Because it's worth it. The question is why we don't ignore other causes of death that are also worth it.
Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes
111–120 of 1001 posts
Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes
#112The primary reason why I ignore car crashes is because I ensure that I do the following things, all of which greatly reduce my risk factor compared to the average: 1. I always drive attentively with both hands on the steering wheel. 2. I completed on-track driving instruction in a race car, multiple times, and also took training in evasive driving maneuvers. 3. I constantly maintain situational awareness of what's go…
40 years old eh? Perhaps it's time to start considering retiring from driving to maintain your high standard.
Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes
#113This is a really excellent read, and neatly summarizes a thought that flashes through the back of my mind whenever someone tells me that public transit is unsafe. If over 100 people died each day on public transit, we'd have banned it by now. But we accept it in our automotive culture, while simultaneously handwringing over every incident that happens on public transit.
I find many of the issues brought up about public transit being unsafe revolve around the people you might encounter on public transit (drug users, homeless, mental illness, etc.) and the waiting around/walking to public transit stops (muggings, thefts, etc.) I've never had any issues myself, but have absolutely been exposed to those issues while taking transit. I've also witnessed those issues increase during/post l…
Right, it's not not necessarily about safety it's about needing to feel safe.
A big problem on this honestly is that news media focuses disproportionately on interpersonal crime compared to almost all other kinds of harm that can be done. Combined with generally decreased newsroom budgets, this has led to firmer reliance on, and less questioning of, direct police releases. We basically just let the cops tell us what to worry about, and they predictably tell us to worry about the things that get more funding for police.
We've mostly decided that, while these things aren't good per se, they are downstream of other incentives and requirements that are good, or at least inevitable. I don't agree, but I also don't think there's much value in a "what could be different" conversation without having a "why is it like this at all" conversation first.
Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
You also can't be sure a random guy is not going to come from a side street on a red light at 90mph and T-bone you because he was answering a whatsapp and didn't notice the lights. I ride a motorbike. As part of training I was repeatedly told to wear protection not because of my riding skills, but because of everyone else's lack of skills.
Part of riding a motorbike (cycle here) is also driving defensively is it not? I don't assume people are going to stop at a given intersection, I take a look at their current speed and project it forward before determining if it's safe for me to go. If someone is going at a high rate of speed towards a stop sign or red light, I don't pull out just because I have the "right of way" I assume they are going to do someth…
> I don't assume people are going to stop at a given intersection, I take a look at their current speed and project it forward before determining if it's safe for me to go.
While I sympathize with your overall sentiment (and indeed, as a fellow motorcyclists, I know a lot about defensive driving/riding), I have never seen people consistently drive the way you describe, ever. For many intersections in the cities (probably most), you simply cannot see if someone is actually going from a side road until you're so deep in the intersection that you have no chance of stopping before it if you notice someone.
Imagine you're driving here:
https://www.google.com/maps/@47.5703087,-122.3952816,3a,75y,...
There's a side road on in front of you. Imagine there is a car going same speed as you, on a crash trajectory (i.e. it is exactly as far from the intersection as you are). Where's the first moment you see it?
Most likely, around here:
https://www.google.com/maps/@47.5703156,-122.3959313,3a,75y,...
where you're around 20 feet from the intersection of your routes. If you begin braking immediately as you notice the other car, you need to be going slower 15 mph if you want to avoid a crash. If you add any amount of time to actually judge the speed of the other car and its intention of stopping, you need to be going less than 10 mph. Needless to say, nobody actually does that, people don't slow down to 10 mph in locations like above.
Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes
#115This is a really excellent read, and neatly summarizes a thought that flashes through the back of my mind whenever someone tells me that public transit is unsafe. If over 100 people died each day on public transit, we'd have banned it by now. But we accept it in our automotive culture, while simultaneously handwringing over every incident that happens on public transit.
