Quote:
Originally Posted by whatnext
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In all due respect: I don't ignore the fact, you cite a media "spin". I have linked directly to the source saying a more tempered story in my original post
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vonny
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It is "media spin", because you can consider that most of the achievements in road safety Transport Canada claims are due to Car safety improvement (and seat belt laws), not roads (and a good reason to say it, is that pedestrian and cyclist safety has not improved on Canadian roads in the meantimes).
Quote:
Originally Posted by whatnext
To compare small European countries, with cities that largely pre-date the automobile with Canada is ridiculous.
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Well, it was exactly what was saying some people in the 70's and 80's in Europe.
Those day (in th 70's), it was more than 17,000 people dying on the French road, and 21,000 on the german road (
http://www.erf.be/images/stat/2007/ERF_stats2007.pdf)
if considered per 100,000 people,
Much much more than countries like Canada or USA at the same time. like I said before America was rightly then considered a model of road safety.
People was explaining exactly the same thing you are doing so...
"you understand we European all live in Medieval cities in the shadow of the Lord's castle", Canada and USA are modern countries with cities built around automobile..."
beside the fact it was very cliche - European population has basically doubled after war, and most of the European people live now in neighborhood built after war (so during automobile era: yes we have our suburb too!)- it was mostly a rational for inaction.
First we have followed the American model, and built urban freeway or its mock up (Vancouver Style), fly-over, underpass...but as soon as early 90's the tide as reversed. And now, we are destroying them like here in Strasbourg (to replace the underpass by the tram we destroyed in the 60's to make place for urban freeways)...
(Western) Europe, some day was very unsafe to drive and Canada was then a model, but now things are totally reversed...eventually because Canadian traffic engineers got stuck in the last century culture, and I am glad to see that this opinion is shared (Thanks Aberdeen5698 for the link
http://www.grist.org/article/2010-11...ering-engineer )
and with all due respect, people trying to justify it, are like their European counterpart 20 years ago, looking at rational for inaction.
Quote:
Originally Posted by whatnext
The social engineering in Europe has come at the cost of horrendously punitive taxes (check out Denmark's) on auto ownership. As we've seen with the HST, that won't fly here.
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Well I can quote only anecdotes: I don't feel it is noticeably cheaper to own a car in BC than in France.
Gas is sure more expensive in Europe, not as much as it used to be (50% more expensive in France than in BC) but mostly cars have on average a better gas mileage, (for example the Mercedes Benz class C sold in France are available in 4 cylinder 1800cc diesel, here in Canada the minimum motorization in V6 2500cc gas): Insurance: Insurances in France are easily, twice cheaper than in BC, in fact close to 3 time cheaper than in BC for equivalent car/driver...due to that it is eventually more expensive to own a car in BC than in France if you don't drive often.
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