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One of these things is purpose-built for the deliberate infliction of harm. The other is vastly more popular and merely causes harm through negligence.
Sort of like the American political parties, I guess
this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
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That is a pretty high number of shootings then. Practically everyone drives so that is a lot of miles/person. You have to drive, you don't have to be shot, that is why it draws media attention.
Traffic engineers use decades-old manuals that ignore safety in favour of driver convenience. This has to change. Streets built by them are a huge public safety issue.
We should never accept crashes that result in serious injuries or deaths as if they are an inevitable force of nature or something. They're merely a predictable outcome of a badly built system.
You need three prongs, infrastructure, training and enforcement. No one wants to spend the large amount of $ it would take to redesign thousands of miles of roads in each city. There is also the issue of how ridiculously low the bar is set for getting a license and how basic safety inspections are. In my state I can count on one hand how many times I've seen highway patrols enforcing traffic laws.
Traffic engineers
They are just doing what they are being told. They don't have the authority to diviate in practice.
This is a political issue. Everything is captured by the shittiest lobby.
Health care > health insurance and pharma
Infra > cars and oil
Privacy > tech firms
There is nothing a slave can do via direct action in these jobs since they will fire you and out somebody in place who will follow orders.
Only one of these things draws media attention
Whats that? Trans people?
Given the strong correlation between these two, I hypothesise that in Chicago, cars rather than bullets are shot from guns.
Car guns. Fully automatic.
Craah = Probably unintended
Shootings = Probably very intended
Besides. There are loads of local crash/emergency reports in the local newspaper.
In absolute numbers.
How many users? How many per people?
I guess it's because one of these things is a widely used tool, a requirement for work / living in the USA and gives people freedom.
The other is just car.
Cars are not designed to inflict harm. This cheap false equivalence tells us a lot.
Yeah, cars aren't even designed to kill people and they still do it just as much as guns. They're way too dangerous to be legal.
That doesnt make any sense. Since card have other purposes than killing they can be legal.
Since guns only exist to kill they should not be legal. But it is a fight against wind mills since americans love their ability to kill who they want more than they love their kids.
Car drivers kill more people without even trying than shooters kill. Imagine if the car drivers were actually trying to kill people. Cars are probably a hundred or a thousand times as dangerous as guns if you control for intent.
Yet cars are not made to kill and have a purpose in everyday life. Guns dont. But sure, I am all for building more public transportation.
Nobody has ever used a car to accomplish as much good as The Adjuster did
Right. I can't ride my gun to work or the grocery store. I get that there's a lot of negatives associated with car culture, but it's a tool in a way that firearms are not.
An automobile, at the end of the day, is a luxury item. A toy. Humanity existed for most of its history without cars, and even today, you can get to work or the grocery store without one. (Granted, often not easily, but that's only because we've made it difficult to get there any other way. But making it difficult was a deliberate policy choice designed to exclude poor people.) One could argue that the automobile is an anti-tool, as its use is making our lives materially worse (traffic violence, health impacts, pollution, ecosystem destruction, climate change, the burden on government and personal budgets), but that ignores a car's major function as a cultural identity marker, and for wealth signaling. We humans value that a lot. Consider, as but one common example, the enormous pickup truck used as a commuter vehicle, known as a pavement princess, bro-dozer, or gender-affirming vehicle.
In that way, they're exactly the same as firearms, which are most often today used as a cultural identity marker. (Often by the same people who drive a pavement princess, and in support of the same cultural identity.) Firearms are also also luxury toys in that people enjoy going to the firing range and blasting away hundreds of dollars for the enjoyment of it. But beyond that, the gun people have a pretty legit argument, too, that their firearms are tools used for hunting and self-defense. They are undeniably useful in certain contexts, and no substitute will do. One certainly wouldn't send mounted cavalry with sabers into war today.
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Cars, roads, and car culture are inflicting harm though, even if it’s seen as a neutral tool by many
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This doesn’t super surprise me. Driving should be taken more seriously. You’re controlling a 2 ton death machine and it shouldn’t be taken lightly.
We should be retaking driver tests every seven to ten years to keep our license.
Poorly designed roads, signage, and intersections cause a lot of accidents. Think on ramps that throw you into traffic, and off-ramps that want you to get over three lanes after exiting in order to turn right at your cross street.
Lack of traffic enforcement drives up insurance costs and reduces city revenues. Some states have cheaped out on the reflective paint used to stripe roads, so you can’t see lane dividers in the rain. More of that wonderful “deregulation” and people not wanting to pay taxes I guess.
