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Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

strongtowns.org

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Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#161

Post by aidenn0 »

digdugdirk wrote: post #86
woodruffw wrote: post #2

This 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…

IMO there's only really 2 underlying issues people have with public transit:

1. In nearly all of the US (maybe everywhere except parts of NYC?) it is a worse experience than driving (requires planning, takes longer, can't carry more than one or two bags with you).

2. It is déclassé.

I think #2 is at least partly a result of #1. Also note that #1 is true even for most cities in the US, because cities in the US are unbelievably car friendly compared to cities in e.g. western Europe. I don't see any public-transit solution that doesn't involve intentionally making the car experience worse, and that's going to be a tough sell to voters.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#162

Post by kelnos »

treeman79 wrote: post #143
kieselguhr_kid wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Doesn’t San Fransisco do all of those? They spend a huge amount on it anyway. And being one the dirtiest cities possible.

I'm really tired of this "SF is the dirties city" trope. Yes, there are areas that are incredibly dirty, but those areas are something like 5% of the city, and most of those areas are concentrated in a few specific neighborhoods. Most of the city is fairly clean (but to be sure, it's no Singapore) and reasonably well-maintained.

I've been in areas of Manhattan that would rival SF's dirtiest areas, but I wouldn't claim that NYC is a "dirty city".

I'm more worried about the threat of violence from mentally-unstable people on SF's streets, though that's something that's also concentrated in a relatively small number of places (unsurprisingly often coinciding with the dirtiness).

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#163

Post by throwaway0a5e »

xyzzyz wrote: post #114
willcipriano wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (prob…

Not only is what he described simply not realistic, it's likely far more unsafe than "driving normally" because the behavior violates the expectations of many/most other drivers and when people are thrown into situations that violate their expectations things get weird.

"But he should have been using a reasonable following distance" makes for easy low effort internet points but internet points won't get you out of a hospital bed.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#164

Post by ccn0p »

rtkwe wrote: post #147
flaque wrote: post #96

There’s an audio version of the same point here: https://podcast.strongtowns.org/e/the-drip-drip-drip-of-traf... A ”best effort” summary of this article: if thousands of people die in once place, it’s one of the great tragedies in American history. However if thousands of people die in thousands different places, it is ignored and considered a fact of life. When a plane or train crashes, we stop everything and redesi…

The same pattern plays out all over the place. Diffuse deaths are just background noise to life where singular events breakthrough. Happens all the time with gun/heart attack/car/pollution/etc. deaths. The last 2 years of COVID proved that to me pretty definitively.

Covid deaths: Simple solution, lockdown, virtual learning, 6-feet apart, cancel sports and after-school activities, miss graduations, etc. All the mental fallout from this: Too complex, just a way of life. Drip drip drip.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#166

Post by multiplegeorges »

chroem- wrote: post #128
narush wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out the book! You'll get a lot from it I think -- even if it's just a better understand of a different viewpoint :)

No thank you: I don't care for content that's searching for evidence to support a preconcieved position. There is too much dogma and not enough pragmatism in this space. I already get enough of their content on HN to recognize dogma when I see it. Quite frankly, it's a circlejerk where everyone else is wrong unless they follow the ST-scene's ideologically-founded prescriptions, and if you post evidence to the contrar…

> There is too much dogma and not enough pragmatism in this space.

And rejecting other viewpoints out of hand isn't dogmatic?

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#167

Post by cupofpython »

bostonpete wrote: post #152
googlryas wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes sense because, for most of America, we have designed our environment to be heavily dependent on the possibilities cars open up for us. It is not the same with air or train travel. Those are useful, but not necessary for almost all people.

Makes sense, but that still doesn't explain why we ignore tens of thousands of auto deaths per year but talk about one Uber ATG death for 5 years...

probably because self-driving has fuzzy accountability and is the same driver in all vehicles.

if a taxi driver crashes, youve got a bad taxi driver somewhere you will probably never interact with. If a self-driving car crashes, you've got possibly hundred of thousands of potential accidents waiting to happen from the same "bad driver"

the regular car accident conversations have all been had. what else is there to say?

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#168

Post by colpabar »

flaque wrote: post #96

There’s an audio version of the same point here: https://podcast.strongtowns.org/e/the-drip-drip-drip-of-traf... A ”best effort” summary of this article: if thousands of people die in once place, it’s one of the great tragedies in American history. However if thousands of people die in thousands different places, it is ignored and considered a fact of life. When a plane or train crashes, we stop everything and redesi…

This is totally off topic, but aside from the numbers being lower, we do the exact same thing with gun deaths.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#169

Post by dwighttk »

woodruffw wrote: post #24
TylerE wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure. I also won't claim that driving is dangerous, in the abstract: human beings take all kinds of risks, lots of them for fun, and I'm not interested in restricting others' behavior on that basis . It's merely thought provoking: every HN thread on transit will have the same half-dozen comments about violence and danger on public transit, when the reality is that two orders of magnitude more deaths occur each year o…

>the reality is that two orders of magnitude more deaths occur each year on our highways.

What is the throughput of highways vs public transit? I wouldn’t be surprised if it was two orders of magnitude greater person hours on roads in non public transit.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#170

Post by throwaway0a5e »

smileysteve wrote: post #90
TylerE wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your details really erase control though; To stick to the legal ones; Tired. 40% of Americans report not getting 8 hours of sleep a night. An only partially intersecting group reports they are regularly tired during daily activities. Is a driver's self actualization of tired accurate? Attentive; bad news, most drivers aren't attentive, hence we're still seeing deaths from texting while driving. Self actualization doe…

>Poor Maintenance. Brakes, nails in tires, low air pressure in tires, tires not suited for climate, other cars leaving oils on the roads, poor road maintenance, unexpected or untrained weather, check engine light (25%), potholes impact tie rods and steering, worn shocks, uneven loading. Very few drivers do this or pre-drive check every drive.

Your list started off good and then quickly went straight to bad faith BS.

Nobody is getting in a crash because their worn out gas cap is causing the emissions system to pop a code.

Furthermore, it's pretty clear from the statistics available and the widely varying conditions across the US with regard to vehicle inspections, weather and road conditions that these factors pale compared to human judgement related causes.

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