Amazing.
The Chicago metropolitan area has about one and a half times the population of denmark and five times the traffic fatalities.
(And 150 times the gun murders, but it’s kind of a given that the US is completely whack on that compared to the rest of the western world)
You should really look into both.
One of these things is purpose-built for the deliberate infliction of harm. The other is vastly more popular and merely causes harm through negligence.
Sort of like the American political parties, I guess
I guess it’s because one of these things is a widely used tool, a requirement for work / living in the USA and gives people freedom.
The other is just car.
That is a pretty high number of shootings then. Practically everyone drives so that is a lot of miles/person. You have to drive, you don’t have to be shot, that is why it draws media attention.
Chicago is pretty different to most of the US. There is actual reliable public transit. The average resident isn’t doing nearly the driving of the average American
If guns are so alike to cars, why not require a license that you get by passing a written test on gun safety and a practical test on basic competence and safe usage?
They are not alike. It’s a dumb comparison. Transport (albeit flawed) brings many more advantages than shooting people. That’s why people accept cars more than guns.
And yet a drivers license requires a lot more than a gun.
Driver’s license requirements honestly should be much higher
I’m a European and in my country driving tests are really hard and it takes a lot of very motivated people 3 or more tries and the better part of a year of frequent training to get a license. When I hear Americans talking about their driving test, most of them didn’t even get on the road and did the test on a separate test terrain. All they need is knowing what a traffic sign is and being nearly able to use their highly automated car. The difference in required knowledge and ability is staggering.
Add to that the tendency to drive huge and heavy SUV 's and trucks that are highly dangerous to other road users and you get an extremely deadly situation.
I agree. But a gun license should be harder too.
I agree it was a dumb comparison to start off with.
I wasn’t the one who made it, but the license issue is the logical conclusion if OP insists on the comparison.
America has ~280M cars, and ~500M guns
Americans, at least, are very accepting of guns. There’s a reason the fatality rate is so high
Sorry let me clear that up. I meant people are more accepting of the deaths that cars cause compared to guns
This is especially surprising to me because Chicago is one of the few US cities with decent public transportation, so there’s a significant percentage of people that aren’t driving.
Vehicle fatalities are generally far higher than gun fatalities in the US. For decades it was the #1 cause of death under 45, only recently being dethroned to poisonings thanks to fentanyl
For Chicago, this is brought down by very low car ownership rate (by US standards), and a high gun fatality rate (including suicides by gun)
Still surprising guns have kept up though
Side note:
I’ve always been on the fence about including suicide in gun violence statistics because I can see both sides of the argument. Yes, the death probably wouldn’t have happened without the gun since it’s the “quick solution”, but also I don’t really see self harm as “violence” per se…
Given the strong correlation between these two, I hypothesise that in Chicago, cars rather than bullets are shot from guns.
Car guns. Fully automatic.
Wow, we really need to educate people on safety and strictly license usage based on examination and proven ability.
Traffic engineers use decades-old manuals that ignore safety in favour of driver convenience. This has to change. Streets built by them are a huge public safety issue.
We should never accept crashes that result in serious injuries or deaths as if they are an inevitable force of nature or something. They’re merely a predictable outcome of a badly built system.
You need three prongs, infrastructure, training and enforcement. No one wants to spend the large amount of $ it would take to redesign thousands of miles of roads in each city. There is also the issue of how ridiculously low the bar is set for getting a license and how basic safety inspections are. In my state I can count on one hand how many times I’ve seen highway patrols enforcing traffic laws.
Traffic engineers
They are just doing what they are being told. They don’t have the authority to diviate in practice.
This is a political issue. Everything is captured by the shittiest lobby.
Health care > health insurance and pharma
Infra > cars and oil
Privacy > tech firms
There is nothing a slave can do via direct action in these jobs since they will fire you and out somebody in place who will follow orders.
that ignore safety in favour of driver convenience
How about one better? Municipalities that ignore both safety and driver convenience in favor of feeling good about helping the environment, or so they perceive. The end result of more pollution, more hazardous navigational conditions for everyone, and more problems.
