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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

#521

Post by thrashh »

Nition wrote: post #478
staticautomatic wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It worked for us in New Zealand. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ When we tried the same thing a second time it didn't work, but that was due to people not following the rules.

That’s like saying that your grandma was able to keep per collection of 4 books perfectly sorted 100% of the time so why can’t a public library of 50,000 books?

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#522

Post by lkbm »

notjustanymike wrote: post #107
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?

Because even 40,000 people is only a lot relatively. It is just 0.012% of the American population and 0.00051% of the world population.

The 40k is US, not worldwide. If you want a % of world population, you should look at world traffic fatalities.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#525

Post by 14 »

GuB-42 wrote: post #284
dmead wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are, but cars will function without them being used.

At least in Europe, there is a very annoying beep if you don't wear the seatbelt. You can still drive, and there are ways to disable it, but most people just wear their seatbelt. I don't think it is mandatory, but it counts in the EuroNCAP score, and since it is one of the easiest safety feature to implement, they all have it.

You are right there are ways to disable it easiest being a seatbelt delete that clips into the buckle and disabled the annoying beep and you can clip into that should you choose. Who would choose to not wear a seatbelt is strange to me but I also rode a motorcycle so we are dead meat anyways if something goes wrong.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#526

Post by pclmulqdq »

alex_young wrote: post #468
staticautomatic wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

China represents 18% of the world's population, yet 0.07% of COVID-19 fatalities. Seems like there is some value in their approach.

0.07% of reported COVID-19 fatalities. There are a lot of incentives to keep the numbers down going up the chain in the Chinese bureaucracy. This is the opposite of most western countries, where the incentives are to over-report.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#527

Post by MichaelCollins »

tifik wrote: post #418
admax88qqq wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Something like 80% of fatal crashes involve either alcohol, no seatbelt, or excessive speed This is the crux of the issue on why we as a society ignore car crashes and panic about train/plane crashes. I'd wager it mostly comes down to filtering out things we feel we have control over stressing about those we don't.

Yep I believe that is a pretty well established cognitive bias called Illusion of Control [1]. Going down the rabbit hole of cognitive biases is a fascinating journey, and lot of them are relevant when driving a car. One I found especially interesting is specifically about how improving safety features may not reduce accidents as much as it could, because when people feel safer, they tend to take greater risks [2] [1…

Refusal to drink and drive is not an illusion. I've been refusing to do that successfully my entire life.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#528

Post by thrashh »

buran77 wrote: post #487
naasking wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> So of course the natural reaction is to shrug in the former case, because there's no obvious connection between them I don't think a common cause is what makes the difference, and you see it with lung cancer due to smoking. The shock factor of plane crashes is brought on by them being so rare, killing a lot of people at once, and almost guaranteeing those fatalities. This makes them shocking and unforgettable, they…

I think it’s both.

Honestly it’s like a lot of problems where it’s easier to solve when it’s one big thing as opposed to 1000 little things. Imagine cutting one big expense out of your budget versus having to cut 1% out of 500 things. One of those is vastly easier.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#529

Post by TylerE »

clairity wrote: post #506
rustybelt wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A quick google is telling me that 26.8% of drivers who were killed or severely injured had alcohol in their bloodstream. Assuming that's true, then wouldn't never drinking and driving reduce your risk of death or serious injury by around 26.8%? That seems like a substantial reduction that is completely in the control of the driver.

no, you have to get everyone else to stop drinking and driving, not just yourself, to get that sort of reduction.

No you don’t. Over 50% of crashes are single car accidents. I suspect, but don’t have proof for, that that percentage is even higher in alcohol-related crashes (eg driver nods off and drives into a ditch/telephone pole

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#530

Post by nradov »

ansible wrote: post #402
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.

And if we hadn't done that stuff, we would have seen even more than the 1M deaths we did experience. Things could have gotten significantly worse as the hospitals filled up and space was not available for Covid patients and all the other people with heart attacks and other medical conditions. Even as it is, the medical staff have been overworked and extremely stressed. They've been quitting the medical field in very…

Wrong. Most of the non-pharmaceutical interventions were pointless pandemic theater. You can find examples of other countries that took less extreme measures and still had lower death rates.
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