I find many of the issues brought up about public transit being unsafe revolve around the people you might encounter on public transit (drug users, homeless, mental illness, etc.) and the waiting around/walking to public transit stops (muggings, thefts, etc.) I've never had any issues myself, but have absolutely been exposed to those issues while taking transit. I've also witnessed those issues increase during/post l…
What we really need is a holistic approach to a lot of these issues. Ending the violent prohibition of drugs, building and providing housing for the homeless, better and more accessible mental health programs, denser cities, better transit, etc. We don't have a politics in the US that fully articulates the dynamic interconnectivity of all the issues and aggressively pushes for a set of solutions.
Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes
#116This is a really excellent read, and neatly summarizes a thought that flashes through the back of my mind whenever someone tells me that public transit is unsafe. If over 100 people died each day on public transit, we'd have banned it by now. But we accept it in our automotive culture, while simultaneously handwringing over every incident that happens on public transit.
The difference is control . While a careful, attentive driver in a well-maintained vehicle certainly isn’t immune, their risk is much lower than someone who drives tired, drunk, or high in a car with bald tires and bad brakes.
The difference is really just the perception of control.
Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes
#117This is a really excellent read, and neatly summarizes a thought that flashes through the back of my mind whenever someone tells me that public transit is unsafe. If over 100 people died each day on public transit, we'd have banned it by now. But we accept it in our automotive culture, while simultaneously handwringing over every incident that happens on public transit.
Or self-driving cars. Every incident is Big News, while ignoring the fact that 40,000 people die every year in traffic accidents (and 4.8 million injuries) -- in the US alone. People are of course famously bad at putting statistics into context.
Assuming people are ignorant en masse says more about your understanding of people than the people.
Not all self driving car accidents make the news — self driving car accidents that any human diver could have easily avoided make the news. Statistically safer something something miles driven means nothing to the family of someone who died in a completely avoidable accident.
Until self driving cars reach the point of handing emergency situations — storms, ice, obstacles, children, other accidents, sudden lane changes, tire blowouts — better than humans and stop punting anything less than ideal conditions back to the driver it’s pointless to talk about safety.
Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
> While a careful, attentive driver in a well-maintained vehicle certainly isn’t immune, their risk is much lower than someone who drives tired, drunk, or high in a car with bald tires and bad brakes. You could have just stopped at "control". That's the fundamental dynamic by which we can explain this differential public sentiment--a sense of control or lack thereof, independent of whether that control actually exist…
If only we could take this further. What’s more in “control” than driving? Walking and riding a bike. That’s ultimate control.
When I am on a bike I am definitely not in control of all the people in cars around me, especially the ones who are drunk, are assholes, or are badly-programmed robots who barely know what a “bicycle” is.
Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes
#119My favorite: Number of people die from cancer each year is same as number of people died in World War II each year. How much resources did we allocated to each? As former chimps, our ability grasp probability and statistics is astonishingly limited.
Isn't some of that skewed though? Most of the people who fought and died in WW2 were 18-40 year old folks in the prime of their life, or minorities killed in atrocities. My guess, and correct me if it's wrong, but a lot of people who die from cancer are generally unwell in other ways, or more elderly. It's also that there's not just one "cancer" we have to fix, and we already spend quite a lot of resources on studying and treating cancer.
Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes
#120This is a really excellent read, and neatly summarizes a thought that flashes through the back of my mind whenever someone tells me that public transit is unsafe. If over 100 people died each day on public transit, we'd have banned it by now. But we accept it in our automotive culture, while simultaneously handwringing over every incident that happens on public transit.
I find many of the issues brought up about public transit being unsafe revolve around the people you might encounter on public transit (drug users, homeless, mental illness, etc.) and the waiting around/walking to public transit stops (muggings, thefts, etc.) I've never had any issues myself, but have absolutely been exposed to those issues while taking transit. I've also witnessed those issues increase during/post l…
Try visiting Japan or South Korea or even central Europe.