cars
This is the only correct answer. Cars kill so many people it’s absurd.
The car doesnt kill anybody. Its the driver on their phone, checking their nails, eating McDonald’s, etc that kill people.
the car absolutely kills people. that same big mac licking driver on a bike or bus or scooter causes 0 deaths. it’s the cars
Build a decent train line and those people using phones or checking they nails will not put anyone in danger.
I’m all for better public transit.
But for those of us who don’t live in a city, it’s not an option. I live about a five minute walk from my nearest neighbor, and a 20 minute drive from work. I’m not in a neighborhood or apartment. They could not feasibly build a rail system to service me and the millions of others who live like I do.
Busses are an option but then my commute would start hours earlier, and they would not pay for themselves where I live. Or I would be paying a very high fair.
Just build a rail system is not the solution.
Public transit isn’t supposed to “pay for itself” via fares. It is a net-good that makes it so that everyone doesn’t need a car and all the supporting infrastrucutre and wastes of space and energy that cars require.
If cars weren’t subsidized to be the primary mode of transportation, you wouldn’t live “5 miles from your neighbor,” and you wouldn’t need a car to get to work.
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Okay, but we aren’t willing not to license dumb drivers because we have decided as a society that to lose your car is to lose your right to an independent life. We aren’t willing to hold dumb drivers accountable for killing people for the same reason. We establish parking minimums for dive bars even though we know people are going to drink and drive and kill people.
Almost got hit today by two separate dipshits not paying attention and/or having zero awareness about the size of the dumbass large trucks they were driving.
Edit: forgot a word.
Cars.
That third one is just fancy talk for cancer
Thanks, was like holy shit I better read up about that neoplasm thing!
Cars are very dangerous.
Your car.
Also garage doors for that matter. That spring can be lethal when it breaks.
Surprised I had to scroll this far down to see this!
Two way roads.
If they didn’t exist today and someone came up with the brilliant idea of having people in control of machines (cars or bikes) moving in opposite directions at 50mph, separated by a few feet and a painted line, it would be dismissed immediately.
I drive on a lot of rural roads in the UK, mainly Wales, most of the time I’m just happy when the road has space for two cars to squeeze through and some visibility for what’s coming around the corner of that rural lane. Actual physical lines separating the lanes? Oh boy it’s my birthday. Yet with all that, we have a death rate per 100 million miles of just over a third of somewhere like the US, so I’d imagine the size of cars and inadequate licence requirements are probably bigger issues for road safety
I can’t remember which episode it was but in the Cautionary Tales podcast by Tim Harford a guest once explained that cars are too safe. Through the years we blamed cars for not being safe when people get hurt but few alterations were made to our behaviour if you campagne it to the advances they’ve made in car safety. If imminent death would follow everytime we made a mistake people would be more careful. That’s how I feel about the roads in Wales. The lack of oversight made me be more cautious. That and the fact that I normally drive at the other side of the road.
I drive a little Skoda so I’m very cautious on those little roads, don’t have the same feeling of safety as the great big SUVs that barrel along
Ok, this is a weird hypothetical, but if the world had been overcast for the last thousand years, and then suddenly there was sometimes just a completely blinding light in the sky that you sometimes have to drive straight toward, it would be chaos.
Before COVID I imagined that the death toll would be so high that most roads would be shut down until technology had been developed and distributed so that you could never be blinded by the sun while driving. (Not just a flip down sun visor, but something like an LCD screen front windshield with head tracking that automatically blocks just the sun from your view).
Now I know how quickly and easily people become acquainted with mass death.
Now I imagine there wouldn’t even be a new driver’s test required that requires you to demonstrate that you can safely drive into the sunset.
Just “We recommend, but don’t require, that you have a sun visor in your car when using public roads.”
Motorcycles, for the same reason
Cars
Your car. Just think about the forces and mechanisms invovled for this to happen. Every single day we travel at 100km/h in our 2ton at least metal box surrounded by hundreds of other people in their equally large and heavy and fast machines in a space barely wide enough to react in case of an emergency(not even considering if most are actually ready to act in such a case. All of this with realistically little training. Not to mention most people don’t really pay attention while driving and certainly don’t consider the life of others while doing so. It’s so impersonal and dangerous. If it was a never heard of concept, individual cars driven by any normal person would be considered laughably stupid at the very best.
The top three causes of preventable fatal injury in the US are:
- poisoning (including drug overdoses)
- motor vehicles
- falls
We might generalize these to:
- chemistry
- engineering
- physics
The third is more gravity than physics, or perhaps you should consider it the absence of gravity.
What I’m trying to say is: stop following geodesics.
Also, heart disease
At least here in a very anti-public transit US city: Automobiles
Dihydrogen monoxide. That stuff’ll kill you.
Psh, I drink it everyday and I’m FINE
But everyone who drinks it will die…
But it’s the stuff which is used in nuclear power plants to store the used rods.
Hitler also drank it every day and he also thought he was fine…
Yeah but he also killed Hitler, so that means he’s okay right?
Too much dihydrogen monoxide? Death.
Not enough dihydrogen monoxide? Also death
Capitalism. Most of the other (daily, specific) dangers out there are dangerous because someone’s making money off putting other people in danger. I’m including the military industrial complex, but also regular industries and the exploitation of vulnerable populations.
Idk if we use capitalism so much as we get used…
What would you call the military industrial complex of CCCP?
Edit: I love that one reply is claiming it’s self defense, the other is claiming they’re capitalist
Necessary to prevent invasions by imperialists and capitalists who feel threatened by successful socialist models or who are looking to exploit other countries.
Imagine how much more they could have accomplished if they didn’t have to fear the very real threat of foreign invasion. Remember, they were invaded by foreign powers shortly after the revolution in 1918.
Electricity?
Fossil fuel pollution.
Swimming pools, with kids in the house. More dangerous than owning a gun:
Honestly the human body is pretty weak, anything can kill us. I crave the strength and certainty of steel.
Would you say you understand the weakness of your flesh?
titanium implants are pretty leet though
I’ve got balls of steel!
Garage door. Then springs will kill you.
