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Biggest Spike in Traffic Deaths in 50 Years? Blame Apps

nytimes.com

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

#152
post #139
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the problem. I don't want my news to be narratives and conclusions.

News isn't experimental data.

No, but they can report information without having to turn stuff into a narrative.

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

#153

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…

> One driver who caused a fatal accident was using Snapchat shortly before the crash. This driver was also going at 115 mph.

I've always thought it was irresponsible that snapchat has a camera mode that overlays your current speed on the picture. What else is it going to be used for? Showing how fast your bus is travelling?

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

#154

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…

I'm not sure if I've become more cognizant of bad journalism over time or simply hold journalism to a higher standard with the rise of publicly available data sets which could be used for real insight into questions like this. Whichever one, I am infrequently satisfied with the level of evidence that supports an article's conclusion. I would love to see a truly data-driven news publication that made quantifying uncer…

Do you know GapMinder[1]? I think that's what you are looking for.

[1] https://www.gapminder.org/

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

#155
post #142

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…

They obviously have agenda. Perhaps some restrictions on apps are coming into legislation and they want to "soften" the public on the matter or just "test the waters". Same type of "journalism" you can see in illegal drugs themed articles

> They obviously have agenda.

Could a desire for safe roads be one? Drivers on smartphones kill.

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

#156
post #21

I'm of the belief that while phones have contributed, it's just not hard enough to drive anymore. Try driving a manual shift, non power steering vehicle some time and using your phone. That's the world the roads were built for, not this ultra easy, power assisted, auto-speed control, auto-lane control world where you don't even feel the speed difference between 60 and 90. I used to hear people say they couldn't drive…

'Driving' in Los Angeles is totally different. You dont need all your faculties when driving consists of waiting 2 minutes, let foot off brake for 30 seconds, put foot back on brake, repeat 100x. Otherwise, I completely agree. I've owned manual shift cars my whole life. I find that a number of drivers dont really understand how a car and basic physics works. This may be an unpopular opinion, but I would blow my brain…

> This is an industry where a company lied about the emissions of their products for years.

Not only that. The individual computers speaking on a common bus are manufactured by the cheapest bidder, which is rarely the same company for all component. They can be cheap because they build to slightly fudged specifications. So the components on the common bus don't even speak the same protocol.

There was a presentation of some contractor using property testing to eliminate a huge number of integration bugs that had been in production for years. Scary stuff.

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

#158
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consumer electronics are designed to fail in 3-5 years. Cars aren't. If my 2012 Honda Accord started failing this year, I'd be really upset. If my 2012 iPad mini started failing this year... well, I wouldn't be surprised given it's age. I don't want my car's firmware failing or even slow when my ABS system needs to kick in because of an icy road. We must hold automobiles to a higher degree of quality and consistency…

You think the features of car touchscreens will still be relevant in 5 years? The point them in because it adds planned obsolescence.

I really don't think it's planned obsolescence - it's just that automotive entertainment systems are subject to the same amount of testing as everything else in the car, which means your average media system is 5 years behind. I have a 2005 Land Rover Discovery 3 with a touch screen, and at 11 years old, it still works the same as on the day I bought it. That's what you want. Software and hardware which continues working fine for more than a decade.

On the other end of the scale we have Tesla, which clearly does very little testing of their media systems, and pushes updates over the air, so things get broken or changed with every update. But "hey, it's not a big deal, we'll just push another update in a month!" - that's absolutely not acceptable with cars.

For example: https://medium.com/@michaelmeier_90534/tesla-model-s-is-grea...

I would be absolutely furious if my car did this. I would rather have a shitty system that stays shitty for the lifetime of the car, than have a good system that gets broken through an over-the-air update.

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

#159
post #142

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…

They obviously have agenda. Perhaps some restrictions on apps are coming into legislation and they want to "soften" the public on the matter or just "test the waters". Same type of "journalism" you can see in illegal drugs themed articles

Or they just know that they have a significant population of readers who think computers and smartphones are unnatural, evil and genetically modified poison, and that they have another significant population of readers who will call them out on the bullshit. Igniting a powderkeg of polarized readers is a great way to drive traffic, and therefore ad money.

Yes, it seems like standard operating procedure for contemporary media.

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

#160

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…

> One driver who caused a fatal accident was using Snapchat shortly before the crash. This driver was also going at 115 mph. I've always thought it was irresponsible that snapchat has a camera mode that overlays your current speed on the picture. What else is it going to be used for? Showing how fast your bus is travelling?

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