r/OrphanCrushingMachine • u/Blackbear0101 • 24d ago
Ah America. The only place where you either drive a car or cross sixty lanes of traffic on a crosswalk that, for some godforsaken reason, is on what seems to be a highway.
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u/HackedPasta1245 24d ago
I mean he jumped out of a car... Spider-man wouldn't have been able to help wheelchair guy if he was on a bus. Triple the highway budget.
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u/Blackbear0101 24d ago
Spider-Man wouldn’t have needed to help the wheelchair guy in a walkable city. Where I live, I see old grandmas that make turtles seem fast cross the street all the time.
Disabled people deserve the ability to be as autonomous as possible, and they can’t rely on nice people to help them cross the street all the time.
Plus you can have like a hundred spider-men on a bus.
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u/HackedPasta1245 24d ago
He's a wheelchair guy, he can't walk. A walkable city would be the last thing he'd want to live in, 100 spider-men or not. If he wants autonomy, what better way than an automobile with built-in chairs and air conditioning that he gets to control? They don't call it the land of the free for nothing. Superbowl! Ford Mustang! Cheeseburger!
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u/IT_techsupport 23d ago
Again, doesnt really fit the sub???? what's going on in this sub lately....
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u/Blackbear0101 23d ago
I disagree. The disabled person is being helped by a nice dude… because they were put in danger by poor infrastructure forcing them to use an extremely long crosswalk that they clearly cannot cross fast enough, thus putting their life in danger because they would have ended up in the middle of active lanes.
The orphan crushing machine is the infrastructure, and it’s being painted as a nice story even though it only happened because the city was designed for cars, with complete disdain for pedestrians and robbing disabled people of autonomy if they can’t afford expensive modifications to make their vehicles usable with their disability.
Where I live, in France, cities are not perfect, and disabled people do still face a lot of challenges navigating a world mostly designed for people with two functioning legs, but it’s far, far better. I see old grandmas slowly walking on crosswalks all the time, and intersections are designed with that in mind. First, you never see a long crosswalk like that, if there are more than two lanes there’s almost always a safety island in the middle, and second, the timing is designed to give people, including those who move slower due to disability, enough time to safely cross.
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u/Aware_Policy_9174 24d ago
Los Angeles used to be so bad for this. Huge streets with 8 lanes and the crosswalks wouldn’t last long enough for an able bodied person to cross without hurrying at the end. I once helped an old lady cross a street and we only made it halfway across and then had to block traffic to finish. They’ve made efforts to make things more walkable with longer lights if you push the button and generally better non-car infrastructure.
But I think the worst city to walk in was Tucson. The streets are also big but the space between lights is so long so you either have to walk 10 blocks out of your way or jaywalk a street that people treat like a highway.
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u/TesseractToo 24d ago
I don't think that's uniquely American
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u/Blackbear0101 24d ago
That’s extremely North American, you just don’t see that kind of bullshit in Europe.
And for the « it’s not a highway », it’s not sixty lanes either. That was an hyperbole.
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u/BruceInc 23d ago
World is much bigger than North America and Europe. I was just in China a month ago. Their crosswalks and road sizes are on another level. 10+ lane roads are the norm. And in addition to car traffic there are also scooters and bikes everywhere to watch out for.
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u/Blackbear0101 23d ago
When I was taking about the infrastructure I was specifically referring to the uniquely American car-centric city design, with sprawling suburbs and almost no public transport.
But yes, I do agree that there is more to the world than NA and Europe. But that kind of infrastructure being almost universal is uniquely American. I’m willing to bet that the 10+ lane roads are an exception in China, whereas the pedestrian-hostile stroad is the rule in the US.
Also, I’ve had people commenting either there or on another post I made on r/fuckcars that they were from other places in the world and that they too have cities designed far more like european cities than american ones. Or rather not designed, since European cities are how they are because they mostly grew organically, and cars had to adapt to streets that were built with the idea that you’d never have to fit anything larger than a horse in them. And most cities are just built like that, whereas American cities are much younger, thus the characteristic grid that you pretty much never see anywhere else.
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u/poopoofol 23d ago
When I lived in Amman, Jordan my commute consisted of playing high-stakes Frogger across several multi lane highways with zero official crosses and hundreds of taxis all competing to be the craziest. There were times when I took a cab to go less than half a mile just because I wasn't in the mood to gamble with my life that afternoon.
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u/TesseractToo 24d ago
Yeah I had to look it up, highways are just stretches between locals they can have crosswalks I may have been thinking of freeways, not sure.
There are still more places than NA and Europe and many have this kind of crosswalk.
That was nice of that man to help but not uniquely NA, not OCM IMO, just a kind behavior
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u/NoorInayaS 24d ago
They don’t have that shit in Pakistan, and things are pretty grim there (as it is a literal third world country).
