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Happy !

I hope to get to Black history soon, but I'm still working through white US history. There's so much of it!

Q: Why are Black people in the US so much more likely to die in traffic accidents than white people? Are Black folk more likely to drive under the influence of alcohol or drugs (DUI)? Is it street racing? Are y'all just bad drivers?

A: Hmm. I'm stumped! No one knows the answer to why this happens! Just kidding. It's racism. It's always racism.

1/N

A big portion of US traffic deaths are "SUV vs anything." "Anything" can be a smaller car, a cyclist, or a pedestrian.

Because of the systemically racist way that US infrastructure has been built, "SUV vs pedestrian" strikes are disproportionately likely to involve a white driver and Black child pedestrian. White SUVs drive in places where Black kids walk.

But what about DUIs? Drunk drivers are bad and should be stopped. DUI checkpoints are an invasion of privacy, but at least they're effective at catching drunk drivers, right?

1. DUI checkpoints are supposed to catch drunk drivers
2. Black drivers are *less* likely to be DUI than white drivers🙃
3. But DUI checkpoints are run by cops, who are incentivized to arrest Black people
4. So DUI checkpoints are disproportionately located in Black neighborhoods 🤦🏿‍♂️
5. So they catch very few drunk drivers.🤡

In Chicago, fewer than 4% of DUI checkpoints are in majority white neighborhoods, but 25% of drunk driving accidents are in white neighborhoods. 🙂🙃

In California, fewer than 1% of drunk driving arrests come from checkpoints.🤦🏿‍♂️

Cops are using DUI checkpoints as an excuse to stop Black drivers, then searching them and arresting them for other things. Because policing in America. Because racism.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/fu

And Black drivers that survive a bad crash, are often concussed and disoriented. First responders to a crash, are often police. I don't need to go much further into explaining what happens when an injured Black driver needing assistance encounters a typical cop, other than to say the motorist is as likely to get a taser as a tourniquet.

🤔 Maybe we should try making cops second responders instead of first responders...

There are several horrific incidents of "racist person gets really drunk and intentionally runs over Black children." Each one of these is awful, but fortunately, this isn't a widespread phenomenon. But... Some racist politicians want it to be. Seriously.

Several states recently passed laws decriminalizing driving a car into a crowd of "rioting" people and running them over.

No, I am not joking.

Florida passed their version of the law along with a change describing a riot as 3 people. Truly evil stuff.

vox.com/2021/4/25/22367019/gop

Similar laws have passed in several states with racist state legislatures. These laws were largely passed in a backlash response to Black Lives Matter protests.

Vox · In Oklahoma, Florida, and other states, Republicans are passing laws that make it easier to run over proteste…By Cameron Peters

There aren't that many intentional racists trying to run over Black kids. Each incident is terrible, but fortunately, they are extremely rare. Unfortunately, there are very many unintentionally racist people buzzing Black people in crosswalks.

White drivers in the US are *seven times* more likely to buzz past a Black pedestrian in the crosswalk than a white pedestrian. Sometimes this goes horribly wrong. Sometimes what looks like one pedestrian, is two pedestrians.

chicagotribune.com/nation-worl

Chicago TribuneStudy: drivers less likely to brake for African American pedestriansBy Fredrick Kunkle

"But won't self driving cars make all this safer?"

Again, not without addressing the racism.

vox.com/future-perfect/2019/3/

This is another example of a common Machine Learning paradox: many ML systems are trained on datasets with not enough Black folk, and don't consider Black folk in the use cases, but those ML systems are used on Black communities. The harm is concentrated on us. 🙂🙃

Yes, this is another reason that the fake genius that rushed to put FSD on the road is a terrible human.

VoxStudy finds a potential risk with self-driving cars: failure to detect dark-skinned pedestriansBy Sigal Samuel
mekka okereke :verified:

We can reverse many of these harms just by letting Black people vote. Then we get rid of the racist politicians and replace them with ones who will:

* Build safer bike infrastructure for everyone

* In particular, build infra that lets kids walk or bike to school and back safely

* Build towns and cities for humans, not cars

* Have a higher safety bar for self-driving cars than what that dude is getting away with

* Incentivize smaller cars / no cars. E-bikes over E-cars.

