Car Culture was a Mistake 2: The Deadly Dreadnought Era

EV Hummer

 When speaking of pedestrian and cyclist fatalities one of the reasons contributing to the yearly rise in deaths is the size, weight and reduced sight lines of the modern era truck-class.  When coupled with the aggressiveness and inattentiveness of drivers you have a deadly combination.

Everyone knows that as the 19th century drew to a close and Naval commanders, National leaders, and war theorists around the world had absorbed and adopted the Alfred Thayer Mahan doctrine of the National strength and sea power required a concentration of power in the waters around the Nation, and this meant the construction of massive Capital ships.

Thus, began the Naval arms race of larger, faster, more powerful, more heavily armed, more heavily armored, capital ships culminating in the infamous HMS Dreadnought in 1906.  Dreadnought famously made all earlier battleships obsolete and pushed other Nations to catch up and expand their Navies.  But, such was the lag time of design and construction that any large capital ship launched was already obsolete compared to the next ship under construction.

Trucks, have supplanted cars in the imagination of, especially rightwing men, as the nebulous concept of Freedom and America.  Trucks of course are marketed to appeal to toxic masculinity, Rolling Coal being one of the most odious and obnoxious displays but, owning Truck = Masculinity is as deliberate andOnce St. Louis resident Bob Chandler modified his 1974 Ford F250 into the legendary BigFoot, the Truck arms race was on.

In accordance with the increase in size of trucks, sport utility vehicles often built on the same chassis have thus grow as well.  And it wasn't just the grotesque Monster Trucks which grew all facets of Trucks have increased.  This can clearly be seen in the front face of the current era of GM vehicles.  The noses on the current Chevrolet Silverado, Cadillac Escalade, GMC Yukon Denali are huge; 5 feet tall, broad and imposing.  The EV Hummer pictured above weighs 10,000lbs and has 0 to 60 speed of 3 seconds.

Great...

One of the obvious reasons, people have gravitated towards larger vehicles is safety.  Not overall safety mind you, but their own personal safety.  As I've noted cars y their very nature and design pit you against the multitude, you the beleaguered fighter pilot avoiding all the enemies around you.  Hence you want a bigger, taller vehicle to gain an advantage.  Modern construction techniques and advances in seatbelts and the wide-spread adoption of their use have made the occupants much safer in accidents.  Airbags help as well but, they seem to have had the paradoxical effect of making drivers more bold and less defensive knowing they have the shield deployment at their disposal.

But, while these roadway Dreadnoughts help keep drivers safer they've become killers for those around them in smaller cars, on bike, or on foot.

Though their designs have changed considerably over the past two decades, late-model SUVs still appear to be more likely to kill pedestrians than cars, a new study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found. 

Thanks to advances in safety, the number of people killed in motor vehicle crashes in the U.S. has fallen from more than 50,000 in 1980 to 36,560 in 2018. Over the past decade, however, the number of pedestrians killed on American roads has ticked steadily upward. 

In the Michigan crashes, SUVs caused more serious injuries than cars when impacts occurred at greater than 19 miles per hour. At speeds of 20-39 mph, 3 out of 10 crashes with SUVs (30 percent) resulted in a pedestrian fatality, compared with 5 out of 22 for cars (23 percent). At 40 mph and higher, all three crashes with SUVs killed the pedestrian (100 percent), compared with 7 out of 13 crashes involving cars (54 percent). Below 20 miles per hour there was little difference between the outcomes, with pedestrians struck by either vehicle type tending to sustain minor injuries. 

I posted the chart of the Governor's Highway Safety Administration (GHSA) Pedestrian fatalities for the past 12 years showing a steady and deadly rise in pedestrian fatalities  The report also notes;

GHSA previously issued a report finding that 3,434 pedestrians were killed on U.S. roadways in the first half of 2022, based on preliminary data reported by State Highway Safety Offices. A second report analyzing state-reported data for all of 2022 found that roadways continue to be incredibly deadly for pedestrians. There were 2.37 pedestrian deaths per billion vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in 2022, up yet again and continuing a troubling trend of elevated rates that began in 2020.

Trucks and SUVs are killers for people walking around but, even worse have been the tragic (and often) negligent deaths caused by the driver backing up over someone; many times their own young children.  The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration as part of the Department of Transportation has been analyzing and warning about Backover accidents for decades and noted in a 2006 report, 

A 1997 Research Note claimed “an annual average of 475 backover fatalities (85 on-road and 390 off-road) for 1992 and 1993.”  

Nowadays, every SUV is outfitted with a back-up camera and most cars have proximity warnings and oncoming perpendicular warning devices.  But, pedestrians and cyclists continue to get hit, injured, and killed.  And the roadway Dreadnought arms race is going to continue, perhaps culminating in the Simpsons parody vehicle the Canyonero

Land Rover has done this very commercial...

Can you name the truck with four wheel drive,

Smells like a steak and seats thirty-five..

Canyonero! Canyonero!

12 yards long, 2 lanes wide,

65 tons of American Pride!

Canyonero!

*- The Federal Highway commission has ruled the Canyonero unsafe for highway or city driving.

