10000Didgeridoos

10000Didgeridoos OP t1_iye2o7s wrote

Wild how many internet tough guys up voting this comment think they have the fighting prowess to take down two men who had the jump on them already...and with pepper spray? How do you plan on taking down two guys with a pepper spray vial? Please detail how you'd do that for us. Again, you're not John Wick.

I only meant in this particular instance it wouldn't have helped, not that carrying it was pointless in all cases. You aren't pepper spraying your way out of a robbery when it's you vs two guys your size or bigger. So you're saying if you were this victim who was suddenly assaulted by two dudes without warning because you thought they needed help, you'd be able to pull pepper spray out of a pocket and hit both quickly enough and accurately enough to get away without them beating you to death? Good luck with that, sorry. If you're already outmanned and don't have time to react like this, trying to fight them is a good way to go from simply being robbed to being killed.

It's not "bending over and letting them have it." Spare us the assrape metaphor, please.

It's the correct decision to maximize your chance of getting out alive and without severe injury because you decided you, a hospital employee caught by surprise, were capable of subduing two male attackers inside a parking garage despite the fact you have zero hand to hand combat training or experience. Again, good luck with that. This isn't a movie. You'd get your head slammed into the concrete, or if they have guns, get shot and killed over your car keys when simply giving them up was an option. No self defense expert anywhere advocates trying to fight back as a first option.

But real talk I don't see what the point of pepper spray is in a state with concealed carry. If you're that afraid of being attacked, you'd be much better off with a CC gun than trying to flail pepper spray into someone's eyes, and someone attacking you is much more likely to run and leave when seeing a gun pulled than a pepper spray device. Why would you carry pepper spray instead of a handgun if you want a self defense weapon? That makes no sense.

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10000Didgeridoos OP t1_iydwai3 wrote

TBH I wouldn't risk trying to pepper spray two men who for all you know might have guns. You're not going to win that fight by yourself even if they don't. Just let them have what they want and hope that's it. If they already got the jump on you there isn't much you're going to be able to do. Pepper spray needs to be pretty accurate since it's a liquid designed to not mist into the user's own eyes. The odds of you taking down two grown ass dudes with accurate pepper spray shots are not great. The second you pull that out of a pocket to point at one, you're getting beaten down by the other one.

Unless you're John Wick.

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10000Didgeridoos OP t1_iydvnvj wrote

Oh you can be 100 percent sure the crashed car was stolen and/or they had warrants out for themselves already. That's the only reason you'd be desperate enough to go full 3 star wanted level over a minor traffic accident.

It's amazing how the asswipes who steal cars always are such terrible drivers that they crash them. You'd think your goal in a stolen car would be to not draw more attention to yourselves.

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10000Didgeridoos OP t1_iydvhsg wrote

It's nuts that VCU has metal detectors at the emergency room entrance, but not for any other MCV building entrance, as if the people coming in to the emergency room and the people coming in to the other departments are somehow totally different.

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10000Didgeridoos t1_iydcwbq wrote

At Horsepen and Monument the other day, a car in front of me made a left turn on red a solid two seconds after the light changed. Like we got to the front of the left turn lane when it turned, they paused for 2 seconds, then went anyway as the cars coming straight who now had green almost hit them. It wasn't even close.

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10000Didgeridoos t1_ix88vht wrote

You're insane if you trust drivers around here enough to haul your children on the back of a bike in traffic.

It'd be one thing if there were bike lanes separated from traffic everywhere, but there aren't. Is it really worth that gamble? I'm gonna say no. This isn't Amsterdam. Pedestrians and bike riders get hit by cars here all the time.

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10000Didgeridoos t1_ix88pay wrote

Yep. If you happen to live and commute along the Pulse line, it's a good option. Anywhere else? Unreliable, and even if it is, it probably involves changing buses at least once and takes 3 times as long as driving does.

That's the thing - if you want to get cars off the road, the public transit option needs to be at least comparable in reliability and transit time. I'm not spending an extra hour round trip waiting and switching buses for the sake of not driving. No one except college students have that kind of free time.

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10000Didgeridoos t1_iuj0dx8 wrote

I had a flat tire on 64 and called the non-emergency number to get a safety vehicle with flashing lights blocking me from behind on the shoulder before I even got out of the car. It took 20 minutes to get there but it's just not worth the risk...let alone getting out and standing in the middle of the highway.

The vdot guy driving the truck said just a month earlier some guy was out in the shoulder because of a car issue up by Afton Mountain. The road was icy and while he was looking at his car, an 18 wheeler lost traction and slid sideways, with the trailer fishtailing like a whip through the shoulder where it smacked this guy into the grass well off the road. He lived but had broken "everything".

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10000Didgeridoos t1_iuizlsk wrote

It's not really "crazy" from an economic perspective.

In order to convert our past 60 to 100 years of suburban sprawl everywhere as a country into public transport you'd have to invest hundreds of billions of not trillions nationally into light rail and bus systems. It's also not clear where the land to run those lines would come from either because it's all privately owned and would have to be seized by eminent domain, if for example you wanted to build light rail through the Richmond metro area.

Stakeholders don't want to change anything. People driving mostly want to keep driving themselves, and business owners don't want to risk losing any volume because the parking or road outside their business has been taken away. We couldn't even convince a handful of places on Broad St to give up a small amount of 2 hour parking spots to have the Pulse run along the curb instead of in the middle of Broad.

It's also simply cheaper to maintain existing highway and road networks than it is to try to end those things or replace some of them. And COVID just fucked budgets everywhere, too, so it's not like there is a surplus of hundreds of billions of dollars sitting around.

So you'd have to essentially convince people to be taxed more to pay for this massive renovation, convince all the people who prefer driving to stop, convince business owners to go along with it, and convince politicians to risk being the ones advocating for this mostly unpopular stuff.

It's never happening. No one wants to hear this, but there is about zero chance cars are replaced to any degree in Richmond in the next 50 years let alone most of the country. This isn't to say we shouldn't try to get some of them off the road, but rather being realistic - the political will, voter will, and money isn't there for a magical massive public transportation conversion. We're mostly stuck with this.

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10000Didgeridoos t1_iuiy2uf wrote

Or insurance. The one time I went to court to try to get a speeding ticket reduced to traffic school, I'd say at least 5 people ahead of me in the docket all were in there because it was the umpteenth time they'd been caught driving without either or both of those things.

People do not care and if they need to risk driving without those things to get to a job, they will. I have an umbrella policy of $1 million on top of my car insurance because I'm aware one bad crash with an uninsured driver might bone me into bankruptcy if I'm unable to work a long period of time or need ongoing home health help because I'm crippled.

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10000Didgeridoos t1_iu3z55i wrote

Yeah.

And I'm sorry, but with as much respect to the deceased as possible, a VCU themed lager has exactly zero connection with a fraternity force feeding liquor in an act of hazing.

Simply having a beer with a university logo on it is not encouraging binge drinking or forcing anyone to drink themselves to death. I don't think Virginia Tech saw an increase in student hospitalizations from chugging cases of Hokie Lager.

The presence of a VCU labeled lager isn't going to increase student drinking. It's college. They are going to drink the cheapest beer in large quantities either way. Given the increased price of a microbrewed VCU lager over cheaper mass market options like Natty Light, Bud Light, etc., I find it hard to believe this would even sell in large amounts in the first place. Students aren't gonna regularly pay $1+ per beer bottle or can just because it has a black and gold typeface and the ram on it.

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