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

181–190 of 255 posts

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

#181

Post by gsnedders »

frakr wrote: post #68
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...

It's also a bit worrisome that the driver apps only give the driver ~30 seconds to accept a new ride request. The requests almost always come in while they are driving. Drivers are forced to pay attention to their phone and try to figure out if they want to accept the ride, all while driving. It's incredibly distracting and they never have enough time to pull over and safely accept the request. This puts the driver a…

And is likely illegal in many places where using one's phone while driving is illegal. While this wasn't mentioned in Mr Y Aslam, Mr J Farrar and Others -V- Uber (the recent ruling about worker status in England & Wales), it does further add to the argument that drivers are not able to accept or decline rides at will, as if they are driving they are unable to legally decline them.

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

#182

Post by prof_hobart »

mnw21cam wrote: post #165
Ntrails wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll check my messages at a traffic light, or flick to the next song whilst driving. I don't see any particular danger in these things (apart from possibly angering the poor bugger behind me if I'm slow to notice the lights change). Much like ye olden days of changing a cassette or tuning the radio - there are times and place to pay less attention. People just need to be sensible.

Do that in the UK in front of a police officer, and expect several points on your licence and a fine. You're only allowed to use a distracting device in similar circumstances as you are allowed to be drunk. Arguing with an officer that you are parked by the side of the road is not sufficient if for example you have the engine on. In some circumstances just sitting in the driver's seat while in possession of the keys…

Unfortunately, the vast majority of people doing it are never spotted by police officers. I walk to work most days, and I can't remember the last time I didn't see at least one person (usually it's at least half a dozen on a 30 minute walk) texting while driving.

This morning, as I dropped my daughter off at school, some woman pulled off from the side of the road and drove about 30 yards before bothering to look up to see if there were any kids crossing.

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

#183

Post by varjag »

zaroth wrote: post #173
varjag wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That blip is probably thousands of dead people.

That graph is probably millions of dead people.

There were 1.25 million estimated road fatalities worldwide in 2015, so a 1% blip would amount to 12.5 thousand. So yes this blip represents very real entirely avoidable deaths, as the offset of the traditional downward trend suggests.

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

#184

Post by Freak_NL »

kriro wrote: post #177
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but... evidence like this is hard to acquire - the most you can get is convincing circumstantial evidence (if the phone survives get accelerometer and activity use from it. That sounds like a worthwhile branch of forensics) And even if we do it's hard to go from circumstantial to causal But as a driver, I can (un)happily attest that I am distracted from the road if trying to do anything non trivial with my podcas…

There have been quite a few simulator studies that have shown significantly worse driving for cell phone users. Granted it's a jump from that to the real world. I remember one from a while back that showed that cell phone users were as bad as drunk drivers with a relatively low intoxication but they were bad in different ways (distraction vs. aggression). I'm sure there must be similar studies in real world settings…

> Granted it's a jump from that to the real world.

Not that much of a jump though.

I wonder how much more evidence is needed for people to accept that having an active smartphone within range of your eyes and ears while driving is a major risk factor? You don't even have to use the thing; just knowing that notifications can show up any time now is enough to distract our primate brain. We've evolved to be able to detect and act on minute movements spotted in the corners of our eyes on the grassy plains, because it might just be a tiger lurking there. It's a (very effective, if you are a hunter-gatherer on a steppe) survival mechanism.

By now there are plenty of studies performed in driving simulators that proof that smartphones distract you significantly. Of course hard empiric real world data is hard to get by, because people involved in a crash will tend to deny or downplay the use or presence of a smartphone, so data from real world accidents is of limited use. What we do have is a lot of anecdotal real world observations by participants and traffic experts, where people conclude that a smartphone did indeed distract them to the point of (near) accidents, or where police officers on highway patrol can pick out someone texting based purely on the swerving of their vehicle (which they then confirm when the overtake them). But the point is that real world data cannot be ethically obtained in a controlled scientific manner for this topic — you can't let one group drive using their smartphone and another not.

Even here on HN it seems like a lot of people are downplaying the risk of smartphones in traffic, despite ample evidence pointing to just that conclusion. Is this one of those inconvenient truths?

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

#185

Post by pwg »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #26
yk wrote: post #11

What does a journalist think when he writes something like "biggest spike in traffic death in 50 years"? The NYT even has a nice plot, that clearly shows that there are two, perhaps three significant, spikes in traffic death, and overall traffic death were reduced to a third of the late seventies. I mean I just eyeball the plot, but to me it seems the story is that there is a plateau since ~2010.

> After steady declines over the last four decades, highway fatalities last year recorded the largest annual percentage increase in 50 years. So I guess the title makes sense, but I think it's extremely misleading.

It is - and it is a title that is misleadingly designed to be "click bait".

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

#186

Post by Freak_NL »

flukus wrote: post #115
ajmurmann wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 minut…

I think it's more about the lack of fiber. I used to take my gameboy or a newspaper with me until I changed my diet.

For a second there I wondered why anyone would have fiber glass internet specifically in their toilet, but not anywhere else.

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

#187

Post by S_A_P »

With cars being built to safety standards that make cars from even 1-2decades ago seem like tin cans, - spike in traffic deaths as I see it is likely due to: 1) distracted driving/apps 2) increase in prescription pill usage/drunk driving. I don't think it's #2 at all.

I don't need statistics to tell me that I am on of few drivers that puts my telephone in my pocket/center console so that I don't look at it. I will cop to hands free telephone talking and I admit it makes me a worse driver, but at least I have my eyes on the road. Bad journalism or not this is a real, infuriating, DANGEROUS, and completely preventable problem. I also can't believe how many people don't want to hear that they are doing something that makes them much more dangerous and much more likely to have an accident. I guess people just don't "feel" like it's wrong if they're sober. I am hoping that autonous cars are cheap and safe before my 9 year old starts driving. People don't seem capable in general of choosing either texting or driving and not both.

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

#188

Post by Freak_NL »

ddeck wrote: post #41
miaumiau2 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are saying, talking to a passenger "causes the same attention impairment level as someone under the influence of alcohol."? For sure there is a distraction, but it is definitely not on the level you described.

>So you are saying, talking to a passenger "causes the same attention impairment level as someone under the influence of alcohol."? That is not what they said at all. They are correct in pointing out that there is a great deal of evidence that conversing on a cell phone (even hands free) while driving is as dangerous as being intoxicated while driving. There have also been studies that investigated why talking hands…

Exactly. With a passenger you share the same locality and when traffic gets tricky, the passenger tends to focus on the situation at hand as well and won't expect immediate responses. With a remote conversation the other side is completely unaware of your local situation; the conversation takes places in some sort of blank virtual shared reality where only the participants and their conversation topic reside — your brain ends up needing to be in two places at once.

We're just not very good at that.

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

#190

Post by bmj »

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…

We had to purchase a new vehicle at the beginning of the year (it was becoming too expensive to maintain our VW camper van), and we purposefully chose a vehicle that did not have a touch screen for any of the controls. We drove several makes that included them, and it was distracting and difficult to do rather simple things.
Post reply on HN