I'm curious, was this something you just didn't consider, or were you being disingenuous?
Nope, I just picked the very first country on your list. It holds for pretty much every country... as infant mortality has dropped, fertility has also dropped. Not saying it's causal.
India? Infant mortality dropped in half over the same period. Indonesia? Same result.
Never mind the fact that food production growth has slowed down significantly.
I'm sure you can do algebra too, so I'll let you calculate what impact these whole number decreases in all the world's most populous countries' fertility rates has in the face of fractional differences in mortality rates. So...
What do you mean whole number compared to fractional, do you think that makes a difference on its face? Are you trying to make the case that population growth is not exponential? I can't figure out what, exactly, argument you are offering that would counter Malthus here... other than name-calling. You point to a single table that doesn't tell the whole truth, and somehow you think that's enough? You're missing infant mortality, child mortality, food production, lots of details in the Malthusian calculation. And yet you think you've somehow demonstrated that the food supply will continue to outpace population growth.
Oh well. No use arguing with people who are content to be ignorant, or can't be bothered to actually make an informed point.
This is not what causes gridlock. Gridlock happens when non-turning straight-through traffic queues across the intersection.
Gridlock happens when *any* traffic queues across the intersection and is prevented from moving by congestion ahead.
In theory, left-turning traffic should not have congestion ahead if the lights are times properly. But gridlock has a way of spreading to intersections upstream, and left-turning traffic is as much as a problem as straight-through traffic at that point.
~That would be completely retarded... then we'd have conversation that is far too easily understood -- and people would be discouraged from going back to re-read a post in order to figure out just exactly what the poster intended.~
Out in the burbs, and even in some of the more urban areas, we have jug handles. And where we do have left turns, we tend to have either dedicated left-turn signals with red lights for oncoming traffic, or we have delayed green lights for oncoming traffic.
We've had bad traffic in Jersey for a long time... and so roads have been built/altered to accommodate those making left-hand turns.
Central Joisey. I have to commute near a mall. "Kids" with tinted windows and ground effects. I put quotes around "Kids" because some of them are in their thirties.
Enter the red light cameras. In the bill that legalizes the cameras is also a clever change to the law: you must stop before making a right turn on red.
Obviously in St. Louis you have different laws than we do here in NJ.
But in NJ the law has always been that you can make a right turn on red provided you have come to a complete stop. This makes sense for a variety of reasons... if that truly wasn't the law before the current program went into place, I'd think it a net positive that it went into effect. Surely the need to stop when turning into oncoming traffic with potentially limited visibility (due to cars stopped for the red light) is a good thing, right?
So, install a camera and make a bundle of money, or lengthen the yellow light and save more lives but make no money. Guess which path most governments are choosing?
I wonder if the municipalities who do this could be held liable in civil court. I'd be surprised if there wasn't some lawyer somewhere hard up for cash and eager to make a name for himself who wasn't building a case on this situation.
Stop lights that do not have a red in all directions between red/green combination states are simply asking for a higher accident rate. Allowing 2-3 seconds in an all-red state (for all directions) solves the issue in >90% of cases. (The remaining 10% being weather related - namely snow and ice.)
Very good point. I'm curious, though, if in high-traffic areas, the increased congestion would be responsible for more accidents. And to be completely cynical, if the cost in time, emissions, gas, vehicle wear-and-tear, etc of that congestion would be worth the accidents saved. But that's the corporate executive side of me coming through...
blockquote>No. The Yellow Light is the warning that the light is going to turn red; thus if it is safe to stop, then you stop - and you must take into account the vehicles around you (especially those behind you). if it not safe, then you are to proceed through the intersection regardless of whether the light remains yellow or turns red.
True. But the length of the yellow should be long enough that a judgment call on not stopping due to a tailgater, etc, should still give you plenty of time to clear the intersection before it turns red.
