#Bluey road safety

[blurban-form]

Pompom & Big Pickups

Pompom the Pomeranian is 4 or 5 years old depending on the episode and she is friends with Bluey and Bingo. She is about the size of a soccer ball, or a basketball, or a pumpkin, etc.

Front Blind Spots

You may have heard about this, if you follow transportation engineering / road safety topics: road safety advocates say private vehicles, especially pickup trucks and SUVs, are getting too massive.

Advocates point to the fact that these vehicles are large and that this, plus the position of the driver, results in a significant blind spot immediately in front of these vehicles. To demonstrate this, they will position a row of children in front of a parked vehicle and they’ll add children until the driver can see a child.

(The idea being that if there’s a kid located closer than the one that’s visible, the motorist can’t see them, and thus that’s a safety hazard: a child could be run over by accident.)

Imagine doing this with dog kids the size of Pompom! It would take a large number of them in a row before you’d see one.

This must be very challenging for car makers (and safety advocates) in the “Bluey” universe. Not to mention drivers!

Especially with vehicles getting larger in Bluey-Brisbane…

Not to mention there are grannies the same height as kids like Muffin…

(Actually I may have overstated the problem, at least for Pompom, as she looks like she is small enough for vehicles to pass right over her.)

Be careful on the roads, everyone!

#Bluey road safety #Bluey automotive design #ok I get it that Pompom is somewhat a sight gag #Bluey

[zahri-melitor]

If I go ‘ow!’ and fake cry and tell my niece she’s not allowed to hit people, be more gentle, I’m not parenting.

If I’m explaining to my niece the fact she needs a bath right now, it’s bath time, we just agreed for one more episode of Bluey, which we just watched, then we would go get ready for bed, it’s not parenting.

If I’m asking my niece to hold my hand as we are walking by a road, it’s not parenting.

I’m part of the village helping raise that kid, for sure. I’ve got responsibility for her safety in all those situations and I’m enforcing boundaries. But I’m not her parent; she has two parents and I’m following their position on what she needs.

[blurban-form]

Motornormativity (1/4?)

Another one of those long reads on here. Stick with me for this one…

Wikipedia says that “normativity” is the phenomenon in human societies of designating some actions or outcomes as good, desirable, etc, and others as bad, undesirable, or not-allowed.

Motornormativity is a specific case of this… the case can be made that past decisions now mean that driving is the only “realistic” form of transportation in many first-world cities, and society just goes along with this, and we just have to overlook the negatives of driving.

Put another way: Society just takes for granted a shared, automatic assumption that travel is fundamentally something you just have to do by car.

Everything from street design to the legal system to media reporting to shows on TV… all contribute (maybe insidiously?) with a consistent message being hammered home that motoring is all-important (and the harms of motoring are not important.)

Now does “Bluey” play a role in this? Does it contribute to viewers taking driving for granted?

Yes, but on the other hand, perhaps not entirely?

Read on...

1. Happy Motoring…

Car use is the norm for the families in "Bluey", the parents are all driving SUVs. I’ve identified a number of the models in past posts:

The Heeler SUV

Jack’s Family’s SUV

Chloe’s Family's SUV

Driving and cars are also the focal points of a number of episodes including “Road Trip”, “Explorers”, and “Pizza Girls”.

People/dog-people, if asked would probably say driving has many advantages, especially for families with small children -- it’s convenient, saves time compared to other modes of transportation (many times transit trips can be 2x or even 3x or more time slower than driving if transit even is an option), and is much more comfortable.

Even with the drawbacks to driving, i.e. costs (fuel, maintenance, insurance, the cost of the vehicle itself), stress/road rage, safety risks, the impacts on society, pollution, road requirements, etc., etc… most of these aren’t thought about most of the time by most people, certainly not every time they get ready to make a trip.

Note that this is generally the case whether you’re a dog-person or a human.

More to come…

#Bluey Happy Motoring #Bluey motornormativity #Bluey mode choice #Bluey driving #Bluey