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Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

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Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#881

Post by axiomsEnd »

kortilla wrote: post #847
pkulak wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gonna go ahead and say the unthinkable here... so what? The person driving fast endangers themselves and everyone else around them. In what other area of society do we tolerate extremely dangerous behavior (40,000+ deaths a year) because to not would be an inconvenience? Guns, I suppose. But I'm not a huge fan or our polices around those either.

> what other area of society do we tolerate extremely dangerous behavior (40,000+ deaths a year) because to not would be an inconvenience? Lol, heart disease wipes out an order of magnitude more people every year and we do absolutely nothing to stop people from eating and drinking themselves into obesity. But I guess you’re cool with it as long as it’s just suicide and a strain on our healthcare system?

And obesity in certainly not connected to the amount of time people in USA spend in cars.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#882

Post by imgabe »

tifik wrote: post #825
teakettle42 wrote: post #810

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody needs a gun to commit suicide. In countries where guns are less available, they use hanging or poison. Putting that aside, it’s not our role to forcibly limit the choices of healthy, responsible people just because some unhealthy, unresponsible people might make the wrong choices when given the freedom to do so. It’s not a societal-level tragedy if someone chooses to eliminate themselves. While it’s abhorrent…

> there’s very likely a net economic/social gain. I see your point, but I strongly disagree. Providing a suicidal person with the right resources to help them avoid suicide will (imo) yield a net gain over the rest of that persons life, as opposed to the gain from selling a gun and a bullet and giving him a quick out. One example that comes to might right away is Alan Turing. Whose contributions to modern society can…

Turing didn’t need help out of depression. He needed to NOT be persecuted, tortured, and mutilated by the state, furthering the point that people in power should not interfere with the rights of free people to go about their lives as they see fit as long as they aren’t hurting anyone else.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#883

Post by Nition »

incompatible wrote: post #723
Nition wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It worked for us in New Zealand. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ When we tried the same thing a second time it didn't work, but that was due to people not following the rules.

I think it stopped working once Covid became far more infectious. Before that, it was possible to stamp out the occasional quarantine failure.

I agree, it was definitely harder the second time with Delta. People broke the rules the first time as well, or mistakes happened, but the few breakouts weren't so difficult to contain.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#884

Post by princeb »

makomk wrote: post #564
pclmulqdq wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

0.07% of reported COVID-19 fatalities. There are a lot of incentives to keep the numbers down going up the chain in the Chinese bureaucracy. This is the opposite of most western countries, where the incentives are to over-report.

If I remember rightly we even know and have evidence of some of the specific ways in which China did this, such as not counting deaths of people in high-risk groups immediately after being infected with and hospitalized due to Covid as Covid deaths and instead blaming their deaths on some existing health conditions. Whereas the UK for example counted everyone who died reasonably soon after catching Covid as a Covid d…

we don't need to rely on the numbers coming from the CCP to get an estimate of how bad it is in china. what we can do is to rely on the covid count of passengers coming in from China, reported by non-Chinese disease authorities. we have several: south korea, singapore, and taiwan who were taking in chinese travelers at various points of the pandemic. china is a minor contributor to imported cases in these three countries.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#885

Post by throwaway0a5e »

tifik wrote: post #825
teakettle42 wrote: post #810

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody needs a gun to commit suicide. In countries where guns are less available, they use hanging or poison. Putting that aside, it’s not our role to forcibly limit the choices of healthy, responsible people just because some unhealthy, unresponsible people might make the wrong choices when given the freedom to do so. It’s not a societal-level tragedy if someone chooses to eliminate themselves. While it’s abhorrent…

> there’s very likely a net economic/social gain. I see your point, but I strongly disagree. Providing a suicidal person with the right resources to help them avoid suicide will (imo) yield a net gain over the rest of that persons life, as opposed to the gain from selling a gun and a bullet and giving him a quick out. One example that comes to might right away is Alan Turing. Whose contributions to modern society can…

Bringing up Turing to support the idea that the state should prevent people from taking their lives is beyond tone deaf. People asking the state to enforce their moral compass (which is basically what you're doing now) is what lead to the situation that Turing killed himself over.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#886

Post by throwaway0a5e »

BiggsHoson wrote: post #873
martinmunk wrote: post #834

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been told by driving instructors that the rule of thumb for putting up octagon STOP signs here in Denmark is only when a serious accident has occurred. I can't find a source for it, but they are definitely rarer than most other places, and I feel like they are taken more serious because of it.

Here in the US, I swear the rule of thumb for installing stop signs is only the limitation of how many can be bought under the current budget. So many intersections would be less frustrating by having yield signs, instead.

4-way stops get installed in volume because neighborhoods gentrify and the new residents complain about the traffic being too fast (the old residents had bigger problems to care about) and converting 2-way stops to 4-way stops is a cheap/easy way to slow down traffic, kinda. Then the next week they complain about having to listen to every vehicle accelerate from the stop.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#887

Post by [deleted] »

eru wrote: post #846
bergenty wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know how you’re even comparing American roads to European roads. I spent 3 months in Europe and all I took away from that is how well planned and well thought out American roads are. I just took them for granted.

Europe is a big and diverse place. Where did you go to?

[deleted]

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#888

Post by throwaway0a5e »

scoofy wrote: post #757
sicp-enjoyer wrote: post #711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do americans travel more miles than is typical in those countries?

Measure in “trips” not miles. Measuring in miles rewards suburban culture. Highway driving isn’t where deaths happen. They happen most on urban roads.

Screw you both.

Measure butt-in-seat hours.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#889

Post by Doxin »

sandworm101 wrote: post #791
Doxin wrote: post #788

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traffic calming measures is how you tackle things like that. Adding a sharpish S-curve to the roads approaching the T should remove enough speed to make it safer. Won't even need a sign.

A surprise chicane, without even a sign, on a road with a history of speeding cars. What could possibly go wrong? This also seems to be farm country. Converting productive fields to non-productive traffic calming structures would be about as popular as banning pickup trucks.

It'd not be a surprise chicane. It'd be an obviously visible one. If you're driving in a way where that'd cause accidents you should have your license revoked.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#890

Post by epistasis »

refurb wrote: post #782
epistasis wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? Deaths per miles driven have never been lower (2nd table). You can't just add up the negative impacts (deaths) without adjusting for positive impacts (miles traveled). https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatalit...

A mile driven is not a positive impact. A trip taken, an amenity experienced, a commute completed would be a positive impact. But every mile driven is a negative impact.

If the amount driven is increasing, it's likely because the system is failing more.

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