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

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#911

Post by robswc » Fri, Jul 22, 2022, 1:54 PM UTC

vineyardmike wrote: post #546

briffle wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a few friends that think the stats I show them are a complete lie and fabrication, but the truth is: more people from pistols than 'assault rifles'. In fact, in the US, more people die from knives than rifles. (not just the 'assualt ones' Heck more people per year in the US die of 'hands, fists, and feet'. [0] But guess what is always in the news, and talked about by politicians on both sides, until their cons…

The banning of assault rifles is because it’s easy and doesn’t detract from peoples lives at all. Assault rifles are for assault and we don’t need more assault. So why have them? Because a few people think it’s cool to own? Pistols and other Guns aren’t very effective at stopping deaths, but they’re perceived to be good defense, so banning them en mass is less palatable. NYC banned pistols once because it was often t…

I think its rather arrogant to think that we have perfected government to the point that we can willingly disarm ourselves of one of the most effective forms of defense...

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#912

Post by robswc » Fri, Jul 22, 2022, 1:57 PM UTC

onos wrote: post #719

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…

Personally find the premise of the article odd. I don’t dislike public transit cause I’m worried I’ll die taking it. I am worried I’ll be mugged, and I know it will be unpleasantly crowded and take a long time. 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 tran…

I try so hard to _not_ dislike public transit but its generally been an awful experience for me.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#913

Post by base698 » Fri, Jul 22, 2022, 1:58 PM UTC

pshc wrote: post #603

WalterBright wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Rescue attempts for a variety of mountain sports do put others at risk. In addition most of the above post was about the effect on first responders.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#914

Post by robswc » Fri, Jul 22, 2022, 2:00 PM UTC

MichaelCollins wrote: post #565

bostonpete wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes sense, but that still doesn't explain why we ignore tens of thousands of auto deaths per year but talk about one Uber ATG death for 5 years...

If a careless driver crashes into me, I've been wronged by an individual who made some bad decisions. If a self-driving car hits me, I've been wronged by a corporation that probably cut corners and sold a shitty product for profit. I have some sliver of sympathy for the culprit in the first case, but zero sympathy in the second.

How do you figure the self-driving car was built by cutting corners? Just to be devil's advocate... usually its a small team of people that genuinely care about making self driving better. What prevents it from simply being an accident?

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#915

Post by epistasis » Fri, Jul 22, 2022, 2:04 PM UTC

notch656a wrote: post #787

epistasis wrote: post #762

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

If you're operating on these kind of statistics I think you need to consider the age and race of your child. If you go by likelihood of death, a 19 year old black male (covered by the chart you cited) has a wildly different chance of firearms related death than a 4 year old white child (for that child, they're more likely to die by swimming pool) [0]. In fact the choice to include 18 and 19 year olds at prime age for…

If a bunch of people want to worship hunks of death inflicting metal as idols, I have zero problem with that as long as I'm allowed to live away from it. And I am allowed to! If somebody tells me that they go the firing range, that's just great, and I may even go with them some time. But I'm not allowed to live away from cars as a normal member of society.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#916

Post by buran77 » Fri, Jul 22, 2022, 2:12 PM UTC

thrashh wrote: post #528

buran77 wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

But that's the misconception, that car accidents/fatalities are somehow all unique and with a unique solution to be applied individually. In the end almost all of them boil down to the same few root causes: alcohol, speed, no seatbelt, tiredness, bad car maintenance, and a handful of others. So why 1% from 500 things, do you just want to prevent just a few accidents caused by speeding?

You don't need to fix 500 individual incidents but just a bit. You should fix one root cause. If your car won't drive faster than the speed limit for the area or the weather, if it won't drive at all if the driver is inebriated, sleepy, doesn't wear the seat belt properly, etc. then you prevent most of the accidents and fatalities.

So you don't cut 1% from 500 things, you cut all payments for a certain something you don't want.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#917

Post by snarf21 » Fri, Jul 22, 2022, 2:29 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…

While true, the are a government organization susceptible to political influence. We could greatly shrink the number of accidents with some very low tech requirements like mandatory full lights and headlights at all times if the car is in gear plus mandatory fish eye mirrors in all side views. These are literally almost free changes but not law. We all know that distraction (texting, nav, infotainment) is another category but we don't have any car rules to mitigate this. Instead we pass largely unforceable laws like "texting and driving is illegal".

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#918

Post by thrown_22 » Fri, Jul 22, 2022, 2:30 PM UTC

benou wrote: post #898

thrown_22 wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Assault rifles are for assault and we don’t need more assault. So why have them? Because a few people think it’s cool to own? People who think this should have a grizzly bear run at them at least once. Having seen it from a car I became pro-minigun instantly.

I love hiking into remote areas, including "bear country". I have seen black bears and grizzly bears while hiking. You do not need assault rifles, this sounds silly and over the top. You just need to be aware of your surroundings, follow the rules and have a bear spray : https://www.nps.gov/subjects/bears/safety.htm

A bear charging at you at full tilt gives you all of half a second to get it with the 9 meter range of bear spray. That's roughly how long it takes you to hit two keyboard keys in a row.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#919

Post by nradov » Fri, Jul 22, 2022, 2:41 PM UTC

spacemanmatt wrote: post #794

moistly wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you support the right of the polio-infected resident of Rockland County (a NYC suburb) to attend tonight’s basketball game? Would you be okay with him shopping at your grocery store, standing in line with you at the cash register?

Yeah, infectious disease beats free assembly every time.

No. There is always some sort of infectious disease going on. Even before COVID-19, thousands of people died every year from influenza and other respiratory diseases (including other corona viruses). This is not a valid reason for imposing restrictions and mandates.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#920

Post by BitwiseFool » Fri, Jul 22, 2022, 2:41 PM UTC

noobermin wrote: post #761

BitwiseFool wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

e-bikes and e-scooters are relatively new. It's not like people were able to use these things for decades unrestricted and now they have to be throttled.