Our Covid Response
- Thread starter gorfias
- Start date
Yes yes, we get it, you have the driving history of an average driver and the people who experience your driving firsthand consider it to be an unwelcome and worrying experience (weird brag IMO). But I was asking about the cost-benefit analysis you do for speeding, given you've said (correctly) that RTAs are the number-one cause of child deaths. Why is your cost-benefit analysis effectively 'fuck them kids'?
Right, not alone. So we can dispense with the idea that China's recent surge somehow discredits masks then.
I mean, A) that's exactly what happened *and* what you wanted *and* what you're chastising them for now and B) horseshit
Like, seriously, I sarcastically say that you think they should've gotten sick sooner so they wouldn't get as sick now, and your response is...well there's a vaccine so exposure isn't a problem? The fuck is that? We're wanting to stop *first* infections, dipshit. And seeing as how Covid is currently kicking me in the throat through a full vaccination and natural immunity, fuck your "it's not a big deal" schtick. The hell is your fixation on eyeball licking contests? Plague Marines at least know and understand the severity of the plagues they're trying to spread
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i want you to go back and explore for yourself what the point of immunity is. how do you get it? what is it supposed to be protecting you from? Can you do that? Then examine the logic.
I'm not quite sure you understand what the nature of being a good road driver is: it is not ability to control a car at high speed.
If the people in the car you are driving are uncomfortable, almost certainly so also are other drivers on the road. Road safety is a lot about regularity, boring stability, meeting expectations. Rash, unpredictable and risky behaviours are liable to cause accidents, because they can leave other drivers unsure what is happening or alarm them so they are more likely to make mistakes. A friend of mine is a motorcyclist. She points out that because motorcyclists are harder to see, they have even more pressure to behave in ways that are clear, visible, predictable and well telegraphed to other road users. One might note that because of this, people may cause accidents even if they are not the ones held legally responsible.
If you are making your road safety dependent on other drivers having to work around your recklessness, you are putting your safety more in the hands of other people. It is perhaps more accurate to say that your failure to be held responsible for an accident may be a testament to the care and attention of all the other drivers on the road.
Even if we 'asked for policies that hurt people', most of those policies can be mitigated. Eg. The government can provide extra support for the population to help with suicide prevention. Eg. My country put in millions of dollars for extra suicide prevention
I'm getting really tired of certain people who bring up good points at the start of the pandemic who now did not bother to realise that we ACTUALLY listened to them and DID something about it. The debate is locked in March 2020
Can we point out the difference between city and country folk driving in areas not known to them. Country folk can be super dangerous on a highway by being too slow or turning off like they are in the countryside
We have an issue with Asian drivers being seen as bad drivers in Australia. But I've gone to a few Asian countries and the ones I've been to drive far more aggressively there compared to Australians. This makes them unpredictable on Australian roads but completely safe on Asian. Being less aggressive on Asian road is super dangerous and will cause accidents. So, I'm not a safe driver on Asian roads.
Indeed. Drivers want other drivers to drive in a way they are accustomed to and can expect, which means that drivers who are unexpectedly slow, hesitant and unconfident can increase the likelihood of crashes much like the ones who are too fast and reckless.
Yep, this was the only place I struggled on my driving test: got two minors for being hesitant (this was, distressingly, 23 years ago - I'm not sure what the test criteria are now).
I know that from the cost-benefit analyses.
If you pay attention to the little things, which turn out to be very important things quite often, then people would be much better drivers. It's like the difference between top players in say a shooter and other good/great players with equal gun skills, it's doing the little things that separate them. For example, I'm willing to bet you don't know why you can actually follow closer in the night during rain vs no rain (also a thing I got yelled at for when driving our group down to Nashville for a vacation). There's tons more places you drive that aren't around kids/schools.
But don't masks help at least a decent amount so how are cases skyrocketing? Also, I'm sure there's still several other covid restrictions in place in China unless the CCP was like "fuck it, we're done", which I doubt has happened. You just can't slow covid (or other respiratory diseases) down without majorly affecting a normal functioning society.
IIRC, China's vaccine rollout to the elderly and vulnerable is pretty low, not like say 10% low or something but like 60-70% low (again, IIRC). They over focused on stopping infections vs giving people immunity. Australia did the same thing at one point as well. If you do some basic restrictions, simple stuff like public gatherings (big stuff like say conventions, bars/restaurants, theaters, etc.) before vaccine availabitity, you'll get people getting infected much more slowly over time vs literally locking people up and then letting them do stuff. Of course, everyone all at once is gonna wanna do stuff and then all get infected at once, thus the huge skyrocket of cases.
Immunity stops you from getting severe disease from covid, not from getting it. You'll get covid again at some point and you'll get the flu again at some point. Why are you trying to stop infections that will happen?
How is knowing a lane is open next to me and not slowing down when the guy in front of me brakes have anything to do with controlling my car at high speeds? How is simply changing lanes some act of controlling a car at high speeds? I've said driving is mainly about paying attention, that's literally what you said (regularity, boring stability, meeting expectations). Most people don't pay attention, that's why they're bad drivers. It's not that they can't make a 90 degree turn at the highest possible speed or do a 180 handbrake "flip this b!tch" maneuver. How am I making my safety dependent on other drivers when my driving technique is all about assuming everyone isn't paying enough attention and always having an "out" if someone does something stupid? I don't panic if say someone moves into my lane even if I'm on the expressway because I know where I can move to whether simply the lane over, or the shoulder or off the road into some grass (which I've literally done both of those before). That's also why I'd never ride a motorcycle because accidents can be 0% your fault and if that happens, you're pretty fubar on a motorcycle.