Again, you'll notice that the word "Black" doesn't appear anywhere in most of these interventions. They're better for all of us.

People in places like Atlanta are trying to make their city safer for pedestrians and cyclists of all colors. 👍🏿

m.youtube.com/watch?v=DFN7fNE8

But again, focus on, and understanding of, systemic racism, is necessary to make sure that this benefit is enjoyed by everyone.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=tycWtaej

Until the US is safely walkable or bikeable, people will continue to buy urban tanks in self-defense.

Since my kids were three years old, they've known to raise their hand as high as they can and wave it around whenever they hear a car engine start.

Some strangers smile and wave back when they see my kids do this. They think it's cute! But it's not really that cute.

@mekkaokereke It's not self defence. It's the age-old American principle that what's good for me is bad for other people (competition is what made America great; solidarity is for socialists). Therefore when I make a choice I pick what's worse for other people (no mask, an AR-15, a gas stove, an Xbox without energy saving) because if it's bad for other people it's best for me.

@mekkaokereke TBF there's a big element of self defence about it: if everyone else is driving bigger & bigger vehicles you feel increasingly intimidated into buying a tank too. There is a seriously socially destructive dynamic based around fear generating reaction and then more fear ... which is a big part of @mekkaokereke's original point

@bthalpin @mekkaokereke And to think that just having European fuel price levels would clean most of them off the roads....

@martinvermeer @bthalpin @mekkaokereke indeed and having European wide roads would get rid of the rest as they’d get stuck or be unable to park

@martinvermeer @bthalpin @mekkaokereke Unfortunately, it wouldn't. I live in a central part of Berlin, Germany, with fantastic public transport. Despite this fact, cars are getting bigger and bigger. The common argument being that it's safer (better overview). There are petitions to make large parts of the city car-free. I think they have a point.

@bthalpin @mekkaokereke I drive an old, relatively small SUV, and the only reason we bought it is because the used-car price was right. I learned to drive in the '90s in a 1988 MINI Cooper, and damn I miss that car. The bigger the cars get here in Oklahoma, the smaller a vehicle I want. If for no other reason than to rebel against the stupid gargantuan monster vehicles.

@courtcan @bthalpin @mekkaokereke I bought a Mitsubishi Mirage a while back, in part because it's pretty much the cheapest new car in the US (I paid 19,500 on the hood), but also because I'm single, and I don't haul jack. I don't need a big gas hog, I was getting free of one. I commute 80 miles a day, I don't need a bed full of crap, I need +-40 mpg. I've driven semi trucks to 3 cylinder economy cars, I don't care what the other person is driving, but that's the privilege of training talking.

@bthalpin @mekkaokereke It's also aspirational, culture-wars consumerism, as the giant pickup signals their "rugged cowboy masculinity" (🍆 compensation) even as they drive to the mall in their suburb. "Rolling coal" trucks are the worst example of this. And the Trump bumper sticker.

OTOH, the "legitimate" users are often towing/carrying such heavy loads (like full car carriers!) that they should require a commercial driver's license and training.

@dr2chase
What a missed opportunity, that should be:
Car Wars
A New Hope

Or possibly less optimistic:
Car Wars
The Unfathomable Menace

@mekkaokereke

@mekkaokereke I've not heard of kids having to do this in England, but here its drummed into your head at driving school to look carefully before driving away from stopped, that pedestrians *always* have right of way and you are liable if you collide with one (particularly if they are vulnerable road users). We do have SUVs and pickups here, but high tax on petrol and a further tax proportional to engine displacement makes really huge ones less popular..

@vfrmedia @mekkaokereke the huge SUVs and pick ups driven in the USA are thankfully not on our roads. Apart from petrol and tax costs, they’d never fit in a parking bay or get in a car park as they’d get stuck.

@vfrmedia @mekkaokereke As far as I know, tall trucks are legal in GB. Looking left and right before you set off won't work if the obstacle is hiding in the bonnet blind spot.

