A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
This HAS to be satire
Par for the course, it would seem.
State Libertarian Party leader charged for disorderly conduct after fender bender
Jeremy Kauffman, a former Free State Project leader who now chairs the New Hampshire Libertarian Party, is facing criminal charges stemming from an incident where police say a fender bender in a Manchester parking lot prompted Kauffman to fight “several people” and yell racist epithets.
Awww he's upset his broom broom had to go wait wait
the entitlement of the motorati is mindboggling. god forbid someone slow down their CO2 factory for a few moments, oh's no's
I'm surprised that such buttons even exist in the US.
They often do nothing.
My city surprisingly set ones up at certain intersections, where the walk lights won’t change UNLESS you hit the button. Had to get back in the habit of pressing them again
Fun fact, those are dangerous as fuck! Drivers just straight up don't see lights that don't regularly change.
There's a crosswalk near me that is normally a flashing green light when you drive past it.
I still have no idea what to do at a flashing green light. What are you trying to tell me?
Wat
I think the lights change (for cars) but the walk signals specifically don’t activate unless someone pushes the button.
I hate those so so much.
Ohhh. There is one near my house that is literally only a pedestrian cross light. It's off 90% of the time. Cars blow right through it constantly with kids in the road.
The ones here are normal traffic lights, so several sets green when no pedestrians around, then go red when someone wants to cross.
There's one on my bike ride home that's wired backwards. You need to hit the one that controls the perpendicular flow to go straight.
I sent in a service request to the city, but they said it was the state's responsibility and forwarded it.
and forwarded it.
I'm sure they did.
I had one that did nothing in my town. I wrote to the state DOT and they fixed it for me. It’s been about 10 years since then and it still works.
Yeah in my city the difference between hitting the beg button and not hitting the button is often that if you hit the button, the next time your direction of travel has the green light, the little walking man light also comes on. I'm pretty sure it doesn't affect the timings at all. And if you hit the button even a split second after your direction of travel's green light comes on? The little man does not light up, instead it makes you wait through more than an entire cycle before it gives you the little man.
New York City is awesome in this respect: They have almost no beg buttons. There is just a pedestrian phase in every light cycle, no matter what. The same way we assume a car phase in every light cycle. Because it's a city, there are pedestrians in cities, so it's assumed that they're walkin here.
One thing both NYC and my city (Portland) do right is LPIs: Leading Pedestrian Intervals. At more and more crossings, they've been making it so that the pedestrians get the little walking man about 7 seconds before the cars get the green. Ensuring that drivers turning have to sit there and see that there are pedestrians for them to wait for.
they do the same here in NZ (leading the pedestrian signal), and on the bigger intersections, even a red turning arrow for another 15 sec
Sometimes they make clicky sounds when you press them
They're referred to by city planners and those in the industry as "beg buttons".
I have become convinced that people get addicted to speed. One of the fastest ways to make some people's blood boil is simply making them drive a little slower; even if it's so marginal that it can't actually possibly affect when they arrive at their destination they become furious.
The US loves to have wide, straight roads with great visibility and no obstacles on which cars could easily, safely do 80MPH (in the absence of other drivers of course) but with artificial limits of 30-40 miles per hour that everybody obviously ignores because - hey, just look at the road, it's begging for people to go faster. The Netherlands by comparison generally does a great job of managing drivers' expectations by adding artificial curves, places where cars have to gently swerve, setting trees along the roads that give a feeling of constraint and not "wide open place to floor it", etc. Of course you still see people here losing their minds because they have to wait for pedestrians to cross once the light turns green, but it's not as bad as my experiences in the US.
Addiction to speed is a part of it. I think being trapped in a car actually creates a lot of psychological issues. Another one that doesn't get mentioned enough IMO is claustrophobia. All these psychological issues are probably big contributors to road rage.
I think the stronger effect is the opposite. When humans use tools with fluency, they temporarily become part of the body plan. You feel it when a hammer or a sling become "part of your body," and it feels good. A person in a big vehicle doesn't feel claustrophobic, they feel like a giant metal juggernaut.
Car gave people power, the larger it is, the greater the power felt. It is a great way to see if people will addicted to power and abuse it.
One aspect i never see talked about is that you literally feel like you're going slower in a car, a big part of which is because the outer parts of your field of view are blocked so you only see the things that are moving relatively slower:
Very true, and it has a much stronger effect when there's nothing around you. When you're in a large Asian/European city with tall buildings and narrow roads, everything feels closer so a small amount of speed feels like a lot. On massive American roads where everything is spread out (like the one in the photo), a lot of speed doesn't feel like very much.
I have a more metaphysical take on it: One's level of suffering is proportional to the distance between where one's body is located, and where one's mind is. It applies in a lot of different scenarios, and I think is kind of the secret behind the mindfulness movement. (If your mind and body are in the same place, you are much happier.)
The way that this applies to cars is in two ways: 1) The driver's body is physically located in a torture chamber, essentially. Sure, they put in a cushy recliner, and an entertainment system, but those can only do so much to mitigate how awful it is to drive. 2) The speed of the car promises a quick trip, so the driver's mind is already at their destination, and the separation makes them miserable and furious.
Yeah, yeah, that's pretty woo-woo. It's just a metaphor for the impatience drivers feel because, in their minds, they're already walking in the door, they're already ordering food at the restaurant, they're already kissing their spouse, they're already answering work emails, or whatever it is they have at the destination. And you, pedestrian, you are directly responsible for keeping them from it.
But I notice the real effects myself. Last weekend, I went up north to my vacation spot, where I've found that riding my bicycle to the beach is subjectively much faster than driving. It's almost like teleporting! Objectively, it takes longer, but when I'm riding my bicycle, I'm mentally on the road riding my bicycle, so the trip doesn't even register as part of the beach experience the way driving does.
Often their mind is already at a destination that they hate (work), making it even worse.
I press the button every time, and if there's a break in the traffic, I cross before it changes.
I also recline my seat on the plane as far as it goes. I don't have any problem with others doing the same.
The sense of entitlement of people inside cars is staggering
I definitely don’t want my life in the hands of someone that can’t afford to be 30 seconds late to wherever they are going.
Not 50 minutes of human life; 50 minutes of carbrain life. There's a difference
I hit these buttons in both directions whenever I get to an intersection. The more stopped cars in the city, the better.
Fuck Jeremy Kauffman.
I agree...
but not in the way the Twitter OP expects.
For the majority of intersections, if you don't press the button (or more often, don't press it in time), you don't get the walk light. Doesn't matter if the parallel car traffic has a green and all cross traffic is blocked, if you didn't press it beforehand, it stays on the red hand and skips your turn.
I say the buttons should not be there to "beg" for crossing permission. They should be used to say, "Hey I'm in a wheelchair or carrying a heavy can you give me 15 extra seconds?" And it should not need to be pressed beforehand.
My BIC, cars must me satire. Yet here we are
definitely satire
everybody knows an intersection like this has at least a 90s light cycle
Hint of misandry too, implying it's not manly to follow traffic safety laws. Dude probably has personal hygiene too and Mr. Jeremy Kauffman would point out washing one's butt is gay.
Starting to think this entire community is satire
A local meme in my country says "you can't be all trolls, some of you has to be an idiot for real".
If this vommunity is a meme, i am the idiot, cause i really believe cars should be pushed back
why? do you agree with the twitter post?
Just one more lane, bro 🙏
But they stop anyway for the other traffic
How dare we let the elderly, children, and disabled cross streets! They’ll get away!!!
In my city, crosswalks, even with the flashing lights mean NOTHING. Less than nothing really because it gives people a (very) false sense of security.
