For second time this month, a bicyclist in Cambridge killed by a truck driver making a right turn

Make the truck drivers who murder other road users responsible for their mayhem.

Maybe they can paint them in prison.

If you want to stay alive you gotta obey your rules and also anticipate others aren’t going to obey their rules. Rape has nothing to do with it. if you are in a car at a red light and the light turns green, you simply need to wait to see if anyone is gonna run their red light so you can stay alive.

This all being said the trucker is probably at fault and should face penalties…..but this is Massachusetts not Mississippi (which Suffolk County DAs will tell sexual assault victims when they are ready to face a MA justice system)

Everyone drove with this level of defensiveness, accident rates would plummet.

And way better than the old design, where both lanes had straight-through lights and it was a constant stream of potential right hooks.

The only issue is that the vehicles need to obey the law here.

This would be a good place to have a red light camera if our do-nothing legislature would get off their ass and allow that. Absent that, there should be a permanent Statie sitting around the corner hiding behind a tree writing tickets.

Well… it’s actually looking way behind over your right shoulder for a biker coming up fast in their lane, and that’s tough at a busy intersection when you’re looking left waiting for an opening. It’s just not a safe situation.

Using the skiing analogy, the person behind has the visibility and therefore is always at fault. Does a car first in line at the light with their blinker on have the right away on a biker who’s coming up 5 cars back in their lane? I wonder what the rule is or if there is one.

But for everyone. For the bike that, yes, cars may be around and trucks are worse. But for people driving cars and Jesus especially trucks, that there might be people in the fucking bike lane and maybe pay attention to that, slow down, and look twice? Also we have to get the distractions out of the vehicles.

Because the turning car/truck will be meeting the bike lane at closer to a right angle, bikers should be easier to see. Drivers don't have to turn their heads as much, because bikers will be coming from their side, not from behind them.

You're right about parking to close to intersections though. "Daylighting" is the term for not allowing parking within a certain distance (often 20 feet) of an intersection, and best practice is to make it impossible with infrastructure - flex-posts, bollards, curb bump-outs, or other barriers. It is one of the best things we can do for making intersections and crossings safer for all users.

Why car culture is bad for society

I believe that there are 2 technologies which have caused more harm than the total number of nuclear blasts. They are television and cars.

A car culture requires sacrificing vast amounts of land to asphalt. All that asphalt is not only scar tissue on the planet but it also contributes to global warming since the asphalt effectively acts as a worldwide battery holding in heat during the day and releasing it at night.

Car culture is a permanent punch to social well being. We are not born with native skills of cooperation, resolving conflicts or creating and maintaining an environment where physical and emotional violence are minimized. But when regularly forced into situations of having to resolve differences the potential of better conflict resolution increases. When we have to deal with each other it's harder to cancel one another. Interdependency is a pain in the butt; but it forces people to work together.

In a neighborhood where residents cannot easily escape to other areas that inability to escape forces people to figure out how to work together. Cars however make it easier to escape.

Jane Jacobs made the point: A neighborhood where neighbors relate to each other more often will be safer than a neighborhood where neighbors ignore each other. Being able to escape makes it easier to ignore the people who are next door or across the street.

So the addiction to cars ultimately weakens the bonds of neighborhoods. Neighborhoods - outside the family - is where we learn to live together. When the needs and demands of living in close proximity can be avoided (by escaping from those needs and demands via cars) then the fundamental social lessons that can be learned from having to live with each other go untaught and not learned.

Car culture is a punch to neighborhoods in other ways. Cars - and SUVs especially - make it much easier to shop at big box stores, such as Walmart. The effects on town commercial areas is documented. Because Walmart emphasizes the one thing that everyone wants - lower prices, the commercial areas of towns die. Without cars and SUVs and their predecessors, station wagons, big box stores would have a much harder time attracting the vast numbers of customers needed to make up for the extremely low retail profit margins that make big box stores work.

So thanks to car we have cities and suburbs scarred with asphalt roads. Parking lots that serve only one purpose of storing vehicles during limited periods of the day, along with roads, depress nature in living as well as contribute to global warming. Cars harm neighborhood integrity by creating of the possibility of escape while also supporting deadly punches to local commercial districts. Which act as another way of weakening social bonds in towns and cities.

As for my being blind. A shallow insult that sets up a conflict with someone who actually agrees with you is not smart.

This city was not created for cars. It was created for pedestrians and horses.

Please, that argument is just absurd, yet people still like to use it.

That was a very, very long time ago. There are roads in European cities that were created well before the Pilgrims ever thought of visiting us, yet they have cars. The roads have been paved and adjusted for cars over the years.

If you want the city to change the use of some roads, write to the mayor. But you're right, she probably gets millions of dark money from the auto industry.

How's that letter coming?