The US is not the “role model” for how a country should be or what a strong democracy is. Other countries aren’t inspired by or jealous of you.
Many, if not most, of us are jealous of other countries, though. Really, this is only a hard truth for the MAGA crowd, and even that is (I think) largely the fault of the nationalist propaganda that’s been shoveled at us since we were kids.
As an American, I agree with you, though - the US is in no way a ‘strong democracy’, or much of a democracy at all. It may once have been, but it certainly hasn’t been the case for a long time.
Back in 1780s the US constitution was an absolute marvel of progressiveness, but today, it is increadibly outdated and keeps the US political system back from making progress.
We’re like the 40-year-old still wearing his school jacket and talking about winning state.
But we’re really a used car salesman trying to get you to finance a clapped out Nissan Altima with 128k miles, failing clear coat, and a dented bumper.
Not most unfortunately, that I learned a couple months ago. Most think their squalor is somehow peak civilization
No shit, what American thinks either are true?
America, fuck yeah!
Has been a joke for like 30 years now
You haven’t met much of the rural population, have you?
This. Conservatives have poor media literacy. They don’t understand that they’re the punchline in stuff like that. They miss the point of stuff like RoboCop and Starship Troopers and unironically like those movies for the action and don’t even recognize the social commentary. They watched Team America and guffawed into their 24 packs of light beer at every shallow joke without recognizing that the jokes were intentionally shallow to point out what an idiot would think is a good joke. It’s like the TV show in Idiocracy. The real joke is below the surface.
I used to watch Colbert Report with my dad and it took him years to realize that it was a parody mocking him often personally. My dad was not a dumb man. The conservative bubble is hard to pop. Its like a Stockholm syndrome victim sympathizing with their attacker.
There are different dimensions of dumb.
Literally the opposite…
Where are you see conservatives talking about how great America has been under Bidnen?
Like, you put zero thinking into your comment, just like you assume the people you’re “dunking on” do.
You’re a different side of the same coin, that’s never meant opposites, you’re th same thing.
Just neither sid bis smart enough to figure it out, and both think only the other side is dumb
The irony is rooted in reality, much like the stereotypes.
I’ve received quite a few hostile reactions when critiquing the US, including idiocy like “FU we have a bigger military” from blowhards.
There are, unfortunately, enough bad apples to spoil the bushel.
Believe me there’s no shortage of people who know that were not the shining city on the hill, unfortunately we’re drowned out by pandering patriotic country music and gunfire from mass shootings.
This clip from the Newsroom sums it up perfectly.
Man I forgot how good that show was
I mean, we generally know the first part. The second isn’t really a surprise either.
Then why do you sound like you are
Because thats what you’ve been brainwashed to think the world wants, so thats what you hear
lol
Gasoline prices are heavily subsidized in the US, the gas price you complain about is cheap compared to other countries.
The commodity price for gasoline right now looks to be about 2 USD per gallon. Retail gasoline in the USA is at least a dollar more due to taxes and markup.
Subsidies may play a role as well, but the taxes in some countries are extreme by American standards. My take on it is that a fuel tax is effectively neutral if it brings in enough revenue to pay for the road system.
The fuel tax isn’t enough to cover the damage to the environment and quality of life, though. That’s why taxes are that high in many other places. Same way cigarettes are taxed to help discourage use and to help cover the increased healthcare costs it puts on everyone
Fuel, and other car-related taxes (sometimes based on horsepower or engine displacement) in most countries in Europe were much higher than in the USA long before there was widespread concern about the environmental impact of cars.
Which is why I said “environment and quality of life” - they don’t want their cities dominated by cars (making life dangerous for pedestrians) and for cars to become a requirement for living. So taxes are added to discourage (not eliminate) driving and car ownership
But also, the mess of smog from exhaust and other impacts beyond climate change have been known since the first automobiles. Concerns about the ‘environment’ is more than greenhouse gasses.
In NZ it’s roughly $2.50NZD per litre minimum, or $5.31USD per gallon. This is roughly 50% tax (it’s how we pay for roads, plus is subject to sales tax), so a bit over $2USD per gallon at the moment excluding tax.