People breaking the law and potentially causing accidents is a far worse offense than my attitude. And your outrage about my attitude just tells me that you have some real entitlement problems. They're not your roads, we share them -- and we agree to share them according to a set of rules. Why you feel that someone who abides by the rules, and wishes others would also, in order to increase safety is an asshole is beyond me.
Tell me how you feel about people gunning it through yellow lights when parts of your friend's mother had to be washed off the road with a firehose due to someone losing control of their car while gunning it through a yellow.
I guess I'm fortunate to live in a state where the lights are timed pretty well and unprotected left-hand turns are rare.
But I'm also kind of an old fart... I avoid driving in areas/situations where traffic would force the issue like that. I'd rather run all my errands on Friday nights than during Saturday shopping hours.
There's no possibility that doing so can increase gridlock (unless the road you're turning onto is backed up, of course) because it takes a moment for the cars in the cross direction to get moving anyway, during which time you should have cleared the intersection.
Not so much where I live... a couple lights on my commute are like this... and traffic coming the other direction is in the intersection before it turns green either direction. A red-light camera would probably help there...
30 MPH in those conditions may be perfectly safe. For one thing, there are unlikely to be many pedestrians out in the rain. For another, most towns have crosswalks in places well outside of shopping districts where you typically find lots of pedestrians. There are crosswalks in my home town back in TN that have lots of people at noon and 1 (around lunch hour) but are otherwise unused for most of the rest of the day. And so on.
I'd posit that someone who can't stop their vehicle in time to avoid a red light also can't stop their vehicle in time to avoid a pedestrian. Pedestrians don't always behave predictably.
Speed limit in my town, through the busy section, with limited visibility due to a hill, is 35 mph. It's barely safe at that speed. In the rain, pulling a trailer? Forget 35. Should be going 25, tops, IMO. I think people take too many liberties with speed when they're towing, or driving a behemoth in the rain... but that's my personal opinion, YMMV.
That said, this argument should be moot because you would cross that 50 foot distance in a second or so, and then you should be able to get out of the intersection before the light turns red. If you are unable to do so, the yellow was too short, plain and simple.
Agreed.
The ones that really bug me are the left turn arrows that are too short. If I start into an intersection from a dead stop on a green arrow and it is red for two seconds before I can get out of the intersection while accelerating at a reasonable speed, the yellow is too short. Oh, and did I forget to mention that if you accelerate just a little slower than most people, someone could legitimately enter the intersection on a green light and potentially T-bone the turning traffic? Sunnyvale, CA, I'm looking at you. Pretty much every side street off of Sunnyvale Rd. has this problem....
Story of my evening commute. Every day, the last light before I get home... gun it through on the green left turn signal, or get squashed by someone anticipating the green coming the other way. The yellow is plenty long enough... but if there's only one car in the left-turn lane, the green light literally lasts for less than one second. Heaven forbid you're not waiting to pop the clutch as soon as it turns green.
The time delay between when your light turns red and the intersecting traffic light turning green is supposed to compensate for mistakes like these.
No, the yellow is supposed to compensate for those mistakes. Why wait until the light turns red to begin braking?
The best ting they could do to make intersections safer is rip out the lights and install round-abouts which, while they have a slightly higher accident rate have almost 0% injurious or fatal accidents.
I'm curious about that assertion... I've heard it before... but all the traffic circles near where I live have either been eliminated or are in the process of being eliminated due to congestion and bad accidents. Maybe there's a sweet spot where they make sense for a certain amount of traffic volume.
(1) Three lefts make a right (2) I live in NJ. One thing I gotta say about NJ, the state looks out for people who turn left. Protected turns, jug handles, etc.
[1] Drivers, I mean. People who turn left politically only get looked out for about half the time.
I take it that every left turn you make is a protected turn?
Not every one. But I don't pull into the intersection until I know I can make my turn. Gridlock sucks, and I refuse to contribute to it.
Making a left onto my street doesn't have a protected arrow, and the oncoming traffic is often busy enough that the only way you'll get through the intersection during much of the day is if you pull into the intersection and sit there until the oncoming traffic stops when their light is turning red.