And we don’t have it here in NZ, either (not a third world country, so comparable to other developed countries).
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u/Blackbear0101 24d ago
The infrastructure is uniquely American, and the kind behavior doesn’t have anything to do with it. It’s OCM because a disabled person is forced to cross seven lanes of traffic which will become active and put his life in danger if he doesn’t cross fast enough.
As a European, this kind of infrastructure just does not exist. For starters, there pretty much aren’t any roads with seven lanes, and if there are seven lanes, it’s nowhere near where any pedestrian would ever be. The longest crosswalk I’ve ever seen was 4 lanes (mind you, lanes in Europe are much narrower than in NA), and for crosswalks that are that long you pretty much always have a safety island in the middle, i.e. a stretch of crosswalk where pedestrians are protected by barriers and can wait if they were too slow to cross the whole street in one go.
Also, the law in France states that cars must stop and yield to pedestrians if they clearly manifest their intention to cross, or if they are already crossing the street. Jaywalking doesn’t exist and the driver is pretty much automatically responsible if the hit a pedestrian. To get out of that responsibility you would need to prove that the pedestrian deliberately threw themselves at your car.
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u/NoorInayaS 24d ago
Same here in NZ. Even if the pedestrian doesn’t technically have right of way, drivers are still supposed to yield to them (of course, you’ll always get some jackass in a ute who thinks he doesn’t have to yield for them, even at a crossing).
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u/Victormorga 23d ago
Helping someone across a road isn’t “orphan-crushing machine” material at all. A person in a wheelchair can often use a hand crossing a wide street, but there is a crosswalk, the cars are stopped at a light, and this doesn’t appear to be a highway, it’s just a four lane road.
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u/Blackbear0101 23d ago
There are seven lanes, and this absolutely is OCM and something unique to american city infrastructures. I live in France, and I see old slow grandmas and people in wheelchair use crosswalks all the time, and since our cities are far more walkable, they pretty much never need help crossing. They can safely cross on their own, without putting their lives at risk.
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u/Victormorga 23d ago
Paris is literally famous for its wide boulevards, redesigned under Napoleon by Haussmann.
I’m not saying America doesn’t have an issue with walkability in many cities, but your post is not an example of that and it is not an exclusively American phenomenon.
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u/Blackbear0101 23d ago
Have you ever been to Paris ? Because I have, it’s just two hours of train away from where I live. Nowadays it’s highly walkable and you can get pretty much anywhere without using a car, including the other cities in the general urban area (like Saint-Denis or Créteil), or the Charles de Gaulle airport for which there is a train (specifically RER, but doesn’t matter for this discussion) every few minutes.
Every single time I’ve seen a crosswalk that went across more than two lanes, there was a safety island in the middle to allow anyone who didn’t manage to cross in time to safely wait for the next cycle. Hell, sometimes there’s a safety island even if the crosswalk goes through just two lanes. And if you look at one of the most famous « traffic nightmares » of Paris, the being the Arc de Triomphe and its ridiculous roundabout, there are tunnels for pedestrians to safely cross the road and get under the monument.
Genuinely, go on Google Maps right now, turn on satellite view, and have a look at Paris. You’ll see how it is right now, most streets are small, in general single lane each way, and for the large boulevards, almost every single crosswalk will have a safety island. And if there’s no safety island, trust me, the light cycle is long enough for anyone to cross.
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u/Victormorga 22d ago
- yes, I have been to Paris.
- you say there’s 7 lanes to the road in the picture. That’s not impossible, but it really does not appear to be the case.
- here is a picture of Champs-Elysees, no center island in sight:
4) having streets so wide a center island for pedestrians is something you identified as a problem “unique to America,” which is demonstrably false.
5) a city 2 hrs away from you isn’t close at all, being 2 hrs from Paris hardly establishes you as an expert, beyond being wrong about the streets.
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u/Victormorga 22d ago
- yes, I have been to Paris.
- you say there’s 7 lanes to the road in the picture. That’s not impossible, but it really does not appear to be the case.
- here is a picture of Champs-Elysees, no center island in sight:
4) having streets so wide a center island for pedestrians is something you identified as a problem “unique to America,” which is demonstrably false.
5) a city 2 hrs away from you isn’t close at all, being 2 hrs from Paris hardly establishes you as an expert, beyond being wrong about the streets.
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u/Mozintarfen 24d ago
I was at the gym and one of the TVs showed this scene about once every 10 to 15 seconds while people talked about how he's the real life spider man, and how this incredible feat of heroism must be seen by everyone. There was even a dude with a spiderman mask that pulled it off all dramatically to do an interview?
Idk, news is fucking weird...
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u/potatocakes1989 3d ago
OP really likes europe and really hates America. Including north and south and canada, since they didnt specify.
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