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307 points MBCook | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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legitster ◴[] No.42150811[source]
In a big picture, this makes sense. You can load the cars with safety features, but it doesn't change the fact that these cars are very heavy, very fast, and loaded with features that reward distracted driving. In the US at least, the top killer of drivers are trees on the side of the road.
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ToucanLoucan ◴[] No.42150846[source]
In a bigger picture, cars are a bad solution to the problem of transportation at scale, and really always have been. As safety features go up, complacency goes up, and to be blunt that's combining with the fact that drivers are getting consistently worse overall at the skill anyway.

Between EV's that are much, much heavier than ICE cars and SUVs/Trucks that are much larger than they need to be, vehicles themselves, despite having more safety features than ever, are also better at killing that they've been at a long time too.

We really need to get serious about improving our transportation infrastructure.

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heywire ◴[] No.42150969[source]
I would wager that most people don’t want to use public transit regularly. I know I certainly don’t.
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1. ToucanLoucan ◴[] No.42150992[source]
Your desire to not be inconvenienced is not as important as the lives of other people who are being killed unnecessarily for it.

That being said, to be clear, I don't think we need to make driving illegal or whatever. I think a TON of people would happily not be saddled with the expense of owning a car or the task of driving if there were reasonable alternatives on offer, which in the few pockets of the US that actually have decent mass transit, is broadly the case.

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2. ghaff ◴[] No.42151168[source]
That said, I drove into a nearby city after dark which is increasingly early last night. There are no reasonable alternatives--I will for a 9-5 event but just doesn't work for the evening. There's a decent mass transit system including commuter rail but it it's just not organized around coming in at 5pm. It's chaos with cars/cycles/escooters/pedestrians often randomly crossing streets, poor visibility, etc. I mostly just don't go in any longer.