Is it really $3 a gallon plus tax in the US right now?
I compare it to how I thought mobile phone calls in the US were super cheap, then found out people pay to receive calls, which was super weird to me. Where I live, my whole life it has never been the case that a normal residential connection would pay to receive a call, mobile or not.
Differences in how we do things make differences appear more than they are.
It’s $3/gal total including taxes here in Illinois right now.
I was in California last week and it was $4.50/gam total
That is about half of the fuel cost here in Sweden
Taxes throw things out because everyone does it different. What are the sans-tax prices?
I don’t know if anyone can really get you that number, because the tax isn’t clearly disclosed when you buy gasoline, it’s just included in the price; the taxes also vary widely between different states/counties/maybe cities too?
Edit: the federal tax is $0.184 per gallon
I can, Spain only has federal tax and it’s 21% for anything premium like gasoline.
1.63€ per litre with taxes.
So 6.169€ per gallon with taxes.
Or 6.29$ per gallon post tax.
Or 5.2$ per gallon without tax.Literally more than double their price, and they complain so hard LMAO.
Huh, the US gets another layer more confusing. Tax is included in gas prices but not in anything else? How do the arguments for not including that tax in the price stack up when gas stations are already including it?
Even more annoying, the gas price really has 99/100ths tacked on, so the price is a cent more expensive because no one thinks of it.
Ie: $3/gal is really charged as $3.0099/gal
Tradition.
Gas prices are also the only retail prices that include tenths of a penny - specifically 9/10, as in all gas prices look like $x.xx9 such as $3.059
that’s work, so no
-Stores
That’s how
Ok apparently Illinois has a 39c per gallon gasoline tax, another 18c in federal, and another 6% or so on state sales tax, plus any regional sales tax. It’s unclear whether the sales tax applies to the gasoline tax (in NZ it does), but let’s assume it doesn’t. Then that’s $3 - 0.39 - 0.18 = $2.43 then remove 6% tax is 2.43/106*100 = $2.29
We can probably knock a bit more off because there is probably some regional/city sales tax but it should be the right ballpark.
It does seem we pay about the same for petrol, though from what I’ve been searching up, this is wildly different across states because states have much different ways of paying for roads (e.g. Hawai’i is mostly taxed at the pump where as Alaska has big taxes on oil extraction to keep taxes for residents low, including for roading).
Sales tax is either included already or not charged.
The posted price is the posted price, no additional taxes on top of it.
Although they add 99/100ths to the price, so $3.00/gal is really charged at $3.0099/gal.
Of course this gets rounded up 😒
Any price lower than that required to compensate for all the negative externalities of both driving and using fossil fuels to do it still counts as subsidized.
A failure to set an excise tax on a product or service that offsets its externalities is not a subsidy. A lower tax rate than a competing product is arguably a subsidy.
I’m not aware of any modern societies that make a credible attempt to adjust the price of all or most goods and services to include their externalities. That sounds like a good idea in theory, but very difficult to implement in practice.
The fuel tax doesn’t even cover the damage your car does to the road.
That’s probably not true, but hard to calculate.
The previous time I looked, which was a while ago, federal fuel tax revenue in the USA and federal highway expenditures were about equal. Since then, fuel tax revenue has fallen behind highway spending; the required increase to even it out would be modest in absolute terms - something like 15 cents per gallon. States each have their own taxes and budgets, of course.
As for the road damage each car causes, it increases (roughly) proportional to the fourth power of vehicle weight. Semi trucks and similar heavy commercial vehicles cause almost all of the traffic-induced road wear, and passenger cars contribute very little. It’s likely the fuel taxes paid for a passenger car (even a relatively large one) are several times its marginal impact on road maintenance.
What state do you live in that the road system is funded adequately? I never hear someone comment positively about the general state of road conditions.
Adequately is a difficult determination.
Is it adequate if there are state maintained dirt roads? In some states, the state or county chooses not to pave all of their roads.
Is it adequately funded if they have potholes? Due to weather conditions, some states are notorious for potholes.
