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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

#931

Post by spacemanmatt »

nradov wrote: post #919
spacemanmatt wrote: post #794

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, not rhinovirus but definitely polio. Surely you aren't proposing that anyone ever tried to limit free assembly for run-of-the-mill germs. Point being, your rights exist in tension with public health; they are not absolute.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#932

Post by wing-_-nuts »

bluGill wrote: post #906
vineyardmike wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You obviously have no idea what an assault rifle is, just made an assumption from the name. An assault rifle is a normal rifle that because of a few cosmetic features looks like a military gun. None of those features make it more deadly than any other gun.

Semi auto high caliber rifle capable of holding a magazine over 10 rounds. Happy? Don't split hairs.

Actually, I'm not sure why I get sucked into these discussions time after time. Nothing will ever change without a constitutional amendment. The left needs to make its peace with that.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#933

Post by elil17 »

kortilla wrote: post #855
flaque wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human error isn’t a root cause. Why were they able to speed on that road? Why did they feel safe being on their phone? Every software engineer understands intrinsically that blaming the user does not improve outcomes. You cannot get folks to click the right button by putting “you must click the right button” into the terms of service, and then suing the users who click the wrong one.

Yes it is. In many scenarios outside of software, things have already been optimized to a point where the human cannot be removed much further or the safety can’t be improved without violating some other constraint. > Why were they able to speed on that road? Every road can be sped on, especially if you’re going to crash. > Why did they feel safe being on their phone? They didn’t, but it was “an urgent reply”.

There is a lot the US could be doing to make roads psychologically harder to speed on. Narrow, winding roads, for instance, make people uncomfortable with speeding. Other countries use this for traffic calming. The NTSB does advocate for design that prioritizes traffic calming.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#934

Post by wing-_-nuts »

thrown_22 wrote: post #612
vineyardmike wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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.

What a ridiculous argument. Most of the artic guides I've seen are running around with beat up 12ga pumps and slugs.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#935

Post by notch656a »

glogla wrote: post #858
notch656a wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people have insurance but the ones doing the crashing disproportionately do not, either because their prior crashing resulted in a requirement for expensive bonded insurance or because their habit of crashing made their insurance prohibitively expensive. I think some places also won't insure drivers who don't have a license, which also correlates well with drivers who get drunk and crash into things.

The question is why people who repeatedly crash while drunk are not in prison to protect rest of the society.

Given that vehicles are trivial to get and licensing does nothing to stop driving, you have a fair point. IMO probably better to drop the licensing schemes and then execute / imprison those who recklessly crash into others.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#936

Post by epistasis »

refurb wrote: post #921
epistasis wrote: post #890

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A mile driven is not a positive impact. A trip taken, an amenity experienced, a commute completed would be a positive impact. But every mile driven is a negative impact. If the amount driven is increasing, it's likely because the system is failing more.

Irrelevant to the point - driving is getting safer, not more dangerous. And unless people deriving zero benefit, every mile driven is a positive outcome. To ignore that is to look at the problem incorrectly.

Given that I only have one life, I actually only care about the cost in lives, not cost per mile.

The way we design our society impacts how much we are forced to drive. Our current plans force people to drive more and more.

Even without increasing miles, deaths by cars are somewhat decreasing, especially compared to decades ago, and I've posted those graphs elsewhere in this thread.

The real way to decrease car deaths isn't to decrease deaths per mile, it's to allow people to avoid the risk at all in the first place.

Because a lot of these deaths stents even from people in the cars, it's from cars ramming into those who haven't gotten in cars but still must risk exposure to them in order to live in the world.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#937

Post by intrasight »

avianlyric wrote: post #343
intrasight wrote: post #299

We don't ignore them - we just accept that risk Data: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety#Statistics 0.00000003% chance of dying if you drive a kilometer to the yoga studio. Want to make it less risky personally? Drive less, or drive a safer car. https://www.iihs.org/ratings/top-safety-picks

What about all the pedestrians that are killed by vehicles (which is rapidly trending up)? Do just have accept that even those that don’t benefit from car must still suffer the consequences of cars?

IIHS safety tests are getting more aggressive on pedestrian safety. And as their results have a huge impact on what the manufacturers do, I expect that in two years time a) a TOP SAFETY PICK+ rating will require passing a night-time pedestrian test, and b) manufacturers will figure it out.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#938

Post by jacobolus »

teakettle42 wrote: post #808
jacobolus wrote: post #790

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> absolutely no reason There is a very good reason: > Results show that the average risk of severe injury for a pedestrian struck by a vehicle reaches 10% at an impact speed of 16 mph, 25% at 23 mph, 50% at 31 mph, 75% at 39 mph, and 90% at 46 mph. The average risk of death for a pedestrian reaches 10% at an impact speed of 23 mph, 25% at 32 mph, 50% at 42 mph, 75% at 50 mph, and 90% at 58 mph. https://aaafoundation.…

> If you could systematically reduce the speed on all urban/suburban streets to no more than 20 mph (actual driving speed, not posted limit), it would be a huge safety win for humans living in those places. What evidence is there that the attrition we see from car accidents is actually a net-loss for society? Furthermore, is safety the highest priority, or is it balanced with other concerns, including road efficiency…

You’re right, mass use of roads for everyday transportation is incredibly inefficient in almost every way: Outrageously high construction/maintenance costs, outrageously large space requirements for roads and parking at both ends, high resource and environmental costs for the cars and driving per se, high costs in human health from a sedentary lifestyle and plenty of local pollution, high costs in human time spent driving around in cars, etc.

We’d be much better off if we re-planned the whole society to switch as many trips as possible to other methods of transportation. This would require changes in land-use laws, a shift in investment toward mass transit and pedestrian/bicycle infrastructure, etc.

Making the roads we already have safer would be a good start though.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#939

Post by cruano »

sooheon wrote: post #730
nightfly wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm overall not anti-nuclear or anything. The lasting cultural, ecological, and economic damage from severe nuclear disasters is _pretty_ significant though and we need to do a better job ensuring they don't happen if we wanna restore peoples trust in the idea of nuclear power.

That's what this topic is about -- the standard for nuclear is high (as it should be), but we take the status quo of fossil fuels without a second thought, even though it's immeasurably worse in almost every way.

It's _measurably_ worse in almost every way

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#940

Post by Tiktaalik »

I came across a 1940s Edmonton Journal a while ago and one of the most remarkable differences from a modern newspaper was at the bottom centre of the front page was a number detailing the number of traffic deaths that year similar to a sort of "x days since this factory has had an accident" sign.

What a remarkable thing to track in such a prime location. Clearly at some point someone cared quite a bit about traffic deaths. Not sure if this was some hyper local Edmonton issue for a while or there was broader concern around car deaths during this part of the 20th century.

At some point though this concern about the startling amount of traffic deaths clearly ended.

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