this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2023
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while you are factually correct that the human is a part of the chain of blame, it is systemically inefficient to blame the driver
in order to make systemic change and make cars safer, we CANNOT say “oh lol drivers fault, get good.” expecting that order of change from hoards of people is unrealistic.
however if i blame unsafely sized cars, fast, wide unsafe roads, a failure of US public transport—these are also realistic points of systemic change that i can point to.
tldr cars are unsafe, cars need to get safer, no amount of blaming the driver will solve things
Driver chose to drive, therefore taking the responsibility of not only their life in their hands, but others on the road as well. Yes, you blame the driver. Because the driver also made the choice to drive the vehicle, then chose to check their cell phone and cause an accident. It's just responsibility at that point.
It's not vehicles, it's people. Cars are safer than they've ever been. People in general, just choose to not be responsible. And that's the reality of it.
Don't get me wrong, vehicles in general are dangerous in the fact that they are basically rolling hunks of metal with combustibles.
At the end of the day though, it's just that most people aren't willing to admit to themselves that they shouldn't be driving because they're too easily distracted in the first place.
Responsibility and self awareness. Put the phone down, don't eat and drive, put your music on before you put the car in drive. It's not rocket science.
Is there any room in your mind for the possibility that some people simply have different values than you?
You're acting like the only people disagreeing with you are people who have been in accidents and are looking for something outside of themselves to blame. You're acting like deep down they agree with you that all error comes from a lack of competence and responsibility.
(Aside: I hate cars and our car-centric infrastructure and I haven't been in any accidents, which means I don't fit into your narrative here. But that's not likely to sway you. And I know that's not likely to sway you. Because I know you don't share my perspective.)
But is it remotely possible to you that some people out there might just believe:
Is it really impossible for you to imagine that some people might just place value on human lives, regardless of cost and regardless of personal responsibility?
Prehistoric humans are now known to have spent years dragging around and caring for their paralyzed tribe mates millennia ago. Meaning the kind of people I'm talking about have existed for thousands of years. People who don't care about personal responsibility. People who just want the best for everyone around them.
If you told these people, "some of your tribe mates will be incapable of safely driving vehicles. How should we build this city?" They would (once you showed them what all of those words meant) have intentionally laid out the city to allow those poorly-driving tribe mates to walk or use transit. They would place nearby grocery stores. They would direct high density housing to go up in the area. They would try to make it possible to avoid using cars. And the city they built would have 90% less cars because of it.
To them such a city would be an obvious choice.
You don't have to agree with the cavemen who cared for their dying relatives. But please acknowledge that they existed, and didn't hold your beliefs. Please acknowledge that the people you're arguing with, don't hold your beliefs.
The issue for the commenter you replied to is that they think that laying the blame for a specific incident at the personal responsibility of the people directly involved somehow means that the diffuse responsibility of wider society in creating conditions wherein those incidents are guaranteed to regularly occur is somehow no-longer relevant.
All that seems to matter in their assessment is who gets the finger pointed at them when the problem happens, not, why does the problem happen and what can we do to avoid it?
Okay, yeah. These people definitely find comfort in hiding behind "personal responsibility" as a means of abdicating social responsibility.
But have you seen the Alt-Right Playbook video, "Always a Bigger Fish" ?
In that video, Innuendo Studios lays out the idea that there is a base, core, philosophical difference between conservatives and progressives in how we think the world ought to be, and what kind of world we think is possible.
To the conservative, nature is full of hierarchy. The strongest chimp gets the most bananas, you know? (Yes, I know that's not actually true. But it's the way they see the world.) The smartest, strongest human survives and hunts well and eats well. (Yes, I know early hunter-gatherer societies hunted in worker cooperatives and raised children cooperatively. So I know this isn't really a well-researched scientific hypothesis. But it is believed by a particular group of people.)
When they say, "take personal responsibility," it's kind of a code word for, "accept your rightful place in the hierarchy. Accept that you are simply the weaker, stupider chimp and you are inevitably going to get less bananas and society can't be expected to coddle you and give you more than you deserve."
According to a worldview that asserts humans are naturally divided into the strong, the weak, and the in-between, a person complaining about their own outcomes is just in denial of this fundamental, universal "truth." A whiner unwilling to admit they receive less because they provide less. A deceiver attempting to usurp a more deserving person's place in the hierarchy because they are unwilling to accept the consequences of their "actions."
There's no better frontier for this idea than the open road, where a single mistake can kill you and everyone in your vicinity. Transit activists, who want to take people off the roads, put them on buses and in trains where they will be safe even if they aren't "vigilant" and "responsible" and "alert" (read: unlucky), are trying to spend society's limited resources coddling people who will never really provide a return on that investment -- because they are weak. Which wastes money, since the money could have been spent on responsible people who will lead society to better places.
To these people,
Hence, roads are a convenient way to cull the weak.
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you should look into some common causes of car accident, which include:
no (nbcnews article)
overall, my position is the same as yours: the average driver is WILDLY unfit to operate a multiton chunk of metal on a daily basis.
however, it is wildy unrealistic to hope against hope that one day, every driving person will wake up and realize that they should drive safe. there has to be systemic effort, whether thats reduction in cars, increase in mandatory car training or increased access to public transport, in order to see systemic improvement.
The driver can be personally responsible for their own failures without that alleviating the responsibility of good decision making by those who are responsible for ensuring people are able to live their lives safely.