Mastodawn

Jef Poskanzer Nov 2

Gun Town

There's a town near you where most of the residents spend much of their days running around with guns. The guns are real. They are loaded with real bullets. Their fingers are on the triggers. But they don't pull the triggers, they just yell "BANG, BANG, BANG!"

Jef Poskanzer Nov 2

Except occasionally something happens. Maybe they hit a bump. Or they are distracted by their cell phone. Or they had a little too much to drink before going out for a gun run. Or they see a non-gun person and want to teach them a lesson.

The gun goes off.

The gun people nod sadly to each other. "Such a tragic accident," they say. The police arrive, interview people, and make a report: "Accident." The dead are not interviewed. Then everyone runs off yelling "BANG, BANG, BANG!"

Jef Poskanzer Nov 2

Of course we don't live in Gun Town. That place is obviously absurd and could never exist in real life.

We live in nice safe Car Town.

Charlie Stross Nov 2

@jef By the 22nd century, people will look back on the automobile culture of the long 20th century (from about 1890 to some time not long hence) with the sort of horror we reserve for 18th century small-sword dueling culture (you weren't a gentleman if you didn't carry a sword and weren't willing to fight to the death to defend your honour if someone looked at you funny).

@cstross
Dear Sir did thy just say that I haveth a small sword? Be thy told I feel insulted! BANG! BANG! BANG!

Szymon Sokół 🇵🇱🇪🇺🇺🇦Nov 2

@cstross @jef …provided the humanity makes it into the 22nd century, which - judging by current trends - seems a farfetched assumption.

Charlie Stross Nov 2

@blotosmetek @jef I'm more optimistic. Humanity—some fragments of it—will definitely make it into the next century. The real question is whether *capitalism* will survive past about 2050 at the latest.

Jef Poskanzer Nov 2

@cstross I've read that in the early days of the industrial revolution, steam boiler explosions killed around 50,000 per year, comparable to the car slaughter we have now. But we don't look back on the boiler massacres with horror. They are just forgotten.

Charlie Stross Nov 2

@jef The car slaughter *globally* happens mostly outside the USA and EU—it's roughly the same level of carnage as the first world war, only ongoing and permanent.

Boiler explosions were recognized as a big problem (bad for profits if nothing else) and metalurgists and engineers worked to eliminate it, hard.

Also, the affected people were mostly operators: it was an industrial accident, and those get treated differently today, too.

Nearest modern equivalent would be airliner crashes.

Aaron Sawdey, Ph.D.Nov 2

@cstross @jef are there any numbers on horse related deaths from the late 1800’s before the car started to become common?

Aaron Sawdey, Ph.D.Nov 2

@cstross @jef ok this isn’t much of a reference but the claim is the horse related fatalities in 1916 were 7x the car related ones in 1997. The links to the paper are dead unfortunately.

https://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2011/03/29/the-horse-manure-problem/

The Horse Manure Problem

In the late 1800s cities were drowning in smelly, dirty, disease-spreading horse manure. The private automobile was a huge step forward, environmentally-speaking.

Big Picture News, Informed Analysis

Aaron Sawdey, Ph.D.Nov 2

@cstross @jef It seems that what we did was invent a horse with gaseous waste instead of solid.. while continuing to ignore the waste problem until it threatens to destroy the ecosphere 😕

Aaron Sawdey, Ph.D.Nov 2

@cstross @jef Horse manure is an externality you really can’t ignore.

Aaron Sawdey, Ph.D.Nov 2

@cstross @jef We hit the problem from the opposite direction in the 1960’s when attempting to develop high energy boron-based jet fuel. Problem is, oxides of boron are solid at those temperatures… something that does not play well with the internals of a jet engine.

Charlie Stross Nov 2

@acsawdey @jef Cars don't randomly spook and bolt out of control. At least they didn't back when throttle/brake controls were physical linkages instead of software! Horses are animals and animals are inherently unpredictable and willful.

Aaron Sawdey, Ph.D.Nov 2

@cstross @jef Well we are busy inventing self driving cars so we can have this back!

Josh Simmons Nov 2

@acsawdey @cstross @jef my waymo shied after seeing a bright orange cone on the road

Charlie Stross Nov 2

@acsawdey @jef That was kind of my point. (We'll have carnage-free roads if and only if we get self-driving cars that are *safer* than human drivers, not faster, and then they're made mandatory—either by law, or by insurance premiums going through the roof. Otherwise we'll have to get rid of cars and switch to lightweight EVs, eg. bikes, trikes, quad e-bikes, and so on.)

Joan of Contention 😷Nov 2

@cstross @acsawdey @jef

People are animals, and animals are inherently unpredictable and willful.

@jef @cstross : that’s basically the subtitle of my novel "Bikepunk"

Some parts of the book are very very explicit about it.

But most reviewers don’t even see it. There’s a huge blindspot for that problem.

@cstross @jef smallswords are cool (come to my classes or read my book ;-) but the thought of having to fight with sharps is not a pleasant one.
BTW, Hope (https://sirwilliamhope.org/Library/Hope/Vindication/) has some interesting observations on the culture, and was not in favour of duels.
Apologies for the tangent!

Linacre School of Defence

Sean Colbath Nov 2

@jef I want to like this analogy, but sadly the fact is that we live in both Gun AND Car town

Becca 🌳🚀🛀Nov 2

@scolbath
In EU we don't live in Gun town. That's a weird US thing.
@jef

@rlcw
Sure thing. However a car is equally dangerous everywhere in the world.
@scolbath @jef

HolgerPieta Nov 2

@shadowdancer @rlcw @scolbath @jef
The US has more than 5 times the number of car deaths per person and year than the UK.
Even if you factor in distance driven per person and year, it's still 80 % more.
Even cars are more dangerous in the US than elsewhere.

@HolgerPieta
Thanks. I wasn't aware.

But I would argue it's not the cars that are more dangerous in the US. It's the drivers.
@rlcw @scolbath @jef

Jef Poskanzer Nov 3

@shadowdancer @HolgerPieta @rlcw @scolbath And the street infrastructure. But mostly the drivers.

HolgerPieta Nov 3

@jef @shadowdancer @rlcw @scolbath
Forgot the source for my numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate?wprov=sfla1

What I don't have a source for: I think it's mostly the infrastructure and the cars, less the drivers.

Big, wide roads that tempt you to drive fast even in residential areas. And a general lack of roundabouts and traffic calming measures at critical spots. Mostly because the fire departments fear for their manliness, if they would no longer be able to use ridiculously oversized fire trucks.

And large pickup trucks and SUVs with very high, vertical, basically boxy fronts that hit you like a brick wall straight on the face.

I cannot find a source for that at the moment, but I remember reading some numbers that the number of crashes isn't all that much higher in the US, but the fraction of death and serious injury is.

List of countries by traffic-related death rate - Wikipedia

@HolgerPieta
Okay, thanks! It would be interesting to see some studies on this, if there exists any.

As you have pointed out, there is a multitude of factors at play here, ranging from structure of cars to overall traffic infrastructure and how pedestrian traffic is taken into account there.

However, to me this seems that, at least at this point, cultural and socio-psychological factors cannot be completely ruled out.
@jef @rlcw @scolbath

Becca 🌳🚀🛀Nov 3

@shadowdancer
I've seen studies for exactly this. Don't have the links handy, but you should be able to find them in the web