They’re not the same. This is privilege speaking, I know, but gun violence mostly occurs between people who know each other. I’m not in those circles or neighborhoods, so only the occasional mass shooting might affect me.
But cars? They’re omnipresent. There’s a steady stream of them in front of my home, so I can’t avoid the danger. My life is threatened by cars every damn day, and my quality of life degraded by them. And you can’t tell me that driving a car around a city is anything but sociopathic disregard for the well-being of others, because that’s what it amounts to.
Claiming that people driving cars are sociopathic is a bizarre claim. Claiming that cars are worse than the concept of a mass shooting is insane. I reiterate: I hope you never find yourself in a mass shooting. Seeing a car drive by on the road cannot make you remotely as scared as being trapped in a building, knowing someone is shooting, but not knowing where they are, how many there are nor how close they are to getting you or your loved ones.
You cannot compare driving cars in a city to that. That is insane.
Getting trapped in a building with a mass shooter is something very, very unlikely. On the other hand, I face the danger of death by automobile at least twice a day, on my ride to work, and my ride home. More, if I go other places. It may seem not that bad because it’s so normalized. Dying in or under the wheels of a car is something that happens to people every single day, and it barely rates a mention in the local news. Sometimes the victim doesn’t get even get a name. By contrast, the stochastic nature of mass shootings makes them scary, like plane crashes or terrorist attacks, the natural order of things is upended. Death is death, though, and I wouldn’t be less dead if it were a texting driver rather than a gunman.
And the texting driver is a whole hell a of a lot more likely. So, yes, it’s entirely logical that I’m afraid of that. Not being able to understand and denying that fear is exactly the kind of car-induced sociopathy that I’m talking about.
Of course, I drive (I kind of have to because of the way our landscape is designed to mandate it), so I have to include myself in this. It’s well-established by psychological research that drivers have very little empathy for other drivers, but especially little empathy for bicyclists and pedestrians, viewing them as less-than-human annoyances. Add in that driving in a city requires that one subject other people to the noise, the pollution, the danger, and the arrogation of space by one’s vehicle, and you pretty much have to suppress any empathy for the people who live there, otherwise it’d be unbearable to do. That lack of empathy is textbook sociopathy, induced by the activity of driving. It just happens to be widely normalized, but we still see posts even here on Lemmy from new drivers who are struggling to suppress those thoughts.
They’re not the same. This is privilege speaking, I know, but gun violence mostly occurs between people who know each other. I’m not in those circles or neighborhoods, so only the occasional mass shooting might affect me.
But cars? They’re omnipresent. There’s a steady stream of them in front of my home, so I can’t avoid the danger. My life is threatened by cars every damn day, and my quality of life degraded by them. And you can’t tell me that driving a car around a city is anything but sociopathic disregard for the well-being of others, because that’s what it amounts to.
Cars as bad as guns? No, they’re worse.
I do not understand your mindset, but I very much do hope you will never know what it is like to be trapped in a mass shooting.
You are definitely speaking form a position of privilege.
You don’t understand what fear is like?
Claiming that people driving cars are sociopathic is a bizarre claim. Claiming that cars are worse than the concept of a mass shooting is insane. I reiterate: I hope you never find yourself in a mass shooting. Seeing a car drive by on the road cannot make you remotely as scared as being trapped in a building, knowing someone is shooting, but not knowing where they are, how many there are nor how close they are to getting you or your loved ones.
You cannot compare driving cars in a city to that. That is insane.
Getting trapped in a building with a mass shooter is something very, very unlikely. On the other hand, I face the danger of death by automobile at least twice a day, on my ride to work, and my ride home. More, if I go other places. It may seem not that bad because it’s so normalized. Dying in or under the wheels of a car is something that happens to people every single day, and it barely rates a mention in the local news. Sometimes the victim doesn’t get even get a name. By contrast, the stochastic nature of mass shootings makes them scary, like plane crashes or terrorist attacks, the natural order of things is upended. Death is death, though, and I wouldn’t be less dead if it were a texting driver rather than a gunman.
And the texting driver is a whole hell a of a lot more likely. So, yes, it’s entirely logical that I’m afraid of that. Not being able to understand and denying that fear is exactly the kind of car-induced sociopathy that I’m talking about.
Throwing insults is not a discussion, by the way.
Lol.
Putting the shoe on and loudly announcing that it fits?
Yeah, I think you are. Good that you see it yourself.
Of course, I drive (I kind of have to because of the way our landscape is designed to mandate it), so I have to include myself in this. It’s well-established by psychological research that drivers have very little empathy for other drivers, but especially little empathy for bicyclists and pedestrians, viewing them as less-than-human annoyances. Add in that driving in a city requires that one subject other people to the noise, the pollution, the danger, and the arrogation of space by one’s vehicle, and you pretty much have to suppress any empathy for the people who live there, otherwise it’d be unbearable to do. That lack of empathy is textbook sociopathy, induced by the activity of driving. It just happens to be widely normalized, but we still see posts even here on Lemmy from new drivers who are struggling to suppress those thoughts.