171–180 of 816 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This study didn’t nearly enough to disambiguate for widespread phone use while driving, which IMO is the biggest factor. Self driving AI is the answer.
They have phones in Europe and their numbers are going down.
So… we have the technology to fix this problem. Let’s just do it!
>“Our estimate is that about 200 to 400 pedestrians a year would not have died if vehicles had remained approximately the same size over the past quarter-century,” the report continued. “That represents about 10 percent of the recent increase in pedestrian deaths.” Am I crazy? The article itself points out that only 10% of the increase would have been 'saved' if cars had remained the same size. This goes directly aga…
This is from the NYT article
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Normalizing by miles driven will take you to the wrong conclusions. It underestimates the extra deaths directly caused by the fact that we’ve built exurbs farther and farther away from where people work over the last 20-30 years. So maybe deaths per mile would be similar, but we’ve pushed people further and further so they have to drive more miles, increasing the deaths due to poor design. Building society in a way t…
> Building society in a way that we increase deaths due to poor planning, like making driving the only option for the majority of people It's not poor planning, it's what Americans want. Americans, by and large, do not want to live in dense neighborhoods or tiny homes like in many parts of Europe. You get that in places like NYC and quality of life in those places is atrocious.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sedan hits you, you get hit in the knees and fall on the hood. Brodozer hits you, it strikes your chest/head, pushes you over and drives over you.
>Sedan hits you, you get hit in the knees and fall on the hood. Brodozer hits you, it strikes your chest/head, pushes you over and drives over you. You just made that up. Pedestrians are mostly killed by head onto solid object. Your two most common options are pavement and windshield. Pavement is worse because cars have a fair bit of engineering that goes into preventing head onto windshield. At the end of the day it…
> The issue isn’t mass alone, but also height. Yes, spreading impact over a greater area reduces the force experienced by any given part of your body, but when that surface area rises further and further from the ground, the impact point on your body rises with it. If you’re hit below your center of mass, you’re likely to fall toward the vehicle. If you’re hit at or above that point, you’re likely to be knocked down in front of of the vehicle instead. The latter becomes less survivable due to the poor visibility offered by taller trucks and SUVs.
> “We see a lot of devastating collisions even at lower speeds because the pedestrian gets punted forward,” said Shawn Harrington, whose company, Forensic Rock, conducted crash testing for the report. “Before the driver knows what’s happened, the pedestrian’s head is under the wheel.”
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This study didn’t nearly enough to disambiguate for widespread phone use while driving, which IMO is the biggest factor. Self driving AI is the answer.
Would've been trivial to just run the same calculations on 1990s numbers when SUVs first became popular but long before smartphones. I think it speaks volumes that they didn't.
Phone is 99% likely the culprit.
Self driving AI or putting the #%£€ phone down would have prevented it.
So this is only one of the reasons, and a relatively small one: “Our estimate is that about 200 to 400 pedestrians a year would not have died if vehicles had remained approximately the same size over the past quarter-century,” the report continued. “That represents about 10 percent of the recent increase in pedestrian deaths.”
Sadly, most will ignore your common sense just as they are ignoring the data.
WA state recently passed a law about e-bikes/e-motorcycles to deal with the issue of younger teens on these kinda moped-style e-bikes going very fast around town (and often riding quite recklessly). The law is reasonable, but it strikes me what a double standard there is for biking vs driving. For biking, there's a danger that's noticed, and we quickly pass a law that straight up bans that type of bike for those ride…
I don't know the particulars, but if what's going on in WA is like what's going on in my California town, I don't think it's reasonable. I see teens going around on ebikes, and people freak out over them in ways that seem completely inappropriate to the kids scooting around. I think it's mostly a reaction to seeing young people being young people, as far as I can tell. Same thing happens on NextDoor, a few kids hangi…
To be fair, most cars go too fast in residential areas. I drive like a grandma in them and there's a good chance that someone is up my ass and annoyed that I'm not exceeding the speed limit.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sedan hits you, you get hit in the knees and fall on the hood. Brodozer hits you, it strikes your chest/head, pushes you over and drives over you.
>Sedan hits you, you get hit in the knees and fall on the hood. Brodozer hits you, it strikes your chest/head, pushes you over and drives over you. You just made that up. Pedestrians are mostly killed by head onto solid object. Your two most common options are pavement and windshield. Pavement is worse because cars have a fair bit of engineering that goes into preventing head onto windshield. At the end of the day it…
> You just made that up. Pedestrians are mostly killed by head onto solid object.
Not to be combative, but I'd also like to see stats on that - that sounds just as made up. I'd expect a lot of pedestrians to strike the hood (about just as likely as windshield) as most pedestrian accidents happen in parking lots, drive-ways, traffic lights and vehicles exiting across a sidewalk (under 25mph).
there’s another thing that started to get quite popular in the late 2000s… smartphones
Then surely Europe shares that trends and shows growth in pedestrian death. But that isn't the case at all, maybe Europeans are immune to smartphones: https://road-safety.transport.ec.europa.eu/document/download...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then surely Europe shares that trends and shows growth in pedestrian death. But that isn't the case at all, maybe Europeans are immune to smartphones: https://road-safety.transport.ec.europa.eu/document/download...
Anecdotally... Having spent time driving in both Europe and Southern California, I'd say that European drivers are more attentive to their driving and way less likely to be looking at their phone while driving, since it's policed. You can often see drivers in SoCal holding their phone for a video call.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-614...
https://www.cbs42.com/news/crime/ohio-woman-caught-eating-ce...
https://www.carthrottle.com/news/cyclist-berated-woman-eatin...