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In the US alone, 35000 people die and more than 2 million are injured every year in car crashes. Technology is our best hope to reduce these numbers. Airbags, b

In the US alone, 35000 people die and more than 2 million are injured every year in car crashes. Technology is our best hope to reduce these numbers. Airbags, blind spot detection, lane keeping, emergency braking can all contribute. Self-driving level 5 will not suddenly appear and work everywhere in every situation. It’s a gradual process. Another thing to keep in mind is that insurers will not insure these cars for cheap until they are safer than humans.

chiefofgxbxl 9y ago
Technology has helped a great deal. I'm saddened that enforcement hasn't played a bigger part, though. What I see around me on a daily basis is pure complacency. People switching lanes without turn signals, drivers with half their car in the bike-lane, tailgating, people who have their blinker on for several minutes (how did they forget? are they blasting music in their car such that they can't hear the clicking noise? are they that distracted??) etc. It feels like my fellow drivers simply don't care about the human life that surrounds them. They'd rather text their friends than pay attention to the several-thousand-pound machine they are operating. In my opinion, obtaining and keeping a driver's license is just far too easy in the U.S., but I guess there is no hope to fix things on this end for two reasons: (1) losing your privilege to drive a car is a "death sentence"... how will you get to work and pay the bills?, and (2) police departments are facing budget cuts, so enforcement probably will not increase. We have hope that self-driving cars will remove these negligent/distracted drivers from the road, but at the end of the day, what does that say about people that they can't take operating a heavy machine responsibly? Do we have any future tech that would emerge where ordinary people can threaten each other's lives? ... Also, road design in the U.S. appears to care more about throughput than safety. Traffic circles are far safer, but they aren't used enough. Anecdotally, near my hometown there is a 6-lane road intersecting an 8-lane (!) road. That is the most dangerous intersection in the town, and IIRC the county! It's no wonder why having so many lanes of cars hurling themselves through an intersection is dangerous, so why are people allowed to design these roads in the first place?
- andrewfong 9y ago
  > (2) police departments are facing budget cuts, so enforcement probably will not increase. I would assume the opposite. Speeding tickets are a way for cash-strapped police departments to raise money (or justify their ROI to whomever controls the budget).
distances 9y ago
There are also other ways to successfully lower the death count, but as the recent NY Times column [0] says the American culture is working hard against any improvements based on restrictions. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/19/opinion/america-is-now-an-outlier-on-driving-deaths.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/19/opinion/america-is-now-an...
- patejam 9y ago
  Is it fair to compare the US to Europe? US has an extremely different driving culture than Europe. ~13500miles/year for the US; ~8000miles/year for Europe. ~800 cars per 1000 people in the US; ~550-600 per 1000 in Europe. Also, a larger number of people in the US simply couldn't live life without a car. I'm sitting in my hometown, a mere hour drive away from the largest city in the US, and I'd have to walk 45min to the nearest food. Work would be a 10 mile bike ride each way. This is New Jersey, the most densely populated state in the US. The seatbelt thing is just us being dumb though.
  - weaksauce 9y ago
    The cars in Europe are generally much smaller too.
  - iainmerrick 9y ago
    Their metric is "deaths per billion vehicle miles travelled", so yes, I think it's a fair comparison. It naturally scales up and down to match the amount of driving that happens in different countries. I'm only deeply familiar with the US and UK, but the contrast there is pretty stark. I routinely see people on their phones or driving drunk in the US. Those do happen in the UK but they're a lot rarer.

chiefofgxbxl 9y ago

Technology has helped a great deal. I'm saddened that enforcement hasn't played a bigger part, though. What I see around me on a daily basis is pure complacency. People switching lanes without turn signals, drivers with half their car in the bike-lane, tailgating, people who have their blinker on for several minutes (how did they forget? are they blasting music in their car such that they can't hear the clicking noise? are they that distracted??) etc. It feels like my fellow drivers simply don't care about the human life that surrounds them. They'd rather text their friends than pay attention to the several-thousand-pound machine they are operating. In my opinion, obtaining and keeping a driver's license is just far too easy in the U.S., but I guess there is no hope to fix things on this end for two reasons: (1) losing your privilege to drive a car is a "death sentence"... how will you get to work and pay the bills?, and (2) police departments are facing budget cuts, so enforcement probably will not increase. We have hope that self-driving cars will remove these negligent/distracted drivers from the road, but at the end of the day, what does that say about people that they can't take operating a heavy machine responsibly? Do we have any future tech that would emerge where ordinary people can threaten each other's lives? ... Also, road design in the U.S. appears to care more about throughput than safety. Traffic circles are far safer, but they aren't used enough. Anecdotally, near my hometown there is a 6-lane road intersecting an 8-lane (!) road. That is the most dangerous intersection in the town, and IIRC the county! It's no wonder why having so many lanes of cars hurling themselves through an intersection is dangerous, so why are people allowed to design these roads in the first place?

andrewfong 9y ago
> (2) police departments are facing budget cuts, so enforcement probably will not increase. I would assume the opposite. Speeding tickets are a way for cash-strapped police departments to raise money (or justify their ROI to whomever controls the budget).

distances 9y ago

There are also other ways to successfully lower the death count, but as the recent NY Times column [0] says the American culture is working hard against any improvements based on restrictions. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/19/opinion/america-is-now-an-outlier-on-driving-deaths.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/19/opinion/america-is-now-an...

patejam 9y ago
Is it fair to compare the US to Europe? US has an extremely different driving culture than Europe. ~13500miles/year for the US; ~8000miles/year for Europe. ~800 cars per 1000 people in the US; ~550-600 per 1000 in Europe. Also, a larger number of people in the US simply couldn't live life without a car. I'm sitting in my hometown, a mere hour drive away from the largest city in the US, and I'd have to walk 45min to the nearest food. Work would be a 10 mile bike ride each way. This is New Jersey, the most densely populated state in the US. The seatbelt thing is just us being dumb though.
- weaksauce 9y ago
  The cars in Europe are generally much smaller too.
- iainmerrick 9y ago
  Their metric is "deaths per billion vehicle miles travelled", so yes, I think it's a fair comparison. It naturally scales up and down to match the amount of driving that happens in different countries. I'm only deeply familiar with the US and UK, but the contrast there is pretty stark. I routinely see people on their phones or driving drunk in the US. Those do happen in the UK but they're a lot rarer.