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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

#91

Post by codemonkey-zeta »

indymike wrote: post #67

The answer here is that the convenience of being able to jump in a car, and get to your destination quickly is worth the risk of occasionally being injured or dying on the way to most people. You also have to compare against what came before the car: horses and walking, both of which may have been perilous in comparison with DC Beltway traffic on the way home from work. Ah... never mind - braving the elements and bea…

That's not the alternative strongtowns advocates for. You can have more convenient and more safe municipalities at the same time. I recommend the "stroads" essay on their site (as well as the others too). Strongtowns really provides a very compelling thesis when you consider the whole of their proposals.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#92

Post by bobthepanda »

intrepidhero wrote: post #46
sonofhans wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 plausib…

FAA still relies on humans, particularly for super manual areas like takeoff and landing. And ATC is notoriously stressful, overworked and understaffed. We’d need a lot more bodies to manage all road traffic.

There is a world of difference between the reliability you need for a one off experiment, and the reliability you need for something expected to operate 24/7/365, in all weather from -40C to 40C, in a complex real world environment, and where legal liability gets involved in the case of an incident.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#93

Post by jandrese »

giantg2 wrote: post #10
jandrese wrote: post #3

The article focuses on trains, but the same thing could be said for autonomous vehicles. When one crashes it is national news because they are so rare. People who say autonomous vehicles won't be viable until the crash rate is zero are setting the bar far too high. The threshold should be fewer accidents and/or fewer fatalities per million miles driven than human drivers. In theory system improvements on the autonomo…

"You can't change people that much." The point of licensing is to restrict the privilege to those who can responsibly and competently preform the task. If they can't conform to that, then they shouldn't be driving. Tougher licensing and enforcement would drastically reduce fatalities. We already see this in many European nations with stricter enforcement and licensing.

In the US it is easier to invent autonomous vehicles than take away grandma's drivers license.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#94

Post by BlargMcLarg »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #77
BlargMcLarg wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that question is practically impossible to answer. You can't extrapolate current circumstances and draw a conclusion from there. The best you can do is compare with other countries, disregard any non-related-yet-ultimately-significant and draw a fairly weak conclusion from there. Most of those conclusions would not be in favor of cars, either. Especially not in light of environmental damage.

It is not impossible. Car haters like to think it is impossible.

Try it. I assure you, almost any angle you take can be poked through.

Cars shine in large, low density zones. For good reasons. Most anti-car people are not in favor of removing cars in these zones or removing cars altogether, so arguing here is moot.

Other places, whether removing a large amount of cars is beneficial or detrimental is decided either by culture, or by reinvestment options. And then, you're still stuck only comparing rationalities, with actual numbers being far harder to judge.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#95

Post by intrepidhero »

djmips wrote: post #65
intrepidhero wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just that people are bad at statistics (we are though). It's also that we place value on individual agency. Getting into a self-driving car (or onto a train) means giving up some of my agency and because of that I have higher expectations of safety from the self-driving car (or train driver) than I would if I had retained that agency. I don't think that's weird or unreasonable. We do need to get better at st…

I completely agree that we put a lot of value into personal agency but I do think it's a bit unreasonable. Agency when driving is only perceived. You could have a heart attack and smash into pedestrians. Your car could fail mechanically. You could be rear ended by a large truck. You could be killed by a drunk or inattentive driver. Your agency can not entirely prevent that. Also you may be in the top percentile in dr…

That's a great point. Often the perceived agency is an illusion.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#96

Post by flaque »

There’s an audio version of the same point here: https://podcast.strongtowns.org/e/the-drip-drip-drip-of-traf...

A ”best effort” summary of this article: if thousands of people die in once place, it’s one of the great tragedies in American history. However if thousands of people die in thousands different places, it is ignored and considered a fact of life.

When a plane or train crashes, we stop everything and redesign the entire network to prevent this from happening again. But each individual death from car accidents is not enough to trigger the same response in cities, planners, and civil engineers.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#97

Post by chroem- »

narush wrote: post #79
chroem- wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd highly recommend reading Confessions of a Recovering Engineer before debating my communication of it. There's a lot more depth to the arguments than the one-sentence summary a novice (me) can give :) Namely, Strong Towns isn't anti-car! In fact, they explicitly arguing _against_ removing cars from city centers in most cases, for reasons related to those that you mention. If I remember correctly, many towns tried…

> That being said, _requiring_ cars and _allowing_ them are very different things. Being anti-bulldozing city blocks to put in 6-lane highways isn't anti-car, it's pro people!

That's a semantic argument that doesn't address the real problems that skimping on commuter infrastructure can cause. San Francisco and Seattle have both achieved some of the highest housing prices in the nation thanks to chronic underinvestment in highway infrastructure.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#98

Post by jandrese »

belorn wrote: post #89
jandrese wrote: post #3

The article focuses on trains, but the same thing could be said for autonomous vehicles. When one crashes it is national news because they are so rare. People who say autonomous vehicles won't be viable until the crash rate is zero are setting the bar far too high. The threshold should be fewer accidents and/or fewer fatalities per million miles driven than human drivers. In theory system improvements on the autonomo…

We can start by putting the autonomous vehicles to the driver license test to see if they can just pass the lowest standard of driving, ie the quality of a novice driver. If they can't do that without instructor needing to step in then just like the novice they shouldn't be allowed on the roads without a licensed driver to oversee them. That is the bar that autonomous vehicles need to reach. Crash rate of zero is not…

This doesn't seem like a very high bar to pass. Around here a drivers test involves a short stint on a low speed closed course with a few intersections and then a parallel parking test. Our current self driving systems should have no trouble with that once they are informed what you expect.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#99

Post by djmips »

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #44

My 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?

I agree, it's one of the things that I think of often... it's not logical. My condolences to you and your family... :`(

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#100

Post by foepys »

willcipriano wrote: post #61
toyg wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Part of riding a motorbike (cycle here) is also driving defensively is it not? I don't assume people are going to stop at a given intersection, I take a look at their current speed and project it forward before determining if it's safe for me to go. If someone is going at a high rate of speed towards a stop sign or red light, I don't pull out just because I have the "right of way" I assume they are going to do someth…

You will never be able to look into every intersection, even very open ones. You will never be able to look out for cars traveling 50kph/30mph unless you literally stop before entering every intersection.

You also don't have any control over how far behind other cars are. The only thing you can do is to drive faster or to let them by by stopping or changing lanes. The latter is highly dangerous in fast flowing traffic on single lane roads while the first will almost never help as the other car actively wants to go faster.

Being in absolute control is you can drive as defensively as you want, in the end a distracted idiot can take you out and the only thing you can do is minimize the risk.

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