Super interesting... it's like a linter for car crashes.
There are opinions that are not going to be liked (i.e. crash vs accident) but such is the nature of any linter.
Show HN: Identify car crash editorial anti-patterns using NLP
181–190 of 213 posts
Re: Show HN: Identify car crash editorial anti-patterns using NLP
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for the feedback. There seems to be some conflict with how to define "counterfactual". Merriam-Webster defines it as "contrary to fact" [1], so that comes down to a statement being either true or false. But the way I'm using it (and the research my work is based off) aligns more with the Cambridge dictionary usage: "thinking about what did not happen but could have happened, or relating to this kind of thinkin…
By the same token though, everyone on this discussion is jumping to "we must reduce speeds in cities" without doing any analysis of whether the collision would be survivable at the lower speed they are proposing. They just assume they don't need to because they have the moral high ground.
I don't think that's quite fair - the relationship between the severity of injuries to pedestrians and cyclists and speed of impact is so well established that it basically does go without saying...
Obviously there are other factors (size of the vehicle, whether it scoops somebody up over the bonnet or down under the wheels, whether the driver is following the speed limit or speeding etc. etc.), and there are other policy options that can also help increase safety, like separating cyclists and cars with curbs, barriers, medians, etc. But I don't think there is any controversy to the assertion that reducing speed on city/suburban streets does reduce accidents and the severity of accidents...
Re: Show HN: Identify car crash editorial anti-patterns using NLP
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US is so car dependent that it's very politically fraught to make it harder to get a driver's license. Not allowing a person to drive in much of the US is a matter of equity; people that can't drive can't make it to their jobs, can't buy their groceries, etc. What that means of course is that the US usually just knowingly increases the risk of non-drivers because of its brittle dependence on cars, and thus disinc…
I dunno, some of this is also the fact the US people are huge babies about certain things, like being able to walk places. For example, there was a reddit thread from an American flabbergasted that people in the UK will actually go on 30-minute-long walks down to their local shops. Is a 30 minute walk really that absurd?
People in the US have developed an aversion to walking because our built environment makes it terrible. For example, watch this video from about 4:25 on showing a typical urban pedestrian journey the US:
(One thing the narrator mentions is shade: Keep in mind that Houston is a hot city, with temperatures often above 30c during the summer.)
But that's not unusual at all. In fact, where I grew up in Pennsylvania many roads had literally no sidewalk.
Let's say I want to walk into town where my parents live. I'd be going down this road (you can follow along on street view):
https://maps.app.goo.gl/huqH4kcT3h667RZr7
That's a narrow road, but don't let it fool you. People there drive fast and they're in a hurry. They certainly do not expect to see someone trudging along the berm of the road. Or more likely in a muddy ditch beside the road, because Pennsylvania is wet and that's the safest way to not get hit by a car.
If you walk along into North Wales, PA, pay attention to the pedestrian infrastructure. Where are there sidewalks? Are there crossing signals? How would you know when it's safe to cross? Now imagine doing this in the evening (note: there are no streetlights).
Re: Show HN: Identify car crash editorial anti-patterns using NLP
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
One way to make roads safer is to make better drivers. There is a lot of training and continuing education that can be done to make better drivers. It is far too easy to drive, and once you get your license it is very hard to lose it even as your body degrades to the point you cannot see. People think of bad driving tickets (mostly speeding) as just a price you pay to drive. I've never heard of someone getting a tail…
I live in the USA. My friend Kristin is from Germany. She got her driver's license in Germany when she was 28. She trained awhile for it and then took 3 tests: city driving, highway driving, and nighttime driving. From how she described it, the training and the testing was much more rigorous than anything that has existed in the USA.
There is only one actual practical driving test.
Nighttime and Autobahn driving are just special lessons.