That's the nice thing about living where I do... if an intersection is busy enough, the left turn is protected (either by dedicated signal, or by delayed green for oncoming traffic, or by jughandles).
People from outside NJ bitch about the jughandles, but I frickin' love 'em. I wish other states used them more.
Ever been pulling a trailer during some rain and had the light turn yellow when you're 50' from the crosswalk? Good luck stopping in time. At 30 mph you're covering ~45 feet per second.
What are you doing pulling a trailer at 30 mph in the rain in a town with crosswalks? Why aren't you driving at a safe stopping speed in those conditions?
If you are in the intersection when the light is red the you have run the light. It's really very simple!
Came here to say that.
FTS:
If you are in the intersection before the light turns red, you have not run it, even if it takes a little while to clear it (say to yield to an unexpected obstacle).
In my state (NJ), you have committed a moving violation if you are in the intersection when the light is red (unless you are turning right). I think it's a matter of selective enforcement that most officers won't ticket someone if the light was yellow when they entered it.
I think this is a good law. Assholes who speed up through yellow lights should get punished if the light turns red while they are in it. Anyone paying attention and driving an appropriate speed for traffic conditions will be able to stop before the intersection for a red light -- assuming, of course, that the yellow light is of proper duration. Which is why the guy from TFA's wife got off -- the yellow was short.
I have never in my life been in a situation where I've needed to run a red light, except when I wasn't paying attention and I didn't see the light turn yellow right away. I'm glad I didn't get tickets the times I've done that, but I would have deserved them.
Fertility rates are down in virtually every country, even where birth rates remain high. Of course all the neo-Malthusian twits remain completely ignorant both of that fact and of the difference between the metrics.
The name-calling is unnecessary.
I'm curious, however, if you've bothered to look into mortality rates as well? Assuming you know what you're talking about, perhaps you've bothered to do the math?
Just as an example, look at Afghanistan. Infant mortality has decreased from 212/1000 to approximately 160/1000 over the same period as covered in the handy chart you provided... where fertility rates went from 7.7 to 7.1. You can do algebra... I'll let you figure out the net impact on population growth of those two factors.
I'm curious, was this something you just didn't consider, or were you being disingenuous?
Reductio ad absurdum (Latin: "reduction to the absurd") is a form of argument in which a proposition is disproven by following its implications to a logical but absurd consequence.
True... but use of fallacious arguments does not mean that the proposition is false...
But what happens when it rains? They get all wet again, and we're back to square one.
I suggest we mummify them using plasticizing resin. We could force them into the pothole while the resin is setting, then just trim them down to the road surface level once they're hard.
It's not that you raise bad points, because you're spot on in the gist of your post. But:
Ask any recovered heroin addict whether they are dead or not. Apparently, you would be surprised at their answer.
Surely that invokes a bit of selection bias, no? I mean, if he wanted to survey heroin addicts to find out if they died during recovery, surely he'd want to also ask the ones that died, right?
If I wanted to find out if falling sixty stories was likely to cause my death or not, I wouldn't limit myself to asking only people who survived a sixty-story fall. That's all I'm saying.
That would explain why heroin is at the top of the list. I'm still scratching my head about LSD.
Umm... dude... that's my ass you're scratching. I mean, we're all connected and part of the single cosmic organism, sure, but my ass is not your head, no matter how well connected we all are in the rhythmic cosmos. Would you please knock it off for a while?
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah! You tell 'im!
I know *I* wouldn't enjoy slashdot at all if self-righteous pricks like that good-for-nothing asshole Red Flayer didn't post here.
FWIW, for every prick like me there's a pussy like that AC. Made for eachother!
Nope, I just picked the very first country on your list. It holds for pretty much every country... as infant mortality has dropped, fertility has also dropped. Not saying it's causal.
India? Infant mortality dropped in half over the same period. Indonesia? Same result.
Never mind the fact that food production growth has slowed down significantly.
