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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

#181

Post by Avicebron »

kelnos wrote: post #162
treeman79 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t San Fransisco do all of those? They spend a huge amount on it anyway. And being one the dirtiest cities possible.

I'm really tired of this "SF is the dirties city" trope. Yes, there are areas that are incredibly dirty, but those areas are something like 5% of the city, and most of those areas are concentrated in a few specific neighborhoods. Most of the city is fairly clean (but to be sure, it's no Singapore) and reasonably well-maintained. I've been in areas of Manhattan that would rival SF's dirtiest areas, but I wouldn't clai…

I saw about 5 between the bart station and Berkeley campus on my way to get a curry, and I wouldn't even consider that dirty relative to driving a few blocks down towards the freeway...(I know it might not technically be "SF" but you know what I mean)

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#182

Post by yongjik »

TylerE wrote: post #34
yongjik wrote: post #33

Earlier 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 assure your bus driver doesn't have a habit of popping pills by making them go through rigorous certification, give them decent wages, and punishing them harshly when they do pop pills.

You may object it's not perfect, but nothing is, and it does work. In fact, it works exactly the same way you can assure that your brake pad won't suddenly give way in front of a bus coming from your left.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#183

Post by greedo »

jiveturkey wrote: post #174
CodeAndCuffs wrote: post #155

I was a cop for several years. I worked hundreds of crashes, and a few fatalities. If cars had a max speed limit of 85 mph, and required the seatbelt to be engaged to work, we'd cut our fatality rate in half. Most nations' DUI laws consider a 0.05 BAC as illegal. In most US states 0.08 is presumed under the influence, 0.06 - 0.079 is considered no presumption either way, and under .06 is considered not under the infl…

Who cares if you kill yourself through your own negligence? There shouldn't be a fine at all for seatbelts. DUI, OTOH, should be treated even more harshly than it is.

Because your death becomes an externality that others have to pay for.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#184

Post by jvm___ »

colpabar wrote: post #168
flaque wrote: post #96

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 redesi…

This is totally off topic, but aside from the numbers being lower, we do the exact same thing with gun deaths.

Which baffles the rest of the world as we see the aggregate number and are dumbfounded that nothing is done.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#185

Post by umvi »

I think there's another reason too we "ignore" car crashes: loose coupling with politics.

Say a DUI driver kills a random family of 5. Is that going to make national headlines? Probably not. Very little to be gained politically. It doesn't really enrage us because we love and celebrate alcohol too much to be capable of villainizing it like guns. So as a result, it doesn't spread very far on social media.

Now say a raging incel shoots 5 people at a mall (2 die, 3 are injured). Is that going to make national headlines? You bet. It easily enrages at least half of us since guns are a wedge issue. Hence, it spreads like wildfire on social media. As it's spreading, it is further coupled to politics whenever people use the story to further political goals like mobilizing peers to go out and protest, drum up support for a preferred candidate, and more.

You won't see a public reaction to car accidents similar to guns until the media decides either alcohol or cars are villains that need to be eradicated from society.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#187

Post by cgriswald »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #127
woodruffw wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. I also won't claim that driving is dangerous, in the abstract: human beings take all kinds of risks, lots of them for fun, and I'm not interested in restricting others' behavior on that basis . It's merely thought provoking: every HN thread on transit will have the same half-dozen comments about violence and danger on public transit, when the reality is that two orders of magnitude more deaths occur each year o…

> human beings take all kinds of risks, lots of them for fun, and I'm not interested in restricting others' behavior on that basis. No but we do have a strong, though admittedly weakening, tradition of restricting the fun of others when the danger posed is not solely to themselves. For example building and setting off bombs is fun as hell but we're not allowed to do it because it's pretty unhealthy for the neighbors.…

You can build and set off bombs. It's just heavily regulated.

However, many people haven't really consented to driving. They drive out of necessity. Where they live and work is only marginally in their control and there are no other transport options. When I was poor, I would have loved to not have to pay for insurance, gas, maintenance, and the vehicle itself. I couldn't really afford it. But without it, I couldn't get to work to eat. There weren't other options. When I made a little more money I could finally afford to live close to work and public transport was an option. The trip was 5 minutes by car, over an hour by bus.

I'm on board for heavily regulating driving and shifting that danger assessment as you suggest. But first I think there is a moral obligation to provide alternative modes of transportation. (This should not be interpreted as excusing drivers from their obligation to be skilled and safe.)

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#188

Post by BlargMcLarg »

Avicebron wrote: post #133
goodpoint wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try visiting Japan or South Korea or even central Europe.

Yes, these are clearly not universal human issues if somewhere like Japan can maintain clean, relatively safe, efficient public transportation. It should be obvious we should be looking outside of the US as to why certain societies are able to solve this issues and others are not.

Because these societies incentivize individuals to behave and conform for the better of the group, while iterating on their systems. The same way the US has iterated on their car-centric culture.

Take the money and incentives away from building roads, cars, parking lots, traffic safety etc. and stick them into systems which are safer by default, incentives for people to keep things clean and not cause a fuss.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#189

Post by woodruffw »

kelnos wrote: post #162
treeman79 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t San Fransisco do all of those? They spend a huge amount on it anyway. And being one the dirtiest cities possible.

I'm really tired of this "SF is the dirties city" trope. Yes, there are areas that are incredibly dirty, but those areas are something like 5% of the city, and most of those areas are concentrated in a few specific neighborhoods. Most of the city is fairly clean (but to be sure, it's no Singapore) and reasonably well-maintained. I've been in areas of Manhattan that would rival SF's dirtiest areas, but I wouldn't clai…

> I've been in areas of Manhattan that would rival SF's dirtiest areas, but I wouldn't claim that NYC is a "dirty city".

I've lived here my entire life, and I would :-)

As much as I'm a booster for NYC (and immensely proud of our public transit), we're also a very dirty city (partially for historical planning reasons, resulting in no alleyways or trash disposal consideration).

It's also gotten worse during the pandemic, in no small part thanks to drivers: people have stopped moving their cars for street cleaning, resulting in accumulations of trash and dirt that then clog the drains, worsening our floods (and damaging the subways further).

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#190

Post by neuralRiot »

TylerE wrote: post #15
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.

I’d say that it is blame rather than control. We tend to focus more in finding the responsible to point the finger at rather than the cause. If 1000 drivers die in car accidents it’s easy to shift the responsibility at themselves but if 2 die on an Amtrak derailment, the responsible is Amtrak or American Airlines, Airbus, Boeing or whatever.
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