Red States - Less safe

[vi edit]

I used to live in downstate IL, Eastern Iowa, Nebraska. Downstate IL was the worst for deer. Not a ton of forest any more, a ton of corn fields. Especially during rut season (October/November)deer were very mobile and all over the place. They'd hop out of brush on the side of the road with no warning. Sometimes you would come around a curve and there would just be 10 of them standing in the road. Sometimes it would just be carcass that someone else clipped in the road you'd have to swerve around. I've only had one instance with a deer and that was on I-80 outside of Davenport IA. A deer had been hit like 3 times and it was just a carcass...a semi clipped it next to me and sent it flying right in front of me and I couldn't do anything and just ran over it. Luckily no damage. I've had countless close calls but mostly because I knew the area well and where deer often were at. So I'd prematurely slow down and be on alert.

I've hit owls (man they are a lot of feathers), had a giant turkey *just* miss my windshield but took a giant shit on the car on the way out. I don't blame it. I'd probably do the same in that situation. And that's just animals. You also have random farm implements in the road that you aren't expecting if you are traveling high speed and come over a hill. You get a lot less concerned about rural stop signs and tend to ignore them. Which 99% of the time is fine, until it isn't. I had two classmates die at the same intersection from that. Eventually got a stop light placed at the intersection because of it.

 

[MrSquished]

Yeah I've put over 2000 miles on a bike in the last calendar year in Portland. 90% of it was on car free dedicated bike trails or roads/streets with a well defined or guarded bike lane. Hell, even going outside of Portland, many of the country roads have a well defined shoulder/bike lane. Contrast that to where I was in Lexington, KY and I wouldn't have even thought of using a bike. Literal death wish. A competing hospital in town had several MD's killed riding their bike to work. There were no bike lanes, people weren't used to bikes, and people were actively hostile to bikers/pedestrians there. I had several people try to run me off the road when running on rural roads in the AM. Even alternative means of transportation in some places are pretty unsafe.

Bike lanes, public transit - these things are communism to true patriot right wingers.

 

[Vic]

It still comes down to speed kills. If you spend more time at high speeds you have a higher chance of death.

No. That is a myth that needs to stop. Drunk driving, distracted driving, and road raging kill. Speeding does worsen collisions, yes, but it rarely causes collisions all by itself (and usually that is due to grossly excessive speeding).
As proof, I'd like to point out the complete and utter failure of PBOT's "Vision Zero" program, which placed considerably more emphasis on reduced speed limits than it did on distracted driving, resulting in an almost doubling of traffic fatalities in Portland in the last 2 years.
And why did it fail? Because focusing on speeding as the cause of collisions lures people into a false sense of security, where they believe they're a safe driver solely because they're driving slowly, and thus they forgo other safe driving requirements (such as paying attention or actually being competent, which most drivers aren't).
And why do govts push speed as the primary path to traffic safety? Because speeding tickets generate a ton of revenue.

 

[vi edit]

It's not a myth. It's simple physics. The faster you are going, the less reaction time you have and the greater impact you cause. All other things you said are still relevant. All I'm simply saying is that a car driving at 65MPH has a far greater chance of hurting it's own occupants or others that it collides with than cars doing 30.

 

[Vic]

It's not a myth. It's simple physics. The faster you are going, the less reaction time you have and the greater impact you cause. All other things you said are still relevant. All I'm simply saying is that a car driving at 65MPH has a far greater chance of hurting it's own occupants or others that it collides with than cars doing 30.

I agreed that speed worsens collisions. What I am saying is that speeding rarely causes collisions (relative to other causes), and that the myth that speeding causes collisions encourages drivers to overlook the actual causes of most collisions. Which are drunk driving, distracted driving, road raging, and plain old incompetence.

Edit: another major cause of traffic collisions and fatalities is poor road design and maintenance. For example, the recent spate of traffic fatalities on Hwy 6 to Tillamook. ODOT needs to be held liable for the dangerous condition of that road, but the chants of "slow down" have misplaced public sentiment in that regard.

 

[Muse]

Yeah I've put over 2000 miles on a bike in the last calendar year in Portland. 90% of it was on car free dedicated bike trails or roads/streets with a well defined or guarded bike lane. Hell, even going outside of Portland, many of the country roads have a well defined shoulder/bike lane. Contrast that to where I was in Lexington, KY and I wouldn't have even thought of using a bike. Literal death wish. A competing hospital in town had several MD's killed riding their bike to work. There were no bike lanes, people weren't used to bikes, and people were actively hostile to bikers/pedestrians there. I had several people try to run me off the road when running on rural roads in the AM. Even alternative means of transportation in some places are pretty unsafe.

