711–720 of 1001 posts
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It can be if you compare it to: 1. Total US population, and total deaths per year 2. Amount of miles traveled yearly.
Except that they are dramatically higher than in comparable countries. It's very obvious that the US is overwhelmingly worse off in traffic deaths.
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If people don't like the China example, they can look at New Zealand or Australia, both of which had tiny fractions of our Covid deaths AND experienced less economic decline AND experienced a drop in suicides during the time.
And are now catching up. New Zealand had the equivalent of 2000 US deaths yesterday. Australia 1500. The vaccines didn't keep people from dying, they postponed them to the next flu season. The old and sick will catch covid and die. There is nothing you can do about it. Putting your head in the sand and hoping for a magic bullet to save us - vaccines, masks, lockdowns - just means that the rest of the health system wi…
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Cars should have a regulator installed by the manufacturer to limit speed to 20mph on roads with people, and to 60mph on grade separated highways. This maximum would barely change your time to destination, but it would save thousands of lives per year. - 20mph: 90% survival rate - 30mph: 60% survival rate - 40mph: 20% survival rate https://www.betterstreetschicago.org/blog/chicago-speed-came...
Staying home on the couch: 100% survival rate
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…
> The threshold should be fewer accidents and/or fewer fatalities per million miles driven than human drivers. Those of us who drive defensively strongly disagree with this metric. The "average driver" is extremely skewed towards a relatively small subset of drivers who cause most of the wrecks. Not coincidentally, the same people who can't afford a fancy autonomous car anyway.
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Yep. We don’t fear things under our control. Do I fear driving my car? No, because I can control my safety (to an extent, anyway). I can drive defensively. I can stay focused. I can avoid dangerous intersections. I wear a seat belt and have a big safe SUV. Mass shootings are terrifying because there’s no sense of control. Animals are scary (spiders, snakes) because we can’t control them. Disease is scary when we can’…
> Mass shootings are terrifying because there’s no sense of control. For anyone here concerned about this, it doesn’t take very much money in HN-terms to become reasonably well trained. You can: 1) Carry your own weapon, following your state’s laws in all but a few. 2) Learn to use that weapon very well, but more importantly: 3) Learn to use cover and move defensively or offensively 4) Learn to administer basic medic…
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…
It doesn't have to be like this though: Other countries pay attention to crashes, especially with fatalities. One of my uncles was a civil engineer working in Spain's government, now retired. All crashes reported to the police would be marked in maps, with an extra layer for fatalities. Then they'd be grouped by the kilometer of road, to look for the sections of road that were the most dangerous. The worst locations…
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Many expect the EU to eventually remove override capabilities as the systems become more widespread.
Basically impossible to get through. As there are often cases where it picks up a speed limit from something like the off ramp on the equivalent of a highway. Which would be dangerous if it suddenly decelerated from 130 to 80.
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Yep. We don’t fear things under our control. Do I fear driving my car? No, because I can control my safety (to an extent, anyway). I can drive defensively. I can stay focused. I can avoid dangerous intersections. I wear a seat belt and have a big safe SUV. Mass shootings are terrifying because there’s no sense of control. Animals are scary (spiders, snakes) because we can’t control them. Disease is scary when we can’…
> We don’t fear things under our control yeah, this is it. This is why people will drive through a blizzard in the middle of the night but will have a panic attack trying to board an airplane. In their car they feel in control but in an airplane they feel helpless and at completely dependent on the pilot/crew/airplane.
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…
As for why we find the crashes surprising it’s probably because they’re rare, ie we think of these as safe in this respect, so are surprised when a death occurs. If anything a feather in the cap of public transit.
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> Mass shootings are terrifying because there’s no sense of control. For anyone here concerned about this, it doesn’t take very much money in HN-terms to become reasonably well trained. You can: 1) Carry your own weapon, following your state’s laws in all but a few. 2) Learn to use that weapon very well, but more importantly: 3) Learn to use cover and move defensively or offensively 4) Learn to administer basic medic…
Right, because having a gun definitely will stop the next Mandalay Bay gunman from sniping me out during a rave.
If you're worried about Mandalay Bay, you're right, you will not be returning fire from the ground into an nth floor hotel window with your sidearm.
The other things on the list still apply. Learn to move, learn to use cover, learn to provide basic medical attention. It's not a bad idea to carry a TQ if you're going somewhere with crazy-large groups of people (for reasons other than shootings, which statistically you will not be involved in).