Why Cars Will Kill 30,000 Americans This Year • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Cars Will Kill 30,000 Americans This Year

#101

Post by DougWebb » Fri, Mar 14, 2014, 3:21 AM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #88

sukuriant wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not entirely fair. Maybe in some of the cases; but, I've seen people do some really, really, REALLY unwise things as pedestrians that they're lucky someone was paying a huge amount of attention so they weren't hit. The most pressing example in my mind is a woman cross the street in the middle of a rain shower, within 15 yards, probably much less (my mind's eye paints the memory as 'the edge of my car was here…

I'd love to see some numbers on how many deaths are due to bad pedestrian behavior like that. Anecdotally, I've never encountered that sort of thing from a pedestrian while driving, but I've almost been run down several times by drivers not obeying the law while I was legally crossing the street with the right of way. All it would take is crossing the street at the wrong time with a walk signal without checking both…

I live in a suburban town that's mostly single-family homes, with lots of children. I also work in the area and often drive home for lunch, so I'm driving around a lot when the children are out. I've had a bunch of close calls over the years with kids wandering out in front of me without looking to see if there's any traffic in the street.

The closest was a teenage girl who literally walked into the side of my car by the passenger-side front wheel just as I was about to make a right turn. I looked right, I was clear. I looked left, I was clear. I looked right again and took my foot off the brake to start my turn, and there she was with her hands on my hood and a surprised look on her face. We're both very lucky her feet weren't under my wheel.

Re: Why Cars Will Kill 30,000 Americans This Year

#102

Post by Houshalter » Fri, Mar 14, 2014, 3:21 AM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #87

nostromo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the solution to unsafe roads is to throw everyone that is at-fault in an accident in jail. I understand the frustration cyclists have with auto traffic, but we've seen a million times that harsher penalties don't always have the intended outcome. And we have a habit in the US of using prison as the answer for every malady. Instead, I think the answer is better road design, separating cars and cyclists u…

When people decry using the prison system as a cure-all, it's usually for things like drugs or mental illness. In essence, why punish people for things that either don't harm others, or aren't their fault? You're applying this to a serious crime, at least manslaughter if not murder. If prison isn't appropriate for that, what is prison appropriate for? I imagine an argument could be made that prison is never the right…

There is a difference between human error and deliberate crimes.

Re: Why Cars Will Kill 30,000 Americans This Year

#103

Post by Houshalter » Fri, Mar 14, 2014, 3:26 AM UTC

trothamel wrote: post #31

In 2004, 42,836 Americans were killed in motor vehicle accidents. So this number actually represents a huge improvement. Something to realize is that potential replacements to cars are not that much safer. Highway travel is responsible for 7.7 deaths per billion passenger-miles. Mass transit is responsible for 5.4 deaths per billion passenger-miles. Given the less-direct routings used by transit, it's not totally cle…

>All of this sucks - but it's the price we pay for being able to move a long distance quickly, something that seems to be a net benefit to society. (How many lives are saved by ambulances each year? How about by being able to easily visit a doctor?)

They are not mutually exclusives. You could ban private cars but still have ambulances. Or make the speed limits absurdly slow or something like that. I'm not saying that we should do this, but we are definitely choosing to sacrifice lives for our convenience.

Re: Why Cars Will Kill 30,000 Americans This Year

#104

Post by jwatte » Fri, Mar 14, 2014, 3:32 AM UTC

I've always seen this as "30,000 deaths and 120,000 permanent disabilities is the price we pay for allowing the sale of cars that can go faster than 25 mph."

Re: Why Cars Will Kill 30,000 Americans This Year

#105

Post by pdonis » Fri, Mar 14, 2014, 3:34 AM UTC

The article quotes the 30,000 per year number, but it only really talks about fatalities or injuries to pedestrians by cars. The 30,000 number includes fatalities or injuries to people in cars as well. So a lot of relevant data is being left out.

Wikipedia has a link to NHTSA figures that give more detail. The link is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in...

From the 2010 data:

* 32,885 total fatalities

* 23,303 (70.8 percent) of those were vehicle occupants

* 4,502 (13.7 percent) were on motorcycles (drivers or passengers)

* 4,280 (13.0 percent) were pedestrians

* 618 (1.9 percent) were cyclists

* 182 (0.6 percent) were "other/unknown non-occupants"

So the article is focusing in on something that's, at most, only 15 percent or so (counting pedestrians and cyclists, since the article talks about both) of the problem. I say "at most" because of other interesting statistics from the NHTSA report:

* 31 percent of fatalities were in incidents involving alcohol-impaired drivers.

* 47 percent of the crashes that resulted in pedestrian fatalities had alcohol use reported by either the driver or the pedestrian or both. Interestingly, 33 percent of the pedestrians involved in these crashes were alcohol impaired, but only 14 percent of the drivers involved were; in 6 percent of the crashes, both the driver and the pedestrian were alcohol impaired.

* 32 percent of fatalities were in incidents where the driver was speeding. (42 percent of the drivers who were speeding were alcohol-impaired.)

* 42 percent of motorcycle drivers, and 51 percent of motorcycle passengers, who were fatally injured were not wearing helmets.

* 51 percent of vehicle occupants killed were not restrained (not wearing seat belts, or not in child seats/restraints).

