Fuck Cars
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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Wouldn’t reflectors work and be low-to-no technology to allow Amish to keep to their tradition? I’m thinking similar material to diamond grade street signs.
No. I live in PA, and we have a similar law. I remember before it was passed, and seeing buggies with just the reflectors.
Close up, directly in front of lights, you can see reflectors fine, but your lights aren't always pointing at them. Maybe it's a curve or a hill, maybe they are approaching an intersection, but flashing lights can be seen from all angles.
Also, most Amish have no problem using modern technology when required. It's not like a pathological fear, it's a religious devotion to self-reliance. They use cell phones and power tools when they need to, and they hire "English" (non-Amish) to drive them in cars. Some are more insular than others, and they rarely get involved in politics, so they mostly just do whatever is required.
Maybe it’s a curve or a hill, maybe they are approaching an intersection, but flashing lights can be seen from all angles.
Note that this law requires Amish use lights even in daytime, which won't be visible around a bend or hill at such times. What's next...telling bikes/peds they also have to go around wearing daytime strobe lights?
Bikes should have daytime strobes and headlamps. Cars should always have their headlights on. Visibility reduces accidents.
You can be on a curved road or a hill and have vehicles you can see that are not within your headlight beams. Further, if a vehicle is obstructed by a curve or hill, you may see lights illuminate the dark ahead of you before the vehicle comes into view.
There's no reason not to have lights on vehicles on the road.
Yeah, and we should fit all the wildlife with strobes too, because drivers should absolutely not be responsible for driving slowly enough to actually be able to see an obstruction within the range of their own headlights in time to stop without smashing into it.
Right, because that's entirely the same thing.
Vehicles on the road are there intentionally, operated by humans who are respon- You know what, man? You win. I really don't care enough about this to keep arguing with you. I've explained this, and if you still don't get it, that's on you.
Further, if a vehicle is obstructed by a curve or hill, you may see lights illuminate the dark ahead of you before the vehicle comes into view.
Plus this sometimes works during the day in shadey areas or when it is very overcast.
Or when people are idiots and just don't turn them on when they're supposed to.
You'd think with how prevalent automatic headlights are nowadays there'd be a lot less people driving with them off in the rain/dark, yet every single night I see at least one idiot doing it in a car that I know has automatic headlights.
I honestly can't tell if this is sarcasm since motorcycles and cars in the US have required daytime running lights for a couple decades.
They already use those. This goes a lot deeper than "buggies are hard to see" and gets into governmentally preferred classes. Requiring the Amish switch from reflectors to lights is an act of both victim blaming and attempted cultural erasure
Horse-drawn carriages are slow-moving vehicles just like construction or agricultural equipment, or stationary obstacles. They present a danger if visibility is limited by weather or the road's curvature.
Where I live, every vehicle is required to be illuminated when outside city limits, including carriages, and the horses themselves.
I hate this framing. The danger doesn't come from the slow moving buggies, it comes from cars moving too fast to stop within the driver's line of sight. Instead of a buggy, the "obstacle" could also be a pedestrian, a deer or a fallen tree. Should blinking lights be required for those, too?
You can hate it all you want if that makes you feel superior, but it's still true.
could also be a pedestrian, a deer or a fallen tree
High-vis equipment is required here when a person has to spend an extended period on roads outside inhabited areas (actually high-vis gear is mandatory in all motor vehicles), and are required to walk on the left side to always have oncoming traffic in sight as opposed to behind. Larger roads have mitigation structures (mounds, fences, warnings signs, speed limits, or grade separation) where wildlife is known to cause problems. Our taxes pay for road inspection and maintenance services to clear natural or manmade obstacles.
If there are people on the roads they aren’t uninhabited.
“She was asking for it going to that neighborhood dressed like that.”
What’s the equivalent of rape culture but for cars mowing people down left and right?
The Amish actually do use technology, but they can't use it unless there's no other alternative, for example word processing.
Also, they tend to use Linux.
That's a broad statement. Different sects and communities have different levels of what they consider acceptable.
I am looking at all the comments and sub comments and realizing almost all the people commenting don’t realize this is posted in fuckcars.
The entire point of this community is to point out how cars have screwed everyone else from using roads and paths that at times predated cars. Most major city’s could add good bike paths and lighten the traffic by using bikes or any other non vehicle option.
It’s fucking stupid. Anyone who can’t see an object in front of their car needs to have their license revoked.
I'm from an area where this can be a problem. In my experience it's pretty easy to see the buggys during the day, but at night on an unlit state road even with good head lights they can be hard to see until you are practically right on top of them.
