Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Biggest Spike in Traffic Deaths in 50 Years? Blame Apps

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 255 posts

Re: Biggest Spike in Traffic Deaths in 50 Years? Blame Apps

#81

Post by pash »

The author neglected to mention that miles driven in the United States increased by a record 107.5 billion last year, up 3.5% [0]. Even at 2014's all-time low death rate of 1.08 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled [1], that increase in driving would lead us to expect 1,161 more deaths on the roads. There were actually 2,417 (7.4%) more deaths in 2015 than in 2014, so the increase in driving accounts for "only" 48% of the increase in deaths.

What accounts for the rest? More notable than the increase in deaths is that the death rate increased from 1.08 per 100 million VMT to 1.12 (3.7%), only the second year-on-year increase in the death rate in the past two decades. The only other increase in the death rate occurred between 2011 and 2012, and the biggest decreases in the death rate over the past two decades occurred in 2007–8 and 2008–9.

What was happening in those years? First the Great Recession, then an economic recovery. The years of the Great Recession were saw the steepest declines in miles driven in decades, and the last several years of economic recovery have seen the sharpest increases in driving (to an all-time high last year). The recession years were also the only years vehicle registrations fell in recent decades, and the number of licensed drivers flatlined for the first time since the previous recession in the early 2000s; licenses and registrations ticked up again during the recovery years, and were up strongly in 2014 [2].

So we saw the death rate fall as the recession hit and people drove less, fewer people got licensed to drive, and fewer vehicles were on the road. Then during the recovery we saw the only increases in the death rate in decades, as people started driving more and more new drivers got licensed and hit the roads.

Here's a hypothesis: the death rate fell sharply during the recession because (a) fewer cars were on the road, making roads safer, and especially because (b) the cohort of drivers changed, shifting older, more experienced, and more cautious as fewer young people (who were hit hardest by the economic downtown, and who have the highest rate of death by car) could afford to drive. Then during the recovery those changes reversed and people began to die on the roads at a higher rate.

Corollary: this article about apps causing driving deaths is mostly journalistic nonsense.

0. http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/travel_monitoring/...

1. http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx

2. https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2014/d...

Re: Biggest Spike in Traffic Deaths in 50 Years? Blame Apps

#83

Post by Scoundreller »

embiggen wrote: post #62
Scoundreller wrote: post #59

The article fails to provide any statistics to show that apps are the cause. It just publishes a few case reports where apps were involved in an accident, and notes an uptick in traffic fatalities. I think apps have reduced my chance of causing a traffic death: My cognitive load for driving is much less than it used to be. I no longer need to scan my environment for street signs, store signs or exit signs. I never ne…

Polar Opposite of other parent: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12964329 Both purport situational awareness" to have vastly different consequences and effects.

In my locale, possibly for legal/insurance reasons, Uber drivers far too often keep their phones very low, and out of sight from other vehicles. Therefore, they have to keep looking far down.

For Uber drivers, the app is like a slot machine: you have to keep checking/interacting with it, lest you miss your next fare. With a navapp in a personal car, if it says I need to take no action for the next 1/10/100km, I know I can focus on the vehicles around me instead of signs for roughly that time.

Re: Biggest Spike in Traffic Deaths in 50 Years? Blame Apps

#84

Post by hueving »

Naritai wrote: post #72
bbarn wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Im going to wait on owning one until an auto company open sources their code and there has been enough time to examine it thoroughly. In short, bring on the self-driving cars but do not make them mandatory. Just make licensing much more strict. At some point, we'll need to hold people to the same standard as the machines, and then.. when most people can't, we make it mandatory.

'make licensing more strict' is basically going to bring the standard up to the level of machines anyway... every time there is an accident, lawmakers will create ' s law', which tightens the requirements a bit further. Sadly, I also predict that this is the only mechanism by which requirements will be tightened.

There are already laws covering most accident scenarios and people violate them and get into wrecks. If Sally runs a red light and smashes into Bob and kills him, what exactly do you think "Bob's law" would entail? It's already illegal to run red lights.

Re: Biggest Spike in Traffic Deaths in 50 Years? Blame Apps

#85

Post by [deleted] »

bigethan wrote: post #49

As a cyclist in SF, Uber/Lyft drivers are the most dangerous thing going. They're driving by staring at their phone's map for directions and pickup/dropoff. Once they stop, they stare at their phone for the next ride. Very little situational awareness. It'd be nice if there was some sort of way for them to indicate they drive erratically. Perhaps by painting their cars all yellow or something...

