Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes • Hacker News Board

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#461

Post by MichaelCollins » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 10:12 PM UTC

briffle wrote: post #358

colpabar wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I have a few friends that think the stats I show them are a complete lie and fabrication, but the truth is: more people from pistols than 'assault rifles'. In fact, in the US, more people die from knives than rifles. (not just the 'assualt ones' Heck more people per year in the US die of 'hands, fists, and feet'. [0] But guess what is always in the news, and talked about by politicians on both sides, until their cons…

I think politicians fixate on rifles because angry constituents armed with rifles are what they personally fear the most. It's not about the general population stats at all. They don't really care about interpersonal/domestic violence or random street crime being committed with pawn shop revolvers or knives, even though these together account for the overwhelming majority of murders.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#462

Post by aidenn0 » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 10:12 PM UTC

woodruffw wrote: post #210

aidenn0 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 unb…

> I think #2 is at least partly a result of #1 And vice versa. As I said in a thread yesterday[1]: we justify our continuing neglect of public transit by claiming that "polite society" avoids it, which in turn fulfills the prophecy. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32165783

That's partly it, but the status quo in the US is of the car infrastructure being so good that driving in the US is a better experience than taking public transit in many places with excellent public transit. Therefore #1 will remain true as long as we don't downgrade (either intentionally or via neglect) the car infrastructure, and taking things away from people is always harder than just not giving it to them in the first place.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#463

Post by rootusrootus » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 10:13 PM UTC

unsupp0rted wrote: post #398

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This maximum would barely change your time to destination Yes it would. The drive from LA to San Francisco is about 300 miles on Interstate 5. Much of this highway is completely straight, with excellent visibility through an unpopulated desert. When sparsely trafficked (as it is much of the time), it is safe to drive 80+ MPH on I5 for hours at a time. At 80 MPH, this is a 3 hour 45 minute drive. At your proposed 60…

People shouldn't really drive 300 miles in individual private vehicles. Apart from the chance of accidentally killing oneself or others, it's hugely inefficient. If we changed an interstate full of cars to high speed trains (or hyperloop or whatever) which depart every half hour, it'd be safer, cheaper, cleaner... you name it.

So what should I do? Take a train? Doesn't go there. Bus? Again. Fly? That's not more efficient. Maybe grandma just doesn't need a visit from her grandkids.

Instead, I bought an electric car. I bet it compares quite favorably to a typical bus. And grandma does like to see her grandkids, let me tell ya.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#464

Post by vehementi » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 10:13 PM UTC

epistasis wrote: post #130

mywittyname wrote: post #105

"We" don't ignore them. Every major government has a body dedicated entirely to automobile safety. In the USA, this is NHSTA - National Highway Safety & Transportation Administration. They maintain an information system of traffic fatality statistics in the USA, called FARS (fatality analysis reporting system). This system is used to determine new safety devices and standards for vehicles and to test their effectiven…

I can't agree with your assessment at all. Deaths are rising, yet what changes are happening? And in particular the NHSTA doesn't give a damn about those outside of the car. The very greatest threat to the life of my children is cars. It would be easy, trivial almost, to fix this by legalizing building for houses and businesses that don't allow cars, but are served only by public transit. Yet this very simple, very d…

> I can't agree with your assessment at all. Deaths are rising, yet what changes are happening?

More than one factor affecting a phenomenon can exist. They can be making changes to make things safer, while other things can be working against them. It's like saying "I don't believe harm reduction is helping: people still die from ODs"

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#465

Post by cityofdelusion » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 10:13 PM UTC

Bhilai wrote: post #276

umvi wrote: post #185

I think there's another reason too we "ignore" car crashes: loose coupling with politics. Say a DUI driver kills a random family of 5. Is that going to make national headlines? Probably not. Very little to be gained politically. It doesn't really enrage us because we love and celebrate alcohol too much to be capable of villainizing it like guns. So as a result, it doesn't spread very far on social media. Now say a ra…

Well, comparing guns and cars is just absurd. Many kinds of restrictions like age limits, requiring a driver license, requiring liability insurance, seat belt restrictions, speed limits, NHTA safety regulations that car manufacturers have to meet, speed traps by traffic police and so on... none of that exists for guns.