It also doesn’t help that many states are getting rid of car inspections for some bizarre reason. Not great to avoid shit falling off of the car in front of you when you’re going 70 mph.
The deregulation & lack of inspections is probably so that the people don’t have as many legitimate reasons to demand higher pay.
We need certified driving and accident avoidance systems and local vehicle to vehicle communication to facilitate lane changes, also certified. All systems independent, acting with consensus.
all the auto body shops in town are on the same road. they lobbied city hall to have the intersection out front changed so now there's two, three fender benders a day there.
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it shouldn’t be taken lightly
Well, of course not. It's 2 tons!
I'll get out...
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Neither of these topics should even be drawing media attention, considering how frequent and non-notable they are. They just report on this stuff every day because it's cheaper and easier than exclusively finding and reporting on real notable local news, and television news needs filler content for selling ad spots. Ever had a day where there was no news, and they ended early?
Road deaths are typically viewed as a risk we take while going about our day, while firearm deaths are either an intentional act, or someone doing something very stupid.
How many people drive a car daily in this area?
Yeah heart disease kills more than either but we don’t hold candlelight vigils to ban butter. Because food is a normal part of life. I know a lot of people grow up with guns, but to me, guns are weird. I don’t know anyone who owns a gun. Not that I know of anyway. I have never held a gun. I have never seen a gun, except strapped to a cop walking by. I hope to never touch a gun (or be touched by one).
Nobody should grow up in car culture either. It's not safe for kids to be surrounded by Death Zones. It leads to kids either being kept inside all day and getting brain atrophy, or dying on the road. Not to mention all the asthma. Raising a child in a car neighbourhood is abuse.
I've used firearms before, including doing smallbore shooting, it can be a lot of fun.
But they're also a massive responsibility, and I don't plan to actually own one.
I mean, how many times have we seen news reports of people intentially driving into protesters? I do wish they had the leading cause of death for comparison tho. Probably cancer, looks like a low-estimate is 6000 people a year just in Chicago.
Driving is orders of magnitude more likely to kill you at any second you're in a car, than flying is at any second you're in a plane.
People who are terrified of flying will get in a car and drive like a monkey like it's no big deal.
Phobias are, by definition, irrational.
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Dumb question: which one draws more media attention in Chicago?
In my own experience (not Chicago), the local news is dominated by where the rush-hour crash is today, while national news talks way more about gun deaths.
I'm going to go with the general vibe of Lemmy here and assume you mean that auto deaths need to get more attention in America. To that I would say there is a general cultural attitude that cars are a necessary evil (even among most people who don't outright love them, which is a huge demographic), and fixing the zoning and infrastructure would take decades and many tens of billions of dollars to restructure a large city around public transit. Besides bumper-sticker-slogan politics ("more public transit!") there are precious few real, concrete plans for getting from the current situation to the car-free utopia.
Even then, you'd not eliminate cars entirely. Among the more developed western European nations that are known for good public transit, Ireland seems (at a quick glance) to have the fewest cars per person at 536 per 1,000, while the car-happy US has 850/1,000. So best case, you reduce cars by ~35%.
Gun deaths, on the other hand, are easier to imagine as a problem that can be solved relatively quickly and with less disruption. From an advocacy point of view, it's the lower-hanging fruit.
But the question is deaths by car and you don’t need to entirely get rid of cars to make a huge difference.
- inspections. It boggles the mind that some places don’t have them
Traffic calming really can work. I’m not talking about speed bumps, but things like curb bumps to narrow the road at intersection while increasing pedestrian visibility, traffic islands, roundabouts. Even repainting lines can make a difference. My town’s master plan is driven by accident stats, so every road rework is a noticeable improvement
A couple years ago my town repainted a two lane road into one lane plus turn lanes. Now traffic is slower and calmer yet you get through that area more quickly. Most importantly it’s no longer one of the most dangerous roads in town
Most recently they built a median. This was a dangerous intersection because it always backed up so impatient people would blast straight through in the turn lanes, causing accidents. Now they can’t
And yes, because of Florida Man, my town built medians at every railroad crossing so idiots can’t go around the gates. We never had that problem, but idiocy is contagious.
Every city and town can make a difference. Now. Relatively cheaply. Just by collecting accident data and prioritizing by that. Just by making small changes a little at a time
there are precious few real, concrete plans for getting from the current situation to the car-free utopia.
Ban cars today and let people figure it out themselves.
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