8 ms·

I don't think this is the argument the author of the article was trying to send at all. This accident could have just as easily happened in a dense urban core,

• jablan 9y ago
  The likelihood of death is proportional to speed [1], and the speed is lower in the urban cores. The math is super simple, and let's stop trying to justify bad urbanistic (essentially, political) decisions blaming it on the bad fate instead. [1] http://www.copenhagenize.com/2012/11/the-85th-percentile-folly.html http://www.copenhagenize.com/2012/11/the-85th-percentile-fol...
  • eveningcoffee 9y ago
    This is simply wrong in the general case. While the speeds might be lower, they are still high enough to kill. In addition the density of the traffic can be so high that just a single wrong step can decide your destiny every minute.
    • jablan 9y ago
      Do you have some numbers to support your claims?
      • todd8 9y ago
        Yes, From CDC: > In large central metro areas, those aged 35–44 years (2.08), 45–54 years (2.60), 55–64 years (2.60), 65–74 years (3.36), 75–84 years (5.19), and ≥85 years (5.24) had statistically higher death rates than those in the same age groups at other urbanization levels. [1] [1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6215a1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6215a1.htm
        • lsc 9y ago
          most US metros don't have workable public transit; most people drive to get from point a to point b even in our dense metros. Perhaps because even our metros are not dense enough, perhaps for other reasons. I would be open to data that showed there were more traffic deaths in dense areas where most people took public transit, but this isn't it.
        • AstralStorm 9y ago
          Does this hold adjusted for miles driven?
      • eveningcoffee 9y ago
        Well, my claim was mostly that the speed is not the only factor but also the traffic density.
  • thomastjeffery 9y ago
    Speed is the most quantifiable factor in a collision. It is also very controllable. That is why it gets the focus that it does. The trouble is, it's easy to get distracted by speed as a coefficient in collision intensity, and not pay attention to what causes that collision in the first place. People often think that because speed is such an important factor that they shouldn't drive faster to help traffic flow, or even that they should block faster traffic. Those actions are very likely to cause collisions, which is more important than the factor they are trying to minimize. The likelihood of a collision causing death is just as proportional to mass. A semi hauling a trailer cannot stop in a short enough distance to prevent some collisions, and can be deadly even at very low speed. Even so, we realize the impracticality of reducing mass, so we focus on speed instead. The real problem we need to focus on is collision prevention, not collision mitigation. Let's stop ignoring the reality of "bad fate", and do real work to minimize it's occurrence instead.
    • sliverstorm 9y ago
      Reducing speeds is a form of collision prevention, is it not? A typical car can just about stop on a dime at 15mph, and a pedestrian has more time to react. There's a whole slew of other pedestrian-friendly street design that we could & should adopt as well, but that doesn't make speed any less of a valid approach.
      • hermitdev 9y ago
        Speed, in of itself, is not dangerous. What is more dangerous on highways is differential speed. i.e. if you're driving 60 mph when the traffic around you is doing 80 mph, you're the problem. Probably exponentially so if you're driving slowly in the "fast" lane. While rarely enforced, most states in the US have laws that require you to pull to the right if you're impeding traffic (usually defined as holding up +2 vehicles behind you) - even if you're doing the speed limit. Yet, these laws are rarely enforced, just like "No Trucks Left 2 Lanes" is never enforced in & around Chicago, despite being posted every mile or so on I 294. I'd wager, also, that speed itself is rarely the direct cause of an accident. High speed, though, will make an accident more severe. My bet is that distracted driving is the #1 cause of accidents. On my daily 2-hour round trip on Chicagoland highways, I usually see 4-6 accidents each involving >2 cars. The shear amount of people I see on their phones is staggering. Hard to tell if it's social media or texting, but you can always tell because their head is staring at their lap, or they're holding their phones at the top of the steering wheel for all to see. I also see people with their phones mounted on their dashes watching movies or TV shows. Playing with your phone while driving is far more dangerous than paying attention & speeding.
  • mulmen 9y ago
    Even if your claim is true it's still not the point of the article.
    • labster 9y ago
      The point of the article is wrong, though. Anyone could have done it. All of us drivers could have killed Brian. We just weren't the unlucky ones. But it is not just the author's fault, it is all of our faults. The road system is designed with inherent danger. The street she was driving had a high speed limit with children near the road. If we design better systems, then no one has to live with needless guilt. And, even better, less people die.
  • dahart 9y ago
    Super agreed on the gist - speed limits and policy matter, if we want to reduce fatalities. But, just to clarify and double down on speed reduction -- likelihood of death is proportional to the square of velocity. Every doubling of speed is 4x more damage in a collision!
• csours 9y ago
  I agree that the message was about how humans deal with tragedy, and as a technical community we often neglect that - but it is also correct to have the technical discussion. Two things greatly increased the probability of a fatal incident in this case: 1. Mailbox across the street from the home: If the mailbox was on the same side of the street as the home, there would be less cause to cross the street. 2. High speed roadway in a residential area: 45 mph is much too high for a residential neighborhood; 25 mph is generally regarded as safe.