Will the Corporate Media push the Rightwing Trucker Boogaloo

In a repeat of the Tea Party nonsense, I see the Corporate Media is back to amplifying and providing undue coverage to minuscule conservative propaganda campaigns.  Even the slenderest of rightwing tantrums is treated as though it's a spontaneous uprising of the Great Masses of Real America!  E.g. Mom's for Liberty! Enter the non-stop coverage of Truckers fighting Covid Tyranny! 

For years rightwing media has known if they constantly and consistently repeat their talking points, the Corporate Media world will be forced to (or willingly) cover the nonsense and often just regurgitates the framing crafted by right-wingers.  

For weeks, Rightwing media hyped the Canadian Convoy (funded primarily by American conservatives and comprised mainly of Canadian Fascists) as an expression of "freedom".  Conservative luminaries, like Candeath Owens and Dilbert Scott Adams, proposed seriously that Prime Minister Trudeau should be forcibly removed by U.S. Armed Forces and rightwingers across the Nation, from he lowliest Alex Jones troglodyte to Arch-Traitor Donald John Trump himself declared Trudeau was far more of a dictator than Vladimir Putin, 

"The tyranny we have witnessed in Canada in recent weeks should shock and dismay people all over the world," Trump said.

Such statements wholly divorced from reality and of sheer buffoonery only makes sense when you understand The Right lives in a completely sealed media bubble, breathing in and regurgitating the same noxious nonsense to each other over and over again, until it becomes concentrated bullshit.  But, it would be nice if outside the bubble the media would focus more on what these rightwing temper tantrums almost always turn out to be; i.e. huge opportunities for grifters to fleece MAGA morons.

Illinois Governor candidate Gary Rabine (Nazi Party) who's slated to get 5% of the vote in the coming primary attached himself to the Convoy in a feeble attempt to jump-start his flaccid campaign.  Even Illinois Republicans, who flirt with fascism, probably won't be excited about Gary's performative assholery. 

Nothing about conservatives should shock or surprise anymore.  The Republican Party is dead.  Conservative political thought long ago morphed into "Own the Libs" and abandoned their so-called principles, ethics, values, morals, and beliefs.  Conservatives live on hatred and a fanatical desire to punish those they hate; We, the American People.

But, the Corporate Media can not acknowledge this stark truth because to do so would be to cast doubt on their rhetoric since Ronnie Raygun.  And worse yet, it would illustrate how they have helped the fascist beast grow and thrive... 

And so when despicable Ron DeSantis was ignoring Covid spikes which have thus far killed upwards of 100,000 Florida residents, the Corporate Media couldn't get enough of his terse press conferences and his pugnacious attitude.  When rightwing media declared Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has won the Pandemic over and over, the Corporate Media world adopted their framing (as they always do).  

So, what's happening since the Media adopted him? DeSantis has pushed bills criminalizing children and their parents for their biology.  Florida is crafting and passing laws making it illegal to vote Republicans out of office and setting up a law enforcement agency to track down those who vote the wrong way, DeSantis brazenly berates children at his press conferences because their wearing masks irritates him. 

Like Youngkin and every other Republican Governor, DeSantis didn't run on a campaign of Nazi Assholery (unlike Gary Rabine in Illinois) because that doesn't win.  But once in office DeSantis dropped any pretense of equanimity and simply let his rank assholishness and deplorable vile temper rule the state while subverting good governance and enshrining fascism into law.

I fear come 2024 the Corporate Media will push DeSantis the way they always push GOP Assholes as he runs for President...

Sleeping Truck Drivers and Fatal Accidents are another gift from Capitalism

A Semi-Truck accident from 2014 is back in the news and it highlights the problem of sleeping truck drivers but not the underlying cause.

Last January 27th in the Chicagoland area, a truck driver Renato Velasquez fell asleep at the wheel and crashed into a State Police Crusier and an IDOT assistance truck which had stopped on I-88 near Route 59 to aid a stranded motorist. The IDOT worker Vincent Petrella was killed and the State Trooper Douglas Balder was severely injured.

Velasquez' trial has begun and he is being charged with operating a commercial motor vehicle while fatigued or impaired and making a false report of his record and duty status.

Prosecutors stated Velasquez frequently, falsified his in-cab log books to indicate he was abiding by federal rules that require truck drivers to sleep for 10 consecutive hours after driving for 11 hours.

In Illinois, the only change to Highway Traffic Laws passed recently was State Senator Jim Oberweis speed limit increase, which he pushed through in order that his delivery truck drivers could go 70+mph to make him more money on his Dairy Empire. Safety of truck drivers and everyone else in Illinois be damned.

Truck Drivers are rountinely given timetables which require them to either: 1) Speed or 2) Eschew Sleep in order to get their loads on schedule.

A quick perusal will find dozens of news stories of sleeping truck drivers and several spectacular crashes caught on video. The underlying cause for all of them is the Capitalist System which has placed Profit over every other concern.

Do not fret though because the system is safe. After these accidents happen Capitalism will never be charged, will never be questioned, the individual truck driver will be punished for Capitalism's systemic flaws and disregard for the safety and well-being of those affected.