Just need to vent...

I tend to keep reimagining close calls. I think to myself, "I could have just ended that poor young woman's life," or "taken out that family," or "maimed that guy for life."

It's not that I think I'm a worse driver than others. Simply put, nobody is a perfect driver including me. And while aspiring to become better drivers is good and all, the possibility of severely injuring or killing someone is still very real even with the upmost care in the way we drive.

Then add to that that most people don't really care all that much about safety, at least the safety of people outside of their vehicle. They just want a way to get around. And you can't control what other people do.

I had a good friend who she and her mother died together leaving her young son orphaned and with brain trauma for life. They were hit by a guy in a Suburban who was high on marijuana (which is now legal in this state). Most people blame her for driving a small car.

 

I drive a Subaru Outback for a few primary reasons:

1) One of the safest affordable cars in an accident
2) It holds my zoo of kids and two 100 pound dogs, plus the runt 50-pounder mutt.
3) It holds up to the backroads I am forced to drive.

Safety has turned into my A1 issue with what I drive/ As an aside, make sure you carry LOTS of uninsured motorist coverage. Lots...
kris

 

I feel like if society can't convince you to buy a car for the purpose of impressing your friends then society tries to shame you into buying a car because you're negligent if you don't.

This is one of the main reasons we decided to buy the Avalon, because it was supposedly safer. It was much more expensive than any car we had ever owned before by leaps and bounds. Yet it's 4,000 lbs of steel and plastic that's sole purpose is to move my butt around town. What a waste. I hate it.

1. Safe neighborhoods would be ones void of personal vehicles. They would have mostly pedestrian traffic.
2. All forms of vehicular traffic would be separated far from pedestrian traffic, except those necessary points where people get on and off public transportation.
3. Sure, let people who want cars to have their cars. But make our communities pedestrian first communities.
   
4. We shouldn't build cities that interfere with pedestrian traffic. Crosswalks shouldn't exist. Pedestrian bridges shouldn't exist. If you're going to make a street for cars then put it far from pedestrians, even if that means burying it underground.
5. Personal vehicle amenities should be given the lowest priority in city planning.
6. We shouldn't bulldoze neighborhoods just to build freeways.
7. Cities shouldn't have to provide parking. Let businesses and homeowners figure that one out.
8. And while building streets with traffic away from ones with pedestrians will cost more to figure out, tax it out of the car owners. Don't bow down and worship the car owners by asphalting every street for them and making big fat freeways for them at the expense of pedestrian safety and ease. If they want to have the freedom to drive their cars then put those asphalted streets somewhere where they do not detract from normal pedestrian traffic. Make the car owners pay whatever it takes, even if that means coming up with the money to bury every asphalted street below ground in a system of tunnels where cars can never come into contact with pedestrians and cyclists. Just DO NOT interfere with pedestrian and cyclist traffic.
9. Or make every street a single-lane one-way street and lower speed limits to 5mph nationwide. Put speed governors on cars. Put curfews on driving.
10. If a pedestrian has to stop and look both ways and wait to cross, then we're doing things wrong, period. The only reason driving is a freedom is because we've told the drivers that they are free to drive down streets at speed but we've told the pedestrians they have to stop and look both ways and wait. We've taken the freedom from the pedestrian and given it to the car driver. It should be the other way around. Car drivers should creep down streets looking both ways and stop immediately any time a pedestrian might cross. Or just drive slowly, far behind pedestrians who are walking down the street.

 

agree that none of us are perfect, and that includes driving, no matter how conscientious

 

Speaking of walking the dog, our utility decided to shut down half of the valley because of high voltage lines that had to be moved for a scheduled Street expansion. Got home from walking the dogs & the power was out. Neighbors next to the hospital said the power was out. People on Spectrum were hosed as their generators didn't come back as opposed to Dish . Thank goodness for backup generators. God forbid we should get notice of such things.

 

Growing up I actually ran to the store. 3 blocks. Now I have a choice of 6 grocery stores within 5 miles of my home but I don't see anyone from my densely packed neighborhood of small single family homes with 2 cars each walking to and from those stores. Apartments are built near the shopping centers. Close enough to walk.

 

Yeah we keep our diesel heavy duty pickup under its cover ½ the year - since it's too long to fit in the garage. So I just jump on the bike when I need a $5 schedule 40 plumbing/irrigation part, & ride down to Ace Hardware in about as much time is it would take for me to drive - minus unpacking the truck from under the cover & putting it back on.
But at age 70 now, it requires being on the stationary bike every day in winter or I would be in bad shape to go much of any distance at all come springtime. Use it or lose it

 

How do you keep from getting ran over? Or how do you fend off the feelings that you'll be next.

