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Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes
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Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes
#42This 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.
So how do the pedestrians that make up a sizeable part of road deaths control the situation then?
Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes
#43The engineering side is good to look at. We should also be looking at the education/credentialing side too. Many incidents are drivers making poor choices, not knowing the laws, or not understanding vehicle dynamics. Stricter licensing would be a good way to reduce incidents regardless of the redesigns. Arguably, that would be the fastest and cheapest route to effective change.
We've got strict credentialing here in France for obtaining your first license and we're well below the US in traffic deaths.
It may be part of the picture, though I still witness plenty of dangerous/aggressive/stupid driving here.
One thing we do have going for us, I believe, is "no permit" cars. These are tiny cars with tiny engines that don't require a permit to drive.
Many (most?) drivers with revoked licenses still need to drive. And they can still legally drive a "no permit" car. It's believed anyway that this serves as a security valve for keeping drunk drivers out of heavy, more deadly vehicles.
Of course, driving a "no permit" car under the influence is still illegal.
Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes
#44My kid sister died in a car accident two weeks ago. Now I find the numbers unfathomable. How can 40,000 families be suffering like this, every year?
Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand. What control do I have over a tired/drunk/high truck driver running a red light into an intersection I'm passing in? I can be actually assured that no drunk driver will smash into my seat in a subway (the chance might not be zero but it's astronomically low). You may say it's not "control" because I didn't personally force all those drunk drivers out of railroads, but then again, I can't force the…
You can assure that you don’t drive drunk. You can’t assure your bus driver didn’t pop a few pills before they came on shift.
You also can't be sure a random guy is not going to come from a side street on a red light at 90mph and T-bone you because he was answering a whatsapp and didn't notice the lights.
I ride a motorbike. As part of training I was repeatedly told to wear protection not because of my riding skills, but because of everyone else's lack of skills.
Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes
#46This 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…
> There is no technical (nor practical) reason you couldn't turn over the whole thing to properly engineered centralized computer control. This is an extraordinary claim for which IMO you must provide extraordinary proof. I see zero evidence that this is technically possible today, regardless of expense or politics. It would be at-minimum a decades-long effort to computerize every car and develop central control for…
Mythbusters set up radio control for cars all the time. There's a GPS, compass, and accelerometer in your pocket. The FAA seems to be pretty good at directing airplanes through airports. USAF has pilots operating drones on the other side of the world. It seems like all the tech is extant. It'd be hugely expensive like I said....
But that claim wasn't really the point I was trying to make. Pick some other more plausible (but still radical) safety measure we could take with cars. Way more stringent licensing, speed limiters, self-driving, or massive increases in public transport.
> (b) most people would be vehemently against it.
Why is that? 40,000 people die in the US every year. Why don't we allocate more resources to solving that? That's the question I think is interesting.
Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand. What control do I have over a tired/drunk/high truck driver running a red light into an intersection I'm passing in? I can be actually assured that no drunk driver will smash into my seat in a subway (the chance might not be zero but it's astronomically low). You may say it's not "control" because I didn't personally force all those drunk drivers out of railroads, but then again, I can't force the…
You can assure that you don’t drive drunk. You can’t assure your bus driver didn’t pop a few pills before they came on shift.
The point is, every driver you interact with might be drunk or distracted. In a collision with a drunk in a car, I'd rather be in a bus.
Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes
#48This 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.
> 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.
You could have just stopped at "control". That's the fundamental dynamic by which we can explain this differential public sentiment--a sense of control or lack thereof, independent of whether that control actually exists, or whether that control translates to reduced risk. You went off the rails trying to link it to some objective reality; it's unnecessary, and in any event even the best of drivers takes on more risk while on the road than riding passenger rail.
Control also figures into notions of ethics and justice. We're much more willing to accept losses when we attribute the proximate cause to "nature", "god", "chance", etc. But our moral calculus shifts dramatically when the decision of a particular person or group can be fingered (reasonably or not) as a primary factor. You already subtly did that by insinuating blame upon many traffic victims. (I'm not saying the insinuation was improper or impermissible... we all frequently do that; it's a staple of public discourse and even personal reflection. Just highlighting the extent to which notions of control color our views.)
Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand. What control do I have over a tired/drunk/high truck driver running a red light into an intersection I'm passing in? I can be actually assured that no drunk driver will smash into my seat in a subway (the chance might not be zero but it's astronomically low). You may say it's not "control" because I didn't personally force all those drunk drivers out of railroads, but then again, I can't force the…
You can assure that you don’t drive drunk. You can’t assure your bus driver didn’t pop a few pills before they came on shift.
It was critical for your train of thought to skip the part where other drivers kill you.
Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes
#50I _highly_ recommend consuming more of the content put out by Strong Towns [1]. If I were to summarize their message, it's that in the past 100 years, we've engaged in a large-scale experiment to design our places around cars. This is bad for safety, bad for the economy, and (most importantly!) bad for us people that live in these places! Content and education-wise, they are my favorite non-profit :) If you're lookin…
You can't conduct commerce on a bike. Anti-car policies are also closely coupled with inflated housing prices, since they effectively reduce the available housing supply by requiring employees to commute from within public transit distance of their job.