Funny, we've got all these studies about our dangerous roads, especially crowded highways, because of texting, alcohol and drugs, fatigue, and so on. I read the articles and they suggest remedies. More laws. More cops. More signage. More checkpoints. Wider highways. Cutting down all the trees to clear the sightlines. Driver training. Sorry, but I look at those and think "what the hell are they doing in cars in the first place?" Mass transit addresses all of these, ya know.
I've taken plenty of forms of mass transit so f*cked up that I could barely see. Tired, drunk, distracted. Never seen any of that affect the safety of the vehicle yet.
All of this, I might add, applies just fine to cabs and jitneys. How many cabs could we subsidize to what degree to keep drunk drivers off the roads and have it cut net costs for a given city?
Do I sound snotty? Yeah, I guess that I do. But as far as I can see, this is yet another case of "normal" Americans who live in a way that results in vast processions of deaths, cripplings, torturous pain, and billions upon billions of dollars of costs but even when confronted with all of this they can talk about it for years and shake their heads disapprovingly and suggest yet more spending and never once even consider that maybe instead of more subsidies and more police state tactics, maybe the rational answer is TO STOP DOING THIS THING THAT KEEPS KILLING PEOPLE.
Why is this so hard to understand?
Old 1920's shorts used to treat it as a given that the drunk guy in the Betty Boop or Keystone Kops or whatever film would then shamble off and get on a trolley. A simple, safe (compared to cars) trolley that would then deliver said drunk person to a location a few blocks from their door. This was just obvious common sense with technology we had by 1915. If you think that we can't cost-effectively do it now well, I don't even know what to say.
Oh, right. Yes, I do.
Go play in traffic.
-Rustin
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