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“Vision Zero” is the derisible name chosen for the currently most fashionable push to reduce traffic fatalities in cities: the Oprahesque idea is that if we collectively envision having zero traffic deaths, we will get there. In contrast, Japan puts out sensible plans periodically for reducing traffic deaths several percent per year, and often exceeds its reasonable goals.
As far as I can tell, nobody in traffic safety establishment has dared publicly mention the trade-off between reducing mayhem on the pavement and pulling blacks over for unsafe driving less. From Streets Blog:
Studies conducted in Minneapolis found stark disparities in traffic law enforcement for Black bicyclists and motorists. Though they make up only 18 percent of Minneapolis residents, data from 2019 showed that Black and African-American residents received 70 percent of vehicle searches and 68 percent of body searches at traffic stops.
For example, here are the last two Vision Zero annual reports from Minneapolis, the epicenter of the Racial Reckoning:
From 2021:
Minneapolis VISION ZERO ANNUAL REPORT 2021
INTRODUCTION
Vision Zero is the City’s initiative to eliminate traffic deaths and severe injuries on our streets. The City’s first Vision Zero Action Plan was adopted in December 2019 and outlines key steps to make progress toward that goal from 2020-2022. Vision Zero is a collaboration of 11 City departments and includes essential partnership with community members and external agencies. Additional information on Vision Zero is available at: www.visionzerompls.com.
IMPACT OF COVID-19 AND KILLING OF GEORGE FLOYD
In 2020, our city and world were dramatically impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and the killing of George Floyd in police custody. These events have had prolonged impacts for the City’s Vision Zero work even beyond initial stay at home orders and May’s civil unrest. COVID-19 led to significant reductions in travel and traffic across Minneapolis and the state. Those reductions began in March and continued throughout 2020. Reductions were most pronounced in downtown. With travel and traffic down, total crashes in Minneapolis were 39% lower in 2020 than recent years and severe crashes were down 21%. Bicycle and pedestrian crashes were lower than any point since at least 1990 and 49% lower than average of recent years. However, there were more total fatal crashes than any year since 2013. At least 70% of fatal crashes involved high speeds—mirroring trends across Minnesota and the country where the frequency of excessive speeding and reckless driving has increased. 60% of fatal crashes in 2020 happened in the Northside (i.e., the black side), which is a significant increase from recent years and adds trauma in the community (i.e., “the community” can only be “the black community).The killing of George Floyd has spurred citywide and nationwide conversations around reimagining public safety. The City is seeking to create a public safety system that keeps every member of our community safe. The City’s engagement and research efforts focus on alternatives to police response, violence prevention, and police policy reform. Traffic enforcement will potentially be impacted by these broader public safety conversations. We are working to eliminate the disproportionate impacts of traffic crashes on Black and indigenous community members and to eliminate racial disparities in traffic stops. Everyone should be safe traveling on our streets.
And from 2022:
Minneapolis VISION ZERO ANNUAL REPORT 2022
RISE IN RECKLESS DRIVING CONTRIBUTES TO BIG SAFETY IMPACTS IN 2021
24 people tragically died in traffic crashes on streets in Minneapolis in 2021. This was the highest number of traffic deaths in Minneapolis since 2007 and more than double the average number over the last decade. This unfortunately mirrors a similar trend around the state and country. This death toll on our streets is devastating and unacceptable. The increase in traffic deaths is hitting neighborhoods with lower incomes the hardest. 65% of fatal crashes were in Areas of Concentrated Poverty where a majority of residents are people of color (ACP50s) while those areas have 28% of the population and 24% of streets. North Minneapolis (11 fatal crashes) and the Phillips neighborhood (4 fatal crashes) were especially impacted in 2021. A rise in very reckless driving is contributing to the increased traffic deaths. In 2021, about 80% of fatal crashes included very reckless driving–a huge increase from 2019 when about 30% of fatal crashes included very reckless driving.
[We define very reckless driving as a fatal hit and run crash or combining two of the most unsafe activities (high speeding, running a red light or stop sign, driving under the influence, driving off the road, and distracted driving).]
We are considering actions we can take to address the rise in reckless driving in an effective and equitable way. This a complex challenge with a lot of factors and no easy solution, but we need to address it to reach Vision Zero.
I.e., ever since George Floyd’s death and the ensuing Mostly Peaceful Protests against cops, bad black drivers have been running amok on the streets of Minneapolis, getting themselves and the innocent killed. But we are stumped. If we even came out and explained why that happened, our careers as professional Nice White People would be toast.
In contrast, from Bloomberg:
How Japan Won its ‘Traffic War’
Until the early 1970s, Japan endured a high rate of road fatalities. Now the nation boasts one of the world’s best traffic safety records. Here’s why.
By David Zipper
September 6, 2022In mid-August, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced that the surge in American traffic deaths is continuing: An estimated 9,560 people died on US roadways in the first quarter of 2022, 7% more than a year ago and the highest first quarter total in two decades.
The traffic safety slide is a trend that precedes Covid-19, but the disruptions of the pandemic seemed to exacerbate the issue in the US, a phenomenon that observers like New York Times’ David Leonhardt have attributed to mental health issues and smartphone use: “Many Americans have felt frustrated or unhappy, and it seems to have affected their driving,” he wrote recently, adding in a tweet that “traffic deaths began to rise around 2015…around the same time that smartphones became ubiquitous.”
One thing that happened in 2015 during the Ferguson Effect was a historic switchover from whites dying on the roads more per capita to blacks dying more. When BLM returned as a national obsession in June 2020, the Floyd Effect caused blacks to suddenly die massively more than whites:
If stress and cell phones are causing this crisis, it’s curious why so many other countries have avoided it.
Similarly, if covid caused the American homicide surge in 2020, why didn’t the same thing happen abroad?
Almost all developed nations have seen a decline in roadway deaths over the last decade, while the US has endured a 30% rise. As I wrote recently in CityLab, an American is now about 2.5 times as likely as a Canadian to die in a crash and three times as likely as a French citizen.
… Fewer than 3,000 people died in Japanese crashes in 2021, compared to almost 43,000 in the United States. On a per capita basis, Japan had just 2.24 deaths per 100,000 residents, less than a fifth the US rate of 12.7 per 100,000.
Japan is a much smaller country, so Japanese don’t drive as much as Americans. On the other hand, as a mountainous yet urbanized place, it’s inherently trickier to drive around than Kansas.