Growing up, my state only had a multiple choice exam for a license. The age limit is the only _real_ restriction you listed. Everything else is just to keep the honest folks honest.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#466

Post by iforgotpassword » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 10:13 PM UTC

throwaway6734 wrote: post #455

porknubbins wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes the author seems to state that there are many more traffic deaths than commercial transport deaths as if the point is self evident but I do not see it. From my perspective its a minor miracle that there aren't more traffic deaths. We let any private individual drive up to a 20,000 something pound vehicle with pretty minimal licensing requirements (in most places in the US). The news story is that it mostly goes o…

my personal theory is that people's overconfidence in their ability as drivers and underestimating the risk of driving ends up making the process much safer than if people were more grounded in reality

Now I'm really curious for the reasoning behind that.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#467

Post by wizofaus » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 10:13 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #419

wizofaus wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you'd then argue being able to keep your foot on the brake doesn't help your chances of avoiding causing injury/death to others?

If you're hit from the side, you were already traveling forward.

Er, so? If you're hit hard from the side with no seat belt, your whole body is likely to be thrown around and keeping your foot on the brake is going to be far more difficult. Sorry but this does seem like a pointless discussion - if you were somehow able to prove that seatbelts basically never helped drivers avoid causing injuries/deaths to others then I'd agree a $50 fine is probably sufficient. But given what I've seen in this thread and elsewhere (including direct personal experience), seatbelts most definitely do help with that, and a fine + license suspension seems quite justified if you're caught driving without one (in Australia the fine is $550 plus a loss of 4 "demerit points" - lose 12 and your license is suspended. Seems a bit soft to me - the penalty for driving at 60k/h in a 50 zone is about the same.)

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#468

Post by alex_young » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 10:14 PM UTC

staticautomatic wrote: post #422

ccn0p wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Generally those things are helpful but I think China has pretty well demonstrated that there’s no alternative universe where fully locking everything down eliminates Covid.

China represents 18% of the world's population, yet 0.07% of COVID-19 fatalities. Seems like there is some value in their approach.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#469

Post by vel0city » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 10:14 PM UTC

jiveturkey wrote: post #174

CodeAndCuffs wrote: post #155

I was a cop for several years. I worked hundreds of crashes, and a few fatalities. If cars had a max speed limit of 85 mph, and required the seatbelt to be engaged to work, we'd cut our fatality rate in half. Most nations' DUI laws consider a 0.05 BAC as illegal. In most US states 0.08 is presumed under the influence, 0.06 - 0.079 is considered no presumption either way, and under .06 is considered not under the infl…

Who cares if you kill yourself through your own negligence? There shouldn't be a fine at all for seatbelts. DUI, OTOH, should be treated even more harshly than it is.

Who cares? Loads of people. My wife lost a coworker from an auto accident, one that they probably would have survived had they been wearing their seatbelt. She was a single parent to a small child. Losing his mom at such a young age probably made a big difference to him. It probably had significant impact on her mom, who now has a complicated custody battle with an abusive deadbeat dad and massively different life having to try and take care of her grandson.

She had a lot of friends, I'm sure they cared about her. My wife cared about her. My wife's other coworkers also cared.

Its incredible how selfish so many people are on this site. Is there nobody you care about?

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#470

Post by nightfly » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 10:14 PM UTC

KptMarchewa wrote: post #234

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 happened to nuclear energy, despite the fact that coal kills 100x people yearly than total nuclear energy deaths.

The disasters that happen when nuclear energy fails are amazingly bad though. Even discounting immediate human deaths, 80 square miles around Fukushima and 1,000 square miles around Chernobyl are effectively ruined forever.