[moffkalast]

Driving4answers had a similar rant recently about the 2024 Prius, where there's an always-on warning beep every time you enter an intersection, which intrusively pulls away your attention in the exact moment when you need to be focusing on the road the most. I'll be surprised if it doesn't cause someone to die in the coming years. Laws for drivers written by people with chauffeurs.

[cucumber3732842]

> Laws for drivers written by people with chauffeurs.

Not even that. They know the laws are stupid. They don't care. It's just another day at work for them. They're trying to surgically write laws to garner support/votes from shorsighted hand wringing Karens (plenty of examples in HN comments) while also not actually hurting industry/donors.

So stupid rules and stupid beeps are what you get.

[whatsupdog]

Women's suffrage was the stupidest thing humanity ever did. And the general populace is still not ready to admit the mistake, as proven by the expected incoming downvotes.

[galangalalgol]

I'm not going to upvote you, because I don't agree. I do hope they don't bury this though. A lot of people (some women included) think as you do. But I have never felt comfortable asking why in person. As long as you are exposing yourself to ridicule would you mind explaining? The obvious answer was always the notion that women make decisions on emotions more often, but is that really well supported? My experience is that they simply make decisions based on different emotions.

Edit: I think most destructive decisions are made in fear, and everyone does that sometimes. But we fear different things.

[mcv]

I think it's entirely baseless. It's pretty clear men can be very emotional about the decisions they make. Look at all the stupid wars throughout the centuries based on pride, anger, greed or vengeance. Look at all the counterproductive economic policies, or counterproductive police systems. And if you question it, all the arguments are based on feelings.

There have been rational leaders and politicians, but there have also been many irrational and emotional ones, and I see no evidence men are less affected than women. If anything, it seems to be the other way around, although there's not that much data yet on female decision making in politics.

But I'm pretty sure that the claim that women would be more emotional, is itself driven by emotion rather than data.

[phoronixrly]

Anyone who's working on making driving a car unbearable has my vote! My bicycle has a single chime and it's manually operated.

[forgetfreeman]

If your primary mode of transportation is a bicycle and you're cheering shit that annoys and (critically) distracts motorists you might have a death wish.

[moffkalast]

Yeah, the occupants of the car won't be dying, I'm pretty sure every collision is survivable with seatbelts on with modern cars that have a meter of crumple zone in every direction and look like bloated whales. But pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists are gonna die on impact with them.

[strken]

I feel compelled to mention that the vast majority of cyclists are part of a household which owns a car, as well.

[kybernetyk]

Let me guess: You get your groceries delivered by some underpaid sucker? While I enjoy biking it's impractical many times (if you don't live a sheltered life with people doing all the annoying stuff for you).

We have those inner city bike extremists here, too. There's proposals like banning all motorized traffic from the city because you "can walk to your bakery duh". But they never ask themselves how the baker gets all his materials to the bakery.

[BoxOfRain]

To be fair it depends so much on the city. Oxford is a great example, driving there is a hellish experience because it's a historic place with notable buildings which too important to knock down, especially in order to replace them with roads and car parks. They try to cram cars in anyway and it's just miserable. In reality the whole city centre should be pedestrianised because that's what the city is actually supposed to be designed around. Remove the private cars and buses, taxis, and yes of course delivery drivers will have plenty of room.

This perfectly legitimate argument for Oxford would be silly to make about say Milton Keynes.

[mcv]

Exactly. Amsterdam has been trying to get as many cars as possible out of the city center, and the city is that much better for it. Use your car to leave the city, but not to get to the center. There's bikes and trams for that.

[ornornor]

I own a car and a bike. I wouldn’t mind if cars were banned or very heavily restricted in the city.

I have a trailer for the bike, we can haul 100 lbs. it’s more than enough.

Businesses can be allowed to get deliveries, just personal cars are restricted.

In my city, many businesses have switched to operating from a cargo bike: plumbers, electricians, even mechanics.

[quantified]

Not very hilly? Or are they all e-bikes?

[ornornor]

E-bikes. Not super hilly but I think it’d be tiring with an acoustic bike for a business.

[nehal3m]

Depends on where they live. Groceries don’t have to be a weekly run to a far flung place to get a truck bed full of stuff. It can be a daily visit to a neighborhood supermarket on your way home. If zoning laws allow those can exist.

[kergonath]

That’s nice in principle, but it really is not the same budget around here, even though the shops are here. Small neighbourhood supermarkets and corner shops are significantly more expensive than the big supermarket that’s a 10-minute drive away.

We’re doing both: buying what we need in large quantities or with a long shelf life once a week from a supermarket and things like some meat, fruits and vegetables from the corner shop but that takes a bit of work and planning. Still, there’s money to be saved taking advantage of economies of scale.

[mcv]

Here the corner shop is a supermarket. I think I've got 5 supermarkets in a 2km radius.

[codedokode]

> But they never ask themselves how the baker gets all his materials to the bakery.

You can allow transport for business (speed-limited to 30 km/h or ~20 mph) and ban individual's cars. There are busses, trams and subway and there is no need to have a car.

[amanaplanacanal]

On the plus side professional drivers are probably better drivers than the average person, since their livelihood depends on it.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

ROFLMAO

[watwut]

I have car and rarely use it for grocerries. I walk to shop and buy stuff. I take car only rarely, when I need to go far.

