5 ms·

I've often heard it said that FAA regulations are written in blood. Meaning, if a rule exists, it exists for a damn good reason. For anyone interested, NASA's

I've often heard it said that FAA regulations are written in blood. Meaning, if a rule exists, it exists for a damn good reason. For anyone interested, NASA's ASRS [1] (Aviation Safety Reporting System) is what the parent commenter is referring to regarding reporting near misses. The idea is, anyone can submit an incident report with NASA, a neutral separate party from the FAA, which is placed in an anonymized public database and cannot be used to justify punishment against anyone involved in the incident. This promotes transparency and learning from the mistakes of yourself and others, instead of covering them up. Frequently, the person who caused an incident in the first place will promptly report it to ASRS, as the FAA looks favorably upon those who come forward to ASRS on their own and dimly upon those who do not. I think more industries could use this kind of transparency in reporting sketchy situations. [1]: https://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/overview/confidentiality.html https://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/overview/confidentiality.html

markbnj 10y ago
I often remarked in the same vein to my daughters as they were growing up and learning to drive. Everywhere you encounter a stop sign, a light, etc., is a place where people were badly injured or killed on multiple occasions. That stuff is there for a reason.
- ceejayoz 10y ago
  New road construction starts with stop signs and traffic lights. They don't just leave it a free-for-all and add them later on. Now, when you see quadruple stop signs (i.e. 16 total) and a jury-rigged flashing red light attached to them, as there was in my home town, chances are that one came about after some accidents.
  - athenot 10y ago
    There's this place in Atlanta where one makes a 180 turn from one interstate to another. They added flashing lights, paint all over the place, signs. Still, there are so many vehicles going off the road that no grass ever grows there. Here's the Google Street view of the dirt patch, complete with vehicle debris which accumulates almost every day. https://www.google.com/maps/@33.7939354,-84.3917037,3a,75y,157.42h,82.52t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sP-2dmY0b-lGZLjXCXNi6YQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@33.7939354,-84.3917037,3a,75y,1...
    - Swizec 10y ago
      At what point do you change the turn? Signs and paint is great, but maybe the fundamentals are just bad.
    - lostlogin 10y ago
      That road is knackered too - is that a commmon state for roads around there?
      - sanswork 10y ago
        The roads in the US are in general horribly maintained. I've driven across it north/south 8-10 times and east/west 4 times along different routes/not just freeways and it's rare to find great roads. Michigan was the worst but luckily starting/ending in Ontario we weren't often on their roads for long.
        barsonme 10y ago
        Sorta depends where you're at. In cities that have hot summers and cold winters (Spokane, etc.) you get terrible roads. Poorer parts of cities have worse roads than richer parts (compare north Tacoma to basically the rest of Tacoma). In suburban, high-traffic†, low-traffic†, or moderate climate areas the roads are fine. In fact some of the freeways around where I live have been putting in the "quiet asphalt" stuff— driving is quiet, even in my 2000 Corolla! † High traffic areas get attention because they get beat up easily. Low traffic highways do not get as beat up. This still kinda depends on who maintains the road, how rich the surrounding area is, climate, etc.
        bmm6o 10y ago
        Weather is really important. For all the traffic it has, the freeways in LA are generally not that bad. 300 days of sunshine and no freezing temps helps a lot.
        sanswork 10y ago
        That's why I specified how widely travelled I was. I definitely understand weather related issues having grown up in Ontario with a 50-60c swing in temps over the course of a year + salt. But I saw lots of awful roads in the north east, the south, midwest, south west, west, and north west. It's pretty safe to say that in general US roads are poorly maintained. Like saying in general UK rail is poorly maintained.
  - yongjik 10y ago
    Sometimes it's quite explicit: in Korea there are signs saying 사망사고 발생지점, literally, "Place of a fatal accident". The problem is that sometimes that part of the road isn't even particularly dangerous, so I wonder what was the rationale for forever reminding people that somebody died there...
    - protomyth 10y ago
      I remember little white crosses on the side of the road in Montana. If a turn had a number of crosses that was a pretty good indication that you really need to be careful.
    - domador 10y ago
      In Costa Rica, for a number of years a few years ago, they would paint a hollow yellow heart, with a halo, inside a box, on top of the part of a street or road where a fatal accident occurred. However, after some time, they stopped repainting them after each time the road was resurfaced.
- CamperBob2 10y ago
  Obviously that's not even remotely true, so why are you telling your daughters that? Don't lie to your kids. They're smarter than you think.
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  - mrb 10y ago
    Napkin math suggests you are wrong, the grand parent is right. I can't find the exact stats but in the US there are 2+ million injuries per year caused by road traffic crashes. We know there are around 300k signalized intersections [1]. If we estimate non-signalized intersections (ie. those with STOP signs) to 20x that number, that's 6 million non-signalized intersections. If 20% of injuries happen at intersections and are randomly distributed across intersections, then on average there will be 1 injury at a given intersection every 15 years. So yeah it is likely that "multiple injuries" have occured at mosts intersections in the country. [1] http://mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov/knowledge/faqs/faq_part4.htm#tcsgq3 http://mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov/knowledge/faqs/faq_part4.htm#tcsgq...
    - mcbits 10y ago
      Where I live, there are at least a couple hundred stop signs and two (2) traffic signals. That's probably closer to a typical ratio for suburbs and smaller towns. I doubt there's ever been a serious accident at most of those intersections, and certainly not as the catalyst for putting up all the signs. The major accidents happen on the highways outside of town, during blizzards.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - markbnj 10y ago
Gravityloss 10y ago
This is some piece of reading about the odd history of government and aviation... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Mail_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Mail_scandal

markbnj 10y ago

I often remarked in the same vein to my daughters as they were growing up and learning to drive. Everywhere you encounter a stop sign, a light, etc., is a place where people were badly injured or killed on multiple occasions. That stuff is there for a reason.

