Comment on Your Truck is Stupid Big
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 3 weeks agoI just think it should require additional restrictions and licensure. It’s a work vehicle. I want masons to be able to get into cities with their rocks, but I want them to have to either flag out a spot because they’re working there or find an oversized vehicle spot when they aren’t. And I don’t want Steve the middle manager driving one just because he thinks they’re cool and fashions himself a bit rural
TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
It’s only in the US that people have these massive pickup trucks for work. Here in the EU people use regular lorries for masonry work etc. Trucks that require a special license. Also ambulances and firefighter trucks are much smaller. Pickup trucks do make sense for farmers for example, but the sizes from the 60’s till 90’s are fine. They don’t have to be massively oversized. The bed size usually isn’t much bigger. In the EU the American sized micropenis trucks can barely navigate through our streets as the streets are smaller and the turn radius of those trucks are to wide for our corners. In the US they increased street size to facilitate massive vehicles at the cost of safety to pedestrians, cyclists and buildings (as people are invited to drive faster and crash into buildings when losing control). With narrow streets, speed bumps which are fine to cross at low speed and tight corners, speeding makes no sense so usually people don’t lose control and if they would, they would hit a tree (without much injury or any at all) or get to a stop when bumping onto a sidewalk ledge (which are designed to make the wheel turn back onto the road so the car won’t get onto the sidewalk). But in the US there are many roads that don’t even have sidewalks, and no cycling infrastructure what so ever. To get from your home to a supermarket 100m away you are forced to take a car as walking is too dangerous. Like, what the actual fuck.
After the second World War Rotterdam was completely destroyed. They rebuilt it like an American city. Due to the high amount of accidents, of which many had fatalities, they completely changed it to a pedestrian and cyclist friendly city within a few years. So the argument of Americans that it’s simply not possible to change an entire city (I hear this often) is bullshit. Just add more public transportation and you can use the maaaaany massive parking lots to new building sites which will only create more income (more businesses on a smaller area) than that it costs. It also removes a lot of congestion, which saves all working people a lot of money too. Every hour less in traffic is an extra hour you can work, or can spend at home with your family etc. And the air pollution will decrease, increasing health and decreasing load on the health care system. Emergency services response times will decrease. I can go on and on about why it would be better. There are many examples of cities that, show statistically why it’s better that way. If only people would follow good examples.