The condescending assumptions people make when they dont have arguments are getting absurd.

[phoronixrly]

No, I walk 200 meters to Billa or Lidl, or less to one of the plethora of small grocery stores.

[beej71]

It won't work for everyone, but I have a bicycle trailer for food shopping. 20 minutes ride each way. I go about once a week.

[mcv]

> inner city bike extremists

WTF? In inner cities, bikes are the sensible option for 90% of traffic. Not for emergency services and larger freight of course, but it's possible to aim for a sensible mix.

[cavoirom]

giving up your freedom to limit others in the name of safety seems unwise.

too much control creates a generation behave like the kids.

[phoronixrly]

Oh, the good old cars are freedom cliché? Thank you, I feel perfectly free when I don't have to worry about parking, gas, maintenance, taxes, inadvertently killing anyone, polluting...

[cavoirom]

you choose to limit your freedom on the public transportation, others don't. The freedom lies in the alternatives, people could choose different lifestyles, that's freedom.

[lan321]

Mobility is freedom, yes. During communism movement within countries required a written permission slip, movement outside even more so.

The longer it'll take you to leave or organize against your leaders, the less freedom you have. See DPRK for an extreme example.

[Mawr]

> During communism movement within countries required a written permission slip

And what does driving your car require if not a written permission slip?

[queenkjuul]

Guess what? They can block roads and demand papers in your car, too. The car has nothing to do with what you're talking about.

[phoronixrly]

Straw man aside, I find the notion of cars being used as a tool to escape from or even to overthrow an authoritarian regime extremely funny... Even without a big brother: cars are heavily regulated and controlled; current cars are a privacy nightmare; cars are (as yet) mostly dependent on fossil fuels (that you can't produce yourself, and are heavily regulated and taxed).

If anything in an authoritarian regime, cars would be (and were) an instrument of control.

The extra funny part is that all the car-brained ex-communist people that had to be good little comrades during the 20-year waiting list period they had to endure are now big on the 'cars = freedom' mindset... No my guy, if cars were freedom, you can be damn sure only the communist nomenclature would be allowed to have them. Instead you were humiliated with spending half your life on a waiting list, and then the only freedom you got was to continue being a subservient communist subject under the party boot. How else would you afford gasoline after all? Not that that was enough... For context, I live in a former communist country, parents and grandparents waited for 10+ years to be graced with the permission to buy a car. Then proceeded not be able to afford petrol until the early 2000s...

[happymellon]

The fascists also requested papers please. It's an authoritarian requirements, not a communist or facist one.

[compass_copium]

Solidarity. Cars belong in the rubbish bin of history. The Soviet Union had the right idea, as usual--make cars unbearable to drive to encourage public transportation.

[elzbardico]

The Soviet Union never had such a goal. Passenger cars universalization was actually a long term goal of the system, but the soviet system prioritized heavy industry, infrastructure and defense over consumer goods.

That was the reason while Ukraine, before the war, was a huge net exporter of electricity. They never got too many or really good cars, but they do sure had plenty of electric generation plants.

The Chinese apparently learned with this, and used and export oriented economy to have the necessary scale to invest both in heavy industry as well as consumer goods.

[ornornor]

I don’t think you’ve ever lived under SU rules.

[actionfromafar]

Yeah, people don't seem to understand that in SU a very small well connected elite gained control over the means of production and abused it for their own purposes.

[kybernetyk]

While not in the SU directly, I got to enjoy public transport in communist Poland for a few years and yeah, you don't want that.

[badpun]

Public transport in communist Poland was horrible because it was severely underfunded. Remember that Poland bankrupted in the 1981 (when the West put sanctions on the country after the Jaruzelski's "coup", and sanctions kiled the economy) the whole decade was kind of surreal in terms of state's lack of funds and decrease of living standards.

[inigyou]

If they were communist, why didn't they just print more money?

[smackeyacky]

Communist Sydney trains are awful too

[phoronixrly]

And here we come to the crux of the train issue - elitism. You both find it below your level to use public transport, and you don't want to mix with the 'unwashed masses' - again, doing so would be below your level.

[K0balt]

That works for people in cities, if cities were made to by usable by cyclists and pedestrians. Not so much for people that live in rural areas.

[zelphirkalt]

Wait until they mandate a panel of warning LEDs on your bike or a cam on your bike recording your face.

[newsclues]

Wait until manual bikes are banned and only gps tracked e-bikes exist for citizen safety!

[hparadiz]

I legit can't tell if this is sarcasm or not.

[imp0cat]

That's what so great about it, isn't it?

[bmacho]

Why would you care what the guy was thinking writing that comment? Do you know him? He might as well just be a stochastic parrot.

Just like with other media (movie, book, etc), the product is the end product, in this case a joke or a thought-provoking view. You shouldn't care about the creator's actual views or consider them while engaging with his comment.

[prepend]

I had a prius and every time I started it up, it would display a big warning prompt that blocked out the rear view camera. So you had to tap ok before backing up. Every time.

My current car shows this once per driver. I always thought toyota engineers were stupid for designing such a system.

[mcv]

Toyota is terrible at this. Various Toyota's we've had required you to either agree to obey traffic rules, warned about data costs when connecting your phone, or a variety of other things. Super annoying and distracting. As soon as the car starts moving, all the parts should be doing their job. That's no time to nag the driver.