this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2025
250 points (80.2% liked)

Fuck Cars

12663 readers
1790 users here now

A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!

Rules

1. Be CivilYou may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.

2. No hate speechDon't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.

3. Don't harass peopleDon't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.

4. Stay on topicThis community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.

5. No repostsDo not repost content that has already been posted in this community.

Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.

Posting Guidelines

In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:

Recommended communities:

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

They think protecting drivers cars from scratches is more important than protecting pedestrians from getting hit, so they make the sidewalk part of the "clear zone"

Physical design is not neutral.

Physical design is an expression of our values.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] wieson@feddit.org 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

"they" actually dont think, protecting vehicles from scratches is more important than protecting pedestrians.

The protection of uninvolved persons or areas next to the road, as well as oncoming traffic, is literally in the guidelines of how to build guardrails (RPS).

I'm as much 'fuckcars' as the next guy here, but please don't post a picture from any random place on earth and blame "them". Who's them? The world ministry of transport?

[–] Sconrad122@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The FHWA guidance on guardrails (https://highways.dot.gov/safety/rwd/reduce-crash-severity/guardrail-101) is very clear that the guardrails are there for drivers and in fact makes exactly zero mentions of pedestrian safety. Many states have specific guidance that guardrails should be placed behind sidewalks. Here is an example from NCDOT: "The preferred treatment is to place the face of the guardrail 12 feet from the face of the curb. The 12 feet width provides ample sight distance for any intersecting streets or driveways near the guardrail installation. This placement method will also accommodate for sidewalk installation. The guardrail will be placed behind the sidewalk" (https://connect.ncdot.gov/projects/Roadway/Roadway%20Design%20Manual/03.%20Guardrail,%20Barriers%20and%20Attenuators.pdf). "Them" is the institutionalized practice of traffic engineering that treats safety of those outside of a vehicle as an afterthought and not a primary purpose of road design elements in the US (and to varying extents, other countries)

[–] wieson@feddit.org 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I paraphrased from my guidance (RPS not FHWA). We don't all live in the US, which was the point.

[–] Sconrad122@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I suppose I may have found it more obvious than you that this image was taken in the United States, which possesses a plethora of places that look like this. I did try to look up RPS guardrails to get a bearing on the context you were coming from, but didn't come up with relevant results, probably because the search engine is biased for English/American results to English/American queries. You mind me asking where RPS is from?

[–] wieson@feddit.org 3 points 2 days ago

RPS = Richtlinien für passiven Schutz an Straßen durch Fahrzeug-Rückhaltesysteme

Wikipedia

From Germany