@ellenor2000 @mekkaokereke

these trucks are legal in UK, but very uncommon on urban/suburban roads here due to size (no room to park them) and running costs. Where I live I might /occasionally/ see one in the rural areas or near military aerodromes the USAF use, but otherwise a Ford Ranger is as big as most people drive and even that is a rare sight..

@mekkaokereke

Given current degraded thinking in some quarters, I'm half joking that we may hear words to the effect of "kids these days should be bigger, like back when -we- were young."

@mekkaokereke I gotta essentially duct tape a flag to my back just do these dipwads can see me now

@mekkaokereke Totally agree on everything!

I wish the overlays were children shaped. At first I was totally confused that walking adult would be half as tall as a modern SUV. Sounds like the graphic uses average height of kids < 3 years old, right?

@indutny

Yeah that threw me at first too!

I thought, "🤔Why are their heads so small? And who makes road bikes for toddlers?"

@mekkaokereke Exactly! It all makes sense given the text of your toot, though.

I'm glad you discuss this topic on Mastodon. We definitely need safer roads for kids/pedestrians/cyclists.

@indutny @mekkaokereke my local parks department drives these things around playgrounds, it’s ridiculous. My kid was a tall almost 5-yr old when I took this, and would be completely invisible to the driver.

@kevinschaper
A pickup truck or SUV that has a front-facing camera is too big.
@indutny @mekkaokereke

@tarheel @indutny @mekkaokereke Absolutely!

I feel the same way about rapid flashing beacon lights at crosswalks, they mitigate an unsafe situation…but are also just a bandaid that keeps the unsafe situation in place.

@mekkaokereke Even when one compares full size pickups to full size pickups, one is floored.

One of those truck owners is compensating for something.

Indeed! I know several female large truck owners. Some of them drive them to compensate for their short stature.

@n8chz @mekkaokereke
I bought a "mid-size" pickup, and it's approximately the same size as a 1970s full-size pickup. There were no small pickups on the lot, and i wouldn't even know where to find one without researching it first.

@mekkaokereke

even thoy I do agree completely on the matter and issue and btw it's not about the size, it's the individual car culture itself, these kid's are quite small, the biker is about five I guess having in mind the size of the real cars.

(oh .. and of course it's german cars .. :)

@mekkaokereke
I've never heard of this before. It's a very good idea.

@mekkaokereke There's also the issue of the lack of crosswalks in wide swaths of the US, and its effect on the incarceration rate for poor blacks.

This came up during Ferguson—if you need to go run an errand on foot in some areas during your lunch break, you can't walk to a crosswalk a mile away in time, so you jaywalk. Then you get ticketed for jaywalking. You don't go to the hearing because you can't afford to skip work. Now you have a criminal record for failing to show for the ticket.

@janakj @mekkaokereke The idea of "jaywalking" is absurd. Walking in a public space like a street should never be a crime.

@SethKaplan @mekkaokereke Absolutely. But as I noted in a different thread, when viewed through the lens of racism, it is a convenience ticketing/fundraising mechanism against poor blacks.

In general, petty fines have grown from car wars to a hallmark of police budgeting in low-tax states.

@mekkaokereke I'm launching The Cars are too damn big party, but then I'm gonna replace it with the Ban Cars party.

@mekkaokereke

speaking of urban tanks, have you seen the graphic showing that an actual M1 tank has better sightlines than an F250?

yeah, they still suck, and we hopefully won't be seeing Abrams Main Battle Tanks going down the street, but why can't we regulate these giant killers off the road?

@mekkaokereke
Valid point, but graphics not to scale, unfortunately.

@PKBamApparat The graphics are to scale, kinda.

They didn't use real graphics of children, but just scaled down graphics of adults. Meaning, that is how tall a typical five year old walking or on a bike is, but that's not what a five year old on a bike looks like.

The image cracks me up, so I'm leaving it.

