That’s not something that really works with industries that are zero sum games. You can’t have a dozen competing rail companies in a given state because there is only so many paths that a rail system can take, and you need to clear out continuous stretches of land through eminent domain.
If a company provides a vital services and fails, it should be nationalized. If a company does not provide a vital service and fails, it shouldbe allowed to fail and the employees themselves bailed out.
The dictation software we have is pretty shitty though. It almost always needs proof-read, or re-dictated several times to get it right. At that point you may as well just send an audio clip.
Until the day that dictation software gets it 100% correct, it’s not going to be worth my time.
For now, the human on the other end will always have an easier time understand an audio clip than a machine, because human minds are more capable of using context and getting past regional accents.
Freedom is inherently dangerous
Only to a degree. Letting your child run free on a playground is significantly less dangerous than letting them run free in a hazardous waste landfill. We can absolutely design safe and free places. We just need to stop designing our cities for the sole use of hazardous waste (cars).
We need to allow more mixed zoning so that we don’t have to travel 20 minutes by bike to get to the store, alleviating the drive to ride as fast as possible.
Not only would that eliminate the need for speed, but it would also reduce the overall number of trips taken by bike. Less trips means less crashes. Same goes for cars.
Add it to the never ending list of benefits to mixed use zoning.
I don’t think safety courses and licensing are a huge barrier to entry though, unless we let them be.
Training and licenses generally aren’t free, and e-bikes are already pretty expensive. It would add quite enough of a barrier to entry to dissuade more people from switching to them, which is something the environment cannot afford. We honestly need to be doing everything in our power as quickly as possible.
And yes, training and a license would indeed make a difference with how riders conduct themselves. Including wearing a helmet or paying attention.
I’ve seen plenty of car drivers on the road who presumably have a license, yet they don’t wear seat-belts, don’t pay attention, turn in places they shouldn’t, speed, etc. The first step should be infrastructure changes to increase the number of protected/dedicated bike trails (which in turn allow accidents to happen safely), built in speed limiters, rules on helmets and speed, mixed use zoning to reduce trip count/speed/cars, etc. Such changes don’t have an impact on barrier to entry or and only a negligible effect on our freedom.
Traveling by bike is one of the few ways you can travel without having the government involved in some way, or at least minimally involved. I’d like it to stay that way.
And like I said earlier, most of these injuries are to the rider themselves, which means they were probably doing something stupid in the first place. People are going to be stupid even with a license and training, so we may as well design around it as a first step.
I have a cat. It likes to get into things I don’t want it to. I could theoretically teach it not to do so, but the far simpler option is to keep the layout of my house and my things such that it can’t get into things in the first place. If I keep the closet doors shut, it isn’t getting in. People are stupid, and similarly, we should design our infrastructure to account for that. It’s why speed bumps exist after all.
We are at a point in time in which we can’t afford to wait any longer to switch away from fossil fuels, and e-bikes are one of the ways to do so. The barriers to entry should be minimal.
The majority of e-bike injuries are to the rider themselves, and due to inattention/falling off. That’s not something that training or a license will really help with. Speeding and not wearing a helmet on the other hand, those are things easier to catch/deal with.
The current situation with trains is shit because we as a country have allowed it to deteriorate.
Waiting 3 hours for a freight train is one such example. The majority of rail lines are owned by freight companies, so they give their own trails priority over passenger trains. That shit is unacceptable.