I used to ride my bike everywhere. When I was a teenager, that's all I had. But when there's been three bicyclists or pedestrians ran over and killed on my street alone, how do I get on a bike again?

It seems like the safer bet is to just save up so I can buy a Suburban for my next vehicle.

 

Residential streets except for the very last block. Even the first block I cut across a small grassy park that abuts the back of our property.



Rear view mirror mounted on the helmet and always listening for nearby cars nonetheless

 

Risk is a fact of life, whether caveman or CEO, no matter how hard you try to barricade yourself behind compensation. But there's also a balance betw. acceptable risk, and irresponsible risk...

Welp, people can weigh the factors anyway they like and do, towards or away from whatever others suggest. So in my case of being permanently injured and on the edge of good health (on meds and strict dietary restrictions)... whatever I can do, I try to do. But tbh, can't have too much sympathy for those who give up driving, as it's never been safer to be a driver in US. To be a pedestrian in the US tho... whew just look up the massive crashes into houses in neighborhoods anywhere on YT, and dashcams in countless neighborhoods of pedestrians being graphically punted out of the way by impatient idiots, like they shouldn't be there, and have no right of way.

People in cars -- cagers -- are getting more and more spoiled and more and more irresponsible with 'better' technology escalating dumbarsery into real threat... but given common sense driving habits and clutch decisions when encountering these garbage people... one can get by, just like people did their entire lives pre-seatbelts in '60s (just when that 10% of contingency happened to them, they tended to die. Not so today, with airbags, collision avoidance, ABS, and cameras. And people will crutch on whatever relieves them of personal responsibility).

If I had to move, to make practical not driving? Wouldn't do it. What's the alternative to the running cost of an Avalon and inability to walk, a scooter? Patent death traps (this coming from a 20+ yr motorcyclist, ex-racer and mechanic 16 yrs). Much, much worse than a proper, as in >500cc 4-stroke motorcycle, due to their inferior componentry -- brakes, suspension, smol tire diameter twitchiness. Seen more scooter wipeouts in traffic in the dry in AZ in 10y, than anywhere else, easily. Add slop to that... and unless you want to feel what a collapsed lung or your cerebral spinal fluid tastes like, may as well walk in it)

 

Well, I'm Walking on Sunshine now......

 

Is this your two weeks of summer with mosquito alert public warnings, between winter? I thought the two weeks were in August.

 

OK - sooo - the contects here - is car versus bicycle crash vents. Sooo jokingly saying the whole topic is kind of morbid, so the joke is a cheerful thought of walking on sunshine? vs morbidity of car crash and bicycle crashes ? Not quite sure how mosquitoes tie into this? hep us out maybe
?

 

The creature that causes the most human deaths?

 

Yet many people consider driving anything other than a full-sized SUV or pickup as being an irresponsible risk, yet I know some of those same people will feel that riding a bike is an acceptable risk.

 

A bicycle is not on the list

I have probably put 2000 miles on a road bike, sometimes 30-100 miles at a time over two lane roads with traffic.

To avoid injury you make yourself visible with blinking red lights in the rear and reflective tape on the helmet. You also watch traffic just like when driving. In all those miles, the biggest threat was falling off the bike.

Fending off paranoia? That is probably more genetic than learned behavior. Some are less concerned about what "might" happen and don't obsess about it.

Realistically far more are phobic about flying even though it is much safer.

 

people justify their own desires and preconceived notions in all of their decision making. it's rarely objective

 

same here. Also not on the list?
Nor is walking

 

Yep, they're all risk. As my assessment of risk is different from yours re: driving, we all accept whatever brink we decide's the line the sand, then do accordingly -- ideally limited to ourselves.

But not even that's true, is it? We have loved ones and their needs to think about, and the example to impressionable smol people, granted.

However like teaching a kid from early age to have respect for knives and firearms, risk is as much a mental barrier as any. Did we skin our knees learning to run? Or skate? Or ride a bicycle? Sure we did. Are we glad we made the effort? Better be

Was it necessary to climb a rickety 6-story tower made of telephone poles swaying more than a meter at the top, with slats as rungs nailed to the side, hand over hand then rappel off the top in boot camp? No. How about crawling 100m under concertina wire two foot off the deck, as M60 7.62mm tracers whizzed over close enough to hear, 1/8th-sticks of dynamite going off in craters a meter to the sides the whole way? Of course not, countless people have lived and died w/o such exps.

But have both forced me to confront fear by concentrating on the present moment, and w tf I'm doing? Oh yes -- wouldn't have ridden 20y, had I not been forced to climb that tower in boot camp no safety net, for sure.

Fear of risk, has to make sense... but if ideally less, hopefully wisdom's the product, once our age