What do you mean whole number compared to fractional, do you think that makes a difference on its face? Are you trying to make the case that population growth is not exponential? I can't figure out what, exactly, argument you are offering that would counter Malthus here... other than name-calling. You point to a single table that doesn't tell the whole truth, and somehow you think that's enough? You're missing infant mortality, child mortality, food production, lots of details in the Malthusian calculation. And yet you think you've somehow demonstrated that the food supply will continue to outpace population growth.
Oh well. No use arguing with people who are content to be ignorant, or can't be bothered to actually make an informed point.
HAND.
Gridlock happens when *any* traffic queues across the intersection and is prevented from moving by congestion ahead.
In theory, left-turning traffic should not have congestion ahead if the lights are times properly. But gridlock has a way of spreading to intersections upstream, and left-turning traffic is as much as a problem as straight-through traffic at that point.
~That would be completely retarded... then we'd have conversation that is far too easily understood -- and people would be discouraged from going back to re-read a post in order to figure out just exactly what the poster intended.~
Fewer than in other states.
Out in the burbs, and even in some of the more urban areas, we have jug handles. And where we do have left turns, we tend to have either dedicated left-turn signals with red lights for oncoming traffic, or we have delayed green lights for oncoming traffic.
We've had bad traffic in Jersey for a long time... and so roads have been built/altered to accommodate those making left-hand turns.
Central Joisey. I have to commute near a mall. "Kids" with tinted windows and ground effects. I put quotes around "Kids" because some of them are in their thirties.
Or how nimble the pedestrian is :O
Obviously in St. Louis you have different laws than we do here in NJ.
But in NJ the law has always been that you can make a right turn on red provided you have come to a complete stop. This makes sense for a variety of reasons... if that truly wasn't the law before the current program went into place, I'd think it a net positive that it went into effect. Surely the need to stop when turning into oncoming traffic with potentially limited visibility (due to cars stopped for the red light) is a good thing, right?
I wonder if the municipalities who do this could be held liable in civil court. I'd be surprised if there wasn't some lawyer somewhere hard up for cash and eager to make a name for himself who wasn't building a case on this situation.
Very good point. I'm curious, though, if in high-traffic areas, the increased congestion would be responsible for more accidents. And to be completely cynical, if the cost in time, emissions, gas, vehicle wear-and-tear, etc of that congestion would be worth the accidents saved. But that's the corporate executive side of me coming through...
blockquote>No. The Yellow Light is the warning that the light is going to turn red; thus if it is safe to stop, then you stop - and you must take into account the vehicles around you (especially those behind you). if it not safe, then you are to proceed through the intersection regardless of whether the light remains yellow or turns red.
True. But the length of the yellow should be long enough that a judgment call on not stopping due to a tailgater, etc, should still give you plenty of time to clear the intersection before it turns red.
Say it all you like.
Doesn't bother me one bit.
People breaking the law and potentially causing accidents is a far worse offense than my attitude. And your outrage about my attitude just tells me that you have some real entitlement problems. They're not your roads, we share them -- and we agree to share them according to a set of rules. Why you feel that someone who abides by the rules, and wishes others would also, in order to increase safety is an asshole is beyond me.
Tell me how you feel about people gunning it through yellow lights when parts of your friend's mother had to be washed off the road with a firehose due to someone losing control of their car while gunning it through a yellow.
But I'm also kind of an old fart... I avoid driving in areas/situations where traffic would force the issue like that. I'd rather run all my errands on Friday nights than during Saturday shopping hours.
Not so much where I live... a couple lights on my commute are like this... and traffic coming the other direction is in the intersection before it turns green either direction. A red-light camera would probably help there...
I'd posit that someone who can't stop their vehicle in time to avoid a red light also can't stop their vehicle in time to avoid a pedestrian. Pedestrians don't always behave predictably.
