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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

#121

Post by MauranKilom »

markstos wrote: post #55
karaterobot wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be inaccurate, unethical, and potentially libelous for any newspaper to construe the events of a potential criminal act (or any event, really) without doing any investigation to support that conclusion, and primarily in order to further an editorial agenda.

I've been employed as a newspaper editor and am familiar with libel laws and the ethics of journalism. What's been advocated for is accurate reporting, not conclusion-jumping. Currently there are headlines like this: "Car hits cyclist" Why is a victim a person but the actor is an inanimate object? They don't say "car hits bike". A more accurate headline would be "Car driver hits cyclist". The other way to improve rep…

> Why is a victim a person but the actor is an inanimate object? They don't say "car hits bike".

The car physically touched the bicyclist, hence "car hits cyclist". The driver did not physically touch the bicyclist, hence "driver hits cyclist" is inaccurate. "Car hits bicycle" is accurate but not the most relevant fact to report (unless nobody was riding it at the time?).

I'm not sure why this point has not been discussed in this thread. Maybe my understanding of English is insufficiently advanced, but "driver hits cyclist" literally implies to me that one person punched another, not that the car crashed into the person riding a bicycle (although this can generally be inferred from the context).

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

#122

Post by throwaway0a5e »

dymk wrote: post #9

This is neat, but something bugs me about the framing of the intended goal versus how you propose to get there. If the intent is to raise public awareness and to put pressure on leadership to make roads generally safer, why do almost all the corrections follow a pattern of shifting blame from the individual pedestrian onto the individual driver? Many of the suggested fixes are just their own form of counterfactual -…

> why do almost all the corrections follow a pattern of shifting blame from the individual pedestrian onto the individual driver?

Because the overwhelming majority of multi-party crashes involve one party violating the norms of how whatever traffic type they are is expected by the rest of the traffic to behave and shaming people is, for better or worse, an effective means of motivating specific behavior.

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

#123

Post by throwaway0a5e »

Zak wrote: post #89
dymk wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that roads need lower speed-limits and to be made safer by their geometry. That's done by reporting on the unsafe conditions of the road. It does no good to play this game of rhetoric, reframing the matter so the driver is at fault (which is not always the case). A driver does not decide to not run over a person because they think a news story will be more accusatory of them.

What I remember reading about the impact of speed limits is that reducing them only affects the slowest quartile or so of drivers while changes to road design such as reducing road width and visibility slow down almost all drivers. Reducing the speed of some drivers and not others increases aggressive driving and probably isn't good for safety. I don't take the position that reducing speed is a good answer for every…

> reducing them only affects the slowest quartile or so of drivers

And having to navigate traffic that is not of a homogeneous speed creates cognitive load for all drivers. So then they don't notice things like cyclists and pedestrians.

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

#124

Post by butwhywhyoh »

yodelshady wrote: post #117

That's actually pretty amazing work. Being super preachy, as a cliched straight white etc etc... after riding a bike I sort of get complaints about -isms, emotionally, in a way I wouldn't without. Everyone has already concluded that you deserved it . Whatever happened. It does not matter if you were wearing hi-vis, or had a light, or were in a bike lane, or the nearest bike lane is 5 miles away and on the pavement fo…

I'd love to hear even one anecdote of 'kid believes bikers are unfairly blamed for accidents' -> 'kid decides never to exercise again in any form'

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

#125

Post by throwaway0a5e »

spamizbad wrote: post #100
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

A 30min walk would get me to two convenience stores and a doughnut shop. It would take me about 1hr to walk (briskly) to the nearest grocery store.

And I live in a city where the zoning can be described as "we'll rubber stamp literally anything that isn't hazmat processing we're desperate for money". And this is a ~150yo neighrborhood in a multi-hundred year old city in the northeast, not some socal dump that was built out long after the advent of cars.

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

#126

Post by _dain_ »

JackFr wrote: post #30
whimsicalism wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I do not think you bear responsibility if you collapse and someone strikes you with their car and then flees the scene.

Don’t be obtuse. A person collapses into the street and is struck by oncoming traffic - no one is to blame. It is an accident.

Imagine this were a workplace: some kind of suspended catwalk where accidentally falling off it is fatal. It would be an OSHA violation not to have guard rails to prevent this from occurring. Likewise, if this is a road where cars are moving too quickly to stop in time to avoid fatally hitting someone who falls onto the road, there ought to be a barrier between the pavement and the road except at designated crossing points.

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

#127

Post by throwaway0a5e »

AJ007 wrote: post #64
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 amazing thing is how many of the most egregious incidents involve drivers with suspended licenses or no licenses. At the moment, in the US, due to bail reform consequences are minimal unless someone is actual killed.

That's just a reflection of the fact of how necessary cars are to a reasonable life. The state is naturally going to be reluctant to screw people out of their means to get to their obligations because the state doesn't want to create more people who are dependent on it.

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

#128

Post by MauranKilom »

Zigurd wrote: post #71
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…

If I hit you with a wrench, saying "the wrench hit you" is clearly awkward and obscuring what matters.

I don't see the analogy. "I hit you with a wrench" by and large implies intent. A pedestrian being hit by a car is very rarely an intentional event.

Further, you tend to have control over the wrench in this scenario (and if I was hit by a wrench because you e.g. dropped it unintentionally, "the wrench hit me" is reasonable), whereas insufficient control over the car is usually the problem in a crash.

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

#130

Post by throwaway0a5e »

dionidium wrote: post #59
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…

> 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.

Oh please. This is the kind of comical rhetoric that gets road safety advocates ridiculed.

In practice speeding or at least the instance that resulted in getting ticketed is usually inconsequential.

Between highways signed well under the normal traffic speeds, revenue enforcement and fishing stops the overwhelming majority of speeding tickets are trivial. People engaging in the kind of speeding most people can agree is excessive are a tiny minority. If they weren't people wouldn't use a speeding ticket as the epitome of a trivial infraction.

Of course speed is a factor in death and destruction. That's tautologically true thanks to how the equations in Newtonian physics are written but you don't see anyone (who isn't getting laughed at) advocating for the return of the national speed limit for obvious reasons.

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