• Kairos@lemmy.today
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    15 hours ago

    The device, known as Intelligent Speed Assistance, is a small box affixed to the dashboard that uses GPS to identify the speed limit — 25 m.p.h. or less on most local streets, and higher on highways — and caps the driver slightly above it. The driver may temporarily override the device, in certain circumstances, with the tap of a button.

    “The entire economy should collapse if GPS has a temporary outage”

      • Kairos@lemmy.today
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        6 hours ago

        It’s much more efficient to just build traffic calming. It’s so nice. North America could be a biking paradise while maintaining 2 or 4 lane roads, it just isn’t. I oppose these kind of "“solution”"s aren’t as good as stuff that’s been proven to work in both traffic flow, people flow, cost, and safety.

        Americans love their cars. There will be people who disable it to drive 80mph on surface streets at night and hit someone who didn’t want to add an additional half mile to go to the crosswalk.

        • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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          5 hours ago

          There’s a limit to it though.

          Biking is great for cities, unless you’d have to cross most of it to reach work, hospitals, or healthy foods and bring them home. I’ve known people that did it, but I don’t think most of the country could qualify as a paradise, even if we tore down and rebuilt cities from the ground up.

          Plus, it doesn’t address the needs of those that can’t bike, or maybe even not walk. The elderly, the disabled, the temporarily sick, and even kids considering the way the world has gotten populated ( bigger numbers mean the percentage of predators also returns bigger numbers of those).

          And it really only works in some cities, and would require shifting all of the shipping to retail connections. You can’t get supplies from a train to a warehouse on pedal power realistically, nor from warehouse to citizen available stations like stores.

          Unless you’re suggesting a total death of modern civilization. Which is cool, but not at all going to happen. Because without the supply infrastructure that gets materials from suppliers to where the goods need to be, they can’t get there. Even if we went back to horses and carriages for that, we’d still need well built roads that connect things. Doing that leaves biking in the same category it does with cars, so the only improvement is in not having to suck exhaust. Which would be great, just not sure it’s a realistic thing

          • Armok_the_bunny@lemmy.world
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            2 hours ago

            Part of the way to build a nation with good bike infrastructure is to bring all those things closer together. People that bike don’t want to need to cross most of the city to reach places they want to go, so they are going to find somewhere to live where they don’t have to. Also importantly, bike infrastructure doesn’t mean no automobile infrastructure, it just means less of it, not the least because less is needed.

          • Simon_Shitewood@lemmy.ml
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            2 hours ago

            Buses and lorries. We transport the people on the buses and cargo on lorries, just like we do now.

            This is what people mean when they talk about car brain - you’re so focused on the need for a car that you forgot that cars aren’t even used for moving your examples.

          • Kairos@lemmy.today
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            5 hours ago

            North America isn’t getting rid of its commuter highways anytime soon.

            Cars can still exist. We have so much space for it.