I skate daily on a "Safe Street," so designated in Berkeley, CA. There are just a few of them, portions of certain streets. Luckily for me there is a well paved one that runs a block from my house. They put up signs saying things like 15MPH, and some portions say "Emergency vehicles and bicycles only." Many motorists abide by this, quite a few evidently don't really. Seems that more than half of the signs posted in the middle of the street have been smashed by cars, the debris is still there. I have several times walked the entire length of the designated portion of the street with a large broom, clearing off debris. Bikes wouldn't care for for skating you want a nice smooth clean surface. I'm about the only person who skates it, although I see occasional skateboarders.

I figure I'm a surrogate for a bicycle. 3 times a guy in a car has acted like they were coming for me, their idea of a prank or maybe an expression of hostility. One guy yelled at me to get out of the street. A few honk at me. Mostly they are reasonably courteous. A few people are very complementary, say nice things to me. I get some nice smiles, some thumbs up. One guy yesterday stood in the middle of the street with a DSLR and I gave him the V sign as he snapped my picture and said "have a good one." Mostly I just go about trying to have the best workout I can, wearing my heart rate monitor.

 

[vi edit]

We're arguing two different things and that's fine. I've spent my life half in the backwoods of rural America. Half in pretty urban cities. I have a much higher chance of death if somethin bad happens (my own cause or someone elses) at the 55+ MPH speeds in the rural areas than I do in the 20-30MPH speeds in town. That's all I'm arguing.

Add in distractions, inexperience, and whatever confounders you want and toss in the higher speeds of rural areas and there's your stats.

I have no doubt that people *can* find ways to kill themselves at 25 MPH. But it sure is a hell of a lot harder.

 

[MrSquished]

We're arguing two different things and that's fine. I've spent my life half in the backwoods of rural America. Half in pretty urban cities. I have a much higher chance of death if somethin bad happens (my own cause or someone elses) at the 55+ MPH speeds in the rural areas than I do in the 20-30MPH speeds in town. That's all I'm arguing.

Add in distractions, inexperience, and whatever confounders you want and toss in the higher speeds of rural areas and there's your stats.

I have no doubt that people *can* find ways to kill themselves at 25 MPH. But it sure is a hell of a lot harder.

Don't forget the drunk driving stats. Also more populated states do have lots and of big highways with tons of people flying fast on them. I know.

 

[vi edit]

There's a lot to unpack. If I live in the city and want to go to a bar, I've got a good chance I can Uber home (if not just pre-plan and Uber there in the first place). No such thing really exists in rural areas. Plus there's public transit. My wife and I have taken the bus/light rail downtown a number of times to go out to bars/dinner instead of driving. Or just walk to one nearby. Never had that option when living in rural downstate IL.

There's still a lot to be said about driving age too. I'd still wager that the average age of drivers on the DC beltline or numerous interstates around NYC/Jersey are a much older driver. Not nearly as many 16-21 year olds. There's still a lot to be said about experience and defensive driving.

 

[MrSquished]

There's a lot to unpack. If I live in the city and want to go to a bar, I've got a good chance I can Uber home (if not just pre-plan and Uber there in the first place). No such thing really exists in rural areas. Plus there's public transit. My wife and I have taken the bus/light rail downtown a number of times to go out to bars/dinner instead of driving. Or just walk to one nearby. Never had that option when living in rural downstate IL.

There's still a lot to be said about driving age too. I'd still wager that the average age of drivers on the DC beltline or numerous interstates around NYC/Jersey are a much older driver. Not nearly as many 16-21 year olds. There's still a lot to be said about experience and defensive driving.

The factors you talk about are true but do not take into account that while in some more densely populated areas there are other options to get places, when people are driving fast on highways, there are a lot more other cars on those highways driving fast, which means more chances of car to car or tractor trailer to car accidents happening. I think that kind of evens things out. The more people barreling down highways going 70mph means more chances of shit going wrong.

Also, once you get to the suburbs, which happens fast, people need to drive to do anything in most of those towns. You might be 10 miles outside of NYC but you are driving to do almost anything, including going to a bar. Also public transit in and out of cities is generally not that great during non rush hour entertainment times. Very few cities in this country have truly great 24/7 mass transit. So a lot of people still drive.

 

[Stokely]

Right now it's definitely less safe, I live in plague zombie central. If there's an upside to it, it might blow over quicker (leaving a pretty big trail of dead unvaxxed morons and a crippled health care system, so "upside" is only a relative term.)

Looking to move north within a couple years for a number of reasons, being around people who wouldn't look at Ron Desantis as a hero would be a definite plus. I'll settle for "meh", that's a number of steps up.

 

[MrSquished]

GQP mentality with Covid is not to do anything to help prevent the spread of the virus - we do what we want to do and it's your personal responsibility to not get it from me. This attitude is probably similar with drunk driving. It's your personal responsibility to not get hit by me, the drunk driver, if you do - thoughts and prayers. GQP'ers can't think of the common good, after all, that's communism.

