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| 5/23 |
| 2007/6/15-19 [Transportation/Car, Transportation/Car/RoadHogs] UID:46972 Activity:low |
6/15 Urban sprawl said to create pushy drivers:
http://www.csua.org/u/ixm
\_ I'm an urbanite myself. Almost every single woman I've met in
my life prefer the suburban lifestyle. My mom, my sister, my
x-gf, x-x-gf, x-x-x-gf, female co-workers, etc prefer the sense
of safety and serenity suburbs provide. I have from time to time
debated with them why the urban lifestyle is better-- better
utilization of space, more efficient use of energy, more
convenience, better community, so on so forth. In the end, I
realized that it's pretty pointless telling them my point
of view. Most of them grew up in the suburbs and they've long
made up their mind that the city is a dump. So go ahead and
list top 10 reasons why the city is better. No one is going to
change his/her mind.
\_ My wife and x-gf both live in Noe Valley. My x-x-gf lives in
Rockridge. Most people are just ignorant, not close minded, so
if you show them otherwise they might change their minds. My
parents thought everyone in San Francisco was stuck up, but
after visiting for a while in Noe, they realized that at least
in my neighborhood, people are quite friendly. It is also
cleaner, safer and quieter than Riverside. Now they are hinting
that they would like to move here. This is not necessarily
a good thing....
\_ But SF is really a dump. It's too cold even during summer,
and too wet. There are too many hills to climb and parking
is impossible. If Amerika invests and builds nice cities
and better mass transits like the ones in Europe maybe
more people would actually want to stay in the city. Until
that happens, suburban lifestyle will be prefered in
Amerika.
\_ Hint: putting a "K" in "American" is not clever. Putting
in three of them doesn't make you 3x clever. Carry on.
\_ Maybe you should meet women somewhere other than your geek job. |
| 5/23 |
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| www.csua.org/u/ixm -> www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/examiner/archive/1999/03/09/NEWS12824.dtl A new study finds a novel culprit for traffic deaths from aggressive driving: urban sprawl. The "car culture" of the 1990s is taking a big toll - more than 20,000 people in the United States die every year from crashes caused by excessive speeders, tailgaters, red-light runners and the like. "If you look at the top 10 metropolitan areas nationwide for aggressive-driving fatalities, we think it's a Who's Who of Urban Sprawl," said James Corless of the Surface Transportation Policy Project, which released its study Monday. "So maybe the solution to road rage and aggressive driving isn't taking an anger-management class. "Maybe it's changing lifestyles and development patterns so people don't have to spend hours in their cars driving everywhere for every little thing." In short, the survey of per capita aggressive-driving deaths underscores the obvious - people who are in their cars more are more likely to be in car crashes, including those caused by aggressive driving. And how much time you spend in your car is a function of where you live. The authors concluded that your risk of being killed in an aggressive-driving accident can more than double by living in some hot sprawl spots compared with other metropolitan areas. And they suggest a host of antidotes to road rage: more sidewalks, bike lanes and bus and train service, and incentives to encourage commuters to leave their cars behind. Questions linger< But the study raises as many questions as it answers. "There are some individual cities that we just can't account for," Corless acknowledged. Another tricky question is defining what qualifies as "aggressive" driving. The study actually uses a more conservative definition than the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Even so, it counts every fatality in which a driver ran a stop sign, ran a red light, failed to yield, made an unsafe or improper lane change, drove faster than 80 mph, passed on the right, weaved in and out of traffic or tailgated - unless alcohol or drugs were a factor. Attitude hard to measure< "Here's the catch," cautioned Stephanie Faul of the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. For example, the driver who never saw the stop sign because he was distracted by his kids fighting or his coffee spilling ran it as an act of negligence, not aggression. And the results may be skewed because researchers could obtain data only for the 41,000 annual traffic fatalities - a small minority of the 3 million injuries each year that result from car accidents. The study found that the safest cities and states are those with more transit options, more sidewalks and more older neighborhoods with grid street patterns. Even congestion wasn't a factor: notorious gridlocked cities like New York and Boston were among the five largest metro areas with the lowest aggressive-driving death rates - although another possible explanation may be that cars simply can't travel fast enough there to do much damage. |