You probably shouldn’t drive. It’s dangerous, expensive, and should be left to professionals. Take the bus or ride a bike.
More widely, we should support policies that make individual car use prohibitively expensive, but public transit easy and cheap. Generally the only cars on the road should be service related (Ambulances, Fire, Police, Utilities,Buses, Delivery/shipping trucks, Taxi’s, Limo’s etc.)
This would save lots of money and energy, and tens of thousands of lives per year.
It’s dangerous, expensive, and therefore absolutely awesome. You’re just jealous of all the normal people with cool cars, and that they don’t let you drive due to your left arm paralysis.
I’d agree with all of that, except for the “ride a bike” part. If you think piloting a car in city traffic is dangerous, think about piloting a completely unprotected, human-powered device with a very narrow silhouette.
With proper bike-friendly infrastructure, it’s far safer. Don’t think of “riding alongside car traffic”—instead think of what Europe does with entirely separate bike “roads” separated from the car-traffic by median strips.
Where did you get the impression that European countries do this on a large enough scale to matter*? There are separate bike roads in some cities, but they tend to end abruptly and lead straight into traffic at places where nobody expects cyclists to appear or show similar acts of genius in their design. If you photograph just the right sections, they definitely look neat. But integrating car and bike traffic in a crowded city is a non-trivial problem; especially in Europe where roads tend to follow winding goat paths from the Dark Ages and are way too narrow for today’s traffic levels already.
While the plural of anecdote is not data, two of my friends suffered serious head trauma in a bicycle accident they never fully recovered from (without a helmet, they’d likely be dead), while nobody I know personally ever was in a severe car accident. And quick search also seems to indicate that cycling is about as dangerous as driving (with both of them paling by comparison to motorcycles...).
*with the possible exception of the Netherlands, but even for them I’m not sure.
Where did you get the impression that by “it’s far safer” that I meant “it’s far safer… than driving”?
i am completely ignoring your anecdotes—they cannot be taken for actual data. I have friends that have been in extremely dangerous car accidents. I have a friend who was killed in a car crash. Anecdotes are a bad idea on this.
I’d be happy with real data on the actual base rates of this stuff, and yes, perhaps the bike lanes are not sufficient to overcome the danger of riding off the bike lane. But I don’t think it’s quite as bad as you’re making out. It definitely depends on where you need to get to by bike… but my experience with riding in Perth was that I could ride from the outer suburbs to the city without going through traffic. The same for large portions of Sydney (once you hit the main bike routes along the freeways). If you’re riding into the CBD, but get off your bike before hitting the main CBD streets themselves (ie choose your route carefully), then you can get to a goodly portion of the city without hitting the (I agree) utterly ridiculous bad bike lanes
...and that’s before even considering Europe.
But yeah, if you have some real data, I’m happy to change my mind.
My commute to school is about 30 miles, or 50 minutes. If I rode the bike to the nearest bus stop (10 miles, 50 minutes) and rode the buses to school (75 minutes, including 20 of walking and waiting), my commute would take two and a half times as long. It would also be free instead of costing $5.50 in gas each way, and I would burn an extra thousand Calories per day.
“According to a study by the British Medical Association, the average gain in “life years” through improved fitness from cycling exceeds the average loss in “life years” through cycling fatalities by a factor of 20 to 1.”
Yes… in countries where the infrastructure is so poor as to require cyclists to ride in traffic (or in the door zone). In places where this is not the case (see Europe) I’d be interested in seeing if those stats are the same.
Even in Europe, places where you don’t have to drive in traffic / door zone are incredibly rare. Bike paths are cool, but as currently implemented they mostly serve to annoy both drivers and pedestrians alike, and there is still a default assumption that where there is no bike path, you’ll be driving with traffic.
While the first part is borne out by statistics, the second is not.
To make a professionals-only drivng regimen feasible, you’d need a massive reorganization of urbanities. Suburbs would no longer be quite so desirable, etc etc.
