The cause was easy enough to identify: Data parsed by Kuhls and her colleagues showed that drivers were speeding more, on highways and on surface streets, and plowing through intersections with an alarming frequency. Conversely, seatbelt use was down, resulting in thousands of injuries to unrestrained drivers and passengers. After a decade of steady decline, intoxicated-driving arrests had rebounded to near historic highs.

… The relationship between car size and injury rates is still being studied, but early research on the American appetite for horizon-blotting machinery points in precisely the direction you’d expect: The bigger the vehicle, the less visibility it affords, and the more destruction it can wreak.

  • SzethFriendOfNimi@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    53
    ·
    10 months ago

    People seem to have gone “feral”.

    Animals in the store?

    No shoes/shirt?

    Waiting your turn?

    Treating other people (especially service workers)?

    Nope. Just a feral return to “mine mine mine, me me me”

    • GBU_28@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      20
      ·
      10 months ago

      Yup. Everyone realized social norms/good behavior, was just a social shared agreement. If you opt out, and shit on the floor, it’s the other person’s fault for caring

    • dumpsterlid@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      10 months ago

      People are the same as they have ever been, the US is just genuinely entering a state of collapse and people are more desperate and less able to cope with side quests in life that demand them to be kind and patient.