91–100 of 180 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bridges do move some normally, yes. It may depend on the type of bridge though? Certainly suspension bridges do.
It's a suspension bridge. And a solid one :) Takes 6 lanes of traffic and whole trains on the bottom.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Most people would accept that level of risk" I wouldn't and I definitely wouldn't if I had other people in the car.
It's likely that you live in an area with similar mortality risk from air pollution. Is there a reason not to move to an area with lower risk from air pollution?
If you knew all this, would you have avoided driving over the bridge? Would you have wanted the local government to close it indefinitely awaiting repairs? Let's say it would collapse with 100% certainty randomly in the next three years, and you're in the danger area for 2 minutes, with a 20% chance of fatality (in fact, nobody died). That's still around a one in 4 million chance any given trip kills you, about the s…
Or how about let's say it would collapse with 100% certainty randomly in the next three years, and a school bus with twenty kids in it drives over the bridge twice a day, with each child facing a 20% chance of fatality.
‘I probably won’t be the one who dies when it collapses’ is a terrible metric for whether or not we should try to mitigate the risk of a bridge collapse.
Same stuff for the Genoa, Italy bridge (Ponte Morandi). Everyone running on that would feel vibrations and "repairs" were just lipstick on a ugly face, until it finally collapsed, with 43 dead. Surprisingly, or not so, no one was found guilty, not even the inspectors that didn't report the ongoing damages, just because "it would be too costly to rebuild it, and profits of the highway company (1) in charge of it would…
Vibrations on a bridge are not normal? I'm asking because I've been in standstil traffic (in my car) on the Lisbon "golden gate" type bridge and that thing was freaking bouncing up and down from traffic on other lanes.
But it's true that big structures are often designed to move as a way to deal with forces. It's much better than something firm that doesn't move until it snaps.
If you knew all this, would you have avoided driving over the bridge? Would you have wanted the local government to close it indefinitely awaiting repairs? Let's say it would collapse with 100% certainty randomly in the next three years, and you're in the danger area for 2 minutes, with a 20% chance of fatality (in fact, nobody died). That's still around a one in 4 million chance any given trip kills you, about the s…
For those wondering if that is right, it is. Here's the math.
Americans drive about 3.2 trillion miles per year and about 40 000 people are killed. That's one death per 80 000 000 miles.
Assuming each mile is equally deadly, that chances you survive a given a mile would be 79 999 999 / 80 000 000. To survive a trip of N miles, you have to survive each individual mile sequentially. The chances of that would be (79 999 999 / 80 000 000)^N.
The chance of not surviving that trip would then be 1 - (79 999 999 / 80 000 000)^N.
For N = 30 that is 1 / 2 666 667, which is close enough to dmurray's number to count as a match. There's enough fuzziness is in the inputs that all we can hope for is the same ballpark.
I've seen others say the rate is one death per 120 000 000 miles, and for N = 30 that does give 1 / 4 000 000, so I'd guess they are using that rate.
> Most people would accept that level of risk. Perhaps not to save a couple of minutes on the journey, but if everyone was redirected to another route at rush hour, it might cost each commuter 10-20 minutes
One big difference is that with the bridge everyone has the average risk. I cross the bridge, I'm rolling a d4000000 and hoping I don't get a 1.
With a car I can take steps to make the chances of dying on my particular trip much lower than average. With the car I can often time my trip so as to go at times of day or during weather conditions or during traffic conditions when accident rates are lower.
maybe they should. maybe we could celebrate repair like we do new construction. there’s a comfort in knowing we’ve been put good again that’s worth signifying.
If you knew all this, would you have avoided driving over the bridge? Would you have wanted the local government to close it indefinitely awaiting repairs? Let's say it would collapse with 100% certainty randomly in the next three years, and you're in the danger area for 2 minutes, with a 20% chance of fatality (in fact, nobody died). That's still around a one in 4 million chance any given trip kills you, about the s…
Someone else posted the NTSB video on the bridge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-VnWB4fiFk I am fairly certain that a large majority of people, if they'd have had access to those images of the bridges structural members, would have stopped using it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most “foreign” aid, especially military aid, is is spent within the “donor” country. Japan is the most extreme in this regard, followed by the USA. And, like maintenance: foreign aid can avoid local problems, e.g. stabilizing countries in central America can reduce the incentive for people to flee to the US (which for most people is a distant plan C over staying where they are or moving a short distance away).
Its grift. Why does the US have to spend money on military aid to first world countries, even if a very sizable chunk is spent on American weaponry? That money could be spent on maintenance rather than fattening our MIC. NGOs are similar. In theory they sound good, the leaders can pull sizable salaries, eclipsing any congresspersons earnings and they are incentivized to keep the bad thing happening—if they solved the…
But contrary to popular belief, the MIC isn’t that fat. They are mostly public companies - you can check out their profits yourself. Here’s one: https://valustox.com/NOC
Their margins tend to be small. Their revenues are incredibly steady (they’re pretty much government departments). Staying ready for war like this is actually a wise course of action - it would be catastrophic to have to ramp up in the next emergency like in WW2.
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In theory, shouldn't it be this way? Having localities pay from local tax money seems like it would focus money on expenditures that the people that use them and pay for them will approve of with their own skin in the game. There are some interstate highways that serve multiple localities, but these should be the minority, right?
Only if the city has the right to bar travelers from passing through.