in cars we are traffic to one another—dangerous, frustrating—when if we were on foot, we would be liveliness, buzz.
@interfluidity People running others over with cars really are a buzzkill
@interfluidity This joke did not age well. Just a day after i wrote it, someone was a buzzkill.
Brings me back to how we have such dangerous things (cars) and how we arbitrarily set what level of danger (for example speed limit) for convenience. Acutally safe would get nobody anywhere.
The directed killing (likely here, but not definitely clear yet) makes a big news splash, but we die by the thousands (2800 traffic deaths in germany 2023) in accidents.
@interfluidity That is correct, but i would rather point to our collective acceptance of the level of danger the specific rules and existing cars pose, not the cars themselves.
Even though most parking spaces are not practical for SUVs, those become more common here, too. Just as a second remarkable thing beyond the speed limit topic.
The deaths surely scale with both, and both could not be if a majority would not accept it.
I'm thinking mainly of what peaceful, nonviolent protest i have read about - environmentalists letting air out of the tires of SUVs, without destroying them. A rare occurrence. And even less would probably make a difference, like communicating to suv owners that this is unethical if they don't need the car for the specific offroad purpose.
It's not the cars, it's us, giving in to convenience.
@admitsWrongIfProven @interfluidity Life is risk
@light @interfluidity Generally, yes. But with what our choices about transportation are, we clearly did not minimize risk. We didn't even really maximize convenience.
@admitsWrongIfProven every day cars kill people. if there's no good day to make the joke, any day must be a fine day to make the joke.