Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

strongtowns.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

761–770 of 1001 posts

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#761

Post by noobermin »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #549
namesbc wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Car manufacturers who voluntarily implemented this would go out of business so fast. Politicians who propose making this mandatory would face constituent uproar. Limiting cars to 20mph on most roads would energize disengaged constituents like you wouldn't believe.

e-bike and e-scooter manufacturers have not gone out of business over similar speed metering and geofencing, it can and should be done for cars.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#762

Post by epistasis »

tzs wrote: post #737
epistasis wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't agree with your assessment at all. Deaths are rising, yet what changes are happening? And in particular the NHSTA doesn't give a damn about those outside of the car. The very greatest threat to the life of my children is cars. It would be easy, trivial almost, to fix this by legalizing building for houses and businesses that don't allow cars, but are served only by public transit. Yet this very simple, very d…

Are you talking about pedestrian deaths when you mention car risk for your children? If so, good news. Those have been going down. Since 1975 pedestrian deaths of under 13 year olds have steadily declined by more than an order of magnitude. For 13-19 year olds the decline hasn't been as big, but is still over a factor of 3 [1]. [1] https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/pedes...

Up until 2020, car deaths were the biggest cause of child death. In 2020, there was a spike in firearm deaths that overtook car deaths:

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2201761

Fortunately, I'm able to live my life without being forced to own a gun, and am allowed to keep my children out of homes that have guns in them.

But Im not allowed to build a life that isn't centered around transporting my child by car, or subjecting them to car violence while on bike or foot. There's no escaping it, especially in places like the Bay Area that have completely fetishized transporting kids by car. There are better lives possible, and my partner and I are just trying to figure out the two-body problem of moving to a better part of the world without one of us sacrificing a career.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#763

Post by Akronymus »

mr_toad wrote: post #717
Akronymus wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Speed limiters aren’t connected to the brakes, just the throttle.

Well, at least mine is actually connected to the brakes.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#764

Post by noobermin »

rr888 wrote: post #327
Avicebron wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> why certain societies are able to solve this issues and others are not. You mean by enforcing a racially homogenous society which does not allow poor (or anyone really) people from other parts of the world?

Singapore then.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#765

Post by theptip »

kamranjon wrote: post #655
bergenty wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know how you’re even comparing American roads to European roads. I spent 3 months in Europe and all I took away from that is how well planned and well thought out American roads are. I just took them for granted.

Just spent 3 months traveling across the United States and then 3 months traveling across Europe and now I’m super curious what part of Europe you visited and what part of the US you are from?

Some extremely old towns or cities might meet this description (and EU has plenty of those). Central Naples for example would probably be navigable on a 200-year old map.

Modern metro areas or developed suburbs not so much.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#766

Post by chriswarbo »

jjav wrote: post #604
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…

> 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 pe…

I've never owned or driven a car, yet they're around me every day, putting my life at risk (both short-term, that they may crash into me; and long-term, since I'm forced to breathe their emissions)

Whilst pedestrians should avoid risky behaviour, we're still largely powerless; e.g. I recently had an encounter with a motorist reversing out of their driveway without looking, and I've twice had motorists drive down the pavement (sidewalk) towards me (once when the road was water-logged, the other time they were trying to bypass traffic).

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#767

Post by vladvasiliu »

yreg wrote: post #553
PebblesRox wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is mandatory but not everyone follows the rules. Our car has been hit three times in the past 4-5 years and only one of the drivers was insured. (One didn’t even have a license!)

Interesting, I wouldn't expect it to be reasonably possible to avoid that rule. More difficult than driving without a license anyway. I believe over here the traffic inspectorate would want the plates back if you stop paying the insurance and then if you drive without the plates that's an instant hefty fee from the first cop that sees you. (The insurance is tied to the car, not to the driver.)

> Interesting, I wouldn't expect it to be reasonably possible to avoid that rule. More difficult than driving without a license anyway.

> if you drive without the plates that's an instant hefty fee from the first cop that sees you

How so? Said cop would have to stop you and check you have insurance. In almost 18 years of driving in France, some of I which I would drive twice a day, I've only been stopped for a police control a whopping 1 time.

Sure, I drive fairly conservatively, but basically I could've driven without license or insurance for all these years.

Also, I'm not sure dealerships have some obligation to check on these. When I bought my first motorcycle, the dealer only ever wanted to see the bank check.

According to [0], it would seem that driving without insurance is quite widespread. They say "over 30000 people have had a crash with an uninsured or runaway driver". Since I'd expect that not everyone without insurance crashes, the number must be higher than that.

Note that in France, the insurance is tied to the car, so if I drive your car, your insurance applies, even if I don't have any insurance of my own.

[0] https://www.senat.fr/questions/base/2019/qSEQ190309675.html

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#768

Post by googlryas »

Akronymus wrote: post #536
googlryas wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes sense because, for most of America, we have designed our environment to be heavily dependent on the possibilities cars open up for us. It is not the same with air or train travel. Those are useful, but not necessary for almost all people.

> It makes sense because, for most of America, we have designed our environment to be heavily dependent on the possibilities cars open up for us. I disagree on "possibilities cars open up". If it is optional to use a car basically everywhere, then sure, those are freedom. In the majority of the US you are locked to HAVING to have a car.

I think we might agree - don't miss the earlier part of that quote - "to be heavily dependent on the possibilities cars open up"

They are both a blessing and a curse. Cars let us commute 25 miles to work in any random direction easily, but a lot of times, that also means we are required to commute 25 miles to work in a random direction.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#769

Post by epistasis »

panzagl wrote: post #179
epistasis wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't agree with your assessment at all. Deaths are rising, yet what changes are happening? And in particular the NHSTA doesn't give a damn about those outside of the car. The very greatest threat to the life of my children is cars. It would be easy, trivial almost, to fix this by legalizing building for houses and businesses that don't allow cars, but are served only by public transit. Yet this very simple, very d…

> It would be easy, trivial almost, to fix this by legalizing building for houses and businesses that don't allow cars, but are served only by public transit. Is that all? Just move everyone in the country? What do you consider non-trivial?

When I say "fix this" I'm talking about the greatest threat to my children's life, ie me moving to a walkable neighborhood without cars, along with the subset of the population that also wants to live that way.

But my preferred lifestyle has been banned. And it is often because people are afraid that if I'm allowed to live the way I prefer, I'm going to make them live the way I prefer, which just speaks to their basic inability to acknowledge human freedom, or the possibility that people should even be allowed to make their own choice.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#770

Post by quantum_magpie »

bsder wrote: post #568
Enginerrrd wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I don't think UV return air would work as well as you think. The real solution is increased ventilation rates. UV bulbs are expensive (and invisible unless you get to poke around a buildings mechanical room.), they need to be replaced typically ~annually (they won't be). If they get dust on them, they don't work as well. Etc. etc. And here's the issue: To actually deal with high concentration infectious aer…

Is all this true for modern UV LEDs?

You need UV-C for sterilization and there are no LEDs emitting that.
Post reply on HN