A driver plowed a car into a crowd at a street festival celebrating Filipino heritage in Vancouver on Saturday night, killing at least nine people and injuring others.
Some of those attending the festival helped arrest the suspect at the scene, who police identified as a 30-year-old man.
…
“It’s something you don’t expect to see in your lifetime,” Kris Pangilinan, a Toronto-based journalist, told Canadian public broadcaster CBC. “[The driver] just slammed the pedal down and rammed into hundreds of people. It was like seeing a bowling ball hit — all the bowling pins and all the pins flying up in the air.”
He continued, “It was like a war zone… There were bodies all over the ground.”
ITT: hillbilly gun-clutchers who don’t realize cars are only working when you don’t hit something, and guns are only working when you do hit something.
ITT: people who don’t realize that none of us are supporting guns. We’re drawing a comparison between the same ridiculous-ass logic that right-wingers apply to guns to try to stall and misdirect from concrete regulation and the exact same rhetoric people in this thread are making in defense of car culture and lack of regulation and safeguards around cars. Strict gun regulation is good; strict car regulation is good. Strict gun regulation would deter many mass-shootings in the US. Strict car regulation (including even basic considerations for pedestrian safety at the slight expense of cars) would deter car-ramming attacks.
“Why are you talking about guns cars at a time like this? I can’t believe you’re using this tragic mass-shooting mass-ramming to soapbox about gun car regulation. This isn’t the time to talk about how we let guns cars be so dangerous and how the direct result was this shooting ramming. The real cause of this was a mental health crisis. Society needs guns cars to protect ourselves get around. What do you mean, ‘Do I ever bring up this mental health crisis outside of mass-shootings mass-rammings?’ Uhh…”
On guns in the US you might want to watch these three:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BxvxbZGjlv4
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wNtxtuQxUz8
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QbXTDuwSVkk
It’s a tad more complicated than “gun bad” or “car bad”.
Every first-world country that has tight regulation shows an astronomical decrease in gun deaths from the US. It’s not more complicated; regulation works, and the more regulated guns are, proportionally the fewer deaths.
Maybe it’s time to revisit our car-centric lifestyle.
“car plows”
So we only call it a murder or a terrorist attack if guns are involved?
We are brainwashed and numb to car violence. Super sad that nothing is done to stop this from happening.
Cars need to go. Away forever.
There are a lot of areas that were designed based on cars. Where I live would be difficult for most of the residents without cars or something similar. The population density is too low to make most public transportation practical.
That’s because they specifically designed those areas to be car specific to serve the needs of the Nazi Ford corporation. “Population density” is a poor argument.
Just look up pictures of America 100 years ago. Trains. Streetcars. Trams. Buses.
Not fucking highways and urban sprawl.
By all means, live in your little suburb with your car. We just want the cities to be safe from the violence they bring.
Good news, in those places a driver going off the road isn’t going to hit a crowd of people.
I completely agree. If you look at the comment I was responding to, though, you’ll see they appear to be advocating a complete prohibition, “Cars need to go. Away forever.” I’m just saying there are places where that’s not practical.
Are you in the regular habit of bringing up your political agenda at funerals and vigils?
A terrorist attack has a narrow definition in Canadian law where it is specifically part of a premeditated ideological, religious or political attempt to influence government policy or to intimidate a section of the public to a specific end. Basically if this guy didn’t have a manifesto or ever stated his reason within this rubric and was not part of a group that has specific aims then it follows under a regular old spree killer homicide unless it was racially motivated in which case it is also a hate crime.
Whether one uses cars or guns is not a factor in determining what counts as a terrorist act. The reporting on this has not been great ar clearing up this point.
Where are you “mental health issues” people coming from? I know you people are brainwashed by the car corporations but come on now half my inbox is full of you.
Cars need to go, streets need to pedestrianize, and bollards need to go up to make sure cars stay the hell out.
To your point, imagine if this were a mass-shooting and the title were: “Nine people killed after gun shoots into crowd at Vancouver Filipino Festival”. “Nine people killed after knife stabs into crowd at Vancouver Filipino Festival.” It’s so fucking passive as to be sickening. It reminds me of the “Man dies in officer-involved shooting” trope we see in US media because extrajudicial murder by the police is so routine and heavily whitewashed.
The AP gives it the same treatment. The only equivalent I could think of is “Nine people killed after bomb explodes into crowd”, and you know why that might be written that way? Because it’s not immediately obvious who placed the bomb. This mass-murdering psychopath is in custody; we can say “Nine people killed after man drives into crowd at Vancouver Filipino festival.”
Edit: the death toll is now eleven, not nine.
