Author Topic: Just venting. I HATE car-centered neighborhoods.  (Read 5872 times)

Penelope Vandergast

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Re: Just venting. I HATE car-centered neighborhoods.
« Reply #50 on: March 05, 2018, 09:17:10 PM »
I should add that I just woke up someone passed out in a car in the middle of the day in the library parking lot yesterday. Maybe she was just tired, but...I had a moment when I was like: "what if she turns out to be dead." Luckily she picked up her head and looked back at me when I tapped on the window.

Le Poisson

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Re: Just venting. I HATE car-centered neighborhoods.
« Reply #51 on: March 06, 2018, 06:03:37 AM »
I should add that I just woke up someone passed out in a car in the middle of the day in the library parking lot yesterday. Maybe she was just tired, but...I had a moment when I was like: "what if she turns out to be dead." Luckily she picked up her head and looked back at me when I tapped on the window.

Back when I had a long commute, I'd often do this. Drowsy driving kills. Find a parking lot out of the way, have a nap, carry on homeward. I actually had 3 or 4 spots along my 1h15m commute for this that I used quite regularly.

dougules

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Re: Just venting. I HATE car-centered neighborhoods.
« Reply #52 on: March 06, 2018, 10:39:25 AM »
something from The Nation: https://www.thenation.com/article/the-left-needs-to-care-about-the-opioid-crisis/

The thing about driving all the time though in rural areas -- you kill just as many people with cars as opiates. (OK, I think opiate deaths are now higher than car crash deaths, but).

Half the people in rural areas have been traumatized by either knowing someone who died in a crash or who were in one themselves. I can think of 10 people dead in crashes from my hometown of about 2000 people back in the 1980s without even trying (four or five of them teenagers when I was in high school, and another one from my class a couple of years after graduation -- when your high school has only 300 people in it that's a very high death rate -- can you imagine the indignant posturing on Fox News if 2% of say Chicago "inner city" kids were dead by 25 due to violence? And car accidents ARE violence. But no one says a word when it's rural white kids, and the deaths are caused by cars). Know one more who was paralyzed. The parents of two friends were killed in car accidents too. Most alcohol-related but not all.

Why people are not up in arms about how many people this "safe" mode of transport maims and kills every year is beyond me. If terrorists killed 40,000 people a year in the US and permanently maimed 200,000+ more it would be a constant national emergency. Instead we just shrug and build more roads.

People have a bias towards being much more afraid of a danger if there is a villain involved.  A bunch of drug-crazed homeless murderers are much scarier than your trusty car that takes you where you want to go every day. 

Also, people think that car accidents are just a side of transportation we have to accept.  It's not like opiates where we can cut way back, right?

Then deaths and injuries from accidents has been a long-time chronic problem and isn't a recent or recently-noticed crisis like opioids. 

Gronnie

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Re: Just venting. I HATE car-centered neighborhoods.
« Reply #53 on: March 06, 2018, 08:15:31 PM »
I should add that I just woke up someone passed out in a car in the middle of the day in the library parking lot yesterday. Maybe she was just tired, but...I had a moment when I was like: "what if she turns out to be dead." Luckily she picked up her head and looked back at me when I tapped on the window.

Why did you wake her up?