Is it adequately funded if the road gets washed out or carried away by flooding? California gets mudslides that take out sections of roads, other states get sinkholes or hurricanes/tornados destroying their roads
How long can one of these issues plague a road before we consider them underfunded?
My opinion is that the US has too many roads. Most roads are maintained by county or municipalities, and are funded through infinite growth model.
When a developer creates a new subdivision, they pave the roads. Once done, they usually relinquish these roads to the county/city who are responsible for maintaining the roads.
Typically maintenance is low until they require replacing. The cities and counties don’t save money or plan well for replacing these roads and rely on new tax revenue to fund replacing them.
It builds a slowly ballooning road maintenance cost that someone will have to pay. I believe someone made a video about this very fact. I don’t have the link handy
Roads aren’t the only societal cost of cars.
Fuel tax in the U.S. doesn’t even come close to paying for the road system. The federal fuel tax covers less than half of federal transportation spending. I don’t know about all of the states, but Wisconsin’s fuel tax covers only about 2/3 of the road spending. And, local streets get built with local property and income taxes.
Most “third world” or “developing” countries aren’t that bad, and there are places in the US far worse than the median developing country.
Also most people in most places do not want to go to the US, even to visit much less immigrate. It’s generally either the worst of a particular society or those specifically harmed by the US previously and feel their chances are better off with the abuser instead of in the abused country. It’s not a wanted destination.
This was a MASSIVE eye opening shock to me. You watch NCIS or any pro military show and they’ll pan to Baghdad or anything middle east and you’ll see crumbling buildings or warzone with a sepia filter. I was got smacked when I saw a real skyline photo of Baghdad, and istanbul, and most cities. Our media is dead set on continuing the thought of these empty deserts
istanbul
That’s wild, from Europe Istanbul is quite well known
I honestly had no idea they had electricity. That’s how bad the propaganda is
You’re kidding me
Wish I was friend, thought it was all single story white stone housing. We were told America is number one, never saw a skyline or how big it was.
Trump has a famous line whining about America only getting immigrants from the “shithole countries”. Wonder why, dude.
And us “shithole countries” receive some immigrants from USA that put to shame the worst we could send back, only they call themselves expatriates.
Haah. Never thought about it but this is very true.
There is a book called Factfulness where they talk about presenting the UN scientists their own data and surprising them at the standard of living in many third world countries. People’s ideas of third world countries is based on what they were like in the 50s, but many are catching up to the developed world in leaps and bounds.
Everyone i’ve known who wanted to go to the US was interested in making easy money by scamming people. That’s the type who admire the US.
I’m not sure where you’re from, but at least in the Middle East that’s not the case. It’s a very desirable immigration destination here (less than Western Europe, though).
See the last part of the second paragraph for that. Victims of the empire paradoxically tend to want to immigrate to the empire believing they’ll be better off there than in the country that empire targeted.
That’s… not related at all though. And not all of the Middle East was subjected to (overt) American imperialism.
The UN General Assembly Human Rights Council 2018 report on USA’s poverty and human rights is a pretty quick and clear overview which makes it clear that parts of the USA are just undeveloped:
http://undocs.org/A/HRC/38/33/ADD.1
“5.3 million live in Third World conditions of absolute poverty”
“69. In Alabama and West Virginia, a high proportion of the population is not served by public sewerage and water supply services”
Your population is essentially being farmed by corporations.
Nothing new to that. In 1886 case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, the US Supreme Court declared that companies are people too. With the same rights — under the 14th amendment.
But without the responsabilities I bet.
And the option to be thrown in jail.
Whether or not they’re subject to the death penalty seems to still be undecided in the court of popular opinion.
We can’t understand how millions can vote for a senile, convicted sexual predator as president…
Dude half of us don’t understand it either.
It’s amazing what decades of defunding education will do when you mix it with a healthy dose of conservative talk show TV and social media algorithms.
I dunno, i understand it pretty well. Lack of education, lead paint/gasoline, nationalism, fascism, racism, sexism, economic disparity, lack of healthcare to deal with neural degeneracy common in trump supporters, and finally lower borth rates among the more educated. America is a shithole, and has been for the past 40 years at least. Until we finally grow a spine and start “adjusting”, things are going to continue getting worse until were all dead and the olligarchs own everything. Then theyll move on to fucking the rest of the world (harder than they already are)
Was with you to the last bit. What does it mean to “grow a spine and start ‘adjusting’”? Why is “adjusting” in quotes?
