SwingingTheLamp

Yup, I’m just amused by the autocomplete typos from a screen keyboard in a comment about the utility of screen keyboards.

It’s really not much is a problem when we ask have touch keyboard in our pockets

🧐

Yep, agreed, it has a lot to do with the geometry of the bike, too. The old, short-tail, drop-bar, racing-style “10 speeds” of my youth felt very precarious, and going over the handlebars was a common occurrence because of the rider’s position. The longer tails, and more-upright posture of the rider, on a city/commuter/hybrid bike puts the bike’s center of gravity much further aft. Going over the handlebars is quite unlikely, and good bike infrastructure that doesn’t put riders in the door zone (or gutter) is much more important than a helmet.

This seems to spark inchoate rage or cognitive dissonance when I point it out, but for exactly the same reason, everyone should wear a helmet when driving a car, too. Head injuries are common outcomes of car wrecks, and a debilitating injury. It may feel unnecessary, because the majority of people can go an entire, normal lifetime without a head-injury crash. But, then, exactly the same is true of cyclists.

Certainly, everybody knows somebody who crashed on their bike and was saved by their helmet. In contrast, I knew people who crashed in their car who may have been saved by a helmet. I say “knew,” because they’re dead.

Thanks for the excellent reply. I don’t exactly agree, but I love that it’s logical, clear, and respectful.

They allegedly did a study to see whether there was enough traffic, a step which requires a certain commitment of resources. If the placement of a stop sign would’ve harmed safety by displacing traffic flow, then they could’ve cited that without spending time on a study. But they didn’t, from which we can conclude that a stop sign is okay there.

It may be a science, but that doesn’t place it in some rarefied air of infallibility, any more than any other science. It’s only ever as good as how it’s applied, and how any science is applied is always subject to human fallibility. Traffic engineering is especially bad in that respect, routinely and as a matter of course being subverted by political considerations, not least by the fundamental choices about who and what matters, and who and what does not matter. It does not deserve much respect as a practice.

But with that said, in this case, even the traffic engineers agreed that a stop sign was an appropriate treatment for this intersection when they rejected it on the basis that the traffic volume wasn’t high enough to warrant installing one. Presumably, if there were more cars, it would be fine. So, yes, we can say confidently that this man made the area safer.

More:

• Traffic stops provide an easy ‘probable cause’ to start an interaction to harass and target minorities and the poor.
• Vehicles enable ICE terror tactics.

Wouldn’t a much greater trick be for Satan to convince you to do his work, but in God’s name?

I would choose small, but then I’m weird. A big house just means that you’ve gotta fill it with excess shit, and clean it all the time.

It’s well-known that how you ask the question in a survey can drastically skew the response, and so we have to interpret these results based on the specific questions they asked.

We know from sale prices that people actually covet walkable areas, so much so that the accusation of “rich elitist” gets tossed at proponents of walkable cities. Those places are so much more expensive. So maybe people are thinking of “houses that I can afford” when they answer this survey? Or, they’re answering it from the perspective of already needing a car, so a little extra driving is no big thing.

What would the results be if they asked things like, “Do you prefer neighborhoods where kids can safely play outdoors, or neighborhoods where there is too much traffic danger?” Or, if that’s too biased, “where children can walk to school versus taking a bus or being driven?” Maybe break up the question, “Do you prefer to have stores located near where you live, or do you want them farther away?”

There are lots of different ways to ask, and the different results would be informative.

(Also, this survey relies on self-reported urban/rural distinctions, and those answers are wildly inaccurate, to say the least.)

Babies don’t have a notochord, though. It disappears earlier in fetal development in vertebrates.