Yeah, fuck cars, but it's just kinda a crap situation in general.
Especially because the buggies are black, which blend in at night/dusk.
at night on an unlit state road even with good head lights they can be hard to see until you are practically right on top of them.
Children, animals, etc are going to be even harder to see I'd think. Seems like people are just going too fast for the visibility they have...
This is probably true. However weather and other factors can add a loss of visibility. Every other vehicle on the road has a lighting system for a reason. It's safer. Children are not usually roaming around at night.
And you should adjust your speed based on those factors. If you can't see a giant object, even with reflectors, you are going far too fast.
We should only drive 5mph because a kid could run out into any street, theoretically.
The actual answer is that we take calculated risks all the time and trade safety for convenience every day.
It's the responsibility of the driver not to hit something, not the something not to get hit.
See halfsack's comment. To elaborate on that point, actually good & competent drivers have many responsibilities. Among them is to see....and be seen.
As others have said, a lot of these buggies are all black. And they're puttering around the road, on a dark nights, well under established speed limits. 2 vehicles traveling at very different speeds, the slow one is hard to see. That's just begging for an accident.
At least where I live, it is technically illegal to drive without headlights on when it's raining. If windshield wipers are required, so are headlights. This is to bolster visibility in poor weather conditions. Also just headlights in general, you can get pulled over & ticketed for driving at night without headlights. Why should the Amish be a dangerous exception to the rules of the road??
This alone: Roads funded by taxpayers, which IIRC the Amish are largely tax-exempt. Thus: if they wish to travel on our roads, they need to abide by our rules & not make the roads more dangerous.
To be slightly more accommodating to Luddites, we could put hi-vis reflective tape on the buggies. But again as others have said, the Amish have all kinds of workarounds/exceptions/justifications to get what they want. They have mobile phones. Some have snowmobiles. They have generators, so they're not "tied into the worldly grid" but they generate & use electricity. So maybe they can get used to the idea of battery-powered lights on their buggies, for visibility.
That's the general idea, but life's not that black and white. It's better if both parties contribute to avoiding collisions. It's the same reason why I'm required to have brake lights and hazard lights on my car.
Absolutely, I still don't ride my bike on the freeway, and I still check both ways before crossing roads, even when there is a crosswalk.
Sometimes reality is at odds with our idealistic views.
Hey look, Ohio once again going the wrong direction, just like every city I've lived in does with bicycles.
Cars keep crashing into bicycles/Amish? Penalize the bicycles/Amish! How dare they intrude into what has ALWAYS been the domain of cars.
Man, fuck Ohio and fuck cars. If I could ride my bicycle to work every day I would.
- Non electric reflectors
- Change the roads and have separate roads for motorized and non motorized vehicles. Either put separate roads along them, widen the current ones
- Move the blame towards the damn people that crash into these buggies, as they obviously are not paying attention to the road
- Put more road lights. With LED and solar panels the installation cost for a simple light is pretty minimal nowadays.
- Make it a rule that they can not drive at night instead of forcing electric lights upon their buggies. If they still drive at night, they are responsible for their own well-being
People and especially government forget that these kind of rules and laws are meant to protect the people. But instead the people they are supposed to protect are fined, forced to go up to the judge, forced to defend themselves against something that other people are telling them they should be doing. They are now victims because somebody else is supposedly trying to protect them from being victims.
Once there, Ashland Municipal Court Judge John Good ruled out the possibility of jail time for them and instead said he would impose liens on their real estate.
...
On Thursday, Good told them that while they may prefer jail, an Ohio Supreme Court case prohibits him jailing defendants that refuse to pay fines for non-jailable offenses.
The State is going to steal their property and render them homeless for following their religion, as if that's somehow better than a short jail term.
Their religion is causing danger to other drivers. If their religion is that important they can not use the roads.
Nah, that's car-supremacist bullshit. There are any number of unlit things that could be in the road that automobile drivers have a responsibility to watch out for: pedestrians, cyclists, deer, etc. The notion that a driver could smash into something because they were driving too fast for the throw of their headlights and somehow not be 100% responsible for it is ridiculous blame-shifting.
There are other things too, but as long as there are safety rules for vehicles a religious exemption is moronic. Safety is safety.
Fuck religious-supremist exemptions from valid* public safety requirements.
*Visibility for safety, pandemic distancing and mask requirements in public, etc. are valid. Mask bans are not valid for anyone, so there shouldn't even be a reason for religious exemptions to come up.
I gotta say I already thought this was a thing.
All the buggies in my area all have these lights already.
Festooned is a great word.