And Japanese roads are getting even safer: 2021 saw the fewest road fatalities of any year since record-keeping began in 1948. It’s quite a change from the 1960s, when a booming economy and millions of inexperienced drivers contributed to annual fatality figures six times higher than they are today. …
Japan is now a traffic safety success story — especially when compared to the US. Here are a few lessons from the island nation that could resonate outside its borders.
Save lives with rail …
On a per capita basis, Japanese own 61 cars per 100 residents, compared to 84 per 100 Americans, and the average resident drives only about a third as much per year.
Of course, highly dense Japan is a better place for rail than road transit than is America.
Say no to street parking
Many Japanese neighborhoods lack something ubiquitous in North American cities: on-street parking.
In Japan, automobile owners must obtain a shako shomei sho, or “garage certificate,” showing that they have secured a place to store the vehicle overnight at their residence or in a parking garage; leaving it streetside is not an option.
In American Yes In My Back Yard (YIMBY) circles, the opposite is fashionable: let everybody build without providing parking places on site.
Make room for the minicar …
Build cities safe for children
Research supports the oft-cited claim that Japanese citizens tend to prioritize the collective good over the individual. Applied to road safety, that orientation might help explain why Japanese road safety education campaigns seem to reduce crashes there, despite being generally ineffective in the US.
Culture could also play a role in the frequency with which young Japanese children travel independently, something that Netflix recently shared with a global audience through the show “Old Enough!”, in which children as young as two face challenges like walking to a market — and crossing a five-lane road — on their own. As Slate’s Henry Grabar recently wrote, “If the show were set in the United States, the parents would be under investigation by child protective services, and the children in foster care.”
But culture alone doesn’t explain why Japanese children walk to school or to run errands far more often than their US peers — infrastructure and regulations play an enormous role. …
In the US, some 41% of children walked or biked to school in 1969, but that figure dwindled to 13% by 2001.
I know a woman who walked to school as a first-grader in the 1960s in Chicago, but then stopped due to the sudden surge in muggings.
With a dearth of sidewalks and protected bike lanes and a preponderance of fast arterials, neighborhoods in many US cities and suburbs have been transformed into dangerous places for any child who isn’t inside a car.
Also, street crime played a huge role in emptying out children from dense American cities. Japan doesn’t have street crime to speak of.
Indeed, these kinds of streets are dangerous not just for children, but for Americans of all ages. As Jeffrey Tumlin, the head of San Francisco MTA, once tweeted, “I’m a childless man, and the city I’d most like to live in is one designed by women for the benefit of children.” Such a place would be much safer — and probably more fun as well.
In fact, it might feel quite a bit like traveling in Japan.
The best thing, infrastructure-wise, that America did for mothers with children in carriages was building a lot of ramps in the 1990s that let them more easily get over curbs and staircases without waking the baby. Of course, we didn’t do it for mothers with babies — they are not Officially Marginalized Persons, so who cares about mothers with babies — we did it in the name of Rights of the Disabled.
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Japan’s sane approach to traffic is downstream from their sane approach to immigration.
Japan is a real nation. We no longer are.
~~~
BTW, immigration is indeed the critical issue for Japan.
Japan is fixin' to get really, really nice. The one negative about the joint is just the overcrowding. But that will be ebbing. As the post-War babies start shuffling into the crematorium, and the late 60s, early 70s echo heads toward retirement ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Japan_Population_Pyramid.svg
... the smaller generations of new Japanese will have excellent job opportunities and abundant housing--terrifically improved "affordable family formation" for young Japanese men and women to get together.
An actual nation of competent and cooperative people, where life is getting better and better. Quite a contrast to the trend in the US and Europe.
The core threat to this though is the TPTB in the US absolutely hate any nation being a nation. "Democracy" means "diversity", means being "open" for parasites wishing to glom on, means turning your nation into globo-marketplace. And unfortunately, these people have the mega-phone--and in fact are addicted to hearing the sound of their voices echoing everywhere. They will find Japanese stooges. Japanese patriots are going to have to be extremely aggressive in seeing them off, seeing that the destruction of their nation never gets going.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. (And sanity.)Replies: @Anonymous, @Muggles
You are confusing requiring the vehicle-owner to have a place to park with requiring the building-owner to provide parking. Those are very different things!
And never need a car to transport small children groceries and other errands such as shopping taking the 40 inch TV screen for repairs, bringing bulky items such as vacuum cleaners brooms and mops small rugs pillows and small furniture big toys Christmas trees home. Just walk your 2 toddlers to the light rail line and come home with the kids a weeks worth of groceries and a pile of pillows bedspreads or a new TV on public transit. There are no blizzards or heavy rain in Green Idiot fantasyland. No need for a car to bring home bulky items.
There’s a light rail line from the beach to downtown about 18 miles in Los Angeles. Big 40 unit apartment buildings are being built all along the line. The light rail uses the old trolley right of way. But the Green Idiots don’t know that no one from the West Side or Central City works down town any more. Or has any reason to go downtown . Because downtown is one big skid row now.
I do vaguely remember a 1980s awareness campaign about PSF (Pediatric Sidewalk Face) caused by overturned carriages on streets and sidewalks.
https://www.nejm.org/medical-archives/pediatric_sidewalk_face
The problem is that the George Floyd riots/BLM 2.0 were generally coeval with COVID and the Establishment has been busily hush-hushing the former while it is simply impossible to memory-hole the latter.
Ima take a page outta their playbook, though, and blame everything bad that’s recently happened on Biden’s war in Ukraine. Inflation running red hot? Blame it on Biden’s war in Ukraine. Economy tanking and headed for recession? Biden’s war in Ukraine, bud. The nice thing is that this has the advantage of actually being true. New season of STRANGER THINGS suck? It’s all the fault of …
Is Japan saner or just depopulating and senile? Japan’s roads are extremely crowded with many areas lacking anything resembling walkability.
There practically aren’t any mothers with babies, Steve. With the fertility rate hovering around 1.5 and women now postponing birth until their 30s, one seldom sees women pushing babies around. That was true even back in the 90s. The only women walking on the streets with babies back then and today were crackheads. Women above that socioeconomic status don’t do anything with their kids, whenever they may have them. They gotta be laughin’ it up at work #becauseshecan.
Kind of depends where. Here's a contemporary pic of a neighborhood in Williamsburg , Brooklyn.
https://assets.dnainfo.com/generated/photo/2013/01/satmar-hasidic-girls-williamsburg-13587796331524.JPG/extralarge.jpgReplies: @Anonymous
Then there is also this:
No Jalopies allowed. We only test for emissions. They test for reliability and safety.
fuseikaizousha = Illegal Vehicle
It appears that less than 30% of the Japanese population is under 30 years of age.
