this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2024
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Fuck Cars

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/33126960

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[–] cynar@lemmy.world 9 points 11 hours ago

That can be both incompetent and arseholes. The 2 aren't mutually exclusive.

[–] kindenough@kbin.earth 15 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

We have a suckhead that parks his delivery van on the middle of a cross over (we call it a zebra pad) everytime to deliver goods to our local flower shop. So I tell him he is unlawfully parked, he says I shouldn't worry, it is just for a minute. I tell him it takes only a second for a pedestrian to get hurt. He didn’t care the slightest bit.

[–] Krzd@lemmy.world 8 points 10 hours ago

In Germany, parents cannot be held liable if their child under 12 (or 14?) damages illegally parked cars with their bike.... Just a random fact of the day, nothing to do with your comment.

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org -1 points 11 hours ago

I tell him it takes only a second for a pedestrian to get hurt. He didn’t care the slightest bit.

while this clown is surely an asshole but let's not forget that his behavior and attitude is likely the very direct result of his economic and employment conditions.

who benefits from this most? the merchant then the buyer...

Delivery trucks, full stop, around here. Though some stop on the street instead, which I prefer, but car drivers usually don't.

In the end, I find it hard to be angry at overworked, underpaid people, who have to work around infrastructure that clearly hasn't been planned with their job in mind.

At least UPS is switching to large bike-like vehicles around here. Hope that trend continues.

[–] Humana@lemmy.world 26 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (2 children)

In my country you can submit a photo of this to the local police with a statement swearing it's a true photo, then your name and tax ID number. Then in 6-9 months the vehicle owner will receive a citation and fee in the mail.

It's fun because you have a serial offender who thinks they are getting away with it like this, but in 6-9 months they will get the first few and correct their behavior but continue to receive the citations. Then they will finally look at the dates of the offense on the citation and realize they have thousands of euros in fees still coming for months of shitty behavior.

[–] Katana314@lemmy.world 12 points 15 hours ago

Oh, man. We want immediate justice so often, but I almost think the delay is the best part of that.

Still means 6 months of cyclist frustration though…

[–] danielquinn@lemmy.ca 10 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

That's the dream. Where do you live?

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 4 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (2 children)

Well, would be better if you could submit it anonymously.

we need an (optional) open source app for that where you just open the app and take a picture (with license plate visible) and click "submit". It submits the time, location, and photo. If it takes more than 30 seconds to report this, they failed.

[–] Humana@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

People here have developed an app that makes it that easy to submit (the app essentially composes the email for you). However, without your full name and tax ID number nothing will happen from the police. As has been pointed out, the system is open to abuse if it became anonymous.

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 1 points 3 hours ago

I see no abuse that can't extremely easily be managed. The NSA has been able to use image recognition for dicks since they wiretapped all of Yahoo Video like 20 years ago.

[–] danielquinn@lemmy.ca 1 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Actually, I spent an inordinate amount of time building exactly this in my head for most of the day following these photos. There are two major obstacles that I can think of:

  1. Abuse. You will very likely get random dick pics and other terrible stuff sent to such a system. I suppose you could fight this by requiring registration with some id or something, but that's its own can of worms.
  2. I don't know how common it is to have GPS enabled by default on people's cameras. On top of that, even though I have it enabled on my phone, 1 of the 3 photos taken that day had grossly inaccurate GPS attached to it, so now I'd be looking at building some sort of friendly UI to allow people to fix the GPS from their photos.

The server-side stuff is easy (at least for someone with my background) but the front-end is sufficiently complicated that I couldn't do a good job on my own.

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 1 points 7 hours ago
  1. dick pics are inevitable and trivial to filter out.

  2. The system should absolutely have graceful fallback. If GPS is off, just prompt the user for the location

Even if GPS is innacurate and 20% of reports have to be trashed, just by making it easier to submit you'll have far more reports in general that its still better to have an easy system that sometimes doesn't work than a hard system that very few people use and always works.

[–] Kanda@reddthat.com 12 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (3 children)

Don't they have traffic wardens in Cambridge? They'd be fined and possibly towed as well here

[–] WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 4 points 9 hours ago

The police very, very rarely do anything about this kind of thing here. It’s not just Amazon; even everyday random people just stop in the middle of the street to pick people up or drop people off.

The worst offender is Uber Eats, which regularly completely blocks up roads near restaurants.

[–] danielquinn@lemmy.ca 7 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

You'd think, but there are three levels of responsibility: the city council, the county council, and the local police. Calling any one of them to complain and demand enforcement results in them redirecting you to one of the others.

