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The day I accidentally killed a little boy

bbc.co.uk

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Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#431

Post by Broken_Hippo »

pnathan wrote: post #317
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha. Very possible, but also depends if people feel inconvenienced enough to be angry afterwards. If it also improves traffic flow, it might be a win most ways.

Read up on the dynamic tolling political fights. Whoo boy, when you start actually charging people for driving (or inconvieniencing them in any fashion), the flamewars get pretty hot pretty fast.

See, that's the thing. There are a lot of thing we can do without actually charging folks outside of tax dollars. Take one of the more simple ones: Stricter traffic policing, especially in neighborhoods and people-prone (and therefore pedestrian-prone) areas. People can avoid any fines, and we can even pre-warn folks about it.

Now, some folks will be upset they can't go as fast and stuff, but they get used to it.

Some things aren't even obvious to folks, like roads designed to decrease speed. Generally, they are narrower rather than wider. I'm not sure folks will put the two together. Roundabouts? Well-timed streetlights, so long as you are going the speed limit? The first folks complain about, the second gets folks to go the speed limit.

The thing I'd personally implement that would get outcry is increased drivers education, which would increase cost. Id' have everyone take an actual course unless they have previously held a license in recent years. I think some exception could probably be made for farm families (special license for equipment and off-road vehicles) and quell the outcry a little bit.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#432

Post by jacquesm »

btrettel wrote: post #408
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Reducing speed limits and designing roadways to discourage high speeds. One of these works. One of these handicapps your infrastructure's capacity, reduces safety in certain conditions and has a handful of other negative externalities. I would wager that were it not for someone following the speed limit the woman in OP's story would not have been cruising along in a line of traffic with her situational awareness dim…

> You can design roads to reduce speed but just posting a different sign has minimal positive effect so better limiting/controlling interaction between different types/speeds of traffic on roads you already have (e.g. adding sidewalks or bike lanes) works better there. As a cyclist, my observation is that "share the road" signs are strongly negatively correlated with how well drivers treat cyclists. The signs are a r…

Cyclists are as often as not part of the problem where I live. I am both a cyclist and a driver and it influences my behavior in both cases. It is fairly easy to spot cyclists that do not drive (when they are over the age where they could have a driving license) and drivers that never cycle.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#433

Post by falsedan »

luckroy wrote: post #140
bryanlarsen wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO, the only person to blame in this incident is the person that thought a 50mph speed limit was appropriate for a road that kids live on.

Perhaps you've never been on rural roads that also have houses? There are many places where a 50+ mph speed limit is appropriate even though there are little clusters of houses dotted along the route. It's not practical to lower the speed limit for every house that has children.

> It's not practical to lower the speed limit for every house that has children.

Yes it is. Do you mean, it would make driving more inconvenient, since drivers would have to slow down when they passed?

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#434

Post by Simon_says »

logfromblammo wrote: post #365
magic_beans wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was not the driver's fault in this case. The child ran right into a residential road with a high speed limit. The road should not have had such a high speed limit, should have had speed bumps, and possible the little boy's parents should have had a fence. Punishing the driver in this case doesn't fix the problem at all.

Tragic preventable automobile accidents will continue to not be prevented, because over-engineering for one particular criterion is its own kind of tragedy. In this particular case, there is one thing that stands out to me above all others: the mailboxes were on the opposite side of the road from the houses. The second thing that distressed me was that the cop, after investigating and deciding there was no reasonable…

Cops just want to feel like they're doing something productive. Best just to ignore them.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#435

Post by Simon_says »

cableshaft wrote: post #331
mikemac wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here, wish there was a Netflix section for "movies where no children are harmed"

They also need one for "movies where no dogs are killed". There's a lot more movies that do that than you might expect. I know several people that get really angry when they are subjected to a movie with this in it.

That'd be a spoiler.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#436

Post by mcguire »

ashelmire wrote: post #357
mcguire wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About 15% of Swedes live in the Stockholm urban area, about the same proportion as Texas and Florida combined.

Texas and Florida combined have 5 times the population of Sweden, twice the area, and far more roadways. Solutions are more complicated in the US due to size, population, and broad political, economic, and geographic complexity. Stop trying to equate this tiny nation with one of the most populated and largest.

That was my point. 15% of Sweden's population live in 1 (one) urban area. You can reasonably compare it to some individual states, but in that case you get similar results, too.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#437

Post by billmalarky »

lolsal wrote: post #212
lasermike026 wrote: post #198

Cars are the 2nd greatest engineering blunder only second to nuclear weapons. Cars are inherently dangerous. Every time you drive you risk killing someone or yourself. We must work to eliminate cars from the world, at the very least cars driven by humans. I am completely serious. There are the pollution issues too.

You don't think the benefits that automobiles brought to the world are worth more than "2nd greatest engineering blunder"?

I imagine ambulances save more lives than automobiles take.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#438

Post by btrettel »

jacquesm wrote: post #432
btrettel wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can design roads to reduce speed but just posting a different sign has minimal positive effect so better limiting/controlling interaction between different types/speeds of traffic on roads you already have (e.g. adding sidewalks or bike lanes) works better there. As a cyclist, my observation is that "share the road" signs are strongly negatively correlated with how well drivers treat cyclists. The signs are a r…

Cyclists are as often as not part of the problem where I live. I am both a cyclist and a driver and it influences my behavior in both cases. It is fairly easy to spot cyclists that do not drive (when they are over the age where they could have a driving license) and drivers that never cycle.

Interesting. What distinguishes driving age cyclists who don't drive from those who do?

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#439

Post by eveningcoffee »

jablan wrote: post #429
Aloha wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is the argument the author of the article was trying to send at all. This accident could have just as easily happened in a dense urban core, as it could have in suburbia. The message was something else - sometimes, bad things just happen to people, and there is little you can do about it other than move on, and learn from the experiences.

The likelihood of death is proportional to speed [1], and the speed is lower in the urban cores. The math is super simple, and let's stop trying to justify bad urbanistic (essentially, political) decisions blaming it on the bad fate instead. [1] http://www.copenhagenize.com/2012/11/the-85th-percentile-fol...

This is simply wrong in the general case. While the speeds might be lower, they are still high enough to kill.

In addition the density of the traffic can be so high that just a single wrong step can decide your destiny every minute.

Re: The day I accidentally killed a little boy

#440

Post by jacquesm »

btrettel wrote: post #438
jacquesm wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cyclists are as often as not part of the problem where I live. I am both a cyclist and a driver and it influences my behavior in both cases. It is fairly easy to spot cyclists that do not drive (when they are over the age where they could have a driving license) and drivers that never cycle.

Interesting. What distinguishes driving age cyclists who don't drive from those who do?

The ones that do have a much better grip on what your average car driver will most likely do. A simple example: there is a road near my house where cars and bikes simply have to mix because there is no bike path. When I am cycling and I see a car approaching I will keep further right than non driving cyclists because I know the edge of road on the far side is soft and cars are likely to avoid that edge. Another is that I realize that if I can not see the driver of a car in his mirrors he likely will not be able to see me and I will adjust my behavior, even if it is my ´right of way´, such as when continuing straight on the same road as a car but on the right hand side and the car has a turn signal on.
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