Per capita, younger people usually get into more traffic accidents than middle-aged people. Elderly people who continue to drive may cause some trouble, but many oldsters don’t drive.
How much of the diminution of Japan’s road accident rate can be blamed on Japan’s birth dearth?
How much of it can be blamed on an absence of blacks?Replies: @Veracitor
Speaking of the disabled, Dems are trying to spin the worst debate performance in history into a W.
Speaking of shameless Democrats:
https://mobile.twitter.com/WesleyHoratio/status/1585272712569708549
This sort of evil is irredeemable.
They were good for mothers with children? Who knew? I thought they were for Dads with children. See, we’d go up the elevator and use one big ramp on one of the campus buildings, with about a 12′ elevation drop, as a steep downhill run for myself on the rollerblades and my son on the tricycle.
After a few feet of slaloming, we’d let go, get our speed up, and come around the blind curve to mix into the crowd of students at the bottom. I’d do a big wide scraping turn to stop, and the kid would often get up on two wheels. Now, THAT was a good use of our tax money!
Parking structures are great for this too.
Per capita, younger people usually get into more traffic accidents than middle-aged people. Elderly people who continue to drive may cause some trouble, but many oldsters don't drive.
How much of the diminution of Japan's road accident rate can be blamed on Japan's birth dearth?Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @Colin Wright, @Twinkie
I think the numbers are worthless for comparison if they are not normed for blacks on stink weed and percentage of Hispanics with blood alcohol levels over 0.25%. Am I right, Mr. Unz?
Also, isn’t permitting more types of new construction the opposite of NIMBY? A rare lowlight from Steve 🙂
Looks like yet another African -American problem requiring African-American solutions.
I think you misspelled The American Colonization Society.
I’d wager that Japanese cities were not in fact designed by women for the benefit of children.
I can’t even…
A single, criminal junkie died of an overdose while being arrested. Unrest and vandalism followed. Therefore, traffic safety! And COVID!
When the truth is vacuumed out of the public sphere, the resulting void is filled by incoherence and falsehood. It’s “nature abhors a vacuum” applied to political and social realms.
Typo. I meant YIMBY. Thanks for catching it.
Has The Simpsons used QUIMBY yet? Quite Unthinkable In My Back Yard.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BmEzd42IEAEMx2S.jpg
No, Japan is mountainous or urbanized. They don’t have many Pittsburghs or Atlantas. The coastal plains don’t take up much of the country’s area, but house almost all of the population. Japan is a patchwork of the crowded and the empty.
Los Angeles County is a good American example, Oahu even better. Check out the satellite maps.
If you’re ambivalent, are you MIMBY?
Has The Simpsons used QUIMBY yet? Quite Unthinkable In My Back Yard.
High trust, cooperative and cohesive societies, like Japan, are in many ways better. Including traffic safety.
Ding ding ding we have a winner! A more accurate comparison would be current Japan to 50’s America. However, there’s not even mention of the roaming black street bike gangs terrorizing downtown patrons!
Here’s low trust, ungovernable and disunited imagery for comparison (including traffic safety):
Per capita, younger people usually get into more traffic accidents than middle-aged people. Elderly people who continue to drive may cause some trouble, but many oldsters don't drive.
How much of the diminution of Japan's road accident rate can be blamed on Japan's birth dearth?Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @Colin Wright, @Twinkie
‘How much of the diminution of Japan’s road accident rate can be blamed on Japan’s birth dearth?’
How much of it can be blamed on an absence of blacks?
(I am quite willing to believe that the USA has a large reservoir of people who are genetically disinclined to behave with proper caution around roads and cars. Heck, did you see the news just this week that California is repealing its (anti-)jaywalking law because NAM's get nearly all the citations, due to their propensities for wandering into the street? But America's problem with NAM's does not explain Japan's experience with traffic fatality rates.)
A non-trivial proportion of the traffic fatalities in Minneapolis have been from post-carjacking joyrides gone very wrong. A perfect example of secondary effects and if these weren’t explicitly mentioned in the report, the entire endeavor is even more worthless than it already appears.
Consider how RARE security guards were in the 1960s, basically banks and large department stores. We used to walk around everywhere as kids, even to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, heck, even saw white woman riding horses around Jackson Park.
Once the Blacks converted the South Side to total ONE race, you really didn’t want to walk around there anymore.
“Japan is a much smaller country, so Japanese don’t drive as much as Americans. On the other hand, as a mountainous yet urbanized place, it’s inherently trickier to drive around than Kansas.”
I will second that. I visited someone working in a fairly remote part of Japan, and driving there was brutal. Single-lane roads, hairpin turns, mirrors on every corner to see if someone was coming around the bend and you were going to die… but accidents basically didn’t exist.
Bottom line: as far as I can see, yes the Japanese are just more careful drivers than Americans.
Maybe Japanese men don’t see driving as a symbol of manhood, but as a means to get from point A to point B?
But it is also true: the best way to avoid a driving accident, is not to drive. Therefore the excellent mass transit in Japan is surely also a factor.
Shows what is possible in a homogenous, nonblack country.
My mother flew to Japan in ’68 to meet my father’s ship in Yokosuka. She had a wild taxi ride at night with a non-English-speaking driver. She later was told that driving wasn’t covered by Bushido rules, so they overreacted to the freedom from traditional courtesy. I guess they’ve shaped up since.
I’m curious what percentage of urban road deaths are happening on interstates vs. city streets, and if that includes pedestrian deaths. Seems like you’d have to be pretty reckless to kill someone in a vehicle on a city street, although on an interstate, all vehicles are supposed to be going in the same direction.
I don’t dispute your general point about demographics and the results of feminism, #242. However, I do have lots of women in our neighborhood with kids and babies, and they do push them in fancy stroller around. Good for them on that score, but I write this to actually stick with the point of the post for a change.
There are sidewalks on most of the streets in which the cars are moving usually at 30 mph, no more than 35 mph. Nevertheless, the women walk with or without babies on the road, often taking up half the road, three abreast. That’s one thing, but then I see them walking on the wrong side of the road!
I really think people today have not learned this most simplest of pedestrian safety rules. Stay on the side for which the traffic is coming at you, so you can bail out if necessary. (In Japan, that’d be the left side.)
I came around a corner left from the big road slowly onto one of these neighborhood roads, and the lighting changed on me. This pretty Mom with her baby stroller was taking up the whole right side of the road, and looking the other way. She was only about 50 ft. away from the intersection. The visibility was not great. If I had gunned it to get across traffic, or if I had been one of these smartphone aficionados on the road, I swear I could have hit her.