Basically, unless you're blocking car traffic, no one with power cares.

[–] Kanda@reddthat.com 4 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

Just gotta wait for that cyclist that turns into the road because a car was blocking him. Then it'll be all "oh no how could this ever happen?"

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 3 points 12 hours ago

..and gets sucked under a lorry

[–] danielquinn@lemmy.ca 2 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

But why weren't they wearing their helmet/high-vis/body armour???

[–] Kanda@reddthat.com 4 points 13 hours ago

Honestly they should've worn their metal exoskeleton with four wheels

[–] WhatYouNeed@lemmy.world 4 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Plus the wardens have to watch the vehicle for 10 minutes before issuing a ticket. The driver would have completed the delivery and gone within that 10 minutes.

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 6 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Why would you permit someone to park illegally for 10 minutes?!?

[–] WhatYouNeed@lemmy.world 2 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Uk law. Unless its a red line, you can stop there.

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 6 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

So paint red lines along the bike lanes?

[–] WhatYouNeed@lemmy.world 3 points 7 hours ago

That is an excellent idea.

[–] WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 6 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Uber Eats does this all day every day.

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 0 points 11 hours ago

affluent people deserve their delivery, fuck u

[–] jabathekek@sopuli.xyz 41 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I have to deal with similar issues in my neighbourhood; any service vehicle will have to block the bike lane because that houses driveway is already full of vehicle.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 72 points 1 day ago (17 children)

Service vehicle never "have" to block the bike lane. They could simply block the general purpose lane instead.

In other words, they are making a deliberate choice to fuck cyclists' safety in order to prioritize convenience for car drivers.

[–] crashoverride@lemmy.world 1 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Either way it's block lane A or block lane A and B

[–] grue@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Right, but that's the point: cyclists' safety should be a superior concern to drivers' convenience. They aren't equivalent, and the status-quo habit is to pick the one that causes more harm!

[–] crashoverride@lemmy.world 0 points 3 hours ago

The cyclist is also just inconvenienced, they could just get off the bike and go around and then just continue on with their day. Unlike the car, what's their stock until the guy comes back and moves the van. The biker is less inconvenienced than the car is.

[–] HappycamperNZ@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I think you're attributing malice to laziness.

I cant think of a single courier or delivery driver that would actively think "let me take an extra 20 seconds to reverse into this driveway just to fuck with bikes". They just want to get it done and get to the next

[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 8 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

I think the word "deliberate" might be a little strong, because it's not one person's choice alone. It probably is laziness, but the way the road is made makes the lazy choice the one that screws over everyone else to prioritise cars. They could leave the van in the middle of the road, but drivers would get angry, so they make a subconscious choice.

Cars are large, cumbersome, dangerous objects with horns on them, and the road's design centers them. If you park in the middle of the road, cars are so space-inefficient that you cause a traffic jam and people get upset and honk, but nobody's in much more danger. If you block a pathway for pedestrians and cyclists, they can get around, but it's much more dangerous, especially for children and the disabled, but most of the time the delivery driver isn't forced to deal with that fact. Those people are much less visible.

So the result is that the mode of transport which causes the most problems for the people around it is also prioritised above all others. Decisions were made at the city planning level that put cycle paths together with cars. There are much better ways of doing things, for instance separate paths, with bollards so cars can't just leave the road. You could make delivery vehicles smaller and lighter, with dedicated delivery bays. You could narrow roads and slow them down to disincentivise inner-city traffic, and encourage the use of bypasses, and subtly teach drivers to expect frequent stops in town.

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[–] frayedpickles@lemmy.cafe 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Not the first time, not the last. Amazon delivery drivers are terrible in every area. Urban or rural they will find a way to block traffic, especially when there is a nearby way to not do so.

[–] cynar@lemmy.world 5 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

I suspect it's a selection effect. Amazon is a pain in the arse to work for. Decent drivers are in demand. This makes it easy for good drivers to jump ship to other companies. This leaves the inexperienced or just stupid drivers left to deal with the BS.

If you've not driven a van before, they are intimidating to maneuver, at first. It's takes time and skill to spin them on a dime, and slot them in, with awareness of how much space you are leaving. Novice drivers simply lack that skill.

[–] frayedpickles@lemmy.cafe 2 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

I've seen them deliberately park at a tee intersection to block all three legs rather than any one of them. That's less incompetence and more not giving a shit about other people. Otoh this is in California so that's kinda just how people act.

[–] cynar@lemmy.world 3 points 10 hours ago

Being an incompetent and being an arsehole are not mutually exclusive things.

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