this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2023
160 points (66.6% liked)

Fuck Cars

9664 readers
136 users here now

A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!

Rules

1. Be CivilYou may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.

2. No hate speechDon't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.

3. Don't harass peopleDon't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.

4. Stay on topicThis community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.

5. No repostsDo not repost content that has already been posted in this community.

Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.

Posting Guidelines

In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:

Recommended communities:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] LemmyIsFantastic@lemmy.world 34 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Meh, shits actually quite rare. https://one.nhtsa.gov/people/outreach/traftech/1995/tt086.htm

When folks are talking to you in percentages and avoid absolutes you can assume they are massaging the message to be more palatable to the intended audience.

[–] my_hat_stinks@programming.dev 17 points 10 months ago (41 children)

Hate to break it to you but that link is talking in percentages. The only absolute number the give is number of fatalities, everything else is a percentage. Specifically, it claims that because turning right on red represents a small % of overall injuries from all traffic it's not unsafe. That's not an exaggeration, it's literally the conclusion they give.

In conclusion, there are a relatively small number of deaths and injuries each year caused by right-turn-on-red crashes. These represent a very small percentage of all crashes, deaths, and injuries. Because the number of crashes due to right-turn-on-red is small, the impact on traffic safety, therefore, has also been small. Insufficient data exist to analyze left turn on red.

A bullet to the arm is safer than a bullet to the head but that doesn't make it safe.

[–] hemmes@lemmy.world 19 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Approximately 84 fatal crashes occurred per year during the 1982-1992 time period involving a right-turning vehicle at an intersection where RTOR is permitted. During this same time period there were 485,104 fatalities.

Thus, less than 0.2 percent of all fatalities involved a right-turning vehicle maneuver at an intersection where RTOR is permitted. FARS, however, does not discern whether the traffic signal was red. Therefore, the actual number of fatal RTOR crashes is somewhere between zero and 84 and may be closer to zero than 84.

They literally use numbers in their report.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (40 replies)
[–] poopkins@lemmy.world 15 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Accidents are rare, sure, and fatalities are rare because the relatively low speed impact. We can nevertheless aspire to create more inclusive infrastructure where pedestrians and cyclists can feel a sense of belonging. The car-centric roads we have in the US today could be better for everyone.

[–] LemmyIsFantastic@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago (6 children)

And banning right in red ain't it. It'll be ineffective, piss off drivers, and have little to no meaningful effect. If you want to blow political capital in this worthless shit more power to us but I'll prefer a pragmatic approach that has a chance of being effective.

[–] drkt@feddit.dk 6 points 10 months ago (2 children)

piss off drivers,

oh no their precious feelings, once again taking precedence over human life

[–] LemmyIsFantastic@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (5 children)

Yes. Guess what, you have to live with those people and you have to convince them to vote on your policies.

If you're going to sit there nagging them over stupid rare occurrence shit and piss them off you don't get your policies. So go ahead and waste political capital pissing off voters with inconsequential shit that pisses them off.

Pragmatic politics is dead replaced by whiney absolutism.

Edit: the best part is even if you go ahead and get to piss everyone off is it'll never ever be enforced except in certain high traffic intersections.

[–] drkt@feddit.dk 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

you have to convince them to vote on your policies.

no I don't and won't because they don't listen. If you want to get something done in politics, you lobby local politicians directly.

For the record, we don't have right-on-red, here, because we're not insane enough to think that's a good idea. Bicycle lanes stop ~2 meters in front of cars so they're visible and get to enter the intersection first because it literally saves lives. Fuck car-owners feelings.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] Milk_Sheikh@lemm.ee 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You missed the salient point in your knee jerk reaction about ‘carbrain feels’

if you want to spend political capital Is this fight worth it more than getting cycle lanes or pedestrian zones?

Or phrased differently, unless you’re the road dictator who defines policy in a vacuum, you will have to get buy-in or agreement from the primary roads users - drivers. Which will involve compromise on your goals.

Right on red does provide (limited) ecological and congestion benefit by limiting idling at otherwise clear intersections. Inattentive drivers are not a new problem, but I would much rather have cycle lanes physically segregated from vehicles as a priority for road reform

[–] drkt@feddit.dk 1 points 10 months ago (7 children)

I think you'll find that the amount of emissions saved from idling at these intersections would be paid for a hundred-fold by just leaving the car at home for one short trip once a year. It essentially doesn't exist. Additionally, fuck your congestion, I don't care. You chose the car, you get to be stuck in traffic in it. I won't accept any risk to my body because you can't wait an extra minute.

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] Chastity2323@midwest.social 6 points 10 months ago

If making people feel safer walking and biking in cities = "worthless shit" to you then why are you even here? I can't tell you how many times I've been honked at or yelled at or nearly run over while walking or on my bike by drivers who refuse to stop at red lights at all because of the right on red rule.

Cars don't belong in cities at all, with the possible exception of delivery/commercial vehicles and vehicles for disabled people. Banning right on red is just one part of a multi-pronged approach to get us there, together with better bicycle infrastructure and public transit, etc.

[–] daltotron@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago (4 children)

I think the general point people are making to you is that, in many municipalities where right on red would be bad, there are enough voters in the pedestrian base alone that nobody has to "appeal to drivers" in order to win a majority. The issue itself has validity on the basis that the health of the pedestrians should be a higher priority than the feeling that drivers are being impacted negatively by not being able to perform this maneuver. You could maybe make a counterargument comprised of economic impacts, as a couple people have tried to do, or a counterargument about how it saves emissions, but I'm sort of inclined to think that caving and giving it over to cars is sort of an approach that has diminishing returns in both of those directions, compared to the alternative.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)

Fatalities are one thing to consider. Another is injuries that can range from minor to life changing.

I don't know the stats on this but pedestrian injuries would be something for policy makers to consider as well.

And in general:

  • If deaths are up it's safe to assume injuries are up as well
  • Good policy making also involves preventing problems, and educating people on the issue. If 0.2% of deaths is acceptable and trending up at what point do we take action? 0.5%? 1%? 5%?

I don't think that the US even tracks injuries at least I can't find anything from a cursory search. But according to Vancouver RTOR is 13% of all deaths and serious injuries. https://viewpointvancouver.ca/2022/08/23/rethinking-the-right-turn-on-red/

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

Ninety-three percent of RTOR pedestrian or bicyclist crashes resulted in injury.

So, one of the data sources they use is for fatal injuries only and it appears that right turn on red accidents are not usually fatal. Ok, but look at that injury rate; injuries that are not fatal but could still be life-changing.

That article also talks about the limitations of the second data source they use

My overall reaction to that article is not “meh, no big deal”, but “crap, we should have better data on this”. Anecdotally, I’ve seen much worse driving behavior since COViD, where it’s becoming all too common for cars to not even slow down for right on red, and people here online are trying to defend that you don’t even need to stop despite that being clearly stated in the law. I do have a nice walkable downtown, but walking it has been getting more dangerous in recent years: if you hit my kid because you didn’t feel like stopping, it won’t be at all comforting for you to say “meh, it’s not a fatality”