How Do We Change Driver's "Indifference"? This Impacts Us All

We've all seen this - texting while driving, driving while distracted, and rolling through a stop sign. Sure, we as cyclists are under scrutiny for stop signs and lights (an argument for another day) but let's be honest, the impact of a car/SUV/truck is much worse. 

CINCINNATI — Ninety percent of American drivers admit to risky driving practices, such as drowsy or drugged driving, running red lights, or texting while driving, according to new data released by AAA Thursday.

Ninety. Percent.

And it’s not just that they admit it, AAA said. It’s also that they don’t really care.

“It’s not that most drivers don’t know the difference between right and wrong, safe or unsafe,” AAA spokesperson Cheryl Parker said. “But there is a culture of widespread indifference, leading more and more people to pay a deadly price.

How do we change this?

Full article:

http://www.wcpo.com/traffic/aaa-study-finds-widespread-indifference...

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Skip Montanaro 0mi on March 4, 2016 at 3:39am

If some drivers weren't such douche bags (apologies for the sensitive among us), GoPro and other similar tools wouldn't be necessary.

Permalink Reply by Cheryl on March 4, 2016 at 7:05am

Agree. And I always try to acknowledge "good" behavior by drivers with a nod, smile and/or wave.

Permalink Reply by Paul Lazzaro on March 4, 2016 at 4:53am

As long as driving is in practice a necessity, and therefore thought of as a right, the standard of behavior demanded of drivers will be very low.

Given our car-dependent pattern of settlement, taking away a driver's license often also takes away a person's ability to get to work.  A transgression has to be pretty severe to warrant that consequence.  And given the necessity of driving, even those who have lost their licenses will often continue to drive.

An optimistic person might think that self-driving cars will eventually provide the answer.  We'll see.  It's a lot easier to make a system of self-driving cars work safely and efficiently if they only have to interact with other cars, so there may be pressure to marginalize cyclists and pedestrians even more as interest in self-driving cars grows.

Permalink Reply by Skip Montanaro 0mi on March 4, 2016 at 8:00am

When I cut through Lincoln Park by the zoo on my way to work, I wind up taking Webster for a couple blocks between Stockton and Clark, then left on Clark. One morning I was riding up the rise and the light turned green. The driver at the head of the eastbound traffic on Webster wanted to turn into the Francis W. Parker parking lot. Being the presumably nice person that she was (or maybe she didn't want to splatter her car with bikie guts), she stopped to let me pass. Of course, somebody a couple cars behind didn't see why she was stopped and honked his horn. Of course.

Permalink Reply by Sebastian Baptiste on March 6, 2016 at 10:06pm

This will likely be a slow evolution, with a mix of incentives and directives. This culture tends to spend more attention to corrective/punitive treatment of symptoms rather than addressing underlying causes. Sure, taking the driver's license away of someone who causes death by car while under the influence of phone, booze or whatever seems fully justified. However, this still does not address the cause. We need spread mass transportation more equally over all the options, as the present situation is lopsided. The approach could be economic by increasing tax and truly incentivizing car-pooling; reducing the size and especially speed of urban cars; supervision/enforcement by camera (we expect that to happen in rail transport!); massively investing in and updating of public transportation and bringing it into the 21st century; creating separated bike infra that takes the fear out of cycling. Lastly, educational by being far more upfront about the links between driving disease and death compared to other means of transportation, and taking the glamour out of driving. It worked with cigarettes, even if it was not done voluntarily.

Permalink Reply by Skip Montanaro 0mi on March 6, 2016 at 11:52pm
Probably worth checking out the March 7 issue of Time magazine. The cover story is, "No traffic. No accidents. No deaths. All you have to do is give up your right to drive." Jeez, I hope we don't have a "cold, dead hands" fight over the "right" to drive.
Permalink Reply by Irvin Steinert on April 7, 2017 at 2:05pm

the answer is: Shame

On our present course, we humans are in danger of becoming a shameless, blameless society. Shame is a useful and necessary part of society.

The original campaign in the Netherlands was a campaign of shame. If your were against safe biking you were a "child murderer". Not sure how they pulled that off.....

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