ceejayoz 10y ago
New road construction starts with stop signs and traffic lights. They don't just leave it a free-for-all and add them later on. Now, when you see quadruple stop signs (i.e. 16 total) and a jury-rigged flashing red light attached to them, as there was in my home town, chances are that one came about after some accidents.
- athenot 10y ago
  There's this place in Atlanta where one makes a 180 turn from one interstate to another. They added flashing lights, paint all over the place, signs. Still, there are so many vehicles going off the road that no grass ever grows there. Here's the Google Street view of the dirt patch, complete with vehicle debris which accumulates almost every day. https://www.google.com/maps/@33.7939354,-84.3917037,3a,75y,157.42h,82.52t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sP-2dmY0b-lGZLjXCXNi6YQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@33.7939354,-84.3917037,3a,75y,1...
  - Swizec 10y ago
    At what point do you change the turn? Signs and paint is great, but maybe the fundamentals are just bad.
  - lostlogin 10y ago
    That road is knackered too - is that a commmon state for roads around there?
    - sanswork 10y ago
      The roads in the US are in general horribly maintained. I've driven across it north/south 8-10 times and east/west 4 times along different routes/not just freeways and it's rare to find great roads. Michigan was the worst but luckily starting/ending in Ontario we weren't often on their roads for long.
      - barsonme 10y ago
        Sorta depends where you're at. In cities that have hot summers and cold winters (Spokane, etc.) you get terrible roads. Poorer parts of cities have worse roads than richer parts (compare north Tacoma to basically the rest of Tacoma). In suburban, high-traffic†, low-traffic†, or moderate climate areas the roads are fine. In fact some of the freeways around where I live have been putting in the "quiet asphalt" stuff— driving is quiet, even in my 2000 Corolla! † High traffic areas get attention because they get beat up easily. Low traffic highways do not get as beat up. This still kinda depends on who maintains the road, how rich the surrounding area is, climate, etc.
        bmm6o 10y ago
        Weather is really important. For all the traffic it has, the freeways in LA are generally not that bad. 300 days of sunshine and no freezing temps helps a lot.
        sanswork 10y ago
        That's why I specified how widely travelled I was. I definitely understand weather related issues having grown up in Ontario with a 50-60c swing in temps over the course of a year + salt. But I saw lots of awful roads in the north east, the south, midwest, south west, west, and north west. It's pretty safe to say that in general US roads are poorly maintained. Like saying in general UK rail is poorly maintained.
- yongjik 10y ago
  Sometimes it's quite explicit: in Korea there are signs saying 사망사고 발생지점, literally, "Place of a fatal accident". The problem is that sometimes that part of the road isn't even particularly dangerous, so I wonder what was the rationale for forever reminding people that somebody died there...
  - protomyth 10y ago
    I remember little white crosses on the side of the road in Montana. If a turn had a number of crosses that was a pretty good indication that you really need to be careful.
  - domador 10y ago
    In Costa Rica, for a number of years a few years ago, they would paint a hollow yellow heart, with a halo, inside a box, on top of the part of a street or road where a fatal accident occurred. However, after some time, they stopped repainting them after each time the road was resurfaced.
CamperBob2 10y ago
Obviously that's not even remotely true, so why are you telling your daughters that? Don't lie to your kids. They're smarter than you think.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- mrb 10y ago
  Napkin math suggests you are wrong, the grand parent is right. I can't find the exact stats but in the US there are 2+ million injuries per year caused by road traffic crashes. We know there are around 300k signalized intersections [1]. If we estimate non-signalized intersections (ie. those with STOP signs) to 20x that number, that's 6 million non-signalized intersections. If 20% of injuries happen at intersections and are randomly distributed across intersections, then on average there will be 1 injury at a given intersection every 15 years. So yeah it is likely that "multiple injuries" have occured at mosts intersections in the country. [1] http://mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov/knowledge/faqs/faq_part4.htm#tcsgq3 http://mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov/knowledge/faqs/faq_part4.htm#tcsgq...
  - mcbits 10y ago
    Where I live, there are at least a couple hundred stop signs and two (2) traffic signals. That's probably closer to a typical ratio for suburbs and smaller towns. I doubt there's ever been a serious accident at most of those intersections, and certainly not as the catalyst for putting up all the signs. The major accidents happen on the highways outside of town, during blizzards.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- markbnj 10y ago

Gravityloss 10y ago

This is some piece of reading about the odd history of government and aviation... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Mail_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Mail_scandal