A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
1. Be Civil
You may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.
2. No hate speech
Don't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.
3. Don't harass people
Don'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 topic
This community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.
5. No reposts
Do 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.
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:
Gary, Indiana. took the number two spot. Jackson, Mississippi took number three, though they were nowhere close to Daytona Beach, with 3.84 and 3.79 times the median rate of car deaths.
Among small towns — those with populations under 50,000 — Dayton, Texas (located in the greater Houston metro) topped the list with a crash death rate an astonishing 12.4 times the national median
Source: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JoWMRt2vMV2uwlzPc4InSJlKckEHr5WyxYbXTIIIjHo/edit?gid=0#gid=0
St Louisian here and I am not at all surprised to see my city in this list. I've lived all over the country and driven in most of our biggest metros but StL is by far one of the craziest places to drive that I've ever seen. People drive like assholes in a lot of big cities (looking at you DC metro) buy they are at least somewhat predictable and respectful of basic laws. Here it is literally the wild west.
They will run stoplights and signs regularly, just about every time I'm in the car I see it at least once. And it's not just squeaking by right after it changes, it's egregious-as in traffic has started in the opposite direction and some jackass comes flying through the intersection like they don't even see the light. But its worse than that- I've seen people go the wrong way on one-way streets, drive in the opposite lane of traffic to pass, turn left across multiple lanes of moving traffic from the far right lane and using closed off construction areas as shortcuts. Pedestrians and cyclists have been hit several times in my neighborhood by drivers who were ignoring basic driving laws. It's not just randos either- city vehicles, school busses, and cabs do this crap. They aren't just asshole drivers- they are reckless and entitled and unpredictable.
What makes the problem worse is that a huge number of people just don't get their cars registered at all, and drive without tags or with years old temp tags with no repercussions. This also means they are uninsured, so it's on the insured folks to cover any accident damage.
My insurance rates jumped about 30% when I moved here and I didn't understand why at first but I do now. I love St Louis but I hate driving here.
Lived in STL and Chicago. Both cities are driving nightmares, but STL is worse for the exact reason you mentioned: predictability.
In Chicago, there are tons of asshole drivers. Probably more than in STL. But you know what they’re gonna do and where they drive, so they can be avoided. In STL? Another story. It’s not just that there are asshole drivers in STL, it’s that they genuinely don’t know how to drive on top of being assholes. (Don’t get me started on Missouri’s “driver’s education” requirements.) It literally is the wild wild west of driving.
I’ll take an asshole chicagoan who actually knows how to drive over a St Louisian any day. The amount of just driving through red lights is unreal.