Comment by voxl

6 days ago

Your argument is really "I'd rather people die then drive through your city slower."????

I think the argument "I'd rather have a higher risk of dying than do this other unpleasant thing".

Which to be fair everyone does all the time (driving habits, eating habits, etc).

  • No, that's not correct.

    It's: "I'd rather have other people have higher risk of dying than me having to do something I'd kinda of not want to do even though the inconvenience is minimal".

    Me, me, me, me and me. Fuck the rest.

You could ban cars entirely. Why wouldn't you? Would you rather people die than drive cars at all?

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with the parent here; I'm just saying your rebuttal is a strawman.

  • Well Helsinki achieved their goal (zero fatalities) without banning cars, so that argument doesn't really work. And I count myself among those who would not have believed it possible.

    Of course in general you can avoid potential bad consequences of a thing by not doing the thing but that's just a tautology.

    • To be clear, what Helsinki achieved is awesome, and I'm not suggesting the outcome was obvious. But that is completely beside the point being discussed here. I was making a rebuttal to a very specific comment and that was it. If the point was not obvious with an outright ban as an example, pretend it said reduce to 10 km/h or something.

  • >You could ban cars entirely. Why wouldn't you? Would you rather people die than drive cars at all?

    We don't even ban drugs here and cars are more useful than drugs. It's all about harm reduction and diminishing returns. Also, autoluwe (but not autovrije) districts exist and are a selling point when buying/renting a house, so your attempt at a strawman is rather amusing.

    • Of course it's about harm reduction and diminishing returns. I have nothing against what Helsinki did. I was solely replying to that specific comment. Because it was an awful counterargument to an argument that I had explicitly noted I was not agreeing with in the first place.

  • Since we're pretending to know logical fallacies, your deflecting with a slippery slope. Lowering the speed limit by 20 mph is not an extreme change, and it if demonstrates to improve car safety then yes blood should be on your hands for not wanting to drive 20 mph slower.

    Alternatively, driving is sometimes necessary to deliver goods and travel. But the funny thing is, is that I would GLADLY ban cars in all cities and heavily invest in high speed rail. Cars would still be needed in this world, but again it's the relative change.

    So no, it's not a strawman. If anything it was an ad hom.

  • Does this not make a double strawman? What's the point of that?

    For example, they might be of the opinion that danger doesn't increase linearly with speed, but more aggressively. This would result in a scenario where they could argue for lower speed limits without having to argue for complete car elimination. Case in point, this piece of news.