@mekkaokereke I hear you. We travelled in the US before covid and after a day on the road, we wanted to go to a Mexican restaurant close to the motel (5-10 min walk or so). We ended up returning to get the car. It was too dangerous to walk. I am well travelled, also in non Western countries, but never had this problem before. 🤔

@mekkaokereke I don’t believe this will change but new cities like Telosa that are planned will remove the need for vehicles. This is likely the least friction path to realizing this reality.

@mekkaokereke

I want to see motor vehicles taxed by the volume they occupy.

Multiply the length x breadth x height together, divide by number of seats, charge it annually. (Allow a discount for commercial vehicles that carry freight, but NOT for pickup trucks or vans used for general business, i.e. the dentist driving a tricked-out Ford F150 for the tax break.)

Such a tax scales as the cube of the vehicle's overall dimensions, so it punishes oversize SUVs and pickups accordingly.

@cstross @mekkaokereke I want to see a CDL requirement and ban on noncommercial use of any vehicle over 1000 kg.

@dalias @cstross @mekkaokereke not sure what the exact values should be, but I think mass is probably the most important metric.

@jwedoff @cstross @mekkaokereke Yep, mass is ultimately the primary factor for harm, although height of hood from road and consequent visibility from driver seat are also way up there. To fix safety and environmental damage we need to get back to late 80s/early 90s vehicle sizes (aka what much of the rest of the world uses).

@dalias @jwedoff tax@cstross@wandering.shop @mekkaokereke I recently saw that there's a perverse incentive pushing American cars to be larger -- that better gas efficiency is required for fleets with smaller wheelbases, and worse gas efficiency is allowed for longer wheelbases. Don't seem to have saved it; googled around and can't find it. Explains why American cars have become so much bigger than others though.

@patriciajhawkins @dalias @jwedoff @mekkaokereke

It's a mindset in America, pure and simple. The idea that "freedom" = consumer power = large homes and larger automobiles.

Absurdly overpowered "personal vehicles" have been the culture since at least the late 1950's.

@jwedoff @dalias @cstross @mekkaokereke

Horsepower plus % electric should be the measure, in my humble opinion.

@bland @jwedoff @cstross @mekkaokereke Neither of those has anything to do with how dangerous the vehicle is. If anything electric makes it worse because of the massive battery. (This could be fixed but they won't.)

@dalias @bland @jwedoff @cstross

I don't think folks are ready for what's going to happen when an EV Hummer collides with something.

It's a marvel of engineering, in a terrifying way. There has never been a car on roads that is 9000 lbs, and can go zero to 60 in under 3 seconds in WTF mode (Watts To Freedom).

youtube.com/shorts/RAU28zorX_8

Because their marketing team knows that this is the most Murkah'n EV ever made. Wouldn't surprise me if the paint is made from crushed up bald eagle beaks.

@cstross @mekkaokereke how about taxing by “dynamic envelope”: the size of the vehicle plus the area around it such that it can stop safely from whatever speeds it usually travels at. I’ll cross the road in front of a moped in circumstances where I might hold back if the oncoming vehicle is a Fireblade, so let’s represent that “plays nice with other road users” externality in the taxation

@dan @mekkaokereke The problem with "dynamic envelope" is that it assumes the driver is able or willing to stop. An SUV with insane braking performance would get a break here that the psychology of the sort of people who buy such a vehicle doesn't really justify.

@cstross @mekkaokereke very true, proposal needs some tuning. maybe base on mass and acceleration performance and assume nominal braking performance. Like it used to show on the back of the Highway Code.

If you don’t want to be taxed as though your attitude to other road users is “get out of my way, pleb”, don’t drive a car that says “get out of my way, pleb”

@dan @mekkaokereke This gets us into the same territory as archaic sumptuary laws. But I am extremely worried about the hyper-aggressive/macho styling of many light trucks, SUVs, and (to a lesser extent) sports cars these days. I think they're calculated to bring out the worst in their owners. Marketed like AR-15s.

@PenguinJunk @dan @mekkaokereke @cstross high-tech taxes will just make it more of a privilege, and hence even more desirable. This monstrosity needs to be banned.