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Why Cars Will Kill 30,000 Americans This Year

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

#141

Post by SixSigma »

kahirsch wrote: post #129
graylights wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That big comfy car that protects you from highway collisions accomplishes that by shifting the impact toward the smaller car. It doesn't increase overall highway safety, just steals it from others in your favor.

Large cars are also safer in single-vehicle collisions, which account for 65% of traffic deaths. There is some adverse effect on occupants of other vehicles, but this is much smaller than the advantage in safety from the large vehicle. It is definitely not true that it "just steals it from others".

It definitely is true. In a collision the vehicles absorb the energy of the collision inversely proportional to their relative masses i.e. the lighter car takes the brunt of the crash.

Safety researchers are responding by using active protection systems: in vehicles equippped with v2v transcievers will stiffen or soften their crash protection systems based upon the relative masses of the vehicles.

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

#142

Post by spikels »

Some Context: in 2010 the 121,000 annual US accidental deaths are roughly evenly split between vehicles (35,000), unintentional poisoning (33,000), falls (26,000) and other causes. Collectively accidents are the 5th leading cause of death after heart attack, cancer, respiratory disease and stroke.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr61/nvsr61_04.pdf

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

#143

Post by Dylan16807 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #132
pdonis wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

most Americans don't fly I'm not sure that's actually true. According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, there were 646 million enplaned passengers in 2013. ("Enplaned passengers" means passengers boarding originating flights, i.e., either nonstops to the destination or the first leg of an itinerary with at least one connection.) That's more than twice the population of the US, and about 2.7 times the popula…

Speed enforcement is a political issue these days, not a cost issue, it is quite cheap to put speed cameras everywhere and many countries do. We could eliminate speeding if we wanted to, Americans just don't want to. So what if a few more people die every year...freedom!

Oh shut up with half-baked emotional arguments, if a 'few people' dying in accidents was always a good enough reason to slow down traffic there wouldn't be a road in the world faster than 20mph.

At any rate, speed limits are set extra low with the expectation that people will go faster than the number on the sign. Trying to 'eliminate speeding' by itself is a nonsense goal.

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

#144

Post by SixSigma »

DougWebb wrote: post #113
mikeash wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If guilt can't be proven for sufficiently to assess which driver's insurance should pay for the costs of an accident, how can guilt be proven for the much stricter requirements needed for manslaughter? I think this would be especially difficult if the courts are overloaded with all accidents that involve deaths, instead of only the ones where drivers today are being charged with manslaughter and murder. (eg: cases wh…

> If guilt can't be proven for sufficiently to assess which driver's insurance should pay for the costs of an accident, how can guilt be proven for the much stricter requirements needed for manslaughter?

Guilt could be proven for more cases but the cost is prohibitive. It is cheaper for all concerned to just say "we know what happened, let's not bother finding out how and just split the costs of repair", the drivers pay higher premiums for a while, they probably share the blame anyway and both will drive more carefully from now on.

When one of the parties could go to prison for life, society decides to accept the burden and does a full investigation.

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

#145

Post by Dylan16807 »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #23
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #6

"Murder Machines"? Come on. Not all deaths are murder. We Americans have this idea that nothing bad should ever happen, that we should find a way to prevent it. It's a goal to shoot for, certainly. But calling it murder if you don't reach that goal? No. Can we climb down from the overheated rhetoric? It smells like propaganda.

I came here looking for this comment, I was not disappointed :-) The headline is hyperbole, but it is common hyperbole. Factories pumping out pollutants are "murdering" our people, Cigarette manufacturers are "murdering" their customers, Etc. The interesting point in the story is how we went from 'cars need to look out for people' to 'people need to look out for cars' in a relatively short time frame. The discussion…

Intentionally releasing poisons is a hell of a lot closer to murder than performing an activity with risks (aka any activity). Factories are a poor leading point, because I could see a world where they are required to capture toxins to the point that only uncommon accidents release non-negligible amounts. But driving would still be okay in comparison.

