nBodyProblem @ nBodyProblem @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

Sorry that happened to you. I have had similar experiences, I have had people literally hit me with their cars because they’re angry I’m taking the lane, bad things thrown at me from moving vehicles.

However, I don’t see experiences like yours as being caused by the right turn law so much as the constant fact that people on cars sharing roads with bikes are assholes.

I will say, as a cyclist the polite thing to do is to position your bike to let turn-on-red people past you whenever possible. I don’t think it justifies this guys behavior and don’t know what this intersection looks like but it’s worth bringing up.

Did you actually read anything I have written?

The point is that simply lowering speed limits as the primary lever to improve quality of life isn’t useful. It does nothing to reallocate that space in a beneficial way.

I’m literally arguing in favor of reducing space for cars for more pedestrian, cycling and transit infrastructure

The bottom line is that if you build to accommodate cars, you will never have walkability. It's geometrically impossible.

Guess what? The city is already built. I agree with you.

The question is how to move forward and slapping lower speed limits on everything isn’t the solution. You need to actually spend money on revamping the infrastructure so there are meaningful alternatives. Try to read more and jump to conclusions less.

There are many reasons why it is bad for everyone, but I will cite a few specifics.

To start with, in the absence of good alternatives, vast majority of pedestrians and cyclists would also be regular drivers. The only exceptions would be people who are too poor to avoid a car. If the drivers and the walkers are the same people then the people who regularly walk still suffer from slowed traffic because they still take the car for some trips.

Poor mobility for cars also translates to increased cost of living. Most businesses rely upon vehicle transport in some way or another and the increased cost of doing business gets passed onto the consumer.

In addition, the existence of high throughput streets with higher speed limits tends to concentrate traffic into specific predictable areas. When you reduce the throughput of those areas, traffic gets distributed onto more roads. The result is that cyclists and pedestrians are less able to avoid cars with strategic route planning.

I wouldn’t ride my bike nearly as often if cars could go 45 mph on Canadian streets.

To clarify, this isn’t every street in the USA, it’s only major thoroughfares. Most side streets in US cities have a 25-30 mph speed limit. In a world with well designed bike infrastructure we would have dedicated paths separated from traffic so you don’t have to share the road with fast moving cars.

Disagree. I spent all of my 20s living the no car lifestyle and cycling 100-200 miles a week on city streets. I have had countless negative interactions with cars but not a single one had anything to do with right turns on red.

I just don’t see any meaningful safety improvement from it but significant downsides in terms of traffic flow.

I think the focus here really needs to be on supporting alternative forms of transport.

We have a city that’s already filled with gridlock almost 24/7, even at 2am in the evening. The city planning is such that it’s hard to go significant distances without a car without spending hours in transit. If the primary lever for change is to institute slower speed limits and traffic calming measures, it simply makes things miserable for everyone involved.

IMO the root of the issue is we have way too many cars and not enough alternative infrastructure to make going without a car especially practical.

Denverites love to walk and bike when it’s convenient and they feel safe. I firmly believe that dedicated infrastructure would dramatically reduce the number of car trips as well as give structural safety measures walkers and cyclists. This would reduce deaths while making the city a more pleasant and healthy place to be. Thats why it should be the primary focus in terms of change.

Yup and I’d LOVE to see some of those four lane roads get turned into two or three lane roads with protected bike lanes

However, in a city that’s primarily optimized for cars and lacking in other forms of infrastructure, the main impact of traffic calming measures is to make it really hard to get anywhere in an efficient manner. I don’t believe it significantly improves safety, but it will undoubtedly make a lot of people who rely on their cars absolutely miserable.

The root of the problem is that we simply have too many cars on the roads to begin with. However, we can’t reasonably ask people to stop driving until the alternatives are as safe and convenient as a car. The primary focus should be on urban planning that makes walking, biking, or taking light rail an attractive alternative. In the case of walking and cycling, this overwhelmingly means dedicated infrastructure.

I live in one of these cities (Denver) and in my city’s case this push is part of a ton of other provisions including a push to set a maximum speed limit citywide of 25 mph.

About 80% of my trips out of the house are walking or on a bike, but it seems clear to me that policies like this don’t improve safety. It’s just lazy policy making. For example, if you set a 25 mph speed limit on a road designed to support 45 mph traffic, most drivers will still drive 45+ mph and you instead get a wild mismatch of driving speeds. This just slows traffic with an arguably negative benefit to safety. Similarly, if you ban turn on red in the city many drivers will still turn on red, but now whether or not a car will turn on red becomes unpredictable.

What our cities need is more dedicated bike and pedestrian infrastructure that is separated altogether from the roads, as well as greatly improved public transit.

Our DM did this, I had no idea they were an official creature. We saved some of them from goblins and their god was shaped like the party’s wizard except with claw hands.

That’s really a modern thing. It used to be that you’d buy a nice PC and 3-4 years later it can’t play new games at an acceptable frame rate and resolution.

I mean, you can Google it and find countless sources, if you really care they are readily available within seconds.

