Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes • Hacker News Board

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#431

Post by not-so-jerry » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 9:54 PM UTC

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…

Not sure if you are implying this or not, but how would lowering the BAC limit prevent fatal crashes?

Figure 3 in this report shows a somewhat normal distribution around .15 g/dl and the mode being around .17 g/dl: https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

This is already ~2x the legal limit.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#432

Post by masterj » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 9:55 PM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #105

"We" don't ignore them. Every major government has a body dedicated entirely to automobile safety. In the USA, this is NHSTA - National Highway Safety & Transportation Administration. They maintain an information system of traffic fatality statistics in the USA, called FARS (fatality analysis reporting system). This system is used to determine new safety devices and standards for vehicles and to test their effectiven…

Safety regulations for the people inside the vehicles. Next to no regulations to protect those obligated to exist alongside them. Ex: No regulations for how a pedestrian body will react in a crash with an SUV

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#433

Post by paulryanrogers » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 9:56 PM UTC

staticautomatic wrote: post #422

ccn0p wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Covid deaths: Simple solution, lockdown, virtual learning, 6-feet apart, cancel sports and after-school activities, miss graduations, etc. All the mental fallout from this: Too complex, just a way of life. Drip drip drip.

Generally those things are helpful but I think China has pretty well demonstrated that there’s no alternative universe where fully locking everything down eliminates Covid.

Or at least not without perfect worldwide coordination. And assuming there are no animal reservoirs

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#434

Post by standardUser » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 9:56 PM UTC

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #53

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.

This is a bad way to look at it. We should ask how many more people would die each day without cars. Somehow, this basic analysis is absent in all of the car-hate posts. Not considering pros and cons fairly is a not an honest approach. You can’t claim to be objective by just looking at negatives and proclaiming cars are bad overall. You need to sum up the negatives and positives (assuming an utilitarian view). Otherw…

"wealthy white cyclists"

What in the ever-living fuck are you even talking about?

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#435

Post by MontyCarloHall » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 9:56 PM UTC

Drunk_Engineer wrote: post #416

SilverBirch wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well done, you've specified a superset of self driiving without delivering any economic benefit. Oh, and every road in Europe is now a hazard because you've designed new cars with absurdly low speed limits. But no I'm sure your baselesss opinion on speeds is best.

Europe is now mandating intelligent speed limiters, so I don't know what you are getting on about.

No, they are not. Cars must alert the driver if they are exceeding the speed limit, but there is no forced limiting.

https://jalopnik.com/no-europe-didnt-just-force-automakers-t...

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#436

Post by porknubbins » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 9:56 PM UTC

naasking wrote: post #304

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…

> 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. But that makes sense statistically, because those are thousands of ostensibly independent events that don't necessarily have a single common cause, where the massacre of a…

Yes the author seems to state that there are many more traffic deaths than commercial transport deaths as if the point is self evident but I do not see it. From my perspective its a minor miracle that there aren't more traffic deaths. We let any private individual drive up to a 20,000 something pound vehicle with pretty minimal licensing requirements (in most places in the US). The news story is that it mostly goes ok.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#437

Post by malauxyeux » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 9:57 PM UTC

chasd00 wrote: post #339

malauxyeux wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 st…

i was in Paris and Southern France for two weeks a little bit a go. As a US driver, the chaos of your mopeds makes driving pretty harrowing haha. Still, i was impressed. In all the driving I did over those two weeks I didn't see a single accident. In the US I would have seen at least two being cleaned up on the highways.

I wonder if the harrowing bit isn't a strength.

When you're driving in North America, even in a city center, it often feels like there's nothing to do except watch the car in front of you and the next light. I wonder if that makes drivers disengage and not notice dangers.

In contrast, things tend to be a lot denser and less regular here. Maybe that keeps peoples' heads on the road.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#438

Post by thereisnospork » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 9:57 PM UTC

CodeAndCuffs wrote: post #283

WalterBright wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not wearing a seatbelt is an individual choice, and should not be a crime. P.S. Growing up, my dad had the dealer install seatbelts in the family wagon before he picked it up. We never moved an inch unless everyone was buckled up. Nobody else, and I mean nobody else, had seatbelts in their car at the time. P.P.S. Seatbelts also saved my life.

Its a choice that effects others. When you get ejected from the crash and hit someone else's car. When we have to shut down the interstate north and south bound for 3 hours to do a full reconstruction. When we have to do a death notification. Dealing with a dead body isnt a big deal. Your mind kinda puts it in the pile of "just evidence". Working the fatality is easy. The hard part is the death notification. Having t…

>Individual choices generally effect more than the individual

One of the fundamental principles of this country is that individual choices are up to the individual unless they present onerous effects on others. Simply, any choice can be construed to have externalities, much like anything can be considered interstate commerce if you squint at it strongly enough. To say nothing of the logical incongruity of allowing people to ride motorcycles.

Of course if you don't wear your seatbelt you're an idiot, but this doesn't feel like an epidemic reaching a reasonable threshold, e.g. being deleterious to national security.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#439

Post by clairity » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 9:57 PM UTC

zip1234 wrote: post #350

clairity wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, speeding hardly changes risk at all, but reckless driving certainly can, but that’s beside the point. the point is that changing your own behavior (i.e., “control”) has a negligible marginal effect on reducing your overall risk. nearly all of the practical risk is external and therefore out of your control (unless you manufacture additional risk by being distracted, reckless, and/or impaired). you can’t really lo…

Speeding doesn't change risk? When 'speed was not a factor' in a crash, it just means that the involved drivers were not driving above the post speed limit. It doesn't mean that the drivers were driving a safe speed. In fact, clearly they were not.

speed increases the severity of collisions, but generally doesn’t cause them (most of what we classify as speed-related is really recklessness, which is also typically a misassessment of risk). distractedness, recklessness, and impairment are the overwhelming causes of collisions, with a small additional portion caused by vehicular homicide/suicide, mechanical failure, and environmental factors.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#440

Post by Shaanie » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 9:57 PM UTC

pkulak wrote: post #415

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This maximum would barely change your time to destination Yes it would. The drive from LA to San Francisco is about 300 miles on Interstate 5. Much of this highway is completely straight, with excellent visibility through an unpopulated desert. When sparsely trafficked (as it is much of the time), it is safe to drive 80+ MPH on I5 for hours at a time. At 80 MPH, this is a 3 hour 45 minute drive. At your proposed 60…

Gonna go ahead and say the unthinkable here... so what? The person driving fast endangers themselves and everyone else around them. In what other area of society do we tolerate extremely dangerous behavior (40,000+ deaths a year) because to not would be an inconvenience? Guns, I suppose. But I'm not a huge fan or our polices around those either.

Don't forget alcohol, and arguably smoking and being obese.