I came very close to stopping and telling her firmly that if she cared about her little one, she should learn the rule I’d learned in kindergarten. However, she could have been a Karen for which it’s more important to call the cops on me for being too forward or “creepy” than to learn something that could be very important.
It’s not the street, it’s the stupidity.
How much of it can be blamed on an absence of blacks?Replies: @Veracitor
Colin, none of the diminution of Japan’s road accident rate 1970’s-2020’s can be blamed on the absence of blacks in Japan. Japan’s per-capita traffic-fatality rate diminished across a time-span during which Japan had almost no blacks from start to finish. (I don’t think you can attribute the decline to the reduced numbers of black American servicement visiting Japan either.)
(I am quite willing to believe that the USA has a large reservoir of people who are genetically disinclined to behave with proper caution around roads and cars. Heck, did you see the news just this week that California is repealing its (anti-)jaywalking law because NAM’s get nearly all the citations, due to their propensities for wandering into the street? But America’s problem with NAM’s does not explain Japan’s experience with traffic fatality rates.)
We derive from this the general rule that when you don’t have blacks to contend with, no public policy choice is remarkable.
Per capita, younger people usually get into more traffic accidents than middle-aged people. Elderly people who continue to drive may cause some trouble, but many oldsters don't drive.
How much of the diminution of Japan's road accident rate can be blamed on Japan's birth dearth?Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @Colin Wright, @Twinkie
That probably plays a role, as does the ubiquity of public transportation system in Japan. Japan has a small fraction of young people and their elderly population rely more on public transit. That said, there is something that Mr. Sailer cited in the piece:
As economies mature, traffic deaths tend to move in a J curve (A LOT of social trends moves in a J curve). At first, since there are too few cars, there are few deaths. As the economy develops, more people own cars, but they lack driving experience, safety infrastructure, and pedestrian-first culture, enforcement against drunk driving, so traffic-related deaths skyrocket. Once the economy matures, and the safe driving culture is firmly established, the fatality rate declines.
Of course, that’s with countries that do develop. In others, traffic fatality rates are high regardless of economic circumstances:
Some random Japan car thoughts:
— Until very recently car navigation screens (completely ubiquitous in all price levels of car) let the driver watch live television. (Our Covid-era Nissan kei car purchase blocks the video when the car is in motion).
— A guy slow-rolled into us at a traffic light by accident, an almost imperceptible bump. We both pulled over into a parking lot. The cops came and took a full report, watching the drive camera video, and interviewing us separately. There was literally no visible damage to our plastic rear body pieces. (The dealer raised our car on a jack and found damage to some lidar sensor/camera stuff, so the repair was in the end pretty expensive, but the other guy brought cash to the dealership to keep his insurance company out of it.) I imagine in the U.S. you would not bother to call the police, who in any event would not show up (“Sorry, we only show up if someone died … and a head was severed”?)
— In Japan you get serious jail time for killing someone with a car, 15 years mandatory in many cases. If you refuse to take an alcohol test the court assumes you were drunk.
— The speed limit around schools is extremely slow during school hours. We live next to an elementary school, so yay!
— School kids are decked out with yellow backpacks and are led in lines along the sides of the (sidewalk-less) streets to and from schools by adult monitors or appointed older kids. There are female cops or retired male cops at intersections near schools when kids are going to and from school.
— Japanese cars are generally small to medium size and weight. I’d hate to see what would happen to our kei car in an accident with the average American car. The four airbags aren’t going to save you. On the other hand driving and parking is much easier with a small car on narrow Japanese roads. Many “two lane” streets have no center line and require retracting your rear-view mirrors to pass another car.
— Drivers over 75 are asked to affix a special magnetic logo to their cars to warn others, and they generally comply. Seniors did originally complain about the original “dead fall leaf” symbol, but it was replaced with an abstract flower symbol. On the other hand, there are regular cases of elderly drivers hitting the accelerator by accident and plowing into shop windows … or pedestrians. These are always national news stories, especially if someone was killed. Sometimes the anniversaries of the accidents are on the news with survivors being interviewed.
If only they were sane about Masking, I might visit. But sadly Japan has a collective mental illness where they think masks are the greatest protection against a microscopic virus that doesn’t affect anybody, let alone those who take 16 shots against wuflu before entering the land of the rising sun.
Perhaps Steve should talk about the mental illness of the East, because it’s killing tourism and justifying more shitskin immigration from parasite peoples. And the expats in Japan are white-hating libards who want uncontrolled African immigration. Listen to the reactionary weebs, Nippon!
No, they think it's a gesture you could make to demonstrate that you are thinking of others, but the Japanese also consider "a gesture you could make thinking of others" to be pretty much mandatory. Now, the onions up the nose, on the other hand ...
Interestingly, conformity to masking is actually higher now than in 2020. In summer 2020, I remember going into supermarkets and finding lots of people without masks. Now, its only me and a few other outcasts not wearing masks.
I'm curious what percentage of urban road deaths are happening on interstates vs. city streets, and if that includes pedestrian deaths. Seems like you'd have to be pretty reckless to kill someone in a vehicle on a city street, although on an interstate, all vehicles are supposed to be going in the same direction.Replies: @Steve Sailer
“She later was told that driving wasn’t covered by Bushido rules, so they overreacted to the freedom from traditional courtesy.”
That was my impression of driving through the Cotswolds in England in 1987: in contrast to everybody in England lining up politely to get on the bus, which goes back to ultra-civilized Victorian times, driving habits in England are of more recent vintage, so there is a lot of tailgating.
As I never tire of mentioning, were it not for President Brandon and his handlers, the Ukraine War would have been over in three days.
No Jalopies allowed. We only test for emissions. They test for reliability and safety.fuseikaizousha = Illegal VehicleReplies: @HammerJack, @Chrisnonymous
No idea from which state you’re dialing in, but in mine (and many others) we have annual state safety inspections and they can be very stringent.
People who own older cars hate them because they are administered by repair shops, which (naturally) have a vested interest in finding things that need repair.
There practically aren’t any mothers with babies, Steve. With the fertility rate hovering around 1.5 and women now postponing birth until their 30s, one seldom sees women pushing babies
Kind of depends where. Here’s a contemporary pic of a neighborhood in Williamsburg , Brooklyn.
Once the Blacks converted the South Side to total ONE race, you really didn't want to walk around there anymore.Replies: @HammerJack
The idea of actual cops in schools is something I’m still trying to wrap my mind around…
A point of objective superiority: Japan has three-phase intersections.
