Nothing makes you hate cars more than living on a busy street, forced to listen to their din day in and day out. >:(
Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud — Not Just Bikes
Urban noise is a common problem, and the vast majority of it is created by motor vehicles. Noise is far too often dismissed as a minor nuisance, rather than the legitimate health issue that it is.The book "Curbing Traffic" has a chapter about the health impacts of noise pollution. I explore the research in the book, and visit Delft, the city that is highlighted in the book as being a shining example of what can happen when noise pollution is taken seriously.
This video explores the problem that farting cars, farting motorcycles, and farting mopeds create in our cities.
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From here:
There is no 'free' market, and there never has been. The 'free' market is predicated on the belief that all players will act honestly, and make informed choices based on available information. This is a completely false assumption, and has been proven so time after time.It completely ignores human nature whereby someone will always lie, cheat, and steal to achieve their own ends -- this is what we see here.
Industry players will always form cartels and collude in anti-consumer behavior -- price fixing being the prime example.
Without someone to keep corporations in line, the market would steadily skew to all of the power being in the hands of a few.
There is no such thing as a 'free' market, and there simply never has been. It's a utopian myth which can never be true.
People who go around spouting about the 'free' market are either naive, self deluded, or actively lying.
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damn, so we've had 11 years of this very thing getting worse.
when will people get it?! people keep voting for these pro corporate parties and it's depressing
Neil E. Hodges likes this.
bazkie 👩🏼💻 bitplanes 🎵 likes this.
well, the same is happening here in the Netherlands. people have been voting the neoliberals into power for decades, despite things going to shit, and other parties being available here.
it's the propaganda that's working; most people still believe that free market capitalism is great, and it will take a lot more downfall before they understand it's shit.
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@bazkie about 10 years ago when I had learned just enough Dutch to read sites where younger folk hung out (and chat to them) I learned a fair few thought all the bicycles, good public transport (which folk in UK often envy!) and the high cost of learning to drive (which is same as UK) was imposed by "big government/EU" and they wanted to have cars just like young people in UK, enjoyed watching Top Gear and thought folk in UK and USA had more "freedom" (and those youths would be 30-40+ by now, many with families of their own)
At least you are highly unlikely to get Nexit as everyone can see the mess the UK is now in 5 years later..
@vfrmedia UK has been a lovely warning sign for us indeed!
..tho people have been voting far right the past few years despite Trump, so maybe most people don't really understand warning signs 😅
and about that dutch youth; keep in mind we've had neoliberal rule for decades now, so the whole "free market good, nationalization bad" has been really hammered in.
not sure if we'll get rid of it in my lifetime tbh. but most of the lovely social policies we have left stem from the more progressive governing we had before I was born 😅
btw why did you learn dutch? (maybe I asked before)
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I love pirate radio!
I don't know if it's actually a pirate station, here's an FM broadcaster near Quinault Lake here that plays all kinds of odds and ends with weird stuff in between. It might fall under LPFM, but I doubt the FCC would hassle them anyway since it's in the middle of nowhere and low power.
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@vfrmedia what's LPFM?
I wonder if maybe the FCC is a bit more relaxed these days since people listen to FM radio less (or well, I imagine that they do)
the "free market" is to economics what the frictionless spherical cow is to high school physics.
The very existence of corporations means there is no free market. Corporations are a legal construct of governments that grants a business (and later even a mere collection of assets) status as a district entity separated to some degree from the owners and workers within.
As such, there is no choice between "government vs corporations" because they are *two sides of the same coin*...it is all one big hegemony.
We have all been thoroughly conditioned to think otherwise for a couple of centuries now. It is thoroughly ingrained the minds of everyone in the "free world" that corporations are the capitalist free market and government is the socialist planned economy but that is pure BS.
The biggest economies in the world have arrived in the same place from two different directions...the US being a corporatocratic regime and China practising state capitalism.
As such deregulation just means re-regulation.
Neil E. Hodges likes this.
If you're gung-ho about the idea of self-driving cars, that might be a sign that you don't actually like driving. 🤔
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Why Does The U.S. Destroy Its Cities For Highways?
What would you do if you created your forever home, and then the government decided to run a highway right through your living room?Join a Local Conversation to find others wanting to end highway expansion: https://strongtowns.org/local
Check out this 4 Freeway Fighting Tactics webinar:
https://academy.strongtowns.org/p/lm-...
Join our email list to stay updated on our ending highway expansions campaign: https://www.strongtowns.org/emailCome to our national gathering: https://gathering.strongtowns.org/
Featured in this video:
Highway Boondoggles 2023 report: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2...
Follow Segregation by Design on Instagram: / segregation_by_designDirected, Edited, and Filmed by Mike Pasternock
Story Produced By Seairra Jones
Research By Seairra Jones and Mike PasternockResearch: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1m...
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When you drive, you put everyone around you at risk, especially those who aren't in cars, while armoring yourself against risk. Said armor is what's dangerous to those around you. Seems kind of selfish. 🤷
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Car harm: A global review of automobility's harm to people and the environment
Highlights
- Summarises car-related harm including crashes, pollution, land use, and injustices.
- 1 in 34 deaths are caused by cars and automobility with 1,670,000 deaths per year.
- Cars and automobility have killed 60–80 million people since their invention.
- Car harm will continue unless policies change; example interventions are discussed.