Speed limit in my town, through the busy section, with limited visibility due to a hill, is 35 mph. It's barely safe at that speed. In the rain, pulling a trailer? Forget 35. Should be going 25, tops, IMO. I think people take too many liberties with speed when they're towing, or driving a behemoth in the rain... but that's my personal opinion, YMMV.
Agreed.
Story of my evening commute. Every day, the last light before I get home... gun it through on the green left turn signal, or get squashed by someone anticipating the green coming the other way. The yellow is plenty long enough... but if there's only one car in the left-turn lane, the green light literally lasts for less than one second. Heaven forbid you're not waiting to pop the clutch as soon as it turns green.
No, the yellow is supposed to compensate for those mistakes. Why wait until the light turns red to begin braking?
I'm curious about that assertion... I've heard it before... but all the traffic circles near where I live have either been eliminated or are in the process of being eliminated due to congestion and bad accidents. Maybe there's a sweet spot where they make sense for a certain amount of traffic volume.
Nope. I drive through urban areas all the time.
(1) Three lefts make a right
(2) I live in NJ. One thing I gotta say about NJ, the state looks out for people who turn left. Protected turns, jug handles, etc.
[1] Drivers, I mean. People who turn left politically only get looked out for about half the time.
Not every one. But I don't pull into the intersection until I know I can make my turn. Gridlock sucks, and I refuse to contribute to it.
That's the nice thing about living where I do... if an intersection is busy enough, the left turn is protected (either by dedicated signal, or by delayed green for oncoming traffic, or by jughandles).
People from outside NJ bitch about the jughandles, but I frickin' love 'em. I wish other states used them more.
What are you doing pulling a trailer at 30 mph in the rain in a town with crosswalks? Why aren't you driving at a safe stopping speed in those conditions?
That's a terrible idea, you ass. Then people might actually start to communicate effectively. ~
Came here to say that.
FTS:
In my state (NJ), you have committed a moving violation if you are in the intersection when the light is red (unless you are turning right). I think it's a matter of selective enforcement that most officers won't ticket someone if the light was yellow when they entered it.
I think this is a good law. Assholes who speed up through yellow lights should get punished if the light turns red while they are in it. Anyone paying attention and driving an appropriate speed for traffic conditions will be able to stop before the intersection for a red light -- assuming, of course, that the yellow light is of proper duration. Which is why the guy from TFA's wife got off -- the yellow was short.
I have never in my life been in a situation where I've needed to run a red light, except when I wasn't paying attention and I didn't see the light turn yellow right away. I'm glad I didn't get tickets the times I've done that, but I would have deserved them.
The name-calling is unnecessary.
I'm curious, however, if you've bothered to look into mortality rates as well? Assuming you know what you're talking about, perhaps you've bothered to do the math?
Just as an example, look at Afghanistan. Infant mortality has decreased from 212/1000 to approximately 160/1000 over the same period as covered in the handy chart you provided... where fertility rates went from 7.7 to 7.1. You can do algebra... I'll let you figure out the net impact on population growth of those two factors.
I'm curious, was this something you just didn't consider, or were you being disingenuous?
True... but use of fallacious arguments does not mean that the proposition is false...
I love running and throwing claymores! I don't even mind if they're the supersized Scots sword instead of the explodey kind!
Thanks old man!
-Mitchell
But what happens when it rains? They get all wet again, and we're back to square one.
I suggest we mummify them using plasticizing resin. We could force them into the pothole while the resin is setting, then just trim them down to the road surface level once they're hard.
Surely that invokes a bit of selection bias, no? I mean, if he wanted to survey heroin addicts to find out if they died during recovery, surely he'd want to also ask the ones that died, right?
If I wanted to find out if falling sixty stories was likely to cause my death or not, I wouldn't limit myself to asking only people who survived a sixty-story fall. That's all I'm saying.
Umm... dude... that's my ass you're scratching. I mean, we're all connected and part of the single cosmic organism, sure, but my ass is not your head, no matter how well connected we all are in the rhythmic cosmos. Would you please knock it off for a while?
=8)