Cars are absolutely not the problem here. Yes cars have issues, but using this as an anti-car platform is disgusting and shameful.
This is a growing problem with mental illness, racism, and the right wing. Focus on the problem.
Oh yeah, the old “this isn’t a gun car issue; this is a mental health issue”. “You’re disgusting for trying to make this mass-shooting mass-ramming about guns cars; this isn’t the time™.” It’s such a shame that the US is the only place in the world with a mental health crisis and that’s why first-world gun deaths almost exclusively happen in the US, not in Canada where firearms are heavily reg– checks title Oh wait. It seems like “This isn’t an X issue, it’s a mental health one” curiously always seems to come back to “I want you to solve this nebulous, prolific, and stochastic issue in lieu of addressing the most immediate, concrete problem by regulating X because I really like my privileged position of being able to use X however and wherever I want and fuck anybody who suffers for or questions that privilege.”
Why can’t it be both? Car deaths have concrete, meaningful steps we could immediately take (pedestrianizing roads, adding bollards to pedestrian streets, reducing car dependency so fewer people own and drive cars, etc., and that’s just for incidents where people intentionally use cars to murder people), but it seems like you happen to prefer ignoring the reality that designing cities around cars is horribly dangerous and dysfunctional. “Cars have issues”? Yeah, try reading the title to see one of them.
It’s so obvious this attack was trivial to a point where it’s not even settled that it was intentional. You think this man could’ve killed nine eleven people and injured twenty more with his fists? Seriously?? [Editor’s note: they seriously compare it to being armed with fists in a now-removed comment.] Even a knife attack is considerably more difficult, and it has at least some minimum barrier that you need to be in some kind of physical condition to perpetrate one, that there’s a minimal chance of escaping the scene, that there’s more chance of stopping it early, and that a car attack can be done much more impulsively. Plus there’s the matter that regulating cars is massively easier than regulating knives. A goddamn infirm 90-year-old has the capacity to perpetrate this attack. And what would’ve prevented it completely? A few slabs of concrete or steel that any decent pedestrian street would have. Make psychological and psychiatric care free under Canada’s Medicare? Absolutely, do it. Do it right now; why haven’t we already? Do I think that’d be as effective at preventing this attack as literally just some slabs on the street? No.
While I agree that it skews the narrative, it’s likely that media at early stages of the story use passive language like that to leave open the possibility of various causes, such as mechanical malfunction or even an algorithmic failure.
It’s not nessisarily skewing the narrative, it’s just not providing context. Terrorist acts have a narrow definition in Canadian law. This guy could be a spree killer motivated by racism but unless that killing is for premeditated ideological, religious or political reasons to coerce a specific result or change of policy from the population / Government it doesn’t fall under the definition.
No manifesto or claim of reasoning or connections found to groups that claim responsibility - no terrorist designation.
Yes, but you’re mixing several points here, primarily environmental and direct harm. Car-centric city design is harmful, but a highway doesn’t up and kill people one day in the same way that a driver hitting someone with their car does.
The other thing you’re mixing into this one comment is the attribution of harm, the “car plows into crowd” thing. Yes, the car didn’t do it, a driver drove their car into the crowd. Having the reporting properly attribute the action is a separate issue from the actions themselves.
Can mods do something about this thread? Everyone is engaging in friendly speculation that it was terrorism, because their lizard brains are remembering the Toronto attack. This was a mental health problem. The suspect was not a white supremacist. Go back to America please.
In this case I have too little insight. But it’s quite clear how biased these reports are in Germany. Anyone not absolutely German is immediately a terrorist and every white, German dude is a confused loner. Media never suspects that mental issues based on trauma from war and refugee journeys might be a good reason or that guys voting for right wing extremists and killing “woke” people might have anything to do with their political views.
Well there is quite a lot of evidence to suggest this was a mental health issue.
The thing is before evidence comes up we see the issue with reporting:
- if black it is gang activity until proven otherwise
- if brown it is terrorism until proven otherwise
- if white it is mental health until proven otherwise
Cars are a terrorist threat! We should remove them from our streets.
Actually, I agree. Put them underground, in a tunnel, where people aren’t walking.
Walking > Bikes > Trains > Buses > fuck cars.
Don’t put them in the city at all, even in a tunnel. If you’re going into the city, park and take transit. (Edit: my complaint here is personal; Boston had an interstate running through it, which they buried, and then put a four-to-six-lane road on top of it where there was supposed to be green space.)
Yeah, I know some people can’t do that because they’re working and need tools, e.g. plumbers, but if we get all the casual drivers on transit it’s good enough.
