• 26 Posts
  • 227 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
Cake day: June 15th, 2023
  • Ice@lemmy.worldtoFuck Cars@lemmy.world•Reddit car crains at it againEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    To clarify, I was referring to visibility of deer and items. The situations you mention here limit the vision of the driver as a whole, and then the visibility of things no longer matters. Where I live we also have lots of deer, but accidents involving deer & other bigger wildlife is uncommon enough to make the local news (and you’ll almost never see such roadkill along the roads). During the season I’ll see animals several times per week, sometimes having to stop more than once on a single drive.

    Nastiest run in I’ve had was where a group of deer had gotten in between the wildlife fencing on a stretch of highway

    Illustration regarding visibility.

    It looks like wet pavement.

    That’s the part that makes black ice nasty. The temps can be slightly above freezing with wet spots everywhere. Then suddenly one small spot has slightly lower temperature. Bam, black ice.

    I agree that drivers have a much larger responsibility, barring reckless behaviour. What I disagree with is driving being inherently dangerous. It’s a question of system design. As you mentioned Wisconsin, I assume you live in the US. My condolences.

  • Ice@lemmy.worldtoFuck Cars@lemmy.world•Reddit car crains at it againEnglish
    59·
    8 months ago

    This is simply incorrect.

    • Deer are very visible at night due to their reflective eyes, coat (which is not black) and movement. They can be spotted at >150m distance with high beams on. The reason they (and other wildlife) are dangerous is because they can jump into the road at the last moment from behind cover.

    • Stationary items are usually a very low threat since the driver has a long time to spot them. Bigger ones (such as a tree, bin or car) are also inherently more visible. Also, the worst case is damage to the vehicle.

    • Adding on, it is usually mandatory for broken down/stopped vehicles to have their hazards on and put out a warning triangle ahead if they are in the road.

    As an intelligent being, you are ultimately responsible for your own continued safety. The good news however is that most drivers try to avoid hitting pedestrians.

    If you spend a lot of time around traffic at night, a simple reflector tag does wonders to increase your visibility and lets you take more space.

  • Ice@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyz•If God had wanted us to have nearly unlimited clean energy, He would have placed a fusion reactor into the sky.English
    62·
    8 months ago

    The days the steam engine are numbered.

    Not really. Unless there are some breakthroughs in technology that significantly lower capex & opex for grid scale energy storage, they’ll be sticking around for a long time.

    There is an asterisk on the 1TW number, and that asterisk is capacity factor. In practice it means that depending on the time of year and location, the effective output of your solar panel will be between 0-40% of label capacity .

    In my country for instance, you can expect 0-2% output from a panel in the winter time, which also happens to coincide with the peak demands (heating). Luckily, our politicians had some foresight in the 70s & 80s and built lots of hydro and nuclear power, which has been the backbone of our grid ever since (despite attempts to dismantle it).