I always change lanes when following one of those people even if the other lane looks to be slower. I can't stand people that are constantly braking for no reason and it's a big tip that they either aren't paying attention or they just suck at judging distances (kinda fucking important when driving). If you see you're making ground/catching up to someone, why are you waiting to slow down so late to where you have to brake vs just easing off the gas? And the amount of people that have like no concept of how wide their car is and won't squeeze through spaces that have plenty of room. This one guy at work was having trouble parking (literally backed out to get more in the middle of the space and actually parked worse on the 2nd attempt somehow) and of course we're commenting on it and he's like "you don't understand how wide my car is" acting like his front end is like a hammerhead shark or something and I'm like "uhh... I'm in the car, I can tell how wide it is".
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We Might Have Long Covid All Wrong
Some post-Covid symptoms may be produced by the brain. Does that make them any less real?
newrepublic.com
No, it's a big tip that you're too close to them and they're signalling to you 'back up, because I'm going to keep slowing down like this until you do.' Like, everything you say to assure us you're a good driver just makes you sound like a worse driver!
You have not answered the cost-benefit analysis question.
Edit: I'd never heard about it being better to follow more closely in the rain at night (because it sounds like a stupid idea to me) so I did google it briefly. Seems the advice is (unsurprisingly) to significantly increase the gap between cars, and, just reporting what I've read, apparently you're a moron if you think otherwise.
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Masks on their own, without any other preparation or public health policy, would do very little. They would slow the person-to-person likelihood of individual transmission, without deferring it for more than a couple of days.
These approaches have to be seen in context. Always.
Nope, it's just those people that are like "i haven't hit the brake in like 10 seconds so i guess it's about time".
You do realize speeding is basically never the cause of an accident right? One of my IT teachers in college was a former cop and he never was apart of investigating an accident where speed was the primary cause.
I'm fully aware of that, I asked why you can actually follow closer in the rain because it's paying attention to something people don't even think about. When it's raining out, you get reflections that you don't get normally. I pay attention to that and can see the car(s) in front of the car in front of me brake in the reflections on the road and I will actually start braking before the guy in front of me starts to brake. Yes rain causes braking to take longer but I can brake far sooner in the rain than not in the rain because of the better intel.
Funny how you cut out the rest of my post that says China almost certainly has other policies still in place outside of just masking. Masking does so little (if it does anything), it's basically pointless. You're gonna get covid again, random dude in China is gonna get covid again, why does it matter if you get it today or 2 months from now (assuming the mask will indeed do that)? Just maybe masks reduce chance of getting covid by like 10%, that means you have to roll 10 on a D10 every single time you get exposed to someone with covid. How many times in a row you think you're gonna roll that 10? The only public health measures that ever made any sense was limiting big public indoor gatherings and protecting the vulnerable. Sure, try masks early on because we didn't know if they would work, but at some point you need to provide evidence they work. It's pretty obvious they had at best very marginal effects if any. New York laughs at Florida for being anti-mask when they have a wave in the Summer, then New York in the fall/winter when they have a wave is "there was nothing we could do"? Yeah, same fucking thing for Florida.
"Twenty-eight percent of fatal crashes, 13 percent of injury crashes, and 10 percent of property-damage-only crashes in 2020 were speeding-related." (https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813320)
You are being very silly now.
No, I didn't cut it out for no reason. /You/ were the one who wanted to connect China's performance solely to mask mandates.
I quite explicitly said I was happy to disconnect the two and talk about other factors. You didn't. You wanted to connect them solely when it was convenient, and then to disconnect them when it became inconvenient.
The interesting comment appears to be that your passengers feel uncomfortable when you are driving. Either you give a lift to lots of people very nervous about car travel, or you do something dangerous - and I suspect that is not maintaining a safe distance from the car ahead. Chances are that you should be either controlling your speed better to maintain distance or changing lanes earlier. Even if you are changing lanes, if you get very close to the car ahead before you complete the manouever, it creates a window of increased danger.
Other cars may, of course, be braking for a number of reasons: such as that they're occasionally drifting faster than they like or they feel they need more distance from the car in front. Again, going back to the point that your passengers feel uncomfortable, I cannot help but suspect that many the drivers you think suck at judging distance are actually just drivers who prefer a safer distance. Not just to the car in front but the one behind, as I agree with Baffle that some people brake lightly as a warning to cars behind that they think are getting too close.
There certainly are erratic drivers of course. Either change lane (if possible), or drop back and maintain additional distance.
I know you think you're sounding clever, but you are mostly confirming to everyone that you are a horrible driver, and you're confusing not being on the wrong side of dumb luck with good driving skills. You've also just sort of confirmed my suspicion above, that you do not maintain a safe distance.
Seriously, what the fuck? It's a common cause of accidents.
Not only is speeding itself a substantial cause of accidents alone, it can be a secondary factor for other causes (such as loss of control or failing to correctly judge another car's path or speed). It's also overrepresented in accidents that involve serious injury and death, for extremely obvious reasons.
City drivers can be just as dangerous in unfamiliar situations.
And people with caravans are just pricks not matter where they come from.