Cars, death, linked?

[Dystopio]

Cars, death, linked?

It's always struck me that cars are a rediculous sinkhole for value in the modern world, at least in America, and other places which put such an emphasis on it as the primary/<70% option for transportation. The amount of $ we have to spend to drive/own a car added to the financial and mortal liability we take on when we turn the keys in the ignition or a car are very high. The amount of taxes used to maintain roads along with the amount of real estate bogarted by them is also extremely high. Cars kill more people than anything besides old age. To live in america in most places you drive or become homeless. Driving is not a choice or a right, it's a responsibility with few exeptions. You add all these things up and the bill is more than even G.W. could steal from us in his lifetime, every year. There are much safer alternatives. There are alternatives that haven't been nearly optimized yet. There are alternatives which will never be thought up while the auto industry reigns over the world. What bothers me most is that this is not even up for debate for the most part in any public way. I can find more heated arguements over wether euthanizing alleycats is immoral or not. Well anyway start the flaming plz.

[JMHX]

What you say about the large automotive industry holding down innovation is true, though I don't know what can be done about it short of the government taking a large amount of control over production within the automotive industry. Start-up companies in that industry have always had an unfairly difficult time taking on the auto cartel.

[Dystopio]

The government the government, yuck, yeah, well I have a host of issues with them as well, the auto people own a great deal of the political capitol as well making things even worse, but then there goes the issue of ending campaign contributions from private sources altogether, ie, campaign finace reform is the way and the light lets get it done. I will always oppose the idea that the govenment cannot do something well. It usually doesnt under current design, but then thats because its designed that way on purpose and the watchdogs only have their eyes on where their payoff is going to come from. A private solution is not likely as any source of finace large enough would innevitably come to the conclusion that such a business strategy would in essance be a war on the auto industry leading to net costs that would eliminate any possibility for profit, and capitol doesnt invest to lose capitol. And, like i said government is owned by capitol, private interests, everyone knows the dice are loaded. The people still have an interest that is worth the effort, the autoerotic era is a stone around the necks of modern man. But, perhaps the real problem is the political system, the economic system, and this is just anothe of the great symptoms of that disease.

[asdfrasdfg]

At 3/23/06 02:32 PM, Dystopio wrote:

It's always struck me that cars are a rediculous sinkhole for value in the modern world, at least in America, and other places which put such an emphasis on it as the primary/<70% option for transportation. The amount of $ we have to spend to drive/own a car added to the financial and mortal liability we take on when we turn the keys in the ignition or a car are very high.

The reason most people would choose to drive cars is because America is a big fucking place. When you want to travel a distance, say 30 to 50 miles, just for an hour or two, would you really enjoy having to book a bus at a certain time, or having to ride a bike that far? Also, do you understand how much freedom you lose when you are forced to take a bus or airplane? You sure as hell can't stop wherever you want, and you're forced to go where they want. You have to schedule yourself around bus or plane times, and have almost no freedom in when you can leave or go somewhere.

So if paying more for a car means that I can have the freedom to go wherever I want, whenever I want, and only worry about how much money in gas it will cost me, I would much rather take that alternative.

The amount of taxes used to maintain roads along with the amount of real estate bogarted by them is also extremely high. Cars kill more people than anything besides old age. To live in america in most places you drive or become homeless. Driving is not a choice or a right, it's a responsibility with few exeptions. You add all these things up and the bill is more than even G.W. could steal from us in his lifetime, every year.

There are much safer alternatives. There are alternatives that haven't been nearly optimized yet. There are alternatives which will never be thought up while the auto industry reigns over the world.

I hope you realize that most of your alternatives use the same road systems. So, you know, that means that even if we got rid of cars, we would still have to pay for the roads, so there's no way that cost is going away. Yes, cars kill lots of people, but that doesn't mean we should completely abandon them for that reason. And like I said above, cars are way too helpful for medium distance travel to try and abolish them, mainly because it gets rid of any kind of freedom while you travel.

It really comes down to whether you want to risk yourself driving a car, or give up any kind of freedom while you travel somewhere.

[Dystopio]

Umm yeah some stuff there....