 

[woolfe9998]

I agreed that speed worsens collisions. What I am saying is that speeding rarely causes collisions (relative to other causes), and that the myth that speeding causes collisions encourages drivers to overlook the actual causes of most collisions. Which are drunk driving, distracted driving, road raging, and plain old incompetence.

Edit: another major cause of traffic collisions and fatalities is poor road design and maintenance. For example, the recent spate of traffic fatalities on Hwy 6 to Tillamook. ODOT needs to be held liable for the dangerous condition of that road, but the chants of "slow down" have misplaced public sentiment in that regard.

Tailgating. It is much worse than speeding.

 

[hal2kilo]

I skate daily on a "Safe Street," so designated in Berkeley, CA. There are just a few of them, portions of certain streets. Luckily for me there is a well paved one that runs a block from my house. They put up signs saying things like 15MPH, and some portions say "Emergency vehicles and bicycles only." Many motorists abide by this, quite a few evidently don't really. Seems that more than half of the signs posted in the middle of the street have been smashed by cars, the debris is still there. I have several times walked the entire length of the designated portion of the street with a large broom, clearing off debris. Bikes wouldn't care for for skating you want a nice smooth clean surface. I'm about the only person who skates it, although I see occasional skateboarders.

I figure I'm a surrogate for a bicycle. 3 times a guy in a car has acted like they were coming for me, their idea of a prank or maybe an expression of hostility. One guy yelled at me to get out of the street. A few honk at me. Mostly they are reasonably courteous. A few people are very complementary, say nice things to me. I get some nice smiles, some thumbs up. One guy yesterday stood in the middle of the street with a DSLR and I gave him the V sign as he snapped my picture and said "have a good one." Mostly I just go about trying to have the best workout I can, wearing my heart rate monitor.

Hell, way back I rollerbladed. Went to a course, and the damn local paper showed up. Of course, a good laugh was had by all where I worked. And that was not the first time in my life I ended up in the local paper. First, I was trying to catch tadpoles in Barcroft creek, in Arlington, VA when I was 4. I was obsessed with tadpoles when I was a kid.

 

[Muse]

Tailgating. It is much worse than speeding.

Yeah, I hate that. I'll tap my brakes sometimes just to get some TGer to back off.

 

[Bitek]

It's not a myth. It's simple physics. The faster you are going, the less reaction time you have and the greater impact you cause. All other things you said are still relevant. All I'm simply saying is that a car driving at 65MPH has a far greater chance of hurting it's own occupants or others that it collides with than cars doing 30.

No. That is a myth that needs to stop. Drunk driving, distracted driving, and road raging kill. Speeding does worsen collisions, yes, but it rarely causes collisions all by itself (and usually that is due to grossly excessive speeding).
As proof, I'd like to point out the complete and utter failure of PBOT's "Vision Zero" program, which placed considerably more emphasis on reduced speed limits than it did on distracted driving, resulting in an almost doubling of traffic fatalities in Portland in the last 2 years.
And why did it fail? Because focusing on speeding as the cause of collisions lures people into a false sense of security, where they believe they're a safe driver solely because they're driving slowly, and thus they forgo other safe driving requirements (such as paying attention or actually being competent, which most drivers aren't).
And why do govts push speed as the primary path to traffic safety? Because speeding tickets generate a ton of revenue.

Personally, I think too large a differences in speed on the same road is very dangerous. This is often found where speed limits are too slow, do you get the aggressive drivers calling bullshit and going fast, and then the rule followers and "safe" slow drivers bumbling down the road mindlessly way slower than the flow of traffic.

Fking dangerous coming up on someone going way slow and having to react around them.

CO has a lot of dopey drivers on feeling too safe on big wide streets with medians and big sidewalks and low speed limits. Honestly feel safer driving in a busy/crazy area like NY/NJ where you have to pay more attention and not fk around.

 

[Muse]

Hell, way back I rollerbladed. Went to a course, and the damn local paper showed up. Of course, a good laugh was had by all where I worked. And that was not the first time in my life I ended up in the local paper. First, I was trying to catch tadpoles in Barcroft creek, in Arlington, VA when I was 4. I was obsessed with tadpoles when I was a kid.

I would have liked them too, but there were no streams where I grew up. The wildest thing around were the empty lots and there were quite a few there in the west Los Angeles area we were in. Nowadays there's probably no empty lots at all. This is near Culver City. I guess it's just prime real estate now.

 

[Amol S.]

I don't understand how WY can be so high. Literally no one else there to crash into.

No trees

Nothing.

How??

Driving into a deep coal mine ditch.