I wonder how differently the last US election would have played out if Murdoch had died before campaign season
Going to have a big party when he finally goes and joins Reagan in hell
Not very. His shitty propaganda machine is running itself by now.
Less than half apparently…
I guess it’s much less than half.
About 1/7 are less than voting age. Another 1/7 or so voted for the oompa loompa, and another 1/7 voted against. So actually, about half of the population just doesn’t vote because they’re a different type of idiot.
I do hate it here, for what it’s worth.
Welcome to every election, not just presidential and not just a Republican or Democrat problem. Trump is disgusting but Seattles former mayor was way worse and didn’t get a peep nationwide.
And Chicago, and New York, and…
I’m just glad our poor congressmen can legally insider trade, think of the children!
And insider trade of children, and if anyone thinks it’s just Matt Gaetz, let me sell you my nfts.
How is you not understanding that the fault of the Americans?
The original question was not “what bad thing are Americans guilty of?”
Okay, well, how is it that Americans aren’t ready to hear them not understanding something?
Hah! Let’s make a list of the countries where leadership of that ilk has never existed. (We’ll just ignore that most of them did not allow elections.) Won’t take much paper.
Needing two jobs to survive isn’t a good thing.
Universal health care is better than whatever you have, for 99.9% of the people 99.9% of the time. And it always was. And always will be.
We know. Even if some of us don’t want to admit it.
International rankings of the US are abysmal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_rankings_of_the_United_States
Peace:
“Vision of Humanity 2024 Global Peace Index ranked 132nd out of 162 countries”
…yup. sounds about right. We’ve been at some kind of war for pretty much the entirety of our existence…
Well at least you’re good at… losing wars, I dunno
The winning or losing was almost always secondary. The main thing is to spend a load of money on wars. We’ve never failed at that.
Military skill was a use it or lose it thing. I wouldn’t be surprised if all of the wars that the US has been fighting have been intentional, specifically in order to maintain skilled soldiers.
Government spending in the Military Industrial Complex is the point.
An able
militiamilitary is a side effect.
Destabilizing other countries and exploitation of natural resources and cheap labor, in order to maintain USD and military hegemony. That’s why.
Affordable healthcare
Public transit
Civilian oversight
Prisoner rehabilitation
Universal income
Free education
Separation of religion and state
Wealth taxes
Law enforcement accountability
Environmental regulations…
Please adopt me.
Separation of religion and state
I cringe every time their president or other politicians are talking about god. It’s unbelievable how backward the US are in this regard.
Where is this magical place?
Varies state to state and city to city, but my city has the majority of that list… plus the freedom of speech is nice. When I read the news about people in Europe going to prison for comments online but getting slapped on the wrist for violent crimes I’m baffled.
Oh really? I would like to know which city is that so I can confirm, but I seriously doubt you have most of that list since that’s regulated on state or federal level.
Also we have freedom of speech in Europe, but you obviously can’t incite violence, the same is true in the US, going online and trying to get people to bomb a building filled with gays or immigrants is hate speech and will get you arrested in most civilized countries.
I gut upvoted you because I want to confirm your point of view, it resonates with me. But you are asking the guy to doxx himself for an internet argument, besides maybe where he lives isn’t so bad and he wanted to express his sentiment.
The thing is that the US also does not have 100% free speech.
You can absolutely get arrested in the US for shouting “FIRE!” In a crowded area.
Regarding punishment for violent crimes seeming low in Europe, that is mainly due to us focusing on rehabilitation rather than revenge. However change is comming, we are moving to longer punishments.
If I got to decide, we would have a system where we focus on rehab for the first X times a person commits a crime, when it has been shown that the person does not want to change, then they are put in containment prisons, they are less nice, and focus on containment firstly, rehab secondly.
Free speech doesn’t not mean freedom from consequences.
