Hammer to Solve Hammer-Related Deaths

If the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail. -- Abraham Maslow (among others)

***

An article at Slate essentially blames an increase in American pedestrian deaths over the past decade on ... wait for it ... a lack of regulations and government spending and (only in part, and not explicitly, but the dog whistles of race and poverty are there) "systemic racism."

Here's the latest call for regulation on the latest obsession of the moment for the left, which resembles nothing so much as the proverbial boy left to play with a hammer for the first time in his life:

Governments even encourage riding bicycles through road construction sites! (Image by Syced2, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)

[I]f you go to Europe and Japan, where pedestrian fatalities are in decline the whole time ours have been rising, you see narrow roads, you see low speed limits, you see expansive public transit, so fewer people need to drive. You see vehicles that are tested and rated for pedestrian safety. There are high fuel taxes and high fuel-economy standards, so driving a big car is unaffordable, so they're simply not made and not sold. And they're rolling out effective autonomous technology like intelligent speed assist, which automatically governs vehicle speeds to the road limit. [bold added]

I recently "drove" a loaner car with speed "assist" and absolutely hated it.

That said, take note of two things: (1) Yes, these things are different overseas, but that doesn't change the fact they have been different for more than the decade of increasing pedestrian fatalities here. And (2) the non-stop cheering for more "help" from Big Brother is unremarkable in and of itself. Practically anyone these days who considers a problem practically jumps up and down in his seat, waving his hand around, and saying I know! I know! I know!

Let's have the government solve it.

What is less remarkable, but usually unnoticed, is that the problem du jour is quite frequently caused by the government "helping" in the first place, and often with the very objective these same people want it to achieve at the moment, or at least with something they also claim to want.

This is true in spades regarding pedestrian deaths, and we can start to see that with something from that very article:

Thanks to government tax incentives from the '60s and '70s and a little regulatory jujitsu that can classify SUVs as light trucks, automakers earn higher profit margins on trucks compared to cars.

Said "jujitsu" was a loophole exempting trucks from fuel regulations. I wasn't aware of it at the time I recall everyone suddenly driving trucks around, but I certainly noticed the arms race. I prefer cars, and the fact that these things were marketed as "safe" (but not for me) was hardly lost on me.

The advent of electric cars -- probably also favored by the same people who want us to bike and walk everywhere -- won't help: Their batteries make them much heavier than conventional cars. Also, no engine noise...

But that's been going on for much longer than the mere decade the article speaks of -- as has the slow destruction of our cities cited later in the article. These may well be contributing factors, but, again, these didn't crop up by magic in the last decade, so blaming the problem of the uptick in pedestrian deaths on not enough spending and regulation with SUVs, the way American roads are built, and urban poverty as evidence is dubious.

I am not against making roads easier to cycle on safely. I am against pretending they are safe now, which is basically what I blame for this problem, as you shall see.

What has been going on? Let's consider bicycling, since this article opens with a bicycling fatality. This American driver has seen: signs on dangerous roads admonishing drivers to "share the road" with bicyclists and bicycle lanes popping up everywhere. Since few roads are privately owned or run, this means government spending and regulation are encouraging people to ride bikes on busy streets and even highways.

Also, the green-left cultural machine has been attempting to normalize and make fashionable bicycling on busy thoroughfares -- a behavior I am old enough to remember even children being wise enough to avoid in the past.

I have, in just the last few months: (1) Had to slam my brakes behind an old hippie woman riding her bicycle very slowly on the main road in my development -- which is has very wide sidewalks (fitted with ramps at every intersection!) on each side; (2) driven 20 miles per hour on a two-lane highway for three miles behind a middle-aged man in spandex; and (3) damned near ran into some idiot bicycling west on a freeway at sunset!

(The last was not long after a news story about someone doing the same thing on that very stretch of road and getting injured: I see why it happened, now! I am glad I did not have "speed assist" and some really large vehicle behind me at the same time. That would have been fugly, and for more than just the idiot pedestrian/bicyclist. And, yes. Bicyclists on American roads are pedestrians. I don't care what the law says.)

Even if the article forthrightly stated "We should at least work to make unsafe behavior that we want to lionize less unsafe," it would be wrong.

But at least it wouldn't insult anyone's intelligence.

I guess, thanks to so many outsourcing their minds to the government, Get your damned bike off the street! has officially passed from the realm of commonly-accepted advice given gruffly to that of Get off my lawn!

Sure we're not regulating "enough."

-- CAV