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Show HN: Identify car crash editorial anti-patterns using NLP

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Re: Show HN: Identify car crash editorial anti-patterns using NLP

#91

Post by lkbm »

fermigier wrote: post #18

I like the general idea, and the use of NLP to implement it. But I am dubious about some of the principles behind it. - For example, I find it inaccurate to say "the driver hit the pedestrian", which to me suggests a collision between two people, not between a person and a vehicle. (Of course this does not apply to a phrase like "the vehicle fled the scene" - it is clear that it was the driver who fled the scene). Wh…

> - For example, I find it inaccurate to say "the driver hit the pedestrian", which to me suggests a collision between two people, not between a person and a vehicle.

Or alternatively, they got in an argument and the driver punched the pedestrian.

On the other hand, you'd never say "the bicycle hit the pedestrian". It would be "the cyclist hit the pedestrian". The former would make it sound like the cyclist had ejected from the bike and the bicycle to continue onward and collided with the pedestrian.

Part of this may be that when a bicycle crashes into me, the 20LBs of bicycle is less important than the 150LBs of cyclist, whereas with a car it's the momentum of the vehicle that's deadly, but I suspect there's also just the fact that we've normalized absolving drivers and blaming the car itself.

Obviously, the correct solution is to say "the human-operated car crashed into the pedestrian", just as we'd say "the self-driving car" if it were autonomous.

Re: Show HN: Identify car crash editorial anti-patterns using NLP

#92

Post by Karrot_Kream »

jstanley wrote: post #82
dionidium wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People think of bad driving tickets (mostly speeding) as just a price you pay to drive. Furthermore, we literally use the phrase, "never got so much as a speeding ticket" to suggest that speeding is the epitome of a minor, inconsequential infraction, when the reality is that we know speeding is a significant cause of and contributor to death, destruction, and injury in automobile crashes.

Predicated on having already crashed, the chances that speed was a contributing factor to the severity is very high. That's why people want lower speed limits. Predicated on simply having been driving over the speed limit, the chances of an accident are very low. That's why people don't care about speeding.

This only captures crashes with other road users. Increased speed increases a lot of other risks, such as risk of injury to pedestrians at crosswalks or sidewalks, increased risk to hitting a building, and of course the general depressing effect that happens on non-car usage of roads (how many people will want to ride a bike on a road where all car drivers are speeding?).

(This is one of my big issues with US speed limits. All the discussion around it is always scoped only to other cars for the most part.)

Re: Show HN: Identify car crash editorial anti-patterns using NLP

#93

Post by FabHK »

fermigier wrote: post #18

I like the general idea, and the use of NLP to implement it. But I am dubious about some of the principles behind it. - For example, I find it inaccurate to say "the driver hit the pedestrian", which to me suggests a collision between two people, not between a person and a vehicle. (Of course this does not apply to a phrase like "the vehicle fled the scene" - it is clear that it was the driver who fled the scene). Wh…

> Regarding the term "accident"

I think in aviation circles the word "accident" is disliked because it implies a certain inevitability and tends to terminate the search for further underlying causes.

If it's a crash, then we find out why, and if it happened because there was some debris on the runway or a certain switch in the cockpit was in the wrong position, then we need to find out how that could have happened and what to undertake to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Re: Show HN: Identify car crash editorial anti-patterns using NLP

#94

Post by nextaccountic »

chiefofgxbxl wrote: post #53
kazinator wrote: post #23

I don't think that "the cyclist was not wearing a helmet" or "impairment was not an issue" are examples of counterfactuals; the authors should crack open a dictionary look up what that word means in general use, and additionally how it is used in philosophy and science. If you have word from the police that the driver was not found to have any alcohol or if the cyclist wasn't wearing a helmet, those are simply facts…

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…

Maybe you should also include in the site this explanation

Re: Show HN: Identify car crash editorial anti-patterns using NLP

#96

Post by csense »

I 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 unreasonable burden on individuals."

I thought this would be an automated grammar assistant for basic English writing techniques you should have learned in high school. It's not. Instead, it's a tool for injecting bias into reporting.

Re: Show HN: Identify car crash editorial anti-patterns using NLP

#97

Post by jimmaswell »

lkrubner wrote: post #72
bluGill wrote: post #26

Earlier 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.

I think we're fine how it is in the USA. Germany's licensing system is absurd overkill and the cost and time commitment leaves out a lot of people who have a need to drive but can't afford it.

Re: Show HN: Identify car crash editorial anti-patterns using NLP

#98

Post by bluGill »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #43
bluGill wrote: post #26

Earlier 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…

> very hard to lose it even as your body degrades to the point you cannot see. People bring this up often. As far as I can tell such people are not heavily represented in car crash statistics.

That is because it is impossible to measure: people tend to drive less as their vision degrades, vision degrades at different rates for different people (we can't use old as a proxy), they tend to mitigate their vision problems by driving slower. Probably other factors to account for too, that I don't know how to account for. Not heavily represented is not the same as not dangerous.

Re: Show HN: Identify car crash editorial anti-patterns using NLP

#99

Post by dgfitz »

lelandbatey wrote: post #80
dgfitz wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If someone collapses into the street, the driver should be able to stop in time, unless they are going to fast. Or they collapse mere seconds before the car strikes them making the __accident__ unavoidable.

The duration between when the pedestrian collapses and when the driver runs over the pedestrian is not as relevant as you seem to be implying. If someone is standing in a crosswalk in broad daylight and falls over, even if the pedestrian collapses 0.1 seconds before someone runs them over that doesn't leave the driver blameless. Why, in broad daylight, in the middle of a crosswalk, was a driver 0.1 seconds away from…

I can say with confidence that this effort will not result in roads being re-designed, ripped up, re-poured, and money paid for the effort.

Re: Show HN: Identify car crash editorial anti-patterns using NLP

#100

Post by spamizbad »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #90
bluGill wrote: post #26

Earlier 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…

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?
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