Example, a state law that made it so bicyclists no longer have to come to a stop at intersections. It was a feel-good measure to make things easier for bicyclists so they’re not having to come to a complete stop over and over. In implementation, it just means a car driving 55MPH comes up to a green traffic light intersection that would ordinarily be safe, except one of the cross-directions has trees blocking the side road, so a bike comes chugging down the hill at 35MPH and blazes through their red light right in front of the much heavier and slower to stop car. (C.R.S. § 42‑4‑1412.5)
Now, couple that with another law that allows large trucks, buses, and RVs preferential treatment at roundabouts. All other vehicles must yield to the large vehicle no matter what. And going back to… the bike doesn’t yield to anything. (C.R.S. § 42‑4‑715)
Welcome to Colorful Colorado.
People think the pandemic invited driver chaos, we were bold, and asked the universe, “hold my beer?”
Are you usually this dishonest, or do you have a particular bias against bikes? I dislike liars, and you are a liar. The law you cited explicitly contradicts your strawman
Here is an excerpt of the law you did not read:
If a stop is not required for safety, the pedestrian or person operating a low-speed conveyance shall slow to a reasonable speed and yield the right-of-way to any traffic or pedestrian in or approaching the intersection. After the pedestrian or person operating a low-speed conveyance has slowed to a reasonable speed and yielded the right-of-way if required, the pedestrian or person operating a low-speed conveyance may cautiously make a turn or proceed through the intersection without stopping.
Here is the law: https://colorado.public.law/statutes/crs_42-4-1412.5
Usually, people don’t get behind the wheel with the intent to kill. We can always discuss the ramifications of drunk driving, speeding and other reckless behaviors that some drivers exhibit when they put the lives of others in danger. It is a discussion that is worth having and it is very important.
However, you cannot tell me that carrying a gun around and waving it in someone’s face is anything other than an attempt to threaten a life. Guns were built explicitly to kill. That is their only purpose. That is why people mostly focus on gun violence. There is intent behind the deaths of every person involved in a shooting while with car crashes, it is rarely the driver’s intent to murder anybody.
It doesn’t mean that car crashes don’t matter and don’t deserve attention, but you comparing the two as if they are the same is frankly ignorant and smells of gun apologist.
They’re not the same. This is privilege speaking, I know, but gun violence mostly occurs between people who know each other. I’m not in those circles or neighborhoods, so only the occasional mass shooting might affect me.
But cars? They’re omnipresent. There’s a steady stream of them in front of my home, so I can’t avoid the danger. My life is threatened by cars every damn day, and my quality of life degraded by them. And you can’t tell me that driving a car around a city is anything but sociopathic disregard for the well-being of others, because that’s what it amounts to.
Cars as bad as guns? No, they’re worse.
I do not understand your mindset, but I very much do hope you will never know what it is like to be trapped in a mass shooting.
You are definitely speaking form a position of privilege.
You don’t understand what fear is like?
Claiming that people driving cars are sociopathic is a bizarre claim. Claiming that cars are worse than the concept of a mass shooting is insane. I reiterate: I hope you never find yourself in a mass shooting. Seeing a car drive by on the road cannot make you remotely as scared as being trapped in a building, knowing someone is shooting, but not knowing where they are, how many there are nor how close they are to getting you or your loved ones.
You cannot compare driving cars in a city to that. That is insane.
Getting trapped in a building with a mass shooter is something very, very unlikely. On the other hand, I face the danger of death by automobile at least twice a day, on my ride to work, and my ride home. More, if I go other places. It may seem not that bad because it’s so normalized. Dying in or under the wheels of a car is something that happens to people every single day, and it barely rates a mention in the local news. Sometimes the victim doesn’t get even get a name. By contrast, the stochastic nature of mass shootings makes them scary, like plane crashes or terrorist attacks, the natural order of things is upended. Death is death, though, and I wouldn’t be less dead if it were a texting driver rather than a gunman.