* 11 percent of fatalities involved large trucks (gross vehicle weight over 10,000 pounds); of those, 76 percent were occupants of other vehicles, 14 percent were occupants of the trucks, and 10 percent were pedestrians.

Taking all this into consideration, I see a very different picture from "vehicles are murder machines". It looks to me like the major factors causing fatalities are individual choices made by people that put them at higher risk. And it's not like those choices are difficult, or about things that most people don't know. How hard is it to wear a seat belt? To put a helmet on if you're on a motorcycle? To not drink and drive?

Re: Why Cars Will Kill 30,000 Americans This Year

#106

Post by mikeash » Fri, Mar 14, 2014, 3:41 AM UTC

DougWebb wrote: post #94

mikeash wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people decry using the prison system as a cure-all, it's usually for things like drugs or mental illness. In essence, why punish people for things that either don't harm others, or aren't their fault? You're applying this to a serious crime, at least manslaughter if not murder. If prison isn't appropriate for that, what is prison appropriate for? I imagine an argument could be made that prison is never the right…

and you are at fault That's the tricky phrase. How do you prove fault in a car collision, to the same degree that's required for a charge and conviction of manslaughter or murder? In New Jersey, we have "no-fault" laws for insurance, which basically means that when there is an accident there's no way to prove that either party is more at-fault than the other, so legally neither is at fault. In practice, both parties…

Why would the same logic be applied? Surely a conviction for vehicular manslaughter would be held to the same standard as a conviction for regular manslaughter, which is to say proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Re: Why Cars Will Kill 30,000 Americans This Year

#107

Post by Houshalter » Fri, Mar 14, 2014, 3:42 AM UTC

datalus wrote: post #85

Still lower than suicide, sadly. Not many articles about that except the ones about statistics. No real op-ed pieces? Not as newsworthy or good for business?

Suicides are voluntary. You can die in an accident through no choice of your own.

Re: Why Cars Will Kill 30,000 Americans This Year

#108

Post by bagels » Fri, Mar 14, 2014, 3:43 AM UTC

Retric wrote: post #24

abstractbill wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've often wondered about this. Instead of just having a single thin metal skin that deforms, wouldn't it be even better to have multiple skins sandwiching a kind of honeycomb structure? That way you have even more stuff to deform and absorb the impact.

The only stuff that actually matters is keeping people from being squashed and the occupant's deceleration profile which you can already customize by changing how the car deforms. To really make a difference vs a high end car we could mandate 3 point seat-belts and helmets like you have in racing world. Still a 70MPH a head on collision is already fairly safe assuming people are belted the real killers are unbelted p…

Nearly every form of motorsport racing requires the following:

5, 6 or 7 mounting point harnesses Head and Neck restraints Helmets

Re: Why Cars Will Kill 30,000 Americans This Year

#109

Post by mikeash » Fri, Mar 14, 2014, 3:43 AM UTC

DougWebb wrote: post #99

mikeash wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd really like to see that broken down by type of transit, as well as deaths for transit passengers versus people killed in e.g. private cars involved in accidents with busses. My guess, and this is very much a guess, is that buses will be disproportionately dangerous, and a fair number of those killed by busses are in cars that collide with them. For one random example, the DC metro has seen 9 deaths in the past fi…

In my town and the towns around me (suburbs of NYC in New Jersey) there are a lot of deaths from people being hit by commuter trains. It's quite possible that we have more people dying that way than in traffic accidents, especially if you don't count deaths on the highways in the area which don't have any pedestrians. The problem here is that the trains mostly run at ground level, and the stations are mostly complete…

That's exactly the sort of thing I mean. I imagine that the safety of commuter trains with open stations and at-grade crossings must be vastly different from the safety of subways with closed stations and full grade separation. But I would love to see real numbers.

Re: Why Cars Will Kill 30,000 Americans This Year

#110

Post by vacri » Fri, Mar 14, 2014, 3:45 AM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #48

tokenadult wrote: post #25

The death rate per miles driven in the United States has fallen dramatically in my lifetime, and I can remember when the annual number of deaths was much higher.[1] That said, the article makes a very interesting claim about attitudes that we should all follow to the end of the article for further discussion here: "There’s an open secret in America: If you want to kill someone, do it with a car. As long as you’re sob…

I was recently in Beijing, where the supremacy of the automobile over the pedestrian is just about taken to its logical conclusion. The US puts cars on a high footing compared to pedestrians, with pedestrians restricted to crossing roads at certain points, generally better signaling and routes for cars, etc. Yet cars are still required to yield to pedestrians when e.g. turning or at a marked crosswalk. In Beijing, th…

In Beijing, the idea of yielding to pedestrians when turning doesn't seem to exist.

In parts of the US, too. Travelling across the US, there were a couple of places where as a pedestrian I had the right of way (pedestrian crossing light illuminated) and I actually had to stop crossing otherwise I would walk into the side of the car turning right in front of me, cutting me off.

I also noticed wandering around some inner suburbs of Austin that it was hostile to pedestrians - some houses just decided to stretch their gardens all the way to the road, blocking the footpath. Pedestrian traffic had to step out onto the road, in one case a secondary thoroughfare, to get past the property.