I: East-West car traffic.
II: North-South car traffic.
III: Music plays, with a change toward the end to signal limited time, and pedestrians are allowed to cross — any which way they want, including diagonally.
No car can hit a pedestrian, or be forced to wait for one who dwaddles, because they are separate.
Building apartments without parking spaces is the latest Green Idiot fad in California. If the building is less than a half mile from public transit. The Green Idiots fantasy is that every resident of those buildings will use public transit.
And never need a car to transport small children groceries and other errands such as shopping taking the 40 inch TV screen for repairs, bringing bulky items such as vacuum cleaners brooms and mops small rugs pillows and small furniture big toys Christmas trees home. Just walk your 2 toddlers to the light rail line and come home with the kids a weeks worth of groceries and a pile of pillows bedspreads or a new TV on public transit. There are no blizzards or heavy rain in Green Idiot fantasyland. No need for a car to bring home bulky items.
There’s a light rail line from the beach to downtown about 18 miles in Los Angeles. Big 40 unit apartment buildings are being built all along the line. The light rail uses the old trolley right of way. But the Green Idiots don’t know that no one from the West Side or Central City works down town any more. Or has any reason to go downtown . Because downtown is one big skid row now.
-- Until very recently car navigation screens (completely ubiquitous in all price levels of car) let the driver watch live television. (Our Covid-era Nissan kei car purchase blocks the video when the car is in motion).
-- A guy slow-rolled into us at a traffic light by accident, an almost imperceptible bump. We both pulled over into a parking lot. The cops came and took a full report, watching the drive camera video, and interviewing us separately. There was literally no visible damage to our plastic rear body pieces. (The dealer raised our car on a jack and found damage to some lidar sensor/camera stuff, so the repair was in the end pretty expensive, but the other guy brought cash to the dealership to keep his insurance company out of it.) I imagine in the U.S. you would not bother to call the police, who in any event would not show up ("Sorry, we only show up if someone died ... and a head was severed"?)
-- In Japan you get serious jail time for killing someone with a car, 15 years mandatory in many cases. If you refuse to take an alcohol test the court assumes you were drunk.
-- The speed limit around schools is extremely slow during school hours. We live next to an elementary school, so yay!
-- School kids are decked out with yellow backpacks and are led in lines along the sides of the (sidewalk-less) streets to and from schools by adult monitors or appointed older kids. There are female cops or retired male cops at intersections near schools when kids are going to and from school.
-- Japanese cars are generally small to medium size and weight. I'd hate to see what would happen to our kei car in an accident with the average American car. The four airbags aren't going to save you. On the other hand driving and parking is much easier with a small car on narrow Japanese roads. Many "two lane" streets have no center line and require retracting your rear-view mirrors to pass another car.
-- Drivers over 75 are asked to affix a special magnetic logo to their cars to warn others, and they generally comply. Seniors did originally complain about the original "dead fall leaf" symbol, but it was replaced with an abstract flower symbol. On the other hand, there are regular cases of elderly drivers hitting the accelerator by accident and plowing into shop windows ... or pedestrians. These are always national news stories, especially if someone was killed. Sometimes the anniversaries of the accidents are on the news with survivors being interviewed.Replies: @J.Ross
What is the deal with the forward-mounted side mirrors? Japanese cars have their side mirrors, not springing from the front lower angle of the driver and front passenger door window, but way out by the headlights. Is that to eliminate the blind spot?
Those ramps are great for deliverymen fedex etc too.
Perhaps Steve should talk about the mental illness of the East, because it's killing tourism and justifying more shitskin immigration from parasite peoples. And the expats in Japan are white-hating libards who want uncontrolled African immigration. Listen to the reactionary weebs, Nippon!Replies: @J.Ross, @Chrisnonymous
>the greatest
No, they think it’s a gesture you could make to demonstrate that you are thinking of others, but the Japanese also consider “a gesture you could make thinking of others” to be pretty much mandatory. Now, the onions up the nose, on the other hand …
You don’t see women with babies because you live in an all male homosexual enclave. The K-5 school near me just built another classroom building. Get off your computer. There’s an entire world outside.
The national narrative is one of closing schools due to women's infertility (and contrary to what some folks want to believe, low immigration).
There are no children being born. No meaningful percentage, that is.
The 1st world in the 21st century is a fertility black hole where all good things go to die. Brought to you by women's free choices.
https://www.the74million.org/article/we-are-becoming-grayer-new-hampshires-shrinking-birth-rates-and-shuttered-schools-offer-preview-for-the-nation/
https://www.chalkbeat.org/2022/4/26/23041755/student-enrollment-cities-small-schools-closures
https://kdvr.com/news/data/no-babies-no-schoolkids-how-colorados-birth-rate-tracks-with-jeffco-denver-school-closures/
One area in which Londoners surprised me in 1989-90 was driving courtesy. Almost invariably they would slow to allow vehicles to join the main road from side streets or let vehicles execute right turns off of the main road into side streets. I imagine that this developed from awareness that everyone has to cooperate if traffic is to move at all in congested areas. And everyone would be obliged to join or leave the main flow multiple times each week.
“Ride with, walk against” is HARD to remember, Achmed!
everybody in England lining up politely to get on the bus, which goes back to ultra-civilized Victorian times, driving habits in England are of more recent vintage, so there is a lot of tailgating.
If it was 1987, it might be worth a visit for an update, Steve.
I do not live there either and I do not drive when I am there, but from my frequent visits I would say a lot of them in the UK are not great queuers any more. Whereas there used to be orderly queues (I think) starting from the front, now it is often more a rabble of people spread out on the sidewalk, in a vague order of arrival.
I do not know about the overall driving habits such as tailgating, but drivers are in general very polite to pedestrians, letting them cross when they have the right of way (which is not universal in Europe!) and I do not think they go through red lights often.
and Waukesha.
Japan doesn’t have Schwartzes either. Coincidence?
I walked half a mile to kindergarten in the 70s. But I grew up in a sundown town in DuPage.
“Derisible” isn’t a word. Do you mean risible? Or derisory?
That guy is so gay!
The first time I was in Japan was in the 1980s.
I was in Osaka and was in a subway station.
A Japanese gentleman came across to me and tried out his English.
“What do you think of the Japanese trains? Clean, efficient, come on time?”
I of course agreed that this was so.
“And do you know why that is?” he asked.
I told him I did not.
“No blacks or Mexicans,” he informed me.
It is just as well non-white people cannot be racist, otherwise I would almost think, well,…..