Example. If you tell someone to kill someone else, and they do it, you will be charged with a crime. Free speech means that you can voice your views, and the government (not private corporations btw) is not allowed to restrict it. That’s why you can still read Luigi’s manifesto, or the Unabomber’s. It’s why you can still publish and read the Articles of the Confederacy, or the Anarchist’s Cookbook.
The small brained “you can’t yell fire in a movie theater” argument so we don’t have free speech is the intellectual equivalent of Jeff Bezos is poor because he drives a ‘93 Honda civic.
Yet that is exactly your argument, that only the US has free speech because Europe puts people in jail for online comments, without regard to what those comments are, it’s the equivalent to saying the US jails people for speaking in the movie theaters in the fire example.
Have you just come here from 9gag?
Your gun worship is killing you.
For what it’s worth, the majority of the nation doesn’t worship guns. But the very small minority that does, like… They worship them a lot.
The main reason US can and could ever delude itself into being great is for having a ridiculous people-to-land/resources ratio. There is nothing inherently great about how the US does things, it just seems that way because you can do whatever you want if you have essentially infinite resources compared to everyone else.
The people who worship it are also the people who screwed it all up. It’s like a failed experiment that needs to be reset. The freedom that everyone speaks of is mostly just one person’s way of taking freedom from another.
Yeah, in addition to having a super-endowment of natural resources, remember that we also stole the labor of about 20 generations of Africans to help turn that into wealth.
True, but that isn’t really very unique to the US
Of course! The part that Americans don’t want to hear is that we are wealthy because of that theft of labor. It’s not just an immoral peccadillo of our ancestors.
Also, they are geographically isolated which kept them out of most destructive wars.
For millions of United States Americans, the so called “American Dream” is achieved in Mexico. They’re often illegal immigrants. They often have mental health problems. They gentrify our cities and are entitled as fuck.
Pot calling kettle and all, but I do wish they’d go back to their own shithole country. They have demonized my country for decades and have weaponized the cartels to feed their own addictions. Most of the problems here can be tied directly to their humongous drug problems.
Yankee go home. The United Mexican States is tired of your shit.
And half of them won’t even bother learning Spanish. I’ll never give someone who immigrates due to hardship a hard time about learning the language, but privileged fucks who go to exploit a lower cost of living or whatever often just end up in expat bubbles and don’t know more than a few words of the local language even after years despite having that privilege of time/money/resources to learn it.
Spot on about the gentrification bit. Entire town populations have shifted from local people to the self called expats and snowbirds. Just look at Chelém, Mérida, San Miguel de Allende, Tulúm, Cancún and many many more including most upitty neighborhoods in México City (Condesa, Roma, San Angel).
I had no idea we had people illegally immigrating that much. Bet they’re the type to use the word “illegals” pejoratively.
American cars suck.
Hard agree, as an American. Honda and Toyota destroy our local companies in pretty much every regard other than maybe regulation dodging.
Can you even call our local companies “local”, they’re all assembled and built in mexico anyways.
Now that you mention it, I wouldn’t be surprised if Japanese companies manufacture more cars in the US than US-based companies.
Not sure about more, but I remember a story from a while ago that Honda or Toyota had the only NASCAR car entirely manufactured in the US.
My brother works for one of those “local” companies and was still calling it local even though he had half a dozen plants in Mexico he was responsible for tooling up
Ford is one of them that actually majorly is in the US. Fuck Dodge though
Preach. Some of the worst engineering in the industry over the last 40+ years.
Your traffic laws are weird.
-
Overtaking/passing on the right
-
4 way stops and whoever comes first can go
-
No strict right of way when coming from the right
-
Right on red
-
Grinding all traffic in all directions over multiple lanes to a stop when a school bus stops
At least the last one I can understand a little with the nearly non-existent pedestrian infrastructure.
Honestly right on red is so stupid. So many people don’t even slow down and they just go. Sometimes I’ll be waiting to turn right at red light and some dickhead in a behemoth truck behind me will start spamming their horn like they think I have the right away and can just mow down whichever pedestrians are in the crosswalk. I bike a lot and I have narrowly avoided being hit by a car turning right on red multiple times. One time I had a car graze my back tire which was really scary but fortunately I ended up okay.
