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Legally Sociable
Personal blog · legallysociable.comcultureeconomics
Legally Sociable is a personal blog at legallysociable.com about culture and economics. Since 2018, 6 different Hacker News readers have linked it 14 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-02, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (4) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters cite Legally Sociable as a source for statistics on traffic deaths, including horse-related deaths in 1900s NYC, and on suburban population and car parking. The posts cover transport safety and housing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 4 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Pleasant Musings on Sociology, McMansions and Housing, Suburbs and Cities, and Miscellaneous Errata.
Most-linked posts?
- /2012/09/07/figures-more-deaths-per-capita-in-horse-accidents-in-nyc-in-1900-than-in-auto-accidents-today/3 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2018-01-10
What Hacker News says?
They were also seen as a safety win [1][2]. Horses and horse drawn carts were a lot more dangerous than most people here probably think they were. From the second link: > It is easy to imagine that a hundred years ago, when cars were first appearing on our roads, they replaced previously peaceful, gentle and safe forms of travel. In fact, motor vehicles were welcomed as the answer to a desperate state of affairs. In…
Comment linking /2012/09/07/figures-more-deaths-per-capita-in-horse-accidents-in-nyc-in-1900-than-in-auto-accidents-today/
on “Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic”Submitted Live event tickets and the first-sale doctrine (2011) as a story · 1 points
HN discussion>> But the roads would have been used for something, at a guess, was it trams and horse carriages, and that these didn't pose much of a problem? > Much less so, horses would not trample people unless spooked (and they don't have anywhere near the acceleration or speed of a car, especially as mass increases). That's what one would expect, but surprisingly that might not be the case. I haven't been able to find a lot…
Comment linking /2012/09/07/figures-more-deaths-per-capita-in-horse-accidents-in-nyc-in-1900-than-in-auto-accidents-today/
on “When cities treated cars as dangerous intruders”An interesting thing I learned a while back that surprised me was that in the days before cars, death rates from accidents involving horses and horse drawn vehicles where similar to the death rates in our time from car accidents [1] [2] [3]. Horses were also quite polluting. I wonder, then, if there were efforts back then to close major streets to horses? [1] https://legallysociable.com/2012/09/07/figures-more-death…
Comment linking /2012/09/07/figures-more-deaths-per-capita-in-horse-accidents-in-nyc-in-1900-than-in-auto-accidents-today/
on “The spine of San Francisco is now car-free”Fatality rates for riders, passengers, and pedestrians from horses in the early 20th century were actually comparable to those for cars in the in the late 20th century. I doubt the rates would be as high now if we went back to horses, because a lot of injuries that would have been fatal around 1900 would be survivable today, but I bet a lot of people would be surprised by how high the rates would be. Some articles:…
Comment linking /2012/09/07/figures-more-deaths-per-capita-in-horse-accidents-in-nyc-in-1900-than-in-auto-accidents-today/
on “Vehicle brakes produce charged particles that may harm public health: study”"more deaths per capita in horse accidents in NYC in 1900 than in auto accidents today" https://legallysociable.com/2012/09/07/figures-more-deaths-p...
Comment linking /2012/09/07/figures-more-deaths-per-capita-in-horse-accidents-in-nyc-in-1900-than-in-auto-accidents-today/
on “SureFly – a personal helicopter designed for safe and easy flight”In addition to the problems from urine and feces and dead horses that other replies have covered there was also a lot of death and injuries from horse and horse-drawn vehicle accidents. In New York City in 1900 for example the pedestrian fatality rate from horse accidents was higher than the 2003 pedestrian fatality rate from cars [1]. Here's an comment from a medical historian with similar numbers for England and W…
Comment linking /2012/09/07/figures-more-deaths-per-capita-in-horse-accidents-in-nyc-in-1900-than-in-auto-accidents-today/
on “Contribution of childhood lead exposure to psychopathology in the US”Fellow housing provider here. To your point about scraping the lots and building SFHs, I would counter the solution to that is to outlaw zoning for SFHs for tear downs. Raw land, go for it. But if a structure stood on a parcel, you can only increase density when rebuilding and upzone. This also potentially avoids situations like Naperville, Illinois, where you have a housing shortage at the same time obscenely wealt…
on “MIT 11.350: Sustainable Real Estate”> I do think cars have their place, but I don't understand how people have come to believe that cars in, say, Manhattan or the center of Paris, make a lot of sense. People have come to believe it because they believed it when cars first came on the scene. They believed it then because before cars major dense urban areas were not low traffic pedestrian safe areas that got ruined by cars. They were areas full of heavy…
Comment linking /2012/09/07/figures-more-deaths-per-capita-in-horse-accidents-in-nyc-in-1900-than-in-auto-accidents-today/
on “Big cars are killing Americans”Also, horses were incredibly dangerous. In NYC in 1900 for example the pedestrian fatality rate from horses was higher than the NYC 2003 pedestrian fatality rate from cars [1]. Similarly in England and Wales deaths from horse-drawn vehicles were around 70 per 1 million people per year in the early 1900s. That's in the same ballpark as motor vehicle deaths in the 1980s and '90s (80-100 per 1 million people per year)…
Comment linking /2012/09/07/figures-more-deaths-per-capita-in-horse-accidents-in-nyc-in-1900-than-in-auto-accidents-today/
on “Tesla braces for its first trial involving Autopilot fatality”"Jaywalking" as a term was a PR effort to reduce pedestrian fatalities. The control of pedestrian traffic to clear roads was not a crime invented by the car industry. It was illegal in ancient Rome to walk in the roads. In Pompeii you can still see the separate pedestrian routes. In NYC, prior to the invention of the automobile, more people were struck and killed by horses than have ever been struck and killed by au…
Comment linking /2012/09/07/figures-more-deaths-per-capita-in-horse-accidents-in-nyc-in-1900-than-in-auto-accidents-today/
on “Hoboken Hasn’t Had a Traffic Death in Four Years. What’s It Doing Right?”...or maybe not. The per capita death rate from horses and horse drawn vehicles in NYC in 1900 was higher than the per capita death rate from cars in 2003. Same for Chicago comparing horses in 1916 to cars in 1997 [1]. Horse related deaths in early 20th century England and Wales were close to late 20th century rates for cars [2]. That article does point out that we are better at treating people nowadays, so it is po…
Comment linking /2012/09/07/figures-more-deaths-per-capita-in-horse-accidents-in-nyc-in-1900-than-in-auto-accidents-today/
on “OR Union Wants Voters to Limit Grocers to Two Self-Checkout Stations per Store”Death rates from horse accidents were comparable to death rates from auto accidents nowadays [1] [2]. [1] https://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/10/31/cars-and-horse... [2] https://legallysociable.com/2012/09/07/figures-more-deaths-p...
Comment linking /2012/09/07/figures-more-deaths-per-capita-in-horse-accidents-in-nyc-in-1900-than-in-auto-accidents-today/
on “Automakers invented the crime of jaywalking (2015)”In 1950 40% of people were living in the suburbs. Now 55% are[0]. And that's against a population growth from ~148M then to ~330M now, so 59M suburban people then compared to 180M now and corresponding pressure that would make on size of car parks, moving shops out of centers to places they can have larger car parks, combined with more households with car ownership since 1950 and more cars per household. More popula…
Comment linking /2021/09/19/the-ten-fastest-growing-american-communities-are-all-suburbs-all-in-south-or-west/
on ““Healthy obesity” doesn’t exist. It is unequivocally bad for you”
