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

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#601

Post by hotz » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 11:52 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #554

kfarr wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if that were a fecetious argument proposing a situation that does not happen in real life that people bring up when speed governors are discussed?

It's not facetious. I used to ride a motorcycle and oblivious or sometimes malicious drivers were a constant hazard; I'd say I got out of trouble by speeding up as often as slowing down, and I am not into speed for its own sake. Acceleration and maneuverability are as important as braking and (for larger vehicles) structural integrity.

Agreed, riding bikes gives us a different perspective on it all. I'd say we're generally more aware of our surroundings and other vehicles. A lot of the suggestions just won't work. Rules/laws/devices etc won't get rid of the human factor. Some people just lack the ability to be considerate to others.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#602

Post by MichaelCollins » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 11:53 PM UTC

windows2020 wrote: post #237

WesternWind wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to look at kilometers driven per person, not just ownership. Americans drive far far more than most other industrialized nations. https://frontiergroup.org/blogs/blog/fg/fact-file-americans-...

America is huge and lots of it isn't densely populated.

Most of the driving is done where most of the people live. In those huge sparsely populated areas, you can stand next to an road all day and see only a few cars. Even on the interstates, it's not uncommon to be driving along without another car in sight on either horizon.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#603

Post by pshc » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 11:54 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #399

CodeAndCuffs wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't envy your job. I'm sure it is tough. I respect you for taking on such a difficult task. However, people still have a right to be stupid with their own life. It's not nonsense. For example, Wilbur and Orville Wright were quite aware that they stood a high chance of dying in their airplane experiments. Neil Armstrong figured that he had a 1:3 (or something like that) chance of dying going to the moon. The peopl…

> For example, Wilbur and Orville Wright were quite aware that they stood a high chance of dying in their airplane experiments. Neil Armstrong figured that he had a 1:3 (or something like that) chance of dying going to the moon. The people who free climb have a very high death rate.

In these examples, these people aren't posing a threat to other people around them in their risky behavior.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#604

Post by jjav » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 11:56 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…

> But that makes sense statistically, because those are thousands of ostensibly independent events

Not only that, but in the case of a plane or train crash, the passengers were completely powerless to do anything about it. So it's a death that's imposed on them by the event.

In a car, the driver has nearly all the agency to do something about it and not be part of a crash. Car crashes don't just suddenly happen to people on a random distribution.

Many of them are directly the fault of the driver, so you can opt of those (don't drive drunk, sleepy, etc). Many are the fault of other drivers but you could often opt out by paying attention (go watch youtube dashcam car crash videos, it's astonishing the number of crashes where the victim could've avoided it but doesn't do anything). Many are also due to lack of skill (e.g. car slides on an oil slick and driver doesn't know how to control it) which you can opt out by taking car control training. Some are from equipment malfunction which you can also opt out (maintain your car).

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#605

Post by daedalus_j » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 11:57 PM UTC

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #303

jjcm wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legally it's required, but I think their point is it should be required by hardware. Right now most new cars just beep at you, but you can still operate them.

We never pushed for it politically because it wouldn't change anything but it would piss people off. You can simply buckle the seatbelt with nobody in the seat, then sit down, and the requirement is defeated. On the other hand, a mandatory breathalyzer for ignition would be useful to prevent a lone driver from driving drunk. We already have them for people with DUIs, so we should make them mandatory for all cars.

Or you could simply make it so that the threat of driving drunk was so high that people actually thought twice.

Get caught in a DUI? You simply never. drive. again... Ever. No 2nd chance. Hurt or kill someone as a DUI? Mandatory minimum jail time.

The difference is that this encourages personal responsibility and has personal consequences, rather than attempting to police the entire population for the bad deeds of the few.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#606

Post by thrown_22 » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 11:58 PM UTC

andrepd wrote: post #551

KptMarchewa wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coal is (probably) permamently destroying 510 million square kilometers of Earth. Few square miles is amazingly small price for a carbon free energy.

Even if it were true, the Chernobyl exclusion zone is mostly habitable now.

It's also the worlds largest nature reserve.

There is something poignant that nuclear apocalypse is better for the environment than human civilization as it normally functions.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#607

Post by mwint » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 11:58 PM UTC

UncleMeat wrote: post #64

TylerE wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is true. But there are two cars in many fatal wrecks. A family friend was killed going to the supermarket by a car running a red light and hitting him in an intersection. A few weeks ago a semitruck slammed into stopped traffic at full speed on 95-S at the Georgia/Florida border. Nothing can be done by a safe driver to prevent that.

Ever since being rear ended in stopped traffic on the freeway, I do make a practice of stopping a bit further from traffic than normal and watching the mirror, ready to speed away on the shoulder, until there’s a decent buffer of stopped carts behind me.

This isn’t reasonable to expect everyone to do, but any individual can realistically minimize their risk in this regard.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#608

Post by gottastayfresh » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 11:58 PM UTC

ericmay wrote: post #129

gottastayfresh wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, but it's not ultimately convenient. Control ends where convenience begins (that's not to say its totally accurate, but the phrase looks nice).

> Exactly, but it's not ultimately convenient Strictly by design and active and reinforced choice. Not for any other reason. Period.

Absolutely! I wasn't implying otherwise. I think in the U.S. the inertia of both design and life choices is more of the problem -- I think convenience captures both of these issues in their present state. I use convenience here not to suggest actual convenience, but the appearance of convenience, much in the way that it's not really control, but the appearance of control that makes us register the preferability of the personal car.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#609

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 11:59 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#610

Post by mwint » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 11:59 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #60

jfengel wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or self-driving cars. Every incident is Big News, while ignoring the fact that 40,000 people die every year in traffic accidents (and 4.8 million injuries) -- in the US alone. People are of course famously bad at putting statistics into context.

It wasn't that long ago that a driver instructor illustrated in a video how often they needed to correct the self-driving car in order to drive legal. It was multiple corrections per minute in a busy city. In term of statistics, the error rates of human drivers are still lower than current self-driving technology. This is why the only certified fully self-driving mode is limited in Germany to operate at speed of less…

I mean, how often would the instructor need to correct a human to drive legal in a busy city? The null hypothesis here is that driving legally in big cities is not practical.