Editing Talk:1075: Warning

I have reworded the explanation (which said evolution had not prepared us for the modern world 'yet'). That implies that we are part-way along an evolutionary process that will see us well suited to motor vehicle travel in the forseeable future, which is not the case and which I don't think was intended by the comic. The sort of evolutionary adaptations required to make us fairly well suited to motor vehicle travel (as opposed to being well suited to walking around all day picking berries and spearing things, as we are now) would take at least several million years, and I think it is extremely unlikely we will still be driving around on highways in cars by then. So there will never be a successor species to the human that is adapted to motor vehicle travel. The main problems with us and cars are (1) reaction time, (2) durability in high-speed impacts and (3) a metabolism that is not adapted to sitting on our backsides whenever we want to get anywhere. For the past 3.5 billion years, none of our ancestors ever had to respond to mishaps at any faster than about 20km/h (running flat out). While our common ancestor with the chimpanzees was probably much better at surviving falls from heights than we are, surviving a collision at highway speeds is not something any of our ancestors ever had to do (at least not often enough to be adapted to it - they weren't adapted to occasional falls from very high cliffs either). Fast vehicles have only appeared in the last couple of hundred years and I would expect it to be many tens or hundreds of thousands of years before these new selection pressures make any noticable (although even then quite inadequate) difference to human physiology. So a very long-winded comment I know, but I hope it will give some perspective. [[User:Tarkov|Tarkov]] ([[User talk:Tarkov|talk]]) 09:34, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

I have reworded the explanation (which said evolution had not prepared us for the modern world 'yet'). That implies that we are part-way along an evolutionary process that will see us well suited to motor vehicle travel in the forseeable future, which is not the case and which I don't think was intended by the comic. The sort of evolutionary adaptations required to make us fairly well suited to motor vehicle travel (as opposed to being well suited to walking around all day picking berries and spearing things, as we are now) would take at least several million years, and I think it is extremely unlikely we will still be driving around on highways in cars by then. So there will never be a successor species to the human that is adapted to motor vehicle travel. The main problems with us and cars are (1) reaction time, (2) durability in high-speed impacts and (3) a metabolism that is not adapted to sitting on our backsides whenever we want to get anywhere. For the past 3.5 billion years, none of our ancestors ever had to respond to mishaps at any faster than about 20km/h (running flat out). While our common ancestor with the chimpanzees was probably much better at surviving falls from heights than we are, surviving a collision at highway speeds is not something any of our ancestors ever had to do (at least not often enough to be adapted to it - they weren't adapted to occasional falls from very high cliffs either). Fast vehicles have only appeared in the last couple of hundred years and I would expect it to be many tens or hundreds of thousands of years before these new selection pressures make any noticable (although even then quite inadequate) difference to human physiology. So a very long-winded comment I know, but I hope it will give some perspective. [[User:Tarkov|Tarkov]] ([[User talk:Tarkov|talk]]) 09:34, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

I do not think this comic is actually about cars (or other modes of transportation at all, really) but more about the great (and becoming greater still over time) divide between our biological evolution against our cultural, technological and governing ones and how we are not prepared to deal with this big mess that it creates in it's wake. [[User:Ragnarok700|Ragnarok700]]

I do not think this comic is actually about cars (or other modes of transportation at all, really) but more about the great (and becoming greater still over time) divide between our biological evolution against our cultural, technological and governing ones and how we are not prepared to deal with this big mess that it creates in it's wake. [[User:Ragnarok700|Ragnarok700]]

[[Special:Contributions/108.162.241.8|108.162.241.8]] 22:26, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

[[Special:Contributions/108.162.241.8|108.162.241.8]] 22:26, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Vehicles fast enough to injure people crashing in them or falling off them (e.g., chariots) have existed for several thousand years. Still, that's not long enough for significant evolutionary adaptation. [[User:Gmcgath|Gmcgath]] ([[User talk:Gmcgath|talk]]) 21:42, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Vehicles fast enough to injure people crashing in them or falling off them (e.g., chariots) have existed for several thousand years. Still, that's not long enough for significant evolutionary adaptation. [[User:Gmcgath|Gmcgath]] ([[User talk:Gmcgath|talk]]) 21:42, 17 December 2016 (UTC)