Thread: Due to design, an SUV is 3x more likely to kill a pedestrian in the event of a crash than a sedan.
Driving 65 in a 55 zone has a similar risk index to driving with a .08 BAC
Per person/per mile, single occupancy vehicle traffic (75-90% of all trips. depending on the metric) cost cities, counties and states much much more than is covered by registration fees and gas tax.
Even with subsidies, most states and cities are accruing deferred maintenance backlogs (repairs that aren’t getting done) that cost drivers hundreds of dollars a year in additional wear and tear on vehicles.
Automobile crashes kill upwards of 40,000 Americans a year. Thats nearly 3x more than homicides and means they’re the single largest cause of death for Americans under 35 (including children).
They also cost billions a year in medical costs (which means premiums and tax money for everyone), lost productivity, crash scene recovery, and property damage.
Pedestrians are wildly over-represented in traffic fatality numbers. Older adults are over-represented within pedestrian fatalities.
While many parents think they are protecting children by choosing “safer” suburbs over supposedly dangerous urban areas, auto-centrism is much more unsafe (and unhealthy) for children than living in dense, walkable, transit rich areas...
...even if it means coming into contact with poor and unhoused people from time to time.
There are 8 parking spaces for every car in the US. Free parking means we all pay more for retail, food and housing, and also reduces our ability to build dense walkable neighborhoods.
In particular, it also means that lower income Americans are increasingly unable to live in walkable areas near transit and job centers.
We have effectively created a costly and unsustainable welfare state for car storage, while resisting policies that enable our working class to live in the communities where their labor sustains.
Adding lanes to highways is insanely expensive and adds both long term financing and maintenance burdens to cities long after any temporary congestion mitigation is gone.
Nothing here is a value judgment. we all have to make compromises and have specific circumstances in our lives that inform our decisions and priorities.
But I’m always amazed when folks call pedestrians or bicyclists entitled.
There is a tremendous amount of subsidy, hazzard and entitlement propping up our dependence on automobiles.
There is a tremendous amount of subsidy, hazzard and entitlement propping up our dependence on automobiles.
I didn’t even touch on the environmental impact.