To offer a counter argument. Right on red the concept isn’t stupid, its stupid to just sit there when there’s not a car in sight.
The drivers, shitty driver tests and 0 enforcement is all dumb.
It’s supposed to be treated like a stop sign, you stop, look, and go when safe. Not roll through at max speed. People also don’t seem to know that a red arrow equals a no-turn on red sign.
I’ve been seeing electronic no-turn on red signs that can turn on/off with the light cycle. So if the opposite lane has the left green, the sign tells you not to turn on red. One would hope they’re integrated into the cross walks too, (not that everyone uses those either).
I think the us has the worse road tests, mine was just some suburbs with 0 merges, no highways, a couple stops signs and maybe a light. Pretty much anyone driving for a day could have passed that thing, and that’s how we end up with the bullshit like “the fast cruise lane (pass lane)” “right roll on red” “the merger has right away” “merge on highway 20miles(32kmh) slower than traffic” “blinker optional” “blinker on only when half way through turn or merge” “break before blinker” “wave of death on two lane roads” the list could go on and on…
I know I’m being pedantic but I just thought it’s interesting that you said “there’s not a car in sight” when I thought the primary concern was drivers not paying attention to pedestrians crossing the street.
However, why is it more stupid to sit there when there’s not a car on sight only when turning right but not when going straight or turning left? There’s an argument for larger roads with many lanes, sure, but isn’t it the same when it’s only 1-2 lane roads?
Honestly right on red is so stupid.
Everything you wrote after this sentence told me that people are stupid, not necessarily the right itself. It makes a lot of sense, I’d like to have it in the EU.
You are correct in my opinion. I don’t like how many people assume it’s a green arrow or that you must go if able, but I wouldn’t give it up.
right away
Maybe it was autocowreckt but the phrase is “right of way”.
You’re correct. I wrote that at around 4 am and I had a variety of other errors as well on my first draft, that one happened to slip through.
Just trying to help where I can through pedantry. Had someone this morning use “all intensive purposes” and he was amazed at how much more sense the actual phrase makes. Recontextualized things for him a bit.
Not nearly as bad as left on green BUT yielding to oncoming traffic.
I’m so confused here.
The right lanes are the slow lanes - we overtake/pass on the left, and you are advised to stay out of the left lane unless you are passing. This makes sense because you need to slow down to exit the freeway, or in case of emergency, you are closer to the side of the road to be able to do so.
How else are you supposed to deal with 4-way stops? In my state it’s first arrival goes first, however if two cars arrive at the same time the car on the right proceeds first. It’s not that complicated, and I’m not sure what’s wrong with it?
And I’m not at all sure what you’re referring to regarding coming from the right? Coming from the right in relation to where?
How else are you supposed to deal with 4-way stops? In my state it’s first arrival goes first, however if two cars arrive at the same time the car on the right proceeds first.
By always respecting the second rule. There are no 4-way stops here. If an intersection does not have signs the vehicle on the right always has priority. No exceptions.
It’s not that complicated, and I’m not sure what’s wrong with it
The problem is that people have different views on who came first but there are no different views on where right is. If there are any disputes there can be no arguments on who came 20 milliseconds earlier, instead you can just look at who had the right of way.
Uh, we do have a rule about right goes first…
In a four-way stop, if you arrive at the same time then the one on the right goes first and if you’re across from each other then the one going straight gets the right of way and the one turning goes after otherwise it doesn’t matter if both are going straight.
Otherwise, if you have two people arrive at a four-way stop and one is clearly there before the other then the winner gets the right of way to keep flow of traffic going rather than waiting for the other to stop and go just because they were on the right side.
We don’t have a ton of roundabouts/traffic circles here but it works the same as it would in Europe.
You should see us a roundabout! 😉
Grinding all traffic in all directions over multiple lanes to a stop when a school bus stops
This varies by state, but I think I most of them are setup so that you don’t have to stop if the road is divided, or if there are more than 4 lanes (so 2 lanes for each direction, plus a turn lane in the middle, you don’t have to stop). As always, check your local laws, and when in doubt, signal and stop.
