Will adding more parking solve your parking problem?
Nope, induced demand applies for parking as well as adding lanes. Making more parking spaces just makes people get more cars.
There’s an interesting problem with induced demand, basically that we have no formulae for calculating it. So when building any infrastructure, you can’t really design it to account for the demand it’s construction will create. Like imagine building rockets but not being able to account for the weight of the fuel. That’s basically what we do every time we build roads or lanes or whatever.
There’s a theoretical solution. Like if you have so much capacity that no amount of additional demand would overwhelm it, but that way lies paving over the east river.
The war on cars is also the war against the patriarchy and toxic masculinity.
The headline is “Two-time F1 champion fractures upper jaw in cycling accident” and I assumed he was going too fast on a road bike or doing something dumb on a mountain bike. But no, he hit a car that was turning across traffic.
Is this a “cycling accident” or is it a “traffic accident” or is it a “collision”?
Safe streets advocates are working pretty hard to change the language we use when talking about this sort of thing. Changing the language on its own won’t solve the problem, but it can change people’s thinking, which can in turn help get the real fixes in place in a democratic society.
I’m not great at headline, but a good start to a better headline for this story would be something along the lines of:
“Driver crashes into F1 Champ Alonso during cycling trip, fracturing jaw.”
The point is to use active voice and have the correct framing. The driver committed an act of avoidable traffic violence. We don’t want to say accident, and we want to identify the driver as a person who exists and is a bad actor.
We sometimes see headlines like, “person shot several times” as if the gun itself will be arrested for muder. We should be seeing headlines like “cops shoot person”. The cops are the ones doing the shooting. A victim doesn’t get themselves shot. Same problem with “hit by car”. Saying someone “got hit by a car” is victim blaming. Place blame correction and describe the act for what it is.
Here’s a good link to start reading about how we can change the language around this topic.
Also, get well soon Fernando. Normally I’d say that I hope he isn’t scared away from cycling in the future, but I don’t think this will scare someone who drove in F1.
Car commercials, especially for SUVs, often contain lots of wilderness/mountain/woods imagery. But a car or truck is as far from outdoorsy as you can get. It’s a way to bring the comforts of indoors with you wherever you go.
Even if you don’t drive, just being in a place with cars, the noise contributes to heart disease.
Heart disease is the number one killer in our society. I’m often asking, how much of it is the fault of cars?
Oklahoma now lets you run over protesters.
In an early morning vote along party lines, with 79 votes in favor and 18 against, state lawmakers approved legislation that would remove criminal or civil liability for any driver who “unintentionally” injures or kills someone while “fleeing from a riot,” as long as they have a “reasonable belief” that fleeing would protect themselves from harm.
this phrasing is unbelievably disgusting given the clutch alternative media has on so many people. Giving carte blanche to exactly the kind of person who would drive to a protest with the intent to “feel unsafe” and run over protestors.