Studies conducted in _____ found stark disparities in _____ for Black _______. Though they make up only x percent of ______ residents, data from ____ showed that Blacks received y + x percent of ______ and z + x percent of _____.
Kind of depends where. Here's a contemporary pic of a neighborhood in Williamsburg , Brooklyn.
https://assets.dnainfo.com/generated/photo/2013/01/satmar-hasidic-girls-williamsburg-13587796331524.JPG/extralarge.jpgReplies: @Anonymous
Gou’ll never see anything like this on an ordinary day on an American street.
We have minoritarianism and celebrate diversity! Japan does not.
Japan is a real nation. We no longer are.
~~~
BTW, immigration is indeed the critical issue for Japan.
Japan is fixin’ to get really, really nice. The one negative about the joint is just the overcrowding. But that will be ebbing. As the post-War babies start shuffling into the crematorium, and the late 60s, early 70s echo heads toward retirement …
… the smaller generations of new Japanese will have excellent job opportunities and abundant housing–terrifically improved “affordable family formation” for young Japanese men and women to get together.
An actual nation of competent and cooperative people, where life is getting better and better. Quite a contrast to the trend in the US and Europe.
The core threat to this though is the TPTB in the US absolutely hate any nation being a nation. “Democracy” means “diversity”, means being “open” for parasites wishing to glom on, means turning your nation into globo-marketplace. And unfortunately, these people have the mega-phone–and in fact are addicted to hearing the sound of their voices echoing everywhere. They will find Japanese stooges. Japanese patriots are going to have to be extremely aggressive in seeing them off, seeing that the destruction of their nation never gets going.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. (And sanity.)
Not even any individual US state was like Japan for long.
Japan is ethnically homogeneous. Other than a tiny number of aboriginal people in the far northern islands. Also it was physically and culturally isolated for millennia and even the Mongol/Chinese failed in invasion. So no immigration, none.
Same for generations, eons.
The US was never, ever like this, even when the Western Hemisphere Siberians came here. They were also probably from different clans and tribes and settled slowly in different groups, languages, customs over many centuries. When the Europeans came, they were from vastly different places, customs and languages in Europe.
Don't do apples versus oranges comparisons. The US almost made German one of two official languages. Now Spanish is the unofficial second one in many places.
You can prefer to hearken back to a mythical past. But at least understand the past for what it was, not some bizarre comparison to Japan, which is one of the few nations that fit your "one people" stereotype.Replies: @Cortes
I disagree here. I’m in downtown Chicago (one of the Near North areas, not the Loop) and there are lots of people pushing children in strollers. Some are tourists, but most appear to live here. They are majority Asian; as I’ve written before, my immediate area is mostly young and of Asian background. But some are white, midwestern-looking mothers (or fathers) and children. There are also dog owners out all day long. Lots and lots of dogs. What I don’t see many of are older, school-age children.
But you can see babies, younger children, and teenagers on the sidewalks in the more affluent parts of Washington DC as well as dogs being walked.
As well, I don’t agree with Steve Sailer that the curb cuts, etc., that are now found on almost all streets were really done just for the disabled. I remember ample descriptions of all the different types of people who would benefit–also anyone on foot, which would include me then and now.
From the School Superintendents Association website:
“School district consolidation is a striking phenomenon. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 117,108 school districts provided elementary and secondary education in 1939-40. By 2006-07, the number of districts had dropped to 13,862, a decline of 88 percent. The rate of consolidation has slowed in recent years, but at least a few districts consolidate every year in many states.”
State and Federal mandates that small community schools could not afford has resulted in the closing of 10,000s of schools. This is the main reason kids no longer walk to school.
I hire a local kid to help around the farm. He must be a genius because the local high school graduated him a semester early. He was bragging to his genius cohort that he could run my local farm stand. To test him I asked how much change would a customer get back if they bought two bales of straw for $$5.50 each and paid with a twenty. Crickets. To try to help Einstein work through the math I ask how much does two bales cost. Crickets.
Public schools are a joke. Public school teachers also a joke.
Not everything has to be about the blekks.
Some observations from white and prosperous western NJ:
1. Every day, dozens of kids from the nearby middle / high school walk to the nearby gas station convenience store after school, 300 feet or so, but no sidewalks, they have to walk on the soft shoulder or the grass. Let them get used to the fact that no one walks, and no one wants you to walk.
2. Bikers and dog walkers on the side of the road at dusk–without lights, without reflective elements on clothing. Every morning I see a young boy biking to school, on a narrow road, with no red light on the bicycle… In Poland, if there is no sidewalk, you must be wearing a certain amount of reflective clothing after dark, or you will be fined.
3. On one of these back country roads, a young woman was killed in a car accident, a day after her high school graduation. There is a makeshift memorial, photos, messages from classmates. The driver, a young fellow, was reportedly doing over 100. He got lawyered down to juvvie, sentenced to three years, got out after one year.
Walking is the daily physical activity that keeps you physically healthy and mentally balanced. It’s immensely sad that Americans don’t walk, can’t walk, won’t walk (for seven or seventeen valid reasons). Americans pop pills, the rest of the world walks…
One quibble is that it is harder to drive in “Kansas”, at least in winter, than you might think. Blowing snow unobstructed by trees means black ice. Black ice means cars slip off roads. And in modern agricultural practices that oft means into surprisingly dangerous roadside ditches in many places. I use the inverted commas around Kansas to connote large flat agricultural expanses such as one may find hundreds of miles to the east or northeast of Topeka.
You’re full of shit. Chicago and Washington DC sre some of the least fertile cities in America. No one sees parents with kids out there.
Japan is a real nation. We no longer are.
~~~
BTW, immigration is indeed the critical issue for Japan.
Japan is fixin' to get really, really nice. The one negative about the joint is just the overcrowding. But that will be ebbing. As the post-War babies start shuffling into the crematorium, and the late 60s, early 70s echo heads toward retirement ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Japan_Population_Pyramid.svg
... the smaller generations of new Japanese will have excellent job opportunities and abundant housing--terrifically improved "affordable family formation" for young Japanese men and women to get together.
An actual nation of competent and cooperative people, where life is getting better and better. Quite a contrast to the trend in the US and Europe.
The core threat to this though is the TPTB in the US absolutely hate any nation being a nation. "Democracy" means "diversity", means being "open" for parasites wishing to glom on, means turning your nation into globo-marketplace. And unfortunately, these people have the mega-phone--and in fact are addicted to hearing the sound of their voices echoing everywhere. They will find Japanese stooges. Japanese patriots are going to have to be extremely aggressive in seeing them off, seeing that the destruction of their nation never gets going.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. (And sanity.)Replies: @Anonymous, @Muggles
Life continues to get harder in Japan every year as the population declines. Banks wont give loans to young people, the Yen value continues to decline, the number of unemployed and unmarried young men only continues increasing, and owning a home remains out of sight for many, particularly as most Japanese want to live in Tokyo, and do nof want homes in which people died.
