Humanize the Earth!

7 Comments

1. Where are the parents?

   People break laws. I ride a bike. I see other cyclists break traffic laws all the time. They’ll ride up between rows of cars or will cruise through stop signs or red lights.

   My grandfather was hit by a cyclist on the sidewalk in Philadelphia and had to go to the hospital.

   Streets are generally not safe for children. Think about that. They’re not playgrounds or parks.

   Comment by Bepah — July 23, 2007 #

2. Why are the streets now safe? Cars. Cars are big, and heavy and deadly. Over 30,000 people were killed by cars in the US last year. How many people were killed by bicycles last year? Or pedestrians? Or 4 year old kids?

   Comment by ted — July 23, 2007 #

3. You put the cart before the horse. There wouldn’t be streets–at least not as we know them– if there weren’t cars.

   In any event, parents are supposed to protect their children. Letting children play in the street is foolish. This is simply Darwin in action: those who do not adapt to their environment will perish and will not reproduce. If there is a threat in the enviroment, then it’s up to parents to protect their offspring against it. That’s plain in every Mutual of Omaha nature film.

   And sure cars are big and deadly. So what? Electricity is deadly too, and it’s fast and invisible, making it much harder to see coming. It kills hundreds of people–if not thousands– annually. Should it therefore be banned? Should it be banned if parents don’t watch their children or take precautions to protect them against it? If a parent lets her child play with a screwdriver near a socket, should the neighborhood’s electricity be shut off if the kid sticks the screwdriver in and kills himself? Should we emboss all knife blades with a warning that says “DANGER: PICK UP BY OTHER END”? Society makes judgments about the benefits to be obtained from technologies and weighs those benefits against the risks posed by the technologies. Motorized transport has been critical to the development of our culture and economy, so we tolerate risks posed by that technology, though we try to minimize them.

   Heart disease killed more people last year than cars did. Should people be force to do aerobic exercises? I’m sure skin cancer killed thousands, too. Should there be a big disc in the sky to block out the sun to keep people from being hurt by its rays? Where do you draw the line? While it’s noble to want to protect people, at some point personal responsibility has to become a factor.

   Comment by Bepah — July 24, 2007 #

4. Of course personal responsibility matters. And no one here has advocated banning cars. It doesn’t make sense to me to blame the parents of a little kid when someone breaks the law by driving a deadly weapon through a stop-sign. Where’s the personal responsibility for the SUV driver? That’s what bugs me. We don’t hold drivers responsible for their actions? Why do we simply accept that a certain number of fatalities are “inevitable”? Good design and good driving could both make a big difference in the quality of our lives, not to mention fewer dead kids.

   And as for your argument about heart disease, that’s clearly a personal thing. My lack of exercise won’t kill you. A better analogy would be smoking. My smoking can kill you. And my car can kill you. So we have a responsibility as a society to take actions such that my smoking is safer for you, and same for cars.

   Comment by ted — July 27, 2007 #

5. Uh, unless I missed something, they didn’t give the SUV driver a medal for breaking the law.

   Sure, good driving helps prevent fatalities. However, people are fallable and sometimes malicious. The bike rider who sent my grandfather to the hospital probably didn’t intend to hurt him or to break the law, but he did. My initial point was that the laws are in place. People who break them are the problem. And many of those people ride bikes as if they’re not bound by traffic laws. Just saying.

   Comment by Bepah — July 30, 2007 #

6. And I do blame the parents first and foremost. If anyone in the world is accountable to the child, it’s the parents. Sure the SUV driver is responsible for his/her actions. Sure the SUV driver should be punished for breaking the law. However, the parents are more at fault. They let their child play in the street. That’s a known risk. It’s no better than handing a child a loaded pistol with the safety off and saying “have fun but be careful!”

   Comment by Bepah — July 30, 2007 #

7. Why do you blame the victim? Streets aren’t inherently dangerous. They are dangerous because of we, as a society, don’t hold users of the streets accountable for good behaviour. Why is it okay to all of us that streets are unsafe and parents need to keep their kids on leashes to keep them safe? I agree that parents need to keep kids safe. And, it’s not right that we just shrug our shoulders at the bad behaviour of car drivers. Imagine if we took 10% of the “War on Terrorism” resources (3000 dead on 9/11) and put it into safer transporation (30,000 dead per year!). That’s what I’m talking about. Society-wide choices.

   Comment by ted — August 5, 2007 #

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