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

#146

Post by Dylan16807 »

SixSigma wrote: post #141
kahirsch wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large cars are also safer in single-vehicle collisions, which account for 65% of traffic deaths. There is some adverse effect on occupants of other vehicles, but this is much smaller than the advantage in safety from the large vehicle. It is definitely not true that it "just steals it from others".

It definitely is true. In a collision the vehicles absorb the energy of the collision inversely proportional to their relative masses i.e. the lighter car takes the brunt of the crash. Safety researchers are responding by using active protection systems: in vehicles equippped with v2v transcievers will stiffen or soften their crash protection systems based upon the relative masses of the vehicles.

You're ignoring the word 'just'.

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

#147

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #143
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speed enforcement is a political issue these days, not a cost issue, it is quite cheap to put speed cameras everywhere and many countries do. We could eliminate speeding if we wanted to, Americans just don't want to. So what if a few more people die every year...freedom!

Oh shut up with half-baked emotional arguments, if a 'few people' dying in accidents was always a good enough reason to slow down traffic there wouldn't be a road in the world faster than 20mph. At any rate, speed limits are set extra low with the expectation that people will go faster than the number on the sign. Trying to 'eliminate speeding' by itself is a nonsense goal.

I'm not making any arguments. Is it ok to go 90mph when the speed limit is 75mph? Even if its straight I90 freeway in the middle of Central Washington? I'm not sure, but today we have that choice as enforcement is choppy.

Anyways, we'll be into self driving cars in 10 or 15 years regardless, the question is almost outdated.

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

#148

Post by Dylan16807 »

rtpg wrote: post #70
ryandrake wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, cars are not killing people. Drivers are. Unless we're talking about self-driving cars that spontaneously turn themselves on, back down the driveway, and mow down pedestrians on their own.

What about things like Toyota's unintended acceleration debacle? Just because driver's actions count for a lot of accidents doesn't mean that car manufacturer are absolved from doing anything. Considering how many accidents there are, cars need to be designed with that in mind , much like how touch keyboards work around our fat finger inputs. User error is a design consideration (or else we wouldn't have undo command…

The Toyota debacle where they had buggy code but no evidence of anything other than driver error?

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

#149

Post by thaumasiotes »

SixSigma wrote: post #141
kahirsch wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large cars are also safer in single-vehicle collisions, which account for 65% of traffic deaths. There is some adverse effect on occupants of other vehicles, but this is much smaller than the advantage in safety from the large vehicle. It is definitely not true that it "just steals it from others".

It definitely is true. In a collision the vehicles absorb the energy of the collision inversely proportional to their relative masses i.e. the lighter car takes the brunt of the crash. Safety researchers are responding by using active protection systems: in vehicles equippped with v2v transcievers will stiffen or soften their crash protection systems based upon the relative masses of the vehicles.

Imagine the following:

- two people driving paper-thin cars crash into each other head-on at 60 mph. The cars divide the energy of the collision evenly, disintegrate, and pass on a lot of energy to their passengers.

- two people driving huge voluminous and massive SUVs crash into each other head-on at 60 mph. The SUVs divide the energy of the collision evenly, warping into unrecognizable crumply wads of steel. The passengers take less damage than in the earlier scenario.

This is impossible?

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

#150

Post by Dylan16807 »

saraid216 wrote: post #14
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #6

"Murder Machines"? Come on. Not all deaths are murder. We Americans have this idea that nothing bad should ever happen, that we should find a way to prevent it. It's a goal to shoot for, certainly. But calling it murder if you don't reach that goal? No. Can we climb down from the overheated rhetoric? It smells like propaganda.

> Can we climb down from the overheated rhetoric? It smells like propaganda. And your comment smells like shilling. If we're making baseless accusations.

Shilling for who? I think you're being ridiculous.

And if you're being ridiculous on purpose, you're not making whatever point you think you are and need to stop posting.

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