one notable thing about traffic safety and regulation here is the absolute resignation on any enforcement, it's impossible to walk anywhere (like literally anywhere) without a car putting you in danger (or at least major inconvenience) in some way

@pony London in early 1990s used to be exactly like this, eventually TfL filled every street with CCTV cameras and imposed a 20mph (32 km/h) speed limit throughout nearly all of London which made things slightly better...

@vfrmedia speeding isn't that big of a deal most of the time

@pony I live at a place where we pay premium for parking anywhere (like €6/hr in the city centre is a very normal thing and annual fee for the second car runs into €300 with 3rd car being like €600). The world here simply reminds you every single day that a car is a luxury item, not a human right. That solves most problems like bad parking. Because with fees comes enforcement and it goes hand in hand with fines for bad parking. Cities like Prague would greatly benefit too. Especially in the suburbs.

@vfrmedia

@FailForward @vfrmedia not really, in fact, few times, i got into argument with a car driver doing something exceptionally shitty and they actually don't see a problem and one of their arguments is they paid for the parking, so they deserve it now

@pony @FailForward other than the sheer density of population and ancient street layout, I suspect a big reason the London speed limits were introduced is to try and slow down traffic to a point all the camera operators can keep an eye on it. Its not perfect but its made some improvement, people don't get run over quite as often and its even possible to cycle in London which was positively dangerous 30 years ago...

@vfrmedia @FailForward this car is currently moving at 0 km/h, yet...

@pony @FailForward

the cameras and wardens also pick up parking violations (in most parts of London this is immediately illegal and results in £30-70 fine), elsewhere it would still be classed as hazardous parking but there are less resources available to stop it

@vfrmedia @FailForward they actually have some kind of a monitoring for it, the main bottleneck is actually administrative capacity to process and deliver the fines (and complete lack of interest, partially because there are two kinds of a police force -- state police and municipal police, state police argues parking is beneath them and won't deal with it, municipal police claims they are not actually supposed to be dealing with parking and won't do a shit either)

@pony @FailForward the setup in UK is different, the Police don't get involved unless there is really bad driving / major danger caused to other road users and its the local Council who collect the fines - many use these to pay for road repairs and public transport investment so there is an incentive to enforce traffic laws..

@vfrmedia @FailForward yeah well the municipal police *is* the council really, they are paid and run by them (and it's the municipal responsibility to hand over the fines), the only difference is the muni police role is not as clearly defined, they kinda can do anything and nothing, like, when our neighbor got high, sat in a window and yelled he's about to jump, we called the muni police, but we could as well call the state one, it sort of doesn't make sense

@pony @FailForward

that is a strange way of doing things, even Britain moved away from this in the late 19th/early 20th century...