Another Rant About Cars

So you saw a bicyclist run a stop sign. It upset you.

Honestly, that doesn't upset me. It's inconsequential.

Do you know what upsets me? When people driving in cars exceed the posted speed limit.

You're thinking: "Wait, really? But you're not serious?"

I'm serious.

But, you say: "That happens constantly. Everyone speeds."

Yes, almost everyone does. And it upsets me.

I get viscerally upset when I see people drive 35 or 40 or 45 or more miles per hour in a 30-mile-maximum residential street with sidewalks and people living on it. It makes me mad because it's dangerous and it happens constantly, all the time.

Have you ever tried to drive under the speed limit consistently? I have, and I do.

It's a deeply upsetting experience. People tailgate and pass you dangerously on the right and left and sometimes honk and rev their engines, and it happens every time. I have a mantra that I use when driving my car: "ignore the asshole." I'd like to get a sticker up on the rear-view mirror that says that. I'd have to ignore half the city. Instead, I just get upset.

"But everyone speeds," you say. "That's just normal."

Its true. You're right. Well over half of people driving on any street in my city right now are going faster than the maximum legally allowed and safe speed.  Did you know? Any time you are driving faster than 25 miles per hour, probability and data make it clear that you are going fast enough to kill a person if you hit them. That's especially true if they are older or younger.

[40 kilometers per hour is the same as 25 miles per hour, by the way.]

I believe that 25 miles per hour should be the absolute maximum people are allowed to drive on a street with a sidewalk next to it. Anything faster than that is a surefire recipe for killing or maiming human bodies. I believe cars should be technologically limited to 25 miles per hour on city streets. I believe our streets should be designed so that it's nearly impossible to drive faster than that. I believe basic human rights and social justice demand that we change our cities and our cars, making speeding impossible.

And yet...

Ha ha, that'll never happen.

People drive at deadly speeds every minute of every day, putting people in danger right now, nearly everywhere. It upsets me even thinking about it from the comfort of my desk.

"How can you live like that?" you wonder. "Everybody drives like that."

Yes, nearly everybody does. I get angry thinking about drivers in this country, and I get angry experiencing speeding and deadly cars whenever I leave the house.

This happens every time.

I get upset viscerally in the pit of my stomach when I see people make a left turn around a corner without slowing down and there's a person standing five feet away. I get angry and sad when, as happened yesterday, a driver honked at me before turning around my bicycle through a "no turn on red" sign by a freeway onramp. I get upset when people speed up at a yellow light instead of slowing down, when people pass me on my bicycle too closely while speeding, when drivers pass through an intersection using the right-turn lane, when they swerve around a driver stopping for a pedestrian nearly killing that person, when people speed up to pass another car on a four-lane death road, when people gun it down a residential street between stop signs.

"But that happens all the time," you say.

It sure does.

"Well everyone needs to obey the law," you say.

Not really. People driving cars in cities need to change.

Bicycles and pedestrians kill and injure a tiny handful of people each year that are not their own personal selves. Meanwhile, people driving 3,000-pound petroleum-powered 100-mile-per-hour vehicles kill over thirty-thousand and injure millions of Americans, every year, for five generations. And it's only getting worse. Millions upon millions of lives changed or ended for what? Getting home a bit sooner to watch another episode of Law and Order?

These are not abstract or made-up people. Every one of those numbered data points are actual people with names and lives, and I can personally name the ones killed recently in Saint Paul off the top of my head. I have their names memorized: Channy Kek, Shelby Kokesh, Elizabeth Dunham, Scott Spoo, Kunlek Wangmo, Alan Grahn, Robert Buxton, and Merideth Aikens who were just trying to live their lives. I can picture their faces. I know how they died. I'm forgetting a few.

There's no both sides-ism here. There is no equivalence from either the laws of physics or basic ethics.

I get upset that we still design cities that make it convenient to speed, kill, and maim people. I'm upset that nearly everyone -- young old black white rich poor left right -- nearly everyone drives at yes illegal and yes deadly speeds on the city streets where people are walking or riding bicycles, and that I have to take this for granted and mentally hold my breath just to cross the street or cross the river every day.

This thing that happens all the time is upsetting to me all the time, and when I see someone complain about a bicyclist ignoring a stop sign and how those people are out of control, it just makes me all the madder and sadder and want to scream and I feel it in the pit of my stomach and I hold it there like an old walnut and swallow and take a deep breath until hopefully it disappears.