  • Aloha 9y ago
    "The road started out as freeway but quickly became a rural highway, one lane in each direction. The speed limit was 45 or 50mph, fairly fast for that kind of road, it was quite busy and I was in a line of cars doing the speed limit." I'd be hard pressed to call a rural area a residential neighborhood.
    • csours 9y ago
      > "I passed a little outpost of houses whose mailboxes were on the opposite side of the street." I used to live on a road like this, it's not exactly a neighborhood like in most cities (so "residential neighborhood" may not have been accurate) - it's a linear neighborhood along the road. We were lucky enough to have our mailbox at the end of our driveway, not across the street; if our mailbox had been across the street, it would have been unsafe to walk and get the mail.
      • brewdad 9y ago
        I live on a street like this with my mailbox on the opposite side of the street. In the winter, I always get my mail a day late since I refuse to retrieve it in the dark. Speed limit is 25mph but average speed is closer to 40mph. City can't be bothered to enforce the limit no matter how much we demand it. Sidewalks are being considered and might finally go in sometime before 2030.
    • mjevans 9y ago
      I agree, it's a very poor design, likely dating from an era when high speed was a big noisy horse drawn carriage. The proper engineering solution to this is to have an angled turn-off on to a side road (either perpendicular or parallel) which /is/ limited to a "safe residential speed".
• Theodores 9y ago
  I had a glancing blow at 70 mph with a car doing a similar speed coming the other way. I was in the last mile of a cross country drive and was thinking of getting to the pub. It was the bit of road I knew best. I drove a couple of times after that, but the screaming kids in the back of the other car was enough for me. Now I cycle everywhere. Or get the train. I was not prosecuted or anything but I didn't want to almost kill anyone (and their family) ever again. I consider myself lucky. Point being: cycling is good too.
  • thomastjeffery 9y ago
    Not to tell you your reaction is wrong, but it's important to remember that cycling is generally more dangerous, and that while you aren't taking action dangerous to those around you, you are likely taking action that makes everyone around you dangerous to you yourself. Even so, cycling is wonderful. I certainly recommend it.
    • megy 9y ago
      It is not more dangerous to other people on the road.
      • thomastjeffery 9y ago
        That's what I said. Danger goes both ways. If you are on a bicycle rather than in a car, you are more susceptible to the danger created by the cars around you. In effect, all of the cars around you are more dangerous than they were before, because there is a cyclist (you) on the road.
        • lsc 9y ago
          right. but... some people feel it is more ethical to take chances with their own lives than with the lives of others.
    • Doctor_Fegg 9y ago
      > cycling is generally more dangerous Out of interest, do you have a citation for that in European countries?
• PhasmaFelis 9y ago
  You're right that this wasn't the author's argument, but it is a very important lesson to take away. There will always be accidents where the driver is not at fault, but it's worth taking the opportunity to think about how road design and car culture make those accidents more likely, and what we as a society can do to reduce them.
• megy 9y ago
  Sure, that is the message they want to give over. However, the message I take away from this is that somehow we have accepted into society this incredibly dangerous thing which while convenient it not necessary at all. While we make everything else in society safe, we seem to ignore the most dangerous thing around us, that kills around 1.3 million people every single year.
  • labster 9y ago
    It's amazing how much death and disease we're willing to suffer for the sake of convenience, isn't it. We treat automobiles as a necessity of modern life in all places, but it wasn't always this way. In the 1910s and 20s, many writers excoriated all of the roads bringing dangerous cars into places where people live and play. It turns out they were right, but we just became blind to the danger.
    • FuckOffNeemo 9y ago
      More people died in those years of horse and cart related deaths proportionate to per capita than they do today by auto-mobiles. Both indirectly and directly. Read Super Freakonomics for the interesting data that they observe between the two.
      • lsc 9y ago
        but we tolerated a lot more (early) death from all causes in those days, in part be cause we didn't have technology to mitigate those risks. The argument I am trying to make is that we have technology (public transit) that would mitigate those risks now, but we choose not to use it. (My assertion is that if we had a place where we had US standard driving safety requirements but more than half the miles traveled were via public transit, we would have fewer per capita injuries. Or more generally, that the per capita injuries goes up with miles driven in cars. I have so far failed to provide statistical evidence of this.)
  • gcrout 9y ago
    In the latest season of Black Mirror, the most dangerous technology is cars: https://medium.com/@galencro/whats-up-with-car-accidents-and-black-mirror-season-4-24bcf967d5d7 https://medium.com/@galencro/whats-up-with-car-accidents-and...
• lsc 9y ago
  To be clear, my mentioning of dense urban cores was only because they make public transit more practical. Many dense urban cores in America don't choose public transit. You may be correct about the authors intent; I maybe should have attached this to one of the threads where fathers talk about their vigilance in protecting their young, but I usually avoid talking directly about children and how they should be raised, because being someone who doesn't have or want children, my words often sound more offensive than I intend.