7bicycles [he/him]

I do know a few young people are tech/programming wizards but “generally tech savy” people seem to be declining. It’s either you’re really into it or barely know anything outside popular apps.

I feel like we also got a new kind of guy, the tech-forward digital illiterate. They run most of everything.

All I’m getting out of this is further proof that the “general publics” sense of safety exists entirely removed from anything fact based

Oh no I meant the first thing specifically lol. Nobody in that entire program cared about efficiency by KPIs. Why would they, that’s enforced without training anyhow

Having sat through corpo leadership training this isn’t really even hyperbole. it was 60% this, 30% marxist theory repackaged with non-scary words and 10% good advice

IR Smoke Detectors with IOT would do the trick here and seem a likely choice on account of they didn’t include some bullshit about AI recognition, but it also makes them hilariously easy to game. Just spray some axe near it, you know us teenage boys, we smell. Or hell, dust.

also bypasses anyone in the IT Department having a shred of conscience because you don’t even gotta really connect to the local network

aero as fuck riding position

oh, quite understandable. I do appreciate EVs when I’M stuck behind one at a traffic light for not gassing me.

The problem with your point is your reinventing the homo oeconomicus except for transportation. The underlying assumption is that if only the public transit (walkability, bikeability, what-have-you-ability) is good enough, people would not drive their cars.

And there’s truth to it insofar as you take something like Phoenix, AZ or something and just make cars more expensive it ain’t gonna do shit except fleece people. But Paris isn’t that, at some point you have to grapple with the fact that you also have to actively get people out of cars via incentives to do so because there’s a sizeable amount of people who are terribly, terribly car brained and will not change, because they’re not being rational about it.

I mean, much the same, but I’m kind of split whether they’re meaningfully better. Unless it’s smog smog I have some ways to avoid car exhaust, like not standing directly beside it, where I live even the law allows for that. I don’t put down enough watts to transport myself to a stable orbit.

But, just to be clear, this is me arguing against all cars, not pro gasoline cars over electric cars

One electric car is better than one gasoline car, because electric cars don’t fart toxic gases into the air where everyone’s trying to breathe.

Nah, the fart particles are still there though and those get worse with weight

Congestion pricing simply creates a penalty for people without providing them with alternative.

Are you seriously arguing you can’t get around Paris without a car lol?

This is the weird fantasy part I was referring to. It’s like, just nonsense. It comes off like an american attitude being ported to the UK with absolutely no adaptation whatsoever to British conditions. Our conditions are nothing like america. Getting rid of cameras and getting traffic calming measures installed instead is not particularly difficult, it’s about the same. This idea of complete and widespread reinterpretation of public space? It doesn’t make sense here.

I’m german tho.

By American standards it would be considered idyllic.

As such, I do not believe american standards as per roads are anything to go by

Parts of the road already have traffic calming measures.

That’s not really gonna stop anybody from speeding down the remaining lane(s) because they’re still very wide. It’s good for pedestrians, probably, don’t get me wrong, doesn’t really fight the speeding problem at all.

This is very easily expanded upon with the addition of chicanes, which are in wide use (hundreds of thousands) across the country.

These do

There’s no “reimagining” needed here. People don’t need to develop a new consciousness of public space.

Those are very much spotwork as per slowing down cars. They work for that spot, yes. It is however absolutely not hard to accelerate a car again. This is a good idea to slow people down before a busy or a school crossing or something, the third picture especially is just going to lead to slow down / wait -> mash gas pedal

We do not live in a country that is utterly obsessed with cars like america.

True, but also nigh about the lowest bar to clear right after like Saudi Arabia.

There are zero political barriers to this, the only barrier is the profit/revenue barrier of the traffic camera obsessed crowd.

And you accuse me of living in some fantasy reality?

In every town, in every village, in every city. Outisde every school. In every residential area. All over the country.

Same, could find similar features here by looking out my old apartments window. Hell, do you one better than that, we have shit like this

Sorry for the grainy pictures, didn’t wanna spend that much time on google. Now that’s a road you can’t speed on, on account of many chicanes and other built up enviroments, not just the single one and then it’s open road before and after.