And the texting driver is a whole hell a of a lot more likely. So, yes, it’s entirely logical that I’m afraid of that. Not being able to understand and denying that fear is exactly the kind of car-induced sociopathy that I’m talking about.
Throwing insults is not a discussion, by the way.
Throwing insults is not a discussion, by the way.
denying that fear is exactly the kind of car-induced sociopathy that I’m talking about.
Lol.
Putting the shoe on and loudly announcing that it fits?
Only one of these things draws media attention
Whats that? Trans people?
Chicago traffic fatality rate is 6.0, that of Utrecht (where I live) it’s 2.6. (per 100.000 inhabitants). Homicide rate Chicago is 22.8, Utrecht 0.7
You had a good point until you revealed it was made by AI.
AI agents get office tasks wrong around 70% of the time. Your figures may be correct, but they are more likely not to be. If you had done your own research this would not have been an issue.
I second this. Pulling any info from ANY AI model without verifying it is dangerous. IMO anything that is AI generated deserves to be smacked with a ban hammer.
Please dont source LLM. You can do better than this.
Chicago civilians were abducted in the early 1980s and were experimented on. some went back for Johnny and never returned.
This doesn’t super surprise me. Driving should be taken more seriously. You’re controlling a 2 ton death machine and it shouldn’t be taken lightly.
We should be retaking driver tests every seven to ten years to keep our license.
Poorly designed roads, signage, and intersections cause a lot of accidents. Think on ramps that throw you into traffic, and off-ramps that want you to get over three lanes after exiting in order to turn right at your cross street.
Lack of traffic enforcement drives up insurance costs and reduces city revenues. Some states have cheaped out on the reflective paint used to stripe roads, so you can’t see lane dividers in the rain. More of that wonderful “deregulation” and people not wanting to pay taxes I guess.
It also doesn’t help that many states are getting rid of car inspections for some bizarre reason. Not great to avoid shit falling off of the car in front of you when you’re going 70 mph.
all the auto body shops in town are on the same road. they lobbied city hall to have the intersection out front changed so now there’s two, three fender benders a day there.
The deregulation & lack of inspections is probably so that the people don’t have as many legitimate reasons to demand higher pay.
Yeah my state has gotten rid of inspections and it’s baffling to me.
Inspections were cancelled because it was shown that they actually led to more accidents. A small percentage of the time mechanics didn’t tighten bolts, back on correctly, after removing a wheel to inspect brake pads. The vast majority of accidents are caused by speeding, not because a wheel brakes free and the car swerved.
Hmmm never heard this one. I am pretty sure my state doesn’t require inspection of the actual pads.
Mine has been arguing this point for a while. Apparently there wasn’t really a drop of issues here when they went into place, so they question the usefulness.
That said, they’re just done incorrectly in the first place. They are done by dealers/shops that lose money in doing them and are instead banking on charging you lots of money for problems they find and hope you get fixed with them. They need be done at an independent run spot with no interest in anything but safety and no way to be bought out.
Wouldn’t the dealers / shops by the most motivated to find the problems, if that’s the case?
Over my 25 yrs driving and getting inspected here, I’ve found a mix of issues… I always inspect my car before dropping it off, most times in their own parking lot.
- good old boys that don’t care and pass it without obviously checking because they know they won’t make money on it anyway.
- ones that talk down to my wife because she must just believe any BS they make up (until I get involved, call them out, the apologize and I don’t go back)
- dealers that make problems for you to have to fix (had two places… one obviously shoved a screwdriver through my CV boot that was fine when I drove it in and wanted $989 to fix. The other said I was missing lug nuts that I know were there when I dropped it off and wanted to charge me $5/each plus $100 installation.)
- places that are actually good and fair.
One issue with the first is that the state doesn’t actually pay them enough per hour that it makes sense to take their time and do it right… they just crank them through finding obviously high money making issues and skipping the rest.
