[brooksby]

“If road deaths were a virus, we’d call it a pandemic. Safer transport helps us all – and we need it urgently

Deaths on the road costs countries up to 5% of GDP. Centring transport around people, not cars, can propel development”

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/feb/22/sustainable-transport-development-road-deaths-un-urban-planning

 

Topic

[Bmblbzzz]

One of many ways in which, on

One of many ways in which, on a society level, we prioritise systems and objects over people.

[David9694]

“Ah well, it was just an

“Ah well, it was just an accident” seems to have become one of the most important ideas in the active travel campaigner’s world.  I guess the ‘haves’ in life have, at least since the Industrial Revolution, insulated their own selves and left everyone else to face the perils of overcrowding / disease, their dark satanic mills or quite simply, each other (e.g. in the rush to get to said mill on time).  

People get “he did it on purpose/ he should be punished”, but the “he didn’t mean to”, so-called accident is a more subtle i.e. tougher sell. No more so than when it comes to cars, where the idea of the “accident” and lack of consequences has been carefully crafted for decades.  Rinse and repeat. Trivialise and ridcule law enforcement, deprive it of resources, resist automated enforcement because of the link to individual freedom, individualise each incident and suppress those who try to join the dots.  

We went into motoring and mass motoring largely for the wrong reasons – “my pleasure, my freedom, I can afford it” so of course, like my other hate in life, Brexit it’s a mess, one that we’re actively conditioned to just accept and work around as best we can. If cars had have absolutely only been about transport from the start, we wouldn’t now be in half the mess. 

[chrisonabike]

Now very old news, but it

Now very old news, but it still just doesn’t take.

Perhaps “not news” plus “not bad enough (most people get through life untouched by this)” plus “but no alternatives”

… plus some extremely well-established interests who’re past masters at “turning the narrative around”.  (And like this).

That first line though – watch out!  I imagine that might be very attractive (in the wrong way) to some … freethinkers … on the subjects of viruses and planned changes * to the built environment!

* I do sometimes wonder sometimes about their philosophical position on all our prior infrastructure.  Do they see it as “a product of natural erosion and weathering”, or was it just “impersonal” market forces (another force of nature), or are they believers in “progress”.

Or perhaps the people carefully considered what was in their best interests and then chose it?

Or they feel they’re mostly alright, Jack, and just don’t want what they currently know to change?  The latter I can at least understand – change is often difficult and certainly can come with winners and losers, and the people saying it’s in your interests are often not to be trusted…).

[Author]

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