Without an app, hell yeah it is.
Japan is a real nation. We no longer are.
~~~
BTW, immigration is indeed the critical issue for Japan.
Japan is fixin' to get really, really nice. The one negative about the joint is just the overcrowding. But that will be ebbing. As the post-War babies start shuffling into the crematorium, and the late 60s, early 70s echo heads toward retirement ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Japan_Population_Pyramid.svg
... the smaller generations of new Japanese will have excellent job opportunities and abundant housing--terrifically improved "affordable family formation" for young Japanese men and women to get together.
An actual nation of competent and cooperative people, where life is getting better and better. Quite a contrast to the trend in the US and Europe.
The core threat to this though is the TPTB in the US absolutely hate any nation being a nation. "Democracy" means "diversity", means being "open" for parasites wishing to glom on, means turning your nation into globo-marketplace. And unfortunately, these people have the mega-phone--and in fact are addicted to hearing the sound of their voices echoing everywhere. They will find Japanese stooges. Japanese patriots are going to have to be extremely aggressive in seeing them off, seeing that the destruction of their nation never gets going.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. (And sanity.)Replies: @Anonymous, @Muggles
The US was never like Japan. Few countries are or were.
Not even any individual US state was like Japan for long.
Japan is ethnically homogeneous. Other than a tiny number of aboriginal people in the far northern islands. Also it was physically and culturally isolated for millennia and even the Mongol/Chinese failed in invasion. So no immigration, none.
Same for generations, eons.
The US was never, ever like this, even when the Western Hemisphere Siberians came here. They were also probably from different clans and tribes and settled slowly in different groups, languages, customs over many centuries. When the Europeans came, they were from vastly different places, customs and languages in Europe.
Don’t do apples versus oranges comparisons. The US almost made German one of two official languages. Now Spanish is the unofficial second one in many places.
You can prefer to hearken back to a mythical past. But at least understand the past for what it was, not some bizarre comparison to Japan, which is one of the few nations that fit your “one people” stereotype.
October 28, 2022 at 11:21 pm GMT • 3.3 hours ago • 200 Words ↑
@AnotherDad
Japan is a real nation. We no longer are.
The US was never like Japan. Few countries are or were.
Not even any individual US state was like Japan for long.
Japan is ethnically homogeneous. Other than a tiny number of aboriginal people in the far northern islands”
I guess the Ainu are overjoyed with Japanese homogeneity and look forward to tendencies not necessarily to the advantage of primitive creatures. How fortunate.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuril_Islands
Sent from my iPadReplies: @Muggles
A reply like this is one reason why I don’t usually comment here, and one reason why this site can’t attract many female commenters. You can apologize for talking to me like that. I mentioned the children in these two cities precisely because some commenters here think they don’t exist. Mr. Sailer, you don’t do a great job in moderating your own blog.
Not even any individual US state was like Japan for long.
Japan is ethnically homogeneous. Other than a tiny number of aboriginal people in the far northern islands. Also it was physically and culturally isolated for millennia and even the Mongol/Chinese failed in invasion. So no immigration, none.
Same for generations, eons.
The US was never, ever like this, even when the Western Hemisphere Siberians came here. They were also probably from different clans and tribes and settled slowly in different groups, languages, customs over many centuries. When the Europeans came, they were from vastly different places, customs and languages in Europe.
Don't do apples versus oranges comparisons. The US almost made German one of two official languages. Now Spanish is the unofficial second one in many places.
You can prefer to hearken back to a mythical past. But at least understand the past for what it was, not some bizarre comparison to Japan, which is one of the few nations that fit your "one people" stereotype.Replies: @Cortes
“Muggles says:
October 28, 2022 at 11:21 pm GMT • 3.3 hours ago • 200 Words ↑
Japan is a real nation. We no longer are.
The US was never like Japan. Few countries are or were.
Not even any individual US state was like Japan for long.
Japan is ethnically homogeneous. Other than a tiny number of aboriginal people in the far northern islands”
I guess the Ainu are overjoyed with Japanese homogeneity and look forward to tendencies not necessarily to the advantage of primitive creatures. How fortunate.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuril_Islands
Sent from my iPad
I was not championing Japan as a model society for the US. Another commentator (AnotherDad) was using Japan as a model for a "true society" etc.
Being a minority group member in Japan (including numerous Koreans) is a tough thing.
My point was that Japan is a rare instance of a homogeneous culture for a nation. And that it is unlike the US (or almost anywhere else).
There are advantages to that of course, Shared cultural values and strong social trust based upon social conformity. Low crime and largely voluntary desirable social habits.
Of course that was also badly misused by military and political leaders that used "Emperor" worship to justify ethnic and political aggression. Blind worship and lack of dissent. Racial arrogance that was even worse (or as bad) as Hitler's Master Race theory.Replies: @Thelma Ringbaum
Don’t take it personal. I had a female instructor once and she recounted a story where two males were arguing with passion and she thought it might come to blows, and then one said to the other: “you need a ride?”
I loved living in Japan. No car necessary. Clean taxis with doors that open for you. Subway station 200 metres away that would take you anywhere around an enormous city in 20 minutes, departing every 6 minutes. Trains to take you comfortably to another city for about $12. Sink a couple of beers (discreetly) on the train not a problem, use the kinda clean toilet on board in a fix. Going across the country? Bullet train for about $100. Your fellow passengers sit quietly, don’t stink and will occasionally nudge you awake if you have nodded off. Going camping? You can rent a nearly new car for about $35 a day! If you are a woman you will get the occasional grope or sketchy taking a photo of your feet but that stuff never caused me any stress so I forgot to care.
I think you “mentioned them” (made them up) because you’re shook by the fact that we really have crossed the rubicon with regards to fertility. The kids don’t exist just like the data says they shouldn’t. Our society has failed to reproduce for half a century, and the few children who are born have mothers that are fully 3 decades older than them. It’s the shame of America. Now, if only we could get rid of that cumbersome child-proof packaging we won’t be needing…
I: East-West car traffic.
II: North-South car traffic.
III: Music plays, with a change toward the end to signal limited time, and pedestrians are allowed to cross -- any which way they want, including diagonally.
