Finally reading “Should Law Subsidize Driving?” (somewhat painfully and slowly due to a non-reflowing pdf). So random quotes maybe from it.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3345366

A reason we often forget for why EVs don’t solve everything: “Emissions regulations focus narrowly on the tailpipe—neglecting particles from brake pads and tires, for example, which contribute up to 85 percent of noxious emissions from cars.”

“For every person killed in a car crash in the United States, over 100 suffer severe injuries, a rate of one serious injury every seven seconds.”

After detailing some basic calculations on value of lives lost and other obvious costs of car culture, Shill writes: “Yet even this churlish definition of social loss cancels out the combined
GDP of roughly 11 U.S. states each year.”

<<For example, 89 percent of survey respondents “considered it unacceptable to drive 10 mph over the speed limit on a residential street, yet 45% reported having done so in the past 30 days.”>>

This quote he gives from Janette Sadiq-Khan is : “ In the MUTCD’s more than eight hundred pages of diagrams, human beings are conspicuously
absent from any representations of the street.”

‘In environments with high volumes of people walking and biking, the FHWA itself suggests abandoning the 85th percentile rule in favor of a different method,
which would set speed limits “close to the 50th percentile speed.”’

A 50th percentile rule would mean we could lower speed limits everywhere in Seattle RIGHT NOW and not go thru this absurd process that will take 100 years to actually lower speed limits!

“Wisconsin study found that drivers yielded to pedestrians expressing intention to cross only 16 percent of the time at observed crosswalks…

Experiments have found that motorists yield less often for
people of color.”

I am so mad.

‘Prior to the invention of the car, the verb “park” meant “a. to plant a tree or spread a patch of turf or flowers,” or “b. to create a little patch of parkland,”’

I literally had never really twigged that “park” for cars was intentionally created from “park” as in pretty spaces to play and relax. I’d always assumed it was a “natural” similarity due to underlying word meaning.

“In determining how people get from point A to point B, one aspect of
public policy swamps all others: few Americans have access—let alone affordable access—to reliable public transit networks, yet all can exploit reliable road networks for free and without limitation.”

Holy carp! Note the units on the left of this graph of cumulative spending on highways minus user fees (seems to not include federal interstates).

“These costs impose an additional burden of over $100 billion, or between $1,012 and $1,488 per household per year, on all taxpayers, regardless of whether
they drive.”

May have to go read the citations for the methodology. Likely would make me

Apparently some academics have posited that the inadequate provision of non-car transportation modes is not actually inadequate because if people really cared, they’d move to places with better options or agitate locally. That cars are still primary is proof they don’t care.

“The total number of parking spaces is not a figure that is tracked, even at the city level. Estimates have put the number as high as two billion, or over six for every person.”

“In the U.S. alone, a dangerous class of fine particulate matter known as
PM2.5 kills 15,000 people a year, or one person every 35 minutes. [most PM2.5 and PM10 are]
left unregulated or mostly unregulated by CAFE standards.“

We expand a lot of roads every year and they cost a lot: “when analyzed using the social cost of carbon, U.S. road construction has an
environmental cost of roughly $4 billion per year.”

(He used a very conservative $36/ton of CO2)

How droll. “human beings are not biomechanically built to withstand impacts from multi-ton metal machines at speed”

TIL that “bull bars” — those metal attachments people put on after-market — are egregiously dangerous. A 12 mph collision with them for children is far worse than a 20 mph one without.

Bull bars are entirely unregulated in the United States but banned in Britain since 2010.

This reminds me of something we don’t track or regulate well. People often park their cars on our neighborhood streets closer to the intersection that is legal. We rarely cite these parking violations unless someone complains.

Given sight line issues at intersections, cars parked too close are likely a significant factor in collisions. Probably mostly non-fatal ones but still harmful. But those costs are entirely unaccounted for AFAICT.

But people wound revolt if we strictly enforced parking rules.

Lolsob. “While crashes become more common with more driving, motorists overestimate their own competence behind the wheel; per one study, 93 percent believe themselves to be more skilled than the median driver.”

Folks will maybe not be surprised that the author of this paper argues that the federal mortgage interest deduction in combination with zoning patterns subsidizes driving and encourages more of it.

Ok. More mad. I didn’t realize we had done away with the tiny federal bike commute benefit. “tax law briefly subsidized bicycle commuting by authorizing
reimbursement on a pre-tax basis of up to $20 a month. The 2017 Tax Cuts and
Jobs Act suspended this deduction until … 2026.”

Relatedly, apparently eve jurisdiction in the United States is subsidizing car purchasing (typically EVs) but there are no subsidies anywhere for non-car vehicles. Washington is not alone in focusing only on EVs.

Can we have this? “the Netherlands makes drivers strictly liable when they strike a pedestrian or bicyclist. When the victim is younger than 14, the driver is 100 percent liable.” (Over 14, driver is half at fault, other half is divvied up based on circumstances of collision.)

The author of this article analogizes with PUPPY SNATCHNG in the concluding part and it’s clearly an emotional trick so that if you don’t already hate cars, you now associate driving with puppy snatching and thus will hate cars.

An after-conclusion section talks about autonomous vehicles in the historical context of previous (eg 1960s) promises for cars. It has this quote which omg.

‘For example, in 2015 Tesla CEO and founder Elon Musk predicted “complete autonomy in approximately two years.”’

The section is asking the question of why bother with systematic change of self-driving cars are coming soon. Of course soon is probably 2035 at the earliest and he offers: if we made our roads like Spain’s (for example) we’d save 30,000 lives per year.

Finally done! I did not read all the footnotes. But there are many. If anything this article is great just for having citations for lots of things (not that mere facts are convincing, but having them easily available makes me feel better.)

Anyway this paper gives me ideas for arguments around subsidy to use locally. I might write the city about the EV charging station again.

One thing this paper has is just jaw dropping figures on the total economic costs of driving and car culture. We talk about how expensive Sound Transit is but it’s really not if you compare it to the unaccounted subsidies to driving.

Driving subsidies in action. First picture on story is a large color screen in the driver’s view which is perfectly legal but certainly increases distraction and collision risk.

Meanwhile we here in Seattle won’t even legalize scooter share. https://twitter.com/seattletimes/status/1104910562302091267

It is absolutely absurd and dangerous that we allow “infotainment” systems which the person driving can’t help but see given their placement.

From this Seattle Times article: “It’s so intuitive that you can largely keep your eyes on the road while scrolling through radio stations, for example.”

I never had to look at screens with my first car. Our current car lets you change radio stations without even removing your hands from the wheel or looking at a screen. Even that seems distracting sometimes, never mind a screen.