They’re so motivated, they find problems that don’t exist!
Texas?
It would have to be a written test to do any good. And for that to be administered properly costs money.
Yes, safety costs money.
Where I live, car inspections have never been a thing. Some cities in my state mandate emissions tests, which I think include a basic inspection. Nothing at all in my county. Just pay to re-register it every year.
it shouldn’t be taken lightly
Well, of course not. It’s 2 tons!
I’ll get out…
Not gonna make much of a difference unless you take your mum with you.
Ohhh!! Hahahahahajaj that was a good burn! Hahahahahahah
Cars are not designed to inflict harm. This cheap false equivalence tells us a lot.
Yeah, cars aren’t even designed to kill people and they still do it just as much as guns. They’re way too dangerous to be legal.
Are you saying that OP is making a “cheap false equivalence”? They are commenting on news coverage, so I don’t follow what you mean.
Yes, OP is very much doing that. They are commenting on how they think that news coverage should do a false equivalence on those two things.
Ty. I guess OP could be hinting at that. I don’t pick up on hints very well, and thought they were saying the news should also report about vehicle accident and death rates sometime.
The graph didn’t offer the conclusion- op did, and yes it’s cheap
Right. I can’t ride my gun to work or the grocery store. I get that there’s a lot of negatives associated with car culture, but it’s a tool in a way that firearms are not.
Common misconception. You actually can ride your gun to work, but you really have to shove it in here. My advice is use more lube
An automobile, at the end of the day, is a luxury item. A toy. Humanity existed for most of its history without cars, and even today, you can get to work or the grocery store without one. (Granted, often not easily, but that’s only because we’ve made it difficult to get there any other way. But making it difficult was a deliberate policy choice designed to exclude poor people.) One could argue that the automobile is an anti-tool, as its use is making our lives materially worse (traffic violence, health impacts, pollution, ecosystem destruction, climate change, the burden on government and personal budgets), but that ignores a car’s major function as a cultural identity marker, and for wealth signaling. We humans value that a lot. Consider, as but one common example, the enormous pickup truck used as a commuter vehicle, known as a pavement princess, bro-dozer, or gender-affirming vehicle.
In that way, they’re exactly the same as firearms, which are most often today used as a cultural identity marker. (Often by the same people who drive a pavement princess, and in support of the same cultural identity.) Firearms are also also luxury toys in that people enjoy going to the firing range and blasting away hundreds of dollars for the enjoyment of it. But beyond that, the gun people have a pretty legit argument, too, that their firearms are tools used for hunting and self-defense. They are undeniably useful in certain contexts, and no substitute will do. One certainly wouldn’t send mounted cavalry with sabers into war today.
Your car is just as dangerous as a gun. You’re not allowed to wave your gun around at McDonald’s, so why can you drive your car through it? It’s corruption. Cars were going to be banned in cities before the auto industry started passing bribes around.
Road deaths are typically viewed as a risk we take while going about our day, while firearm deaths are either an intentional act, or someone doing something very stupid.
How many people drive a car daily in this area?
Yeah heart disease kills more than either but we don’t hold candlelight vigils to ban butter. Because food is a normal part of life. I know a lot of people grow up with guns, but to me, guns are weird. I don’t know anyone who owns a gun. Not that I know of anyway. I have never held a gun. I have never seen a gun, except strapped to a cop walking by. I hope to never touch a gun (or be touched by one).
I’ve used firearms before, including doing smallbore shooting, it can be a lot of fun.
But they’re also a massive responsibility, and I don’t plan to actually own one.
Nobody should grow up in car culture either. It’s not safe for kids to be surrounded by Death Zones. It leads to kids either being kept inside all day and getting brain atrophy, or dying on the road. Not to mention all the asthma. Raising a child in a car neighbourhood is abuse.
I mean, how many times have we seen news reports of people intentially driving into protesters? I do wish they had the leading cause of death for comparison tho. Probably cancer, looks like a low-estimate is 6000 people a year just in Chicago.