[deleted]

Re: Biggest Spike in Traffic Deaths in 50 Years? Blame Apps

#86

Post by ajmurmann »

et-al wrote: post #12

As an aside, sometimes I wonder about how much more efficient we are today due to smartphones. Places where we've lost time: - at the stoplight, the driver in front of you is too busy looking down to notice the light has changed - in the bathroom, people check social media on the toilet - on the sidewalk, folks walk slower because they're pre-occupied with texting - meeting up with friends, it's more acceptable to be…

I think you are spot on with the bathroom. It's unbelievable to me how much time people seem to spend in there now. The last two times I've arrived in SFO and went to the bathroom I had to wait for a stall I ended up waiting about 5 minutes till anyone came out of the stalls. Meanwhile you hear notification sounds coming out of some of them. Likewise at work some people disappear in the bathroom for close to 30 minutes. I am becoming more and more in favor of installing jammers in public bathrooms.

Re: Biggest Spike in Traffic Deaths in 50 Years? Blame Apps

#87

Post by mattbeckman »

m3rc wrote: post #34
niftich wrote: post #29

Apps are a plausible contributor. But I also noticed that some new cars ship with infotainment systems that consist solely of a (bad) touchscreen; as new cars slowly replace old ones, the number of cars with actual physical buttons for the music player or radio is dwindling. This is awful because the lack of physical buttons prevents the tactile feedback needed to operate the device without having to look at it. Luck…

I can't stand touchscreen systems. Instead of a single physical switch to turn AC on or off it's two latency laden taps. Part of it's menu design but I can't help but feel like it's always gonna happen with touchscreen centric designs.

It probably won't be as big of a concern going forward as self-driving cars become the norm. For non-self-driving, I agree with you.

Re: Biggest Spike in Traffic Deaths in 50 Years? Blame Apps

#88

Post by ajmurmann »

grandalf wrote: post #9

Not necessarily just apps, how about IOS: The worst for me is the delay in rendering the bar that occupies the top of the screen when navigation is in use or when tethering is in use. I often look at the screen, then tap, but in between those events the bar appears and receives my click. It's nearly always inconvenient to get the phone back to the intended screen. It seems that the delayed appearance of the bar is an…

Yeah there is nothing more annoying than looking at where Waze wants me to make the next crazy turn and the directions are blocked by a notification. I take my eyes off the rainy, busy road to ensure I am turning into the right street and instead see that I received recruiter spam.

Re: Biggest Spike in Traffic Deaths in 50 Years? Blame Apps

#89

Post by wvenable »

edgyswingset wrote: post #74
wvenable wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that the point of the rating system? I don't want to be killed by my next Uber ride because you feel bad rating them appropriately. I've never had a bad Uber experience but I have had some downright frightening cab rides and I'd love to be able to rate that.

Yes, except it's not really a fair system. A 4.5/5.0, to me, is an excellent score. That's an A- if it were a grade on a math test. Yet in Uber, a 4.5 means you get your driving privileges revoked. How does that make sense? It isn't a system in which I can fairly and accurately vote someone's work.

> Yet in Uber, a 4.5 means you get your driving privileges revoked.

If that is unreasonable, why is that the system? If I can have nothing but 4.6+ drivers then why wouldn't I want that? If Uber doesn't have enough over 4.6 drivers, wouldn't they simply lower their standards? I can only assume that isn't a problem.

Re: Biggest Spike in Traffic Deaths in 50 Years? Blame Apps

#90

Post by mck- »

apsec112 wrote: post #65

Headline: "Blame Apps" Evidence given in the article: - "Safety experts say" that it's true. The experts are not named or quoted. No evidence or reasoning is given to support the claim. - Highway fatalities are up this year. However, they're still significantly down from 2007, when the iPhone was first introduced. Mobile has been booming for almost a decade - if we should "blame apps", why hasn't it been a concern be…

Next decade, the NYT will run another story titled: "Biggest drop in traffic deaths in 60 years".

Autonomous cars are around the corner and it's the only way to truly make a leap forward in terms of traffic safety.

And people can spend even more time on their apps while commuting, uninterrupted by this soon-to-be-forgotten distraction called "manual driving".

Incidentally wrote a blog about this today: https://medium.com/self-driving-cars/safer-roads-and-cleaner...

Post reply on HN