Re: Show HN: Identify car crash editorial anti-patterns using NLP
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its more the realization that you aren't safe, and that your safety is not only not a priority but somehow actively repugnant, all due to you being on a bike. If you are a kid driving isn't an option. If you don't feel safe on the roads as a pedestrian or bicyclist then your options are rather limited. This was my own experience, and if I had been less reckless I would have gotten less exercise. As it was, telling so…
Sounds like you should cycle in safer places then? Airline pilots don't complain because highways aren't a safe place for planes to be, and similarly it can be pretty dangerous to ride a bike in a place where cycling is an afterthought. Shifting the blame back to the drivers doesn't change that, if anything it tarnishes the reputation of cyclists even further. I get a similar feeling when I see people on Hacker News…
This is a masterclass in horrible logic. Every sentence either starts with an incorrect premise (e.g. that roads are only for vehicles) or makes extraordinary leaps in order to conjure a conclusion. Well done?
Re: Show HN: Identify car crash editorial anti-patterns using NLP
#186I'm curious how a similar tool built for airplane and helicopter crashes. What if it was due to mechanical failure, would you want the story to focus on a mechanic?
Re: Show HN: Identify car crash editorial anti-patterns using NLP
#187Slightly related is the crashes[1], which collects reports of crashes in the local news. They do this because they feel that in the news cycle these are heavilly underreported (as compared to for instance a terrorist attack) and therefore they seem less as a problem (to for instance improve infrastructure to reduce the risk of crashes).
Re: Show HN: Identify car crash editorial anti-patterns using NLP
#188I was expecting things like "woman was hit by a car" to be replaced by "A car hit a woman" (prefer active voice). Instead it refers to pedestrians as Vulnerable Road Users. It says the information that "alcohol was not a factor" is a "Distracting counterfactual. Readers place more blame on victims when articles use more counterfactual statements. Counterfactuals also obscure the systemic nature of incidents and place…
It's a tool for correcting bias.
The corrected version of "woman was hit by a car" (key actor not even mentioned) and "alcohol was not a factor" (unmentioned driver did nothing wrong) is "driver hits woman in unlit crosswalk, third casualty at this intersection this year."
The former statements don't challenge the status quo of deadly infrastructure. The latter statement does. Making the driver visible makes it clear to readers that drive that the story isn't one just about other people: they, too, could be doing everything right but still hurt someone.
Re: Show HN: Identify car crash editorial anti-patterns using NLP
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
> you are presumably a novice after all I'm 49 and I've been driving since I was 16. You can absolutely react to hazards without appearing skittish, which also alerts other traffic to the hazard if they're paying close attention. Trying to drive like a robot all the time is something that actual novice drivers think makes them better drivers.
I don't know why this other person is claiming that altering your driving based on what's happening on the road is a bad thing. Not adapting to the conditions is how many crashes happen in the first place. All that other stuff in this thread about safer road design is really about removing the need to think about how to drive. So instead of making it so drivers need to give cyclists room, safe road design would just…
>I don't know why this other person is claiming that altering your driving based on what's happening on the road is a bad thing.
Thanks for the strawman. My point is that doing so to an extent that is anomalous compared to other traffic sends up red flags.
Re: Show HN: Identify car crash editorial anti-patterns using NLP
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every speeding ticket that I’ve gotten in the US was issued on a controlled access road with a speed limit of at least 55mph. None were for as much as 20 over. Most were from pack travel where deciding to travel at the posted limit would result in far more passing and aggregate risk to roadway users. I do believe all of those are minor infractions (and of course they were inconsequential, except for the delay and exp…
That's another part of this issue. Traffic enforcement in the US is more ideological than it is utilitarian. Automated enforcement tools like red light cameras and speeding sensors run into intense political pushback in the US. Speeding tickets are usually ways to boost revenue instead of actually trying to deter speeding behavior. Traffic stops are arbitrary and usually based on the political and ideological goals o…
>Automated enforcement tools like red light cameras and speeding sensors run into intense political pushback in the US
Of course they do. The laws they enforce with machine level reliability do not reflect the reality of how society behaves.
Nobody actually cares whether or not people obey the rarely relevant number on the sign so long as people travel a safe and reasonable speed.