"there were the number of accidents went up due to the city putting up red light cameras because the culture at the time was to run reds for a bit after the light changed. When they put up the cameras, people would slam on their brakes and get rear ended. "

What I understand you mean by this is that there was a culture in which people ran red lights regularly. [Aside: this kind of behavior is known to be associated with elevated fatality rates in urban collisions, especially when they involve pedestrians and cyclists. Choosing to do this kind of behavior is as reprehensible as antimaskery/antivaxxery]. Then, when the relevant government entity began enforcing laws against running reds with automatic camera /radar systems, people began slamming on their brakes to avoid running a red light. This increased the number of rear-end type collisions.

Did I get anything wrong?

The reason I said,

This is far less likely to injure or kill than the kind of collision that occurs more often when people are trying to deliberately run a red light.

is because shifting the distribution of collisions away from red-light-running-involved collisions, which frequently involve higher speeds than rear-end type collisions, results in a reduction in all kinds of fatal crashes, and a significant reduction in non-fatal crashes. . It is empirically better to have a slight increase in rear end collisions if it cooccurs with a decrease in more severe collisions.

To be clear, I completely agree with you when you said,

"Obviously, all of this can be avoided with public transit,"

but I cannot support the clause that follows,

"these are the realities of driving."

because red light running, drunk driving, speeding, excessive aggression, and other unsafe habits are personal decisions (sure, they're incentivized and amplified by our shitty automobile-centric system) by which a driver chooses to make other people unsafe (with no care for their consent) to gain at best a marginal improvement in their own convenience.

[–] KnilAdlez@hexbear.net 0 points 2 days ago

'm not supporting this behavior and I am not asking for other people's support of the behavior I am simply stating the way it is in certain places at this time, and how that may have influenced this woman's behavior. Breaking certain traffic laws can become the driving culture in an area, and as such, not doing so can lead to accidents because other drivers will be expecting that behavior from you. The safest form of driving is when everyone knows why everyone else is going to do. The red light cameras didn't increase rear end collisions because they're bad, they increased rear end collisions because they caused behaviors that went against the accepted culture. The culture should change, I want the culture to change, but that involved short-term increases in collisions because other drivers were expecting the behavior of the previous culture. That is what I'm trying to express to you: this is not individual decision making this is a sociological, cultural decision that every driver in that area is making, and their split second decisions are based on that accepted culture.

Obviously something like drunk driving is not something every other person on the road is going to expect and your behavior while drunk driving is not going to be predictable, which is one of the many reasons it's incredibly unsafe.