Edit: to clarify, the oncoming lanes don’t stop, the lane behind and adjacent to the bus still have to stop.
“check your local laws”
Lol sorry what? It’s even worse than I thought 😂
There are 50 states in the USA. They generally have the same rules of the road but you are being an idiot if you think that all states have the same laws. Does any other coalition in the world work like that?
A note, not all states operate this way, but the concept of ‘right of way’ is going away. Judges do not like the idea of someone feeling privileged enough to make a situation worse. In general, they want to implement fail-safes and not fail-unsafe situations.
Edit: To add - we’ve actually had this for a while, it’s called ‘failure to yield’. The switch is actually being more driven by emergency services making things worse, which is kind of relieving given the general sentiment. Unfortunately it’s just another phrase for the same thing, semantics…but if you do go to court, you’re better off presenting who failed vs who’s entitled.
I think I have seen this and been confused by it. Does it mean that nobody should assume they have right of way? For example, having right of way isn’t necessarily an excuse for being in an accident because you didn’t give way to someone driving badly.
If a person didn’t yield at a sign saying they should, and caused an accident as a result, they are demonstrably at fault.
Pretty much, the only caveat I’d add is the assumption of ‘right of way’. You can have situations where road conditions were unusual but drivers are not certain to all the conditions. The involved parties can all assume they have the ‘right of way’, when in reality the best option would have been for everyone to yield until conditions ARE certain.
I’ll give a personal example: I once came upon an accident on a bridge, and the cop cars were already on the scene. It was night, raining hard and the cop cars were facing the oncoming lane with headlights set to high. I couldn’t see anything past the cop cars, so I slowed down from 50 to 25. As I passed, I briefly saw a shadow of a person and heard them say “SLOW DOWN”. I still have no idea how close I was to hitting them, but they must have been very close to hear them thru the rain and sirens. I should have gone much, much slower, maybe even stopped. Fortunately, nothing bad happened, but I had assumed that since the one lane was open that it was ok to use. I don’t know why the cop cars oriented themselves in a way to blind oncoming drivers, but had something happened, the fault would have ultimately been mine regardless.
Another example is parking lots, so many accidents occur at busy locations. People forget how you are not supposed to block ingress (to prevent traffic backing up into the street and making things worse) and get road rage because they can’t leave. I’ve seen people try to “squeeze in” and end up blocking an entire lot because they can’t move. One side will say “zipper” (ie: “my turn for RoW”) the other will say “right of way”, and parking lots are notorious for not having any signs.
Edit: and ofc, old ladies who think blinkers give them RoW
Edit2: an example for cops: blowing thru red lights without making sure intersections are clear. To be fair, everyone should yield to a cop car in the performance of their duties, but this doesn’t mean cop cars get a free pass for RoW and can plow thru full speed, damn the consequences. They still have to take safety of others in mind and yield if required.
Edit3: because I’ve had the discussion before. Yes, it’s semantics. RoW and FTY are the same thing. I’m only saying the phrase is being sunsetted, no Judge wants to hear someone say RoW. Some laws even use them together as “Failure to Yield Right of Way”. The goal is to prevent the mindset of entitlement, to make sure the clarity of safeguards remain in place.
What does “strict right of way when coming from the right” mean? If it’s up for debate there’s usually either stops or yields, or road size rules (double yellow takes priority over local small roads)
-
Here’s one from the Middle East: Fuck your veterans. Y’all were right when you were calling Vietnam vets baby killers, and Afghanistan and Iraq weren’t much better. And here’s a corollary: Get the fuck out of the Middle East.
American here. Lots of us don’t want to be over there either. Seeing our tax dollars literally set on fire on the other side of the world pisses us off.
Another thing you may not be ready to hear is that the world holds you collectively responsible for the actions of your democratically-elected government even if you supported the other guy.
Seeing our tax dollars literally set on fire killing people on the other side of the world pisses us off.
(Padme meme)
Lots of us don’t want bases “over there” or in fact anywhere. The casual nature in which Americans think having bases in other countries all around the globe is normal and fine is highly alarming.
