...
Our most basic form of transportation is an abject fucking failure. Because what else cab you call a system that demands 38,000, 39,000, 40,000 or more human lives every year as tribute, just to get us all from here to there.
Enough already!
It doesn’t matter whether you do everything right, or everything wrong. Fuck up badly enough in the right place, at the right time, and you can walk away. Do everything right, follow every law, dress up like a neon clown and light up your bike and person like a Christmas tree, and you can still lose your life to a drunk, a stoner, a distracted driver texting with their thumbs while they try to grip the wheel.
Wear a helmet, or don’t. It might protect your skull if you fall off your bike. But it doesn’t do a damn thing to protect your midsection or keep your limbs attached.
Drivers seem to think it’s some sort of magic talisman to ward off injury and evil sprits, equivalent to a seat belt or an airbag, encased in a steel frame. Yet it’s only designed to protect against impacts at a whopping 12.5 mph.
But that’s more protection than pedestrians get. They get a couple of parallel white stripes drivers are supposed to stop for, but usually don’t. Or a curb that’s somehow supposed to halt a four-wheeled ballistic missile from slamming into an outdoor diner or a daycare.
Forty-fucking-thousand people every year, give or take. That’s a small city. And that’s just in the US.
Add in all the other people killed in traffic violence in all the other countries in the world, and you’re up to nearly 1.2 million lives lost. That’s like a WMD somehow wiped Dallas, Texas off the face of the earth.
...
2 Comments
crowcore_explorer@piefed.blahaj.zone · 8 pts · 2d
my first day of eighth grade (read: long ago) i was walking to my bus stop when i was struck by an automobile. it was a cool morning and the high schooler who was driving was running late (speeding, didn't defrost his windshield, probably distracted). i went flying into a puddle at the end of a neighbor's driveway. he kept driving, claimed he thought he hit a mailbox. probably the most fucked up part was the cop on the scene blaming me for walking on the right-hand side of the road. apparently I was supposed to know better. so, yeah, acab and fuck cars.
YoSoySnekBoi@kbin.earth · 7 pts · 1d
My college town became "bike friendly" by adding unprotected bike lanes to three busy roads and calling it a day. I ride a bike eveywhere. I've almost been run over nearly half a dozen times, narrowly missed getting side-swiped by a semi because the bike lane is so narrow, and have to make an unprotected left turn across two lanes of traffic to get home each day.
The drivers don't even know hand signals, so half the time I signal my turn and they assume I'm waving them on or smth and just fucking go before slamming on their brakes and honking when I dare to...turn left when it's my turn at a stop sign?
And they just outlawed riding on the sidewalks within city limits because pedestrians get annoyed if I kindly and quietly ride at walking speed behind them. But it's totally fine for delivery vehicles to indiscriminately park on the sidewalks and in the bike lanes on a whim.
Not to mention they don't clean or patch the sidewalks or bike lanes, so I have to dodge potholes and gravel and re-tread and random litter from passing cars. The roads are clean and pristine though.
Oh, and if I bike on the roads I either get jacked-up trucks riding my ass or people whipping around me at 15mph over the speed limit in a no-passing zone. There's literally no winning. I either break city law and piss off random pedestrians, or risk my life 5x a day just to get to class.
The amount of vindictive pleasure I get when drivers get stuck at the crosswalks during class changes...
Fuck cars and everyone who prioritizes them over human lives.