The Tl;dr is that his methods are based in dominance theory. Dominance theory has been widely debunked and the methods that arose from it are widely considered to exacerbate fear and aggression related issues in dogs. Caesar’s celebrity status has contributed to its persistence in the popular imagination.

Cesar Milan is considered a hack by almost every reputable dog trainer, and his methods conflict with every modern study I have seen on how to effectively train a dog.

Spiritual faith and faith in the scientific method are not the same.

They’re both belief systems pertaining to knowledge of the universe beyond your immediate perception

Scientific knowledge is SUPPOSED to be challenged and changed as we gain new information.

Of course. However, the central tenet of science doesn’t rely on scientific knowledge but the scientific method itself and it’s assumed power to find objective truth. Any questions about the viability of the scientific method to find objective truth tend to be aggressively rejected.

Religious faith is expected to be accepted without question and regardless of information.

This isn’t necessarily true. There are some religions that have no authoritative text, central authority, or official dogma; they encourage new perspectives in the nature of the universe. Daoism is one.

Do you not understand what a thought experiment is? It’s an exaggerated example to better illustrate a concept, in this case the concept that reliable calibration and use of instruments is itself based on some underlying theory of operation.

Even stone age people knew the difference between East and West. If a surveyor incorrectly used a compass his work could still be verified by looking at a goddamn sunrise. If the surveyor ignored the conflicting data and, as you say "put his faith in his instruments", it ceases to be the scientific method and becomes dogmatic fanaticism.

If it helps you understand the concept, imagine that the source of error is very weak, only disturbing the compass by a few degrees at any given location.

Science? It's a tool for measuring things... it is about as much of a religion as a ruler

It’s not, it’s a system that seeks to understand our world at a deeper level and predict future events.

It’s funny you mention that, though, because it brings up one of the difficulties in science. Measurements we base our scientific theories on rely on instruments, most of which themselves rely on other theories for reliable operation and interpretation of data.

One philosopher of science famously brought up the analogy of a surveyor who doesn’t understand magnetism. He attempts to use a compass as a surveying tool near some hidden source of magnetic field. Without understanding of the underlying principles of magnetism and local magnetic field, he would assume the compass unfailingly points north and the resulting measurements of the local geography would be wrong. Those flawed measurements might then be used by geologists, leading to the development of theories supported by flawed data.

There is always a degree of uncertainty in the instruments we use to develop and test our hypotheses because there is no such thing as certain knowledge in science. However, at some point we simply put faith in the scientific method and presume that our underlying theories are sufficiently accurate for our purposes and proceed accordingly.

Sure. To be clear, I’m an engineer and an atheist so I don’t mean it to attack either Athiesm or science by any means.

To start with, we cannot get true knowledge of the world outside ourselves by sensory perception alone. Rather, the way we interpret our sensory inputs is by applying it to some metaphysical framework of how we believe the outside world works.

As a small example, Descartes famously brought up analogy of a melting candle. A totally naive person being born into existence would see melted wax and hardened wax as two different substances. Sensory perception alone would lie to this person. Only by interpreting it through this metaphysical framework do we come to the conclusion that melted wax and hardened wax are the same thing at different temperatures.

This extends to deeper concepts that we can’t directly explain by our experience alone. At some point we stop using our own direct experience and expand our metaphysical framework using something else.

The thing that springs from that “something else” is religion, and in many instances it doesn’t necessarily encompass a concept of divinity or worship. In abrahamic religions it is the Judeo-Christian god. In Daoism it’s the belief in the Dao, an unexplainable force tied to the events of the natural world. In science it’s belief in the scientific method’s ability to produce objective truth with sufficient cooperation and experimentation. They’re all models of the outside world that stem from something beyond a single individuals sensory perception.

Agreed

Atheism and science are also a type of religious belief. Ultimately, as long as someone isn’t hurting anyone else or trying to force their beliefs on others, I don’t care what they believe.

If you believe this than you are woefully uninformed about American food culture.

You can get good authentic food from every region of the world here, but we also have a culture that deeply loves to create new and incredible things inspired by that foreign influence.

Look at American third wave coffee, for example. American coffee culture was inspired by the Italians, but has seen a renaissance of experimentation that makes it uniquely American. It’s now among the best in the world.

Bigoted speech is itself free speech. It’s fundamentally important that the law doesn’t make subjective judgement calls like this on what views are good or bad precisely because it protects the minority.

Spanish cuisine is great

But French is every bit as good

Outside of Europe? Nobody can compete with America in depth and breadth in terms of incredible food options.

The "it's your fault I'm a bad person" excuse, adored by abusive partners the world over.

See, this is exactly the issue with America today. Someone disagrees with you on something with nuance and that immediately means they’re a “bad person”

The way forward is completely disregard everything the pro-gun community says.

Uhh huh. How’s that working out?

I've got a better idea, we'll just take your guns and you can fuck off.

Annndddd here’s the truth. SHOCKER that there’s no cooperation here isn’t it?!