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Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

strongtowns.org

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Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#11

Post by js2 »

woodruffw wrote: post #2

This is a really excellent read, and neatly summarizes a thought that flashes through the back of my mind whenever someone tells me that public transit is unsafe. If over 100 people died each day on public transit, we'd have banned it by now. But we accept it in our automotive culture, while simultaneously handwringing over every incident that happens on public transit.

It's like a form of the Dunning–Kruger effect where everyone believes they're in control of their fate in a car, but not on public transit. People must think they're exceptional drivers and that they can dodge any accident.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#12

Post by intrepidhero »

This article presents one facet of automobile risk that is interesting. Essentially there is no governing body tasked to analyze and mitigates these risks to the same degree as with public transport. Rather, general consensus (maybe not majority but still some level of consensus) must be reached before safety measures begin to see widespread adoption in a very distributed system.

> For auto crashes, we’re talking about block level interventions, the kind of fine-grained design details that transportation departments are not able to perform.

To point out an alternative, transportation departments, if endowed with the authority, could mandate centralized control of all motor vehicles. There is no technical (nor practical) reason you couldn't turn over the whole thing to properly engineered centralized computer control. It would be incredibly expensive but it could certainly be done in such way to reduce the risk by orders of magnitude. And that is exactly the kind of top down intervention transportation departments are capable of implementing, at least structurally, if not with their current budget levels.

And I think the question of why we haven't done this, and probably won't any time in the foreseeable future, is a fascinating way to explore our approach to risk.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#13

Post by ithkuil »

causi wrote: post #4

Human response is never in actual proportion to reality. For example, veterans have a suicide rate lower than farmers, fisherman, construction workers, maintenance workers, and engineers.

How do veteran farmers compare to non-veteran farmers? (Or fishermen etc?)

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#14

Post by elil17 »

The NTSB actually does investigate car crashes. Typically police do the actual footwork but if the cause is unknown NTSB agents will put boots on the ground. Unfortunately most of the causes are shared across many cases (speeding, distracted driving, drunk driving), so the cases end up getting lumped together into reports which can include tens of thousands of cases.

However, they are performing root cause analysis. For distracted driving, for example, they break it down into distractions by other occupants, distractions by moving object inside vehicle (such as a fly), cell phone use (with hands), cell phone use (no hands), using component integral to vehicle (climate or audio), using component integral to vehicle (other), smoking, and many more.

The problem is that decision makers don't do anything about it.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#15

Post by TylerE »

woodruffw wrote: post #2

This is a really excellent read, and neatly summarizes a thought that flashes through the back of my mind whenever someone tells me that public transit is unsafe. If over 100 people died each day on public transit, we'd have banned it by now. But we accept it in our automotive culture, while simultaneously handwringing over every incident that happens on public transit.

The difference is control.

While a careful, attentive driver in a well-maintained vehicle certainly isn’t immune, their risk is much lower than someone who drives tired, drunk, or high in a car with bald tires and bad brakes.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#16

Post by TylerE »

intrepidhero wrote: post #12

This article presents one facet of automobile risk that is interesting. Essentially there is no governing body tasked to analyze and mitigates these risks to the same degree as with public transport. Rather, general consensus (maybe not majority but still some level of consensus) must be reached before safety measures begin to see widespread adoption in a very distributed system. > For auto crashes, we’re talking abo…

NHTSA?

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#17

Post by pessimizer »

jandrese wrote: post #6
woodruffw wrote: post #2

This is a really excellent read, and neatly summarizes a thought that flashes through the back of my mind whenever someone tells me that public transit is unsafe. If over 100 people died each day on public transit, we'd have banned it by now. But we accept it in our automotive culture, while simultaneously handwringing over every incident that happens on public transit.

Imagine how angry people would be if at the end of an article about a train crash that killed 4 people the author included an anecdote about how there were 900 train fatalities in the previous year compared to 1.3 million car fatalities.

> 900 train fatalities

And 600 of them were trespassers walking on the tracks, then the vast majority of the remaining were people who tried to beat the train at a crossing. The number of dead passengers was 6 and the number of dead train workers was 11, if I'm reading this correctly: https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics...

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#18

Post by ratsmack »

woodruffw wrote: post #2

This is a really excellent read, and neatly summarizes a thought that flashes through the back of my mind whenever someone tells me that public transit is unsafe. If over 100 people died each day on public transit, we'd have banned it by now. But we accept it in our automotive culture, while simultaneously handwringing over every incident that happens on public transit.

>... while simultaneously handwringing over every incident ...

And then there's those Tesla accidents that must happen thousands of time a day, because they're always in the news.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#20

Post by kiba »

elil17 wrote: post #14

The NTSB actually does investigate car crashes. Typically police do the actual footwork but if the cause is unknown NTSB agents will put boots on the ground. Unfortunately most of the causes are shared across many cases (speeding, distracted driving, drunk driving), so the cases end up getting lumped together into reports which can include tens of thousands of cases. However, they are performing root cause analysis.…

There's just more opportunities for things to go wrong when you give million of people across all walk of life the ability to control deadly vehicles and forced them to do it as a matter of daily routine.

In contrast, public mass transit just have less things that can go home. Trains can be really safe if we wanted it to be.

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