Take your politics out of rationality.
Yikes! can you explain how something that’s a good idea for rationalists on lesswrong is bad for society? Should we keep our good ideas secret because if everyone did it the suburbs would be undesirable?
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt but so far this seems more like denial than reason.
Well it certainly isn’t denial. As proof I’d offer up my lack of any kind of driving license or vehincle ownership throughout my life.
The idea itself is not what is bad for society. The badness here is the political-ish applying of an idea without thinking through the consequences and dealing with them.
I would certainly not encourage keeping any ideas secret, for then how would the corollaries be resolved?
Suburbs are the scum of the earth. It is an infeasible extrapolation of the american dream, it uses up good agricultural soil and it is quantifiably more awesome to live in highrise buildings in the city.
This comment seems to have suddenly go at lot of attention, despite the fact that I am reasonably sure this thread is about semi-offensive/semi-joking comments and that my past self posted it in that spirit.
Man, sometimes your mental state moves so fast you can look a month back and thing “What an idiot.”
I do still hold the opinion that suburban housing is ecologically and economically unsustainable, taking up potential farmland and forcing large parts of the population to acquire automobiles that pollute and require large amounts of raw materials to construct.
EDIT: Maybe I should just make it a habit to retract stuff I said when I disagree with my past self.
I always thought that “mold” was the spelling for that meaning and “mould” was the spelling for the other one, but [googles] it looks like “mold” is the American spelling for both and “mould” is the British spelling for both. Where the hell did I get that wrong impression from?
You probably shouldn’t drive. It’s dangerous, expensive, and should be left to professionals. Take the bus or ride a bike.
More widely, we should support policies that make individual car use prohibitively expensive, but public transit easy and cheap. Generally the only cars on the road should be service related (Ambulances, Fire, Police, Utilities,Buses, Delivery/shipping trucks, Taxi’s, Limo’s etc.)
This would save lots of money and energy, and tens of thousands of lives per year.
It’s dangerous, expensive, and therefore absolutely awesome. You’re just jealous of all the normal people with cool cars, and that they don’t let you drive due to your left arm paralysis.
Well… I can drive, but I still try to do it as little as possible.
I’d agree with all of that, except for the “ride a bike” part. If you think piloting a car in city traffic is dangerous, think about piloting a completely unprotected, human-powered device with a very narrow silhouette.
With proper bike-friendly infrastructure, it’s far safer. Don’t think of “riding alongside car traffic”—instead think of what Europe does with entirely separate bike “roads” separated from the car-traffic by median strips.
Where did you get the impression that European countries do this on a large enough scale to matter*? There are separate bike roads in some cities, but they tend to end abruptly and lead straight into traffic at places where nobody expects cyclists to appear or show similar acts of genius in their design. If you photograph just the right sections, they definitely look neat. But integrating car and bike traffic in a crowded city is a non-trivial problem; especially in Europe where roads tend to follow winding goat paths from the Dark Ages and are way too narrow for today’s traffic levels already.
While the plural of anecdote is not data, two of my friends suffered serious head trauma in a bicycle accident they never fully recovered from (without a helmet, they’d likely be dead), while nobody I know personally ever was in a severe car accident. And quick search also seems to indicate that cycling is about as dangerous as driving (with both of them paling by comparison to motorcycles...).
*with the possible exception of the Netherlands, but even for them I’m not sure.
Where did you get the impression that by “it’s far safer” that I meant “it’s far safer… than driving”?
i am completely ignoring your anecdotes—they cannot be taken for actual data. I have friends that have been in extremely dangerous car accidents. I have a friend who was killed in a car crash. Anecdotes are a bad idea on this.
