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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • Every parking spot on the block is taken, and a handful of drivers are double-parked or stopped in front of businesses’ driveways. Others simply idle in the middle of the road.

    It sounds like this is what happens when you have limited public transit and lax traffic enforcement.

    “I’ve seen drivers cuss out the police. They cuss us out. They threaten to fight us,” Koral said. “We are verbally assaulted on the daily and threatened with physical violence on the daily. … It gets scary.”

    Oh, and assholes. They make any situation more shitty.

    I’m not actually sure what level of public transit San Francisco has. I know they have trolleys and trains, but I’m not sure what the service area/coverage is like. It sounds like the neighborhood in question isn’t covered well enough, though.

    I’m not opposed to removing parking minimums, but it needs to be done in conjunction with other improvements to avoid situations like this. It’s wishful thinking to enact the former, hoping that this sort of pain will force political action to enact the latter.






  • the possibilities of head-on collisions and left turn-related crashes are virtually eliminated

    intended to slow drivers to speeds where crashes are far less severe.

    I’ve definitely heard that they’re safer, but this just seems to indicate that the crashes aren’t as bad. Are there also fewer crashes?

    Although some studies point to roundabouts causing higher numbers of minor crashes ― a point which WisDOT recognizes in its manual ― Qin said, in terms of injury severity, roundabouts are considerably safer.

    Oh… ok. Not dying is a perk, but I’m sure everyone will be super stoked to be in more accidents that are right around the cost of their insurance deductible.

    It often feels harder to drive defensively in a roundabout (especially multi-lane roundabouts) when I need to look over my left shoulder to make sure it’s clear to merge while also looking to my right to make sure that the guy in the lane next to me or the other guy getting on at the next entrance know to yield to me. In a traditional intersection, all “conflict points” that the article mentions are in front of you as you enter the intersection.



  • Meanwhile, this article told (reminded?) me that we have a mental health hotline service.

    These missed calls are happening at a time when most Americans still aren’t aware the 988 national suicide prevention and mental health hotline exists — and even as we hit the service’s one-year mark, few states have established long-term funding commitments to sustain it

    Plans to use some of the nearly $1 billion in federal funding for a nationwide public service campaign haven’t materialized, partly due to early concerns that marketing 988 could overwhelm the lifeline past capacity.

    Well, good thing they aren’t marketing it. We wouldn’t want 1/4 of the calls to go unanswered or anything…

    “It’s taken 15 years for 911 to evolve to the kind of system that it is today. We’re just one year in.”

    I mean, a 15 minute wait in a mental health crisis still doesn’t sound like an ideal goal, but I guess it’s better than being completely ignored.