No car can hit a pedestrian, or be forced to wait for one who dwaddles, because they are separate.Replies: @Steve Sailer
On the border of UCLA and Westwood, the intersection of Westwood Blvd. and Le Conte also allows pedestrians to cross diagonally. I first saw diagonal intersections in Huntington, WV in 1980.
You made that bullshit up.
The national narrative is one of closing schools due to women’s infertility (and contrary to what some folks want to believe, low immigration).
There are no children being born. No meaningful percentage, that is.
The 1st world in the 21st century is a fertility black hole where all good things go to die. Brought to you by women’s free choices.
https://www.the74million.org/article/we-are-becoming-grayer-new-hampshires-shrinking-birth-rates-and-shuttered-schools-offer-preview-for-the-nation/
https://www.chalkbeat.org/2022/4/26/23041755/student-enrollment-cities-small-schools-closures
https://kdvr.com/news/data/no-babies-no-schoolkids-how-colorados-birth-rate-tracks-with-jeffco-denver-school-closures/
October 28, 2022 at 11:21 pm GMT • 3.3 hours ago • 200 Words ↑
@AnotherDad
Japan is a real nation. We no longer are.
The US was never like Japan. Few countries are or were.
Not even any individual US state was like Japan for long.
Japan is ethnically homogeneous. Other than a tiny number of aboriginal people in the far northern islands”
I guess the Ainu are overjoyed with Japanese homogeneity and look forward to tendencies not necessarily to the advantage of primitive creatures. How fortunate.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuril_Islands
Sent from my iPadReplies: @Muggles
I am not sure what your point here is.
I was not championing Japan as a model society for the US. Another commentator (AnotherDad) was using Japan as a model for a “true society” etc.
Being a minority group member in Japan (including numerous Koreans) is a tough thing.
My point was that Japan is a rare instance of a homogeneous culture for a nation. And that it is unlike the US (or almost anywhere else).
There are advantages to that of course, Shared cultural values and strong social trust based upon social conformity. Low crime and largely voluntary desirable social habits.
Of course that was also badly misused by military and political leaders that used “Emperor” worship to justify ethnic and political aggression. Blind worship and lack of dissent. Racial arrogance that was even worse (or as bad) as Hitler’s Master Race theory.
We know that there was no Germany nor Italy before 1850-1870s. Consider that same is true for the Japan, which naturally had separate nations on each of her islands. They were joined by conquest of their "revolution".
Thus the ideas of Fascismo, master races etc, in each of the three places. They were all desperate to build a nation from a diverse crowd little nations each having their own language, history etc.
It almost sounds like Steve for some reason has something against joggers and them levying reparations from their too rich compatriotes. Why would that be?
I mean, we all stand with the Ukraine that stands for the right of stealing the Gas from Germans and Russians. This is an indispensible pillar of the rules based World order, that a transit country have right fo steal all she wants from the transit, because the victim of the theft happens to be richer.
Why joggers be denied such rules based order in their Home country? Seriously, though?
I was not championing Japan as a model society for the US. Another commentator (AnotherDad) was using Japan as a model for a "true society" etc.
Being a minority group member in Japan (including numerous Koreans) is a tough thing.
My point was that Japan is a rare instance of a homogeneous culture for a nation. And that it is unlike the US (or almost anywhere else).
There are advantages to that of course, Shared cultural values and strong social trust based upon social conformity. Low crime and largely voluntary desirable social habits.
Of course that was also badly misused by military and political leaders that used "Emperor" worship to justify ethnic and political aggression. Blind worship and lack of dissent. Racial arrogance that was even worse (or as bad) as Hitler's Master Race theory.Replies: @Thelma Ringbaum
Thats an interested analogy.
We know that there was no Germany nor Italy before 1850-1870s. Consider that same is true for the Japan, which naturally had separate nations on each of her islands. They were joined by conquest of their “revolution”.
Thus the ideas of Fascismo, master races etc, in each of the three places. They were all desperate to build a nation from a diverse crowd little nations each having their own language, history etc.
“As Jeffrey Tumlin, the head of San Francisco MTA, once tweeted, ‘I’m a childless man…’”
A childless man in San Francisco?
One second of Googling his name revealed that…yup, gay and thinks encouraging gayness is a major part of his job at the MTA.
They needed to make it easier to get from Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center to Chick-Fil-A
https://ibb.co/f1TT2QF
In Oregon. Previously, California. All we have is emissions test. In CA, we used to call it Smog test. Here it is DEQ (Department of Environmental Quality). A guy brings a cable, reads OBD-II port (On Board Diagnostics), gives you a receipt. Wheels falling off? Steering column loose? Not his problem.
No Jalopies allowed. We only test for emissions. They test for reliability and safety.fuseikaizousha = Illegal VehicleReplies: @HammerJack, @Chrisnonymous
This is getting at why Japan’s traffic fatalities are lower. The other explanations in this post don’t really get at the main cause, which is that the government makes it hard to get and keep licenses and cars. The driving license test is not a test of driving competence, but a test of ability and aptitude of rule-following. Hence, people who are allowed to drive are those in society who most likely to conform to safety campaigns and driving laws.
The Netflix show sounds like a re-packaging of the Japanese show “First Errand”. Young children are sent by their mothers to pick up groceries or deliver gifts to relatives and neighbors. Extreme cute-level. Highly recommend checking it out.
Perhaps Steve should talk about the mental illness of the East, because it's killing tourism and justifying more shitskin immigration from parasite peoples. And the expats in Japan are white-hating libards who want uncontrolled African immigration. Listen to the reactionary weebs, Nippon!Replies: @J.Ross, @Chrisnonymous
This is a problem of Japanese culture, not misunderstanding science. Japan has a culture of (a) conformity and (b) responsibility avoidance. Every institution in Japan needs an authority figure to announce that it is okay to stop masking, and every authority figure is afraid to say the obvious because if case rates go up, they risk being blamed. This is demonstrated by the fact that everyone is still doing hand and surface sanitization in addition to masking even though it has been known since about May 2020 that contact transmission is not a thing.
Interestingly, conformity to masking is actually higher now than in 2020. In summer 2020, I remember going into supermarkets and finding lots of people without masks. Now, its only me and a few other outcasts not wearing masks.
Gigantic Wake Forest Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem has the Chick-Fil-A in the building. Unfortunately, they don’t have any maps or direction signs for anything, so I had to find it by smell.
Until the 70s, Virginia required safety inspections every 6 months. They’d unpack a front wheel bearing while checking the front brakes. NC is getting slack: a windshield crack to the edge would fail last century, now the cracks can’t be so bad they obstruct vision.