Good article and discussion here on Truereddit. It mainly focuses on the amount of protestors run over (left wing protestors, mind you, because if right wingers got run over, you know the cops and DAs would arrest anyone involved[1]) and how the drivers get off without any sort of punishment. [2]

Only problem is I want to talk about how this is only the latest manifestation of something that has been going on since 2009. 

Do you see that absolutely clear and sharp change? Go online and you hear "SUVs"!!! and yet here is another one for SUVs on the road:

Note how it only really starts going up in 2012-13 or so. I'm sure it plays some part, but how does that explain 2009's inflection point? I've even heard people [3] claim it's the recession that sent people walking [4]. Just a look at the chart above and see how the previous recessions affected things? Yeah I see nothing at all. 

So what is it?

Well, let's look at what else happened in 2009 that could have caused such a spike, shall we?

Uber started. So that means the increase of cars on the road started (and drivers going fast trying to hustle). I'm sure that's something, but I'm dismissing this because there's no way it was big enough back then to have made a dent, you know? Few even knew about it back then. 

Well, the other major thing was a black man being voted POTUS. Now we all know the backlash to that (still ongoing today) and we all know how angry a subset of white America was with that. I lived in the South, was in the Army (ostensibly a more diverse place than the rest of the south) and the reaction from the whites to this was pretty uniform and pretty angry that he would ever get voted in. 

Hell, I remember how angry whites in the south are with people, especially black people, walking on the side of the road (a serious visceral anger that is kinda hard to get used to). Even remember a couple of racist jokes about using the car as a vehicle and I remember riding with a cop who was similarly aggressive towards black people (this in Washington) walking near the road. 

So this is something that has existed for a long time and most certainly was exacerbated by the voting in of Obama into office. 

Look at this chart: 

Most of the places with a high amount of pedestrian deaths/capita are in the south, matching up with what my experience tells me. Studies show that minority pedestrians are in fact more likely to die at the hand of cars, but it's more than what the talking/typing heads over at r/urbanplanning will say (which is the design of roads is all it is).

In fact, many studies show that cars are more aggressive to black people who are pedestrians. Hell, this book has a whole section on how inequality makes people in cars (expensive ones especially) more aggressive to pedestrians. Hell, even here in Seattle I've almost been killed 20 times. I can scream to the city about these attempts at murder, but they ignore them. 

So that's the story. Obama becomes president and racists start being more aggressive to minorities who walk, killing many more. Then when the first BLM protests happen, they continue their fantasy of running over innocent civil rights protestors knowing that the law will never lock them up. Hell, GOP passes laws protecting them and we still aren't willing to call this what it is. Democide. 

Now on twitter you see "all lives splatter" signs by right wingers and more attempts to kill with their cars and still nothing. Just a bunch of fools on twitter screaming about SUVs, as if intent was never a thing.

Your thoughts?

[1] For proof see how those idiots on 1/6 are getting 60 days for misdemeanors and a left wing veteran gets a lot more time than that for online posts. Like Germany and Japan before their takeover by fascists, we're seeing a similar pattern of light sentences for the right and hard ones for the left. 

[2] I still remember my book, rebel, and how I mocked the right (rednecks mainly) for taking a hezboallah sign for their own. But now reality shows them calling themselves "the base" (aka al Qaeda) and now mimicking ISIS in terms of running over innocent people. 

[3] Holy crap the amount of people with this take. I really can't explain it. I imagine it's because they think in terms of solutions that they want? I mean they're usually for road diets, which is something I want, but they just seem blind to this and I imagine it's that smart subset of elites who have very little experience outside a very limited track in life. You know... 

[4] Seriously, who comes up with this?