K america is a big place i would think here you mean that it has many low populated areas that seperate the concentrations of population, since simply being large doesnt in itself make cars superior to some other form of public transportation.

I don't know how much you've driven but umm yeah thinking that cars = freedom hmm alot of cars ads have probably nailed that into your subconcious, sit in traffic for 2 hours bumber to bumber, very freeing experience, kinda like the freedom to drag burning coals over your body.

1-Youre assumptions about the freedom and efficiency seem to derive mainly from an assumption that public transportation used by more people or a large chunk of people would still have the limitations of sparsly implemented public transportation, ok yeah right now cars are the main way you have to get around well, but thats because the raods are designed for cars and public transportation gets very little investment when compared to other nations at our level of industrial development and population density. Basically being able to stop wherever u want, we could make a system to accomodate that need if we really wanted to, it's called engineering, use our brains figure it out amazing.

2- we would be using up the same road space. Hmm a drawing might be useful here, ok how much room does a car take up?, how often are there multiple passengers?, if you can have a reliable system for moving people via vehicles which are automated for maximum effieciency without the stupidities of individual drivers who as a whole have no chance of driving efficiently could you not save a great deal of roadspace while getting higher speeds of moving people where they need to go? ( long sentence meh) I think so yes.

3- parking space,- system that utilizes a private or government owned set of vehicles can use those vehicles constantly thus eliminating a vast amount of parking space ie your one bedroom in LA may actually cost less than 1200 a month because of the freed up real estate.

4- eliminate traffic cops, dmvs, metemaids, tow companies, reduce the strain on medical facilities, casket makers (meh not really in the long term just a sideward point), and save a great deal of public value in inumerable other places. also makes it hard to kidnap children when you have to drag them through a public transport sytem to get them back to your molestation flat.

5- sparce areas, cars do it, buses can do it, whoop dedo, computer operated small railsystem that you can tell where you want to go to and it efficiently takes you out to ure farm via the rail system. amazing,

a car does not make you free, it gets you places, if something else can do that better while saving you money, and reducing youre chance of early death that makes you free.... to do something besides suck on carbon monoxide for hours every day.

[BeFell]

Well this is just about idiotic. Public transportion might make logical sense in a large city but that's just about it. What about people who live a couple miles outside of town, are you going to have a subway stop at each of their houses or maybe a bus route that comes by three times a day. Yep, that sounds like fun.

[Dystopio]

Once agian you focus on the least important element of the issue, there is no congestion in low pop areas also no problem with lack of parking space and real estate areas. however the high cost of auto ownership does still exist and while i have not imagined the specifics of applying good public transport in those areas in such a way as to take the gun out of the hands of the individual in those cases it does make sense that sparsly populated areas would be the last to get attention from a public transportation system and is the last area of my concern.

Many stops can be made in cities and suburban areas where masses of people live and there is population movement on a constant basis, this makes an intricate flexible system of public transport cost effective, feasable, and unimaginably rewarding to the local economy and individual needs. Huge amounts of productivity are shown to be lost during the neccessary driving in a highly populated area, this drives up the cost of labor for employers as well as diminishing the time able to be applied to the raising of children or whatever personal activities one makes on their own time. Also during large emergencies public transportation can be coordinated to allow evacuation to proceed efficiently whereas as is grossly apparent in any disaster the auto is a deathlock that traps people into an area with the inevitable car lock that is the result of so many people trying to drive away from an incident.

In these areas as any civil engineer would be able to tell you with public transportation as the backbone of transport in the area you get alot more for alot less labor and materials, the main neccesity is that this system is constantly reliable, which means a privite company cannot simply go bankrupt and walk away, so either the government fully or partially with private contracters must handle this responsibility.

I would also sudgest the idea that since this would require a high level of R&D to first implement and fashion with the greatest result a national program that invested a great amount into the design phase would be ideal, as the designs created under those circumstances could afford the greatest engineering/design costs with the vast production absorbing those high design costs, and a great length of time of those systems being in operation would then optimize the value of the construction and operation. An international union could also be used to create the initial designs further spreading out those costs and creating the most effective results, with that choice much of the patriotic fuel for such a program might be lost and the cost of negotiation and hesitance to share technology might demean that value too highly.