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Macrophage87 t1_j3lninq wrote

  • Car owners are looked down upon because they kill people. In this city, you're more likely to get killed by a driver than a bullet, particularly if you aren't in a gang. Reckless drivers are hardly ever brought to justice. A careless truck driver ran over and killed a 5-year old kid in Brookland and the city blamed the 5-year old for it.
  • As for accessibility, we have some of the most accessible public transit in the country. For trips that can't be made through a transit route, there's even paratransit. Many disabled people can't drive at all, and benefit greatly from having effective public transit.
  • The places that people look down on car drivers have efficient public transit. You can always take a highway to a metro station and go from there.
  • Food delivery in many parts of this area can be accomplished through the use of bicycles, electrified or not. It is in many other cities, and to a limited extent, is here as well. Virtually everywhere in this city, it's faster to use a bicycle than drive unless going an extensive distance.
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202markb t1_j3loify wrote

Quibble- Nationally more people die of auto accidents, but not in dc. If memory serves Dc auto deaths are around 20-30/yr, firearm deaths are about 10x that.

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Macrophage87 t1_j3loysp wrote

Most of those firearm deaths are between people who have extensive criminal records, rather than against the general public. While the statistics writ large might look that way, I'd argue that the risks to the general public are higher from cars. There aren't that many 'civilian' deaths. However, most areas that have high car risk also have high gun risk, namely the part east of the Anacostia River.

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202markb t1_j3lqpdp wrote

You appear to have some faulty assumptions about the nature and geographic distribution of gun deaths. Here: https://dcwitness.org/interactive-map/ FYI you can use this same map to geolocate vehicular deaths. If you do so you will note that they also are concentrated EOTR.

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Old_Distribution9636 t1_j3lsf42 wrote

Someone complaining about a speeding camera ticket and someone killing someone is not the same. I feel for the kid and their family. Unfortunately, an emotional anecdotal story is not enough to change the infrastructure of the city overnight.

These “facts” seem off. I can promise you not all areas of DC are metro accessible unless you have hours to waste. Speak to someone working at a nonprofit that helps low income individuals. They’ll tell you how inefficient the metro/bus system is outside of the expensive areas. I get what you’re saying, but these ideals ignore a huge portion of DC residents where walking or biking to a bus or metro then transferring and spending triple or quadruple the time isn’t feasible or possible.

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Macrophage87 t1_j3lusyt wrote

Driving at a higher speed than a road is designed to travel safely is putting other people at risk. Risky drivers are the ones killing people. We need to hold them accountable.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/fatal-car-crash-increase-risky-driving-rcna43969

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Old_Distribution9636 t1_j3lyha3 wrote

I agree that we should hold reckless drivers accountable. IMO, this change starts with police issuing moving violations. The cameras aren’t enough. The fear of getting randomly caught versus learning the cameras seems more effective to me.

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Macrophage87 t1_j3lze8o wrote

Yes. We need to have the police pull those people over, not just mail a ticket.

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swampoodler t1_j3lsrhd wrote

Yeah but this doesn’t change all the negative aspects of cars.

Just means we need more pressure on leaders for increases to transit. I was reading this morning that Mayor Bowser has raised concerns about free and overnight buses (may not support it). Give her office a call and let her know that she is in the wrong.

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Macrophage87 t1_j3luiot wrote

She didn't sign the bill that approved it, but it was approved unanimously by the council.

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swampoodler t1_j3lxgyz wrote

On NPR this morning she came out against it because “other jurisdictions aren’t doing the same thing” or some such nonsense. Hope the council remains firm and overrides her if she does try to stop it.

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Ok_Concentrate_75 t1_j3mc46w wrote

People forget that a big part of public transportation is getting to the actual places, many can't even adequately walk down streets in some parts of SE due to potholes and just being uneven. Plus the trains stop at like 1 am, last call tends to be 2 am...idk DC makes itself a place for extremes.

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swampoodler t1_j3lpzc7 wrote

I believe all of this except the gun violence / car rage ratio. Need to see some stats on that. Otherwise, spot on.

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rlpw t1_j3lxeod wrote

I agree but I think it’s “unfair” to make the comparison between gun violence and car/driver violence. We will often here more about instances of gun violence but won’t hear about “near” misses or car crashes unless someone is dead, seriously injured, or a building is ran through.

So I think a more transparent metric is necessary - unless it already exists.

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