Comment on YSK that in most countries, traffic fatalities have been falling. But in the U.S., the opposite happened. Americans die in rising numbers

• Akasazh@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  They didn’t come out of nowhere in those countries. They were once as car centric as everywhere else.

  ‘if you build it, it will come’

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  • MBech@feddit.dk ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    They were once as car centric as everywhere else.

    Not quite sure about that. Denmark famously had a bicycle regiment during WW2. We’ve never been anywhere near as car centric as places like the US, for various reasons including, but probably not limited to:

    1. Our cities and towns are really close. I can cycle for 30 minutes and get through 3-4 towns around my rural parts.
    2. We have had excellent public transportation for a very long time.
    3. Old ass cities are really bad for big roads, so instead you get a bunch of crammed roads that are awful to navigate, resulting in more people prefering their bike, since it’s about as fast anyway.
    4. We have a very high (compared to the USA) tax on cars, gas and everything relating to it. This started in the 70’s when oil got scarce. To try to make people conserve oil, we started to tax the shit out of it, and kept doing it. As a result, driving a large vehicles is super expensive, and if you CAN live without one, you’re much better off riding a bicycle.

    This is not to say that the person you responded to isn’t completely wrong about everything, it’s just not going to help acting like we’ve ever been as crazy about our cars as they have always been. It could also be a decent roadmap for how to get rid of the huge deathtraps, and get people more excited about bicycles.

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    • Akasazh@feddit.nl ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Sure. I’m from the Netherlands, we did use bikes more often. But if you look at infrastructure from the fifties and compare that to today there’s a world of change. Cars were everywhere and bike lanes just a line on the road.

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    • Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      All of those are policy choices though. None of that (except the old cities) happened by accident

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• Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Right, so you don’t stop at a white line, you lower speed limits+add speed bumps, or protect your bikelanes.

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  • captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Or you do what I’ve seen some cities do and you close certain roads to car traffic entirely, and then send the bikes down there. Further increase the efficiency of both modes of traffic while eliminating collisions. Create walkable and bikeable sections of town that cars can travel between.

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    • Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Of course you should ban cars from areas of the city, but bikes still need to travel between those islands. If your “pedestrian area” is an island everyone has to drive to get to, it will fail.

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      • captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        At that point, you can do things like pedestrian bridges, over/underpasses with roads and streets, or level crossings with signals. Instead of trying to mix traffic everywhere, have the two systems meet at certain well designed controlled spots. Instead of bikers being in a near constant state of “I am in traffic”, have certain points along their journey be “I am crossing a road.” These areas will almost certainly drive both cars and bikes to stop, and then one or the other gets to go at a time, rather than both are in motion failing to predict the other’s movements.

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