I’d be happy with real data on the actual base rates of this stuff, and yes, perhaps the bike lanes are not sufficient to overcome the danger of riding off the bike lane. But I don’t think it’s quite as bad as you’re making out. It definitely depends on where you need to get to by bike… but my experience with riding in Perth was that I could ride from the outer suburbs to the city without going through traffic. The same for large portions of Sydney (once you hit the main bike routes along the freeways). If you’re riding into the CBD, but get off your bike before hitting the main CBD streets themselves (ie choose your route carefully), then you can get to a goodly portion of the city without hitting the (I agree) utterly ridiculous bad bike lanes
...and that’s before even considering Europe.
But yeah, if you have some real data, I’m happy to change my mind.
I actually do avoid driving whenever possible. But then I live in an urban area, and can do that.
My commute to school is about 30 miles, or 50 minutes. If I rode the bike to the nearest bus stop (10 miles, 50 minutes) and rode the buses to school (75 minutes, including 20 of walking and waiting), my commute would take two and a half times as long. It would also be free instead of costing $5.50 in gas each way, and I would burn an extra thousand Calories per day.
Try hundreds of thousands per year from just accidents, before even counting health benefits of reduced emissions and smog saving more lives.
As a cyclist, I think biking is probably more dangerous than driving...
But… have you framed “danger” apprppriately?
“According to a study by the British Medical Association, the average gain in “life years” through improved fitness from cycling exceeds the average loss in “life years” through cycling fatalities by a factor of 20 to 1.”
From http://davesbikeblog.blogspot.com/2008/04/cyclists-live-longer.html.
That’s an interesting quote. There are probably other ways to achieve the same fitness benefits though.
Yes… in countries where the infrastructure is so poor as to require cyclists to ride in traffic (or in the door zone). In places where this is not the case (see Europe) I’d be interested in seeing if those stats are the same.
Even in Europe, places where you don’t have to drive in traffic / door zone are incredibly rare. Bike paths are cool, but as currently implemented they mostly serve to annoy both drivers and pedestrians alike, and there is still a default assumption that where there is no bike path, you’ll be driving with traffic.
While the first part is borne out by statistics, the second is not.
To make a professionals-only drivng regimen feasible, you’d need a massive reorganization of urbanities. Suburbs would no longer be quite so desirable, etc etc. Take your politics out of rationality.
Take your politics out of rationality.
Yikes! can you explain how something that’s a good idea for rationalists on lesswrong is bad for society? Should we keep our good ideas secret because if everyone did it the suburbs would be undesirable?
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt but so far this seems more like denial than reason.
Well it certainly isn’t denial. As proof I’d offer up my lack of any kind of driving license or vehincle ownership throughout my life.
The idea itself is not what is bad for society. The badness here is the political-ish applying of an idea without thinking through the consequences and dealing with them.
I would certainly not encourage keeping any ideas secret, for then how would the corollaries be resolved?
Suburbs are the scum of the earth. It is an infeasible extrapolation of the american dream, it uses up good agricultural soil and it is quantifiably more awesome to live in highrise buildings in the city.
This comment seems to have suddenly go at lot of attention, despite the fact that I am reasonably sure this thread is about semi-offensive/semi-joking comments and that my past self posted it in that spirit.
Man, sometimes your mental state moves so fast you can look a month back and thing “What an idiot.”
I do still hold the opinion that suburban housing is ecologically and economically unsustainable, taking up potential farmland and forcing large parts of the population to acquire automobiles that pollute and require large amounts of raw materials to construct.
EDIT: Maybe I should just make it a habit to retract stuff I said when I disagree with my past self.
Value systems differ.
Clichés are the mould of the mind.
ETA: I just noticed that “mould” has two meanings. I meant the nasty stuff that grows in unattended, dark, damp places.
Yes, but the arguments are mostly correct—except maybe the “quantifiably more awesome” part. I wouldn’t know.
I always thought that “mold” was the spelling for that meaning and “mould” was the spelling for the other one, but [googles] it looks like “mold” is the American spelling for both and “mould” is the British spelling for both. Where the hell did I get that wrong impression from?