Abstract
Despite the widespread harm caused by cars and automobility, governments, corporations, and individuals continue to facilitate it by expanding roads, manufacturing larger vehicles, and subsidising parking, electric cars, and resource extraction. This literature review synthesises the negative consequences of automobility, or car harm, which we have grouped into four categories: violence, ill health, social injustice, and environmental damage. We find that, since their invention, cars and automobility have killed 60–80 million people and injured at least 2 billion. Currently, 1 in 34 deaths are caused by automobility. Cars have exacerbated social inequities and damaged ecosystems in every global region, including in remote car-free places. While some people benefit from automobility, nearly everyone—whether or not they drive—is harmed by it. Slowing automobility's violence and pollution will be impracticable without the replacement of policies that encourage car harm with policies that reduce it. To that end, the paper briefly summarises interventions that are ready for implementation.
Found via @Ray Delahanty 's video (All the Ways Car Dependency Is Wrecking Us), which goes through points made in the article.
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This whole "war on cars" bullshit (not to be confused with the War on Cars podcast) is obviously propaganda pushed by the auto industry. Shame they have so much money so they can cram it into every mainstream media outlet. :/
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Isn't it telling how the main response to increased injuries and casualties caused by the increase of distracted driving caused by smartphones amounts to victim blaming ("You should all wear high-vis and lights!") instead of actually fixing the problem of distracted driving?
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"You can only be free if you use our products." — American auto industry
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Pickup Truck Guy: A Brief Psychoanalysis
Dudes who drive pickup trucks: easy to dunk on, but there is A LOT more going on here ---- some of it hilarious, some of it disturbing. But, strangely, in reviewing the comments on my most recent video on this topic, maybe slightly encouraging? Let's explore the mindset of pickup truck guy.
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Pickup trucks are basically luxury vehicles now. I remember working at Home Depot and loading an appliance into the back of some lady's truck, and she was terrified we would scratch the truck bed. Lady it IS A TRUCK.
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You will never convince me that cars aren't physical manifestations of excess and inefficiency.
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Traffic jams are displays of how inefficient cars are for transporting large numbers of people.
Boomers: Driving is just something you do.
Today: What if we made that no longer the case?
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Make car corns as loud inside the cars as they are on the outside so people won't abuse them as readily. >:(
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Things are so bad in the US that pedestrians crossing the street should probably carry a portable car horn for their own safety. :(
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People complain about how long rail transit projects take to build, but highway projects usual take even longer!
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but yeah, in my context, we as nation need as many public transportation infrastructure as possible.
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☒ Adding more road and parking space for the ever-increasing number of cars.
☑ Taking a step back and realizing that the path of supporting these highly inefficient modes of transport is unsustainable.
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Feels like drivers either don't know or don't care about how dangerous their cars are to everyone around them. :/
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I wonder how bad things (traffic, the climate, etc.) have to get before we accept the fact that continuing to add lanes for more cars isn't working.
It's No Accident: Advocates Want to Speak of Car 'Crashes' Instead
The word was introduced into the lexicon of manufacturing and other industries in the early 1900s, when companies were looking to protect themselves from the costs of caring for workers who were injured on the job, according to Peter Norton, a historian and associate professor at the University of Virginia’s department of engineering.The business community even developed a cartoon character — the foolish Otto Nobetter, who suffered frequent accidents that left him maimed, immolated, crushed, and even blown up. The character was meant to warn workers about the risks of inattention.
“Relentless safety campaigns started calling these events ‘accidents,’ which excused the employer of responsibility,” Dr. Norton said.
When traffic deaths spiked in the 1920s, a consortium of auto-industry interests, including insurers, borrowed the word to shift the focus away from the cars themselves. “Automakers were very interested in blaming reckless drivers,” Dr. Norton said.
But over time, he said, the word has come to exonerate the driver, too, with “accident” seeming like a lightning strike, beyond anyone’s control. The word accident, he added, is seen by its critics as having “normalized mass death in this country,” whereas “the word ‘crash’ is a resurrection of the enormity of this catastrophe.”
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Different words used when you're a commercial driver in an employer's vehicle.
The trucking company doesn't often say "accident". More of their focus is on "preventable incidents".
The other driver may have run the red light, but could you have prevented the incident/collision if you'd been watching for that possibility?
More #DefensiveDriving would be a good thing.
Neil E. Hodges likes this.
I wonder if part of the "popularity" exclusionary zoning is secretly rooted in a scheme by the auto industry to effectively force more people to drive. Of course, nobody behind that push would even admit to that. :/
It's a shame people in the US are so #CarBrained now that highway revolts are a thing of the past. Yet another way the auto industry has won. :/
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Reminder that cities are only loud because of motor vehicles.
Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud
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If driving is so "easy", then why are so many people killed and injured by drivers each year? And why is it so difficult to build an autopilot that sufficiently safe for people around the car it's controlling?
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I wonder if the push for self-driving vehicles from the auto makers is them admitting that most people really don't like driving after all. :P
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bazkie 👩🏼💻 bitplanes 🎵
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Neil E. Hodges
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Daniel
in reply to Neil E. Hodges • • •every time I contemplate "upgrading" the stock exhaust on my bike, I remember it's already louder than a car exhaust.
Most car exhausts, anyway. Not the M3 that my neighbour across the road drives.
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Mira
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