Doesn’t mean the rest of it isn’t incredibly car brained and hostile, and as such, transportation by foot or cycling sucks major ass.

If your vision of not being carbrained is “do better than the USA”, yeah, you’re there, but that shouldn’t be the end goal

Meanwhile, in the real world we must be concerned with actually viable change.

Real Zach Brannigan hours here on account of “It might get a lot of other people killed but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make”

You are inventing a fantasy reality to suit an anti car obsession. One I share, car reduction is good. However you’re being a tit now.

What part of this is fantasy. Like where do you see the political potential for a nigh nationwide road redesign.

A negative in the short term leads to a longterm positive.

I do not want to die a martyr to the fight against traffic cams.

Also I see no other method of doing this. If you go to the council and say “I want to replace this highly profitable traffic camera making hundreds of thousands per year with a traffic island that will make no money at all” the decision that any team will make internally is obvious.

That kind of poses the second question as to what, in the interim, will be cut as per budget, but that’s a sidenote. I guarantee you without change far reaching enough to societally gain a new understanding of public space and roads, when the last speed cam is dismantled you’ll find all the roads still suck ass and will not be redesigned. Once you have the change so far reaching that you can reunderstand basically every road, yeah, then you don’t need the traffic cams anymore and they can be dismantled.

Having been to court twice for online related stuff I will absolutely couch this shit.

Fair, I meant it more on “don’t do it on my accord”

I do not see how that question is doing anything but attempting some sort of gotcha or accusation that these people

Your these people just seems to have some very oddly drawn lines is the heart of it. It does include poor drivers, to whom speed cameras are a problem and not that much of a solution, it does not seem to include poor people not in a car, who profit from this. My FALGSOC doesn’t have speed cameras in it - who’s would - but it’s a long way from here to there.

deserve to be fucked over instead of have real designs that don’t result in their lives being made harder. It seems like spite to me.

This is running on the assumption that I think people deserve to be fucked over for speeding, and that’s the main motivation. Sure, some of them, but that’s not the kind of distinction a speed cam could make on account of how it works. I’d very much be open to them not issuing fines but other punishments - as appropiate - to not make them so classist. Loss of driving license, if you really, really fuck up in a sports car that gets impounded or such, but I’ll concede, even that is far out from today, but just to point it out,

My point here is that for every one it fucks over, it helps other people not being fucked over, because it does do something against speeding. My line of reasoning for speed cams is not that it fucks people over, it’s that it helps people. You wanna focus on the first part, I’m trying to get you to see the issue is more complex than that, at least if you include people outside of cars in your consideration. They’re not a good solution, by any means, again, I assume our optimal way of solving it is quite similar. For the meantime though, the fuck else do you do? Just abandon all traffic enforcement until all the roads get fixed? So what, 20 years of being vulnerable road users being even more endangered than now?

You can just say yes, you don’t have to couch this shit in a good WKUK skit.

Do they do harm to the poor that are on bicycles, or walking, then?

The process and length of time it takes for either option are practically the same.

Sure, but you’re arguing for like instant speed camera abolishment or destruction here, aye?

Not to mention a traffic island costs like £3k while a camera costs £85k (guess why they pick the camera despite the price).

Dunno if you got to that one already but I’ve did a reply pointing out where you’re a bit off there

Croydon council responded to FOI request stating it costs £2.5-£3.5k to install traffic islands. The cost of a speed camera installation on the other hand is £85,000 according to Bedford Council, with a £5000 annual upkeep cost.

Croydon cites average cost for roughly such an action at 2,5k - 3,5k in a denial of the FOI request which means there’s pretty much no way to know how much it actually costs depending on what they calculate the average on and if you have any idea about the cost of public works that number should strike you as very, very oddly low.

Wiltshire government here cites about 45.000k for a traffic island narrowing a road to one lane, all in all.

The source you cite for the cameras, however, puts those costs for 2 cameras, so 42,500 a pop / 2500 upkeep annual, albeit with returns via fines obviously.

You want people to actually slow down? Redesign the road.

I’ve posed this question elsewhere in this thread and: what until then? Like what do you do until a good, what, 50 - 90% of road depending on criteria, is redesigned?