Dear journalists who remain on Twitter:
You actively participate on a site operated by an extremist right-winger who promotes other extremists who want, among other things, to end democracy. The end of democracy means, in case you haven't grasped this yet, the end of freedom of expression.
This means you are actively supporting his business -- and you're doing it for free.
Please grow a spine, and stop helping the people who hate you and want to destroy what you do.
Angie Schmitt says: "Big cars are killing Americans." And that's not hyperbole.
It is literally (and tragically) true that US pedestrian deaths have risen rapidly thanks to the behemoths on our roads that cyclists, like me, and pedestrians must try to dodge.
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After a decade of steady increases, the newest Ford F-250 — part of Ford’s F-Series of pickups, the No. 1 selling vehicle model in America — measures some 55 inches tall at the hood. That’s “as tall as the roof of some sedans,” a Consumer Reports writer remarked in a recent analysis examining the mega-truck trend. This height would easily render someone in a wheelchair, or a child, totally invisible at close range.
If I, a tallish woman at 5 foot 6, were hit by a new F-250, I would be struck above the chest. The face, head, neck: These are not great places to suffer a forceful blow — like the kind that an up to 7,500 pound F-250 can deliver.
Americans have traded sedans for crossovers and SUVs for full-size pickups with total abandon over the past decade. To the extent that we think at all critically about the sheer bulk of the vehicles we drive, we’re usually motivated by environmental concerns.
One common notion — though auto-safety experts will say it’s not that simple — is that it’s safer to get around in what’s basically a tank. But those benefits, exaggerated as they may be, are only for people *inside* the vehicle. People outside — pedestrians, cyclists, wheelchair users — are in more peril.
This helps explain why passenger and driver deaths have remained mostly stable over the past decade while pedestrian fatalities have risen by about 50%. From 2019 to 2020, pedestrian deaths per vehicle miles traveled increased a record 21%, for a total of 6,721 fatalities. This astonishing death toll has multiple causes, but the scale of the front end of many pickup trucks and SUVs is part of the problem, and that’s been obvious for quite a while.
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FULL ARTICLE -- https://archive.is/sLYZL
ALTERNATE LINK -- https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/12/suvs-trucks-killing-pedestrians-cyclists/621102/
I think I’ll repost this every week until the election.
“The public doesn’t understand the risks of a Trump victory. That’s the media’s fault.” Margaret Sullivan
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David August ❌👑
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