this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
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By being anti car it indicates the critical failure of design. You dont want to force people away from cars u want to make public transport a better more appealing alternative.
It depends what you mean by "force." It isn't necessary to legislatively outlaw cars or anything like that, but you really do have to at least stop catering to cars if you ever want public transit to be good. More concretely, you have to change the zoning code to stop limiting density and forcing developers to build parking. That accomplishes two things: it allows there to be enough trip origins/destinations within walking distance of stations to make the transit viable, and it limits the available parking to only that which the free market is willing to provide (a lot less than zoning codes typically mandate now) which discourages driving by making it hard to find a place to park.
That's not actually "forcing" anything in reality, but a lot of car-brained people will tend to think it is because to people accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.
(Another related example: NIMBYs think "abolish single-family zoning" means "prohibit building single-family houses," but it actually means "give property owners the freedom to build either single-family houses or multifamily buildings if they want." It's actually deregulation, but the people wedded to the highly-regulated status-quo will swear up and down that the proposed change is some kind of big-government communist plot.)
The fact that people are still trying to drive Dodge RAMs in undercover carparks and down city laneways suggests that failure of design is not the key issue. Fuckwits are the issue.
Designing city’s that encourage social transit over independent transport is one thing. Legislation to prevent people being selfish fuckwits and driving a “Light” Truck into your office job.
As long as its safe why should the government have any say whatsoever over what vehicle u drive?
How is it unsafe? Other people feel unsafe? Its not like getting hit by a small car is any leas deadly the relative intertia means the car wins eather way regardless of if its 500kg or 3000kg.
Yank tanks are more dangerous for a few reasons.
The shape of their frontal area means that when you hit an adult, instead of being launched over the top of the car thanks to being hit in the legs, they get hit in the chest and go under instead. Far more deadly.
They also have abysmal sight lines. You can fit a dozen children sitting on the ground in front of them in a line before you can see any of them.
So not only is a yank tank more likely to kill you if you get hit by it, it's also way more likely to hit you in the first place, because it's harder for the driver to see you.
You failed physics in school, didn’t you?
Also modern passenger cars have crumple zones and pedestrian protection systems. Light commercial vehicles are legally exempt from these requirements because they are designed to be commercial vehicles. They are not designed to be driven by someone who doesn’t understand that 3000kg is more than 500kg and that changing the velocity of something that weighs more requires more “work”.
This example is also why Sports car brakes and SUV brakes are much more expensive than compact and subcompact car brakes. Popular LCV brakes are cheap because of volumes and fleet discounts.
Dodge RAMs, Ford F150s and Silverado’s all require LCV brakes, but because very few people in Australia are stupid enough to buy them as a daily run-around, there is not the market demand to create lower prices.
This is OK for people legitimately using it as a work vehicle, because they can claim depreciation.
When ignorant private individuals who can’t afford to buy these vehicles, and can’t afford to maintain these vehicles are out driving on our urban and suburban streets, other people in normal sized cars, motorbikes, pushbikes and pedestrians get killed.
It doesnt matter how much work it takes to stop the vehicle u standing on the road will not be enough in comparison to a car if its 10times what u can provide or 50 ur still dead. Also the whole breaks argument relies on people not being able to afford to maintajn there car. So the solution is simply ban poor people from ownjng big cars.
If I have a car barreling towards me, my first instinct is to get out of the way.
What I don’t think I about, but is pretty important are; A) is the driver doing to respond in time to slow the vehicle? B) is the driver assistance system going to respond in time to slow the vehicle. C) is the vehicle braking system going to be effective enough to slow the vehicle. D) how much momentum (Mass x Velocity) is the vehicle going to pass onto me when it hits me. E) where will my head hit the car when it does hit me. All these factors come into effect in modern vehicles.
A and B are irrelevent as that goes for all vehicles. C Australian regulations require all passenger vehicles are tested to an identical standard. Heavy vehicles are tested to a different standard but thats only ones over 4.5 tonnes (thats more than a Humvee). D Damage to a person is based on the Force which is accelleration times mass. Momentum is a measure of a bodies resistance to change in velocity as i said earlyer a small vehicle and a large vehicle have so much relative momentum compared to a person you will make very little effective change. E thats the only good point u got.
Yeah yeah yeah, meanwhile my street is much nicer without cars in it, and the shops are full of locals buying things. How sad that you car folks need to stay in your own neighborhoods instead of giving us all brain damage.
It really depends on what you mean by "force". Certainly we don't want to just ban cars, but in order to make public and active transport appealing, some restrictions on driving are necessary.
For example, at the moment you can drive from anywhere, to anywhere, via almost any route. This makes even local streets unnecessarily dangerous because people end up driving through unrelated local streets when that ends up being faster than sticking to main roads. Which in itself is making walking and cycling more dangerous, causing more people to drive instead.
If instead we used modal filters—sections of local streets that you can't drive through but can walk or ride through—that would definitely make driving seem "worse" because rat running would no longer be possible and access to local streets would be possible only via one route instead of 4 different ones, but it would also make walking and cycling better, too. It would make them safer, and would mean for some trips they can literally take a shorter journey.
This is just one example of good design. There are a number of other ways things can be designed better that might both help public and active transport users and hinder car use. Ironically, if done well, even all this would actually make driving better, because the number one problem for drivers at the moment is other drivers. And if you design well, you can reduce the number of other drivers, so anyone who continues to drive will have a better experience.
It's not about "forcing" anything. But it is about incentivising and disincentivising things to arrive at a better overall transport network.