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Opponents of gun control in the United States have a famous slogan that says, "Guns don't kill people, people kill people." It states the obvious, that unless you inhabit the world of Terminator or the Transformers, humans shouldn't be blaming machines for their problems.
As obvious, though, is the fact that people can kill people is by failing to control the harm they can inflict with their machines. We already have speed limits, and the government has promised to step up enforcement. But, in this and all other cases of speed-related deaths, we seem to accept without question the right of manufacturers and merchants to sell fast cars that maybe just don't belong in a crowded city.
The comparison with guns is instructive. The standard defence of gun rights in the US is that guns aren't used only to commit violent crimes: they can also be used for hunting and self-defence. But then you don't need a military assault rifle like an AK-47 for such purposes, so these are more tightly regulated.
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We have no speed-unlimited autobahns nor a cross-country rally course. Yet, luxury sports models like Ferraris and more-affordable racers such as the Subaru WRX ply our roads freely, packed with the kind of horsepower that has no legal purpose.
Bad design kills people.
That's right. It's not a matter of aesthetics, or of politics, or of opinion. It's a plain fact: When you design streets solely for cars, people die as a result. The underlying conditions that are responsible for those deaths are rarely or never challenged. The victims often get blamed for their own injuries or deaths.
Don't believe me? Well, let me refresh your memory about Raquel Nelson, the Atlanta-area mother who was recently convicted of vehicular homicide, second degree -- but not for anything she did behind the wheel. No, she was crossing a busy road with three children when her 4-year-old son was struck by a car and killed.
You might have heard about the story of Raquel Nelson — nearly a year ago, her 4 year-old son was killed by a drunk driver as they crossed the street with the rest of their family. Nelson and her daughter were injured, too. The drunk driver ended up serving six months of prison, and was released, despite having two prior hit and run violations on his record — Nelson, meanwhile, was charged for manslaughter because she failed to use a crosswalk that was a third of a mile away. She faces up to three years in prison.
Outrageous absurdities abound in this case — punishing a mother more than the killer chief among them — but there’s one that hasn’t gotten due attention. And that’s the absurdity of building and maintaining communities in which it’s not only difficult to walk, but downright dangerous to do so — and then favoring the drivers within the legal system. As Grist’s Sarah Goodyear points out, bad city design literally kills.
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Nelson lived in the neighborhood right across the street, but that street happened to be a relatively busy four lane road. But the nearest crosswalk was a third a mile down the road — meaning they’d end up adding nearly an entire mile in order to circumnavigate the road as per the community’s design. The kids were tired, and it was getting dark — would you blame her for crossing that street, if you didn’t know what was going to happen next? She’d done it safely hundreds of times before.
But this time, a speeding, out-of-control driver (he was also on pills and legally half-blind), slammed into the family.
And yet our society still allocates an equal amount of blame to the mother.
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The system is penalizing a woman for failing to successfully evade a speeding car. Despite there being no good way for that woman to navigate her community without a car — the implication here is that you can be punished for not having one. All this despite the fact that we’re told to ingrain the mantra ‘Driving is a privilege, not a right’ into our heads when we apply for our drivers’ licenses. Our society indeed treats driving like a right.
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While American cities are synchronizing green lights to improve traffic flow and offering apps to help drivers find parking, many European cities are doing the opposite: creating environments openly hostile to cars. The methods vary, but the mission is clear — to make car use expensive and just plain miserable enough to tilt drivers toward more environmentally friendly modes of transportation.
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Cities including Vienna to Munich and Copenhagen have closed vast swaths of streets to car traffic. Barcelona and Paris have had car lanes eroded by popular bike-sharing programs. Drivers in London and Stockholm pay hefty congestion charges just for entering the heart of the city. And over the past two years, dozens of German cities have joined a national network of “environmental zones” where only cars with low carbon dioxide emissions may enter.
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Likeminded cities welcome new shopping malls and apartment buildings but severely restrict the allowable number of parking spaces. On-street parking is vanishing. In recent years, even former car capitals like Munich have evolved into “walkers’ paradises,” said Lee Schipper, a senior research engineer at Stanford University who specializes in sustainable transportation.
when people make environmentally sound choices, how much are those choices driven by the consumers’ desire to show off their green bona fides?
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Two young economists, Steve and Alison Sexton, have been looking into this question. (Not only are the Sextons twins, but their parents are also economists, and Steve is a competitive triathlete.) The result is an interesting draft paper called “Conspicuous Conservation: The Prius Effect and WTP [Willingness to Pay] for Environmental Bona Fides.” When you drive a Prius, the Sextons argue, there’s a “green halo” around you. You make new friends; you get new business opportunities. In an especially “green” place like Boulder, Colo., the effect could be worth as much as $7,000.
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The Sextons focused on the distinctive design of the Prius — which was no accident. Honda, Ford, Nissan and other car makers sell hybrids, but you can’t pick them out on the road (the Civic hybrid, for instance, looks just like a Civic). The Prius is unmistakable. It marks whoever is driving it as someone who cares about the environment; it’s an act of “conspicuous conservation,” an update of Thorstein Veblen’s “conspicuous consumption.” Here’s how Steve Sexton describes it:
SEXTON: A sort of “keeping up with the Joneses”-type concept but applied to efforts to make society better. I will be competing with my neighbors to donate to a charity, for instance, or to reduce energy conservation or environmental impacts.
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Tesla Motors will next week pack up its office in Singapore having failed to secure any kind of tax break for its Roadster electric sports car. Tesla came to Singapore believing they would be able to secure some kind of ‘green tax incentive’ from the Singapore Government which would make their car considerably cheaper than the petrol powered competition.
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the cost of ownership of cars in Singapore there’s a 100% import tax and a hefty ‘Certificate of Entitlement’ which makes owning a car a significant undertaking
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