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The LA Times hit piece on this issue went so far as to dig up random traffic incidents involving these vehicles. If there were significant fatal accidents befor

The LA Times hit piece on this issue went so far as to dig up random traffic incidents involving these vehicles. If there were significant fatal accidents before 1999 - especially if the fault lay with the vehicles' design, they would have dug them up. So it's safe to assume there were none. Your numbers on person hours for us drivers is far off. Keep in mind that a total of about 3.2 trillion miles are driven per year. 199.685 trillion person hours would give an average base rate of travel of 0.016 miles per hour. Obviously you need to multiply that by the average number of occupants per vehicle, but even if you say there are 10 occupants you're looking at 0.16 miles per hour on average so it looks like you missed some decimal points. Your explodo example is not really reasonable. We know here for a fact that these things have transported tens of millions of people. And they've also been in operation for millions of hours. There's way more than enough of a sample for lots of things to have gone wrong. Yet of all the incidents that have happened in these millions of hours, and the likely 40,000,000+ people that have used these vehicles, we only had 2 severe accidents - both caused by extreme human incompetence. So you're left with two choices, neither of which I expect you'd really like: - Accidents practically never happen. - Accidents do happen at a normal frequency, but in nearly all cases the outcome is completely safe.

learc83 8y ago
>If there were significant fatal accidents before 1999 - especially if the fault lay with the vehicles' design, they would have dug them up. So it's safe to assume there were none. That's not even remotely safe to assume. You can't seriously think the LA times has the manpower to comb through 70 years of non-digitized records and local newspaper stories for 1 article. Since they included traffic incidents after 1999, and you think they went through 70 years of data. Why no traffic incidents before 1999? The simplest explanation is that they only included what they could find using digital records that were easy to access. > looks like you missed some decimal points. I looked it over and the data is just wrong. It was based on self reported data, and it looks like people just over report the amount of time they spend in cars. Since there is no way to accurately calculate person hours for cars. I'll just refer you back to the estimation based on operating hours. Or you can compare it to the person hour safety data for passenger boats in the UK. Either way based on my estimations, DUKWs are likely statistically much more dangerous. But who cares. I'm just some guy on the interne with very limited access to the relevant data. You don't need to take my word for it. The NTSB found that the boats were unsafe. Their recommendation to New York and Wisconsin was that they require DUKWs to be modified or cease operations. Their recommendation was that unmodified DUKWs are too dangerous to continue carrying passengers. >Your explodo example is not really reasonable. So you agree that safety flaws that magnify human error can make a vehicle unsafe? Because it seemed like you were arguing the opposite for the last several posts. >And they've also been in operation for millions of hours. There's way more than enough of a sample for lots of things to have gone wrong. Yet of all the incidents that have happened in these millions of hours, and the likely 40,000,000+ people that have used these vehicles, we only had 2 severe accidents - both caused by extreme human incompetence. So you're left with two choices, neither of which I expect you'd really like: This entire paragraph is an appeal to emotion. You've disguised it by throwing in some very dubious numbers that you have no way of verifying. Your argument essentially boils down to: We've had lots of people ride our boats and only a couple really bad accidents--that means they're safe. The rational way to judge their safety is to compare the fatality rate to other vehicles, and in the absence of the ability to accurately do this, defer to a trusted expert. But you just want to focus on what feels right to you. The NTSB thinks that they are dangerous, back of the envelope math shows they are probably more dangerous than other vehicles. Just admit that your gut reaction was wrong in this one case.
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  40 million assumes that in the 50 years prior to 1999 average usage was less than 400k per year. Going from 0 in 1946 to 1 million in 1999 with nothing but a linear increase would of course be 500k per year on average. My number was more than 20% below that. It was intentionally an extremely conservative estimate. I do not believe that you believe that organizations such as the LA Times and NY Times are incapable of digging up incident reports in the decades before 1999 - that's cognitive dissonance. And on that note, I feel as though you're projecting here. The numbers we've come up for here look okayish even when you are making crazy assumptions like pretending these things never existed before 1999, or were using some rather creative math to get that person hours estimate. Reality is rather friendlier, meaning these numbers are going to go from "okayish" to something substantially better. The reason we were interested in the rates was not to prove they are safer than cars, but to show that when you look at the incident rates that these calls for bans on them are grossly sensationalistic and emotional. I'm not sure what level of accident rate does make one start pondering a ban, but we're obviously not even in the remotely right ballpark for that sort of discussion. The NTSB investigates literally thousands of incidents, offers probable cause and solutions where available. The presence of solutions that could lessen the dangers of catastrophic failure is not the same thing as the boats themselves being unsafe. For instance, if I were to locate a report from the NTSB proposing some form of vehicular regulation or another, would you then insist that all vehicles are unsafe, simply for the fact that they could be made more safe? I would not have to search long, as you can see from their reports [1] yourself. [1] - https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/AccidentReports.aspx https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/Ac...
  - learc83 8y ago
    > Going from 0 in 1946 to 1 million in 1999 with nothing but a linear increase would of course be 500k per year on average. My number was more than 20% below that. It was intentionally an extremely conservative estimate. Here's another example of why these extrapolations are useless without real data. 1. There is absolutely nothing that would allow you to say with any confidence whatsoever what the growth curve looked like. Maybe it was quadratic and there were only a million from 1946 to 1998. From looking at the history of the original Wisconsin Ducks, it looks like they operated with only a handful of DUKWs for decades. Maybe they stayed small until bigger companies got involved and spread to multiple cities in only a few years before 1999? You don't know, which is why trying to use numbers before 1999 is useless. Exponential growth is a very likely explanation for the appearance of an increase in fatalities over the last 20 years (Vehicle aging and easier access to modern records are others) 2. The 1 million number you keep quoting was for all amphibious tourist vehicles, not only DUKWs. There were other amphibious vehicles in operation in 1999, and there are more now. There is no breakdown for the number of riders by vehicle type. Given that newer purpose built vehicles are more expensive, they are more likely to be used in high traffic areas thus they are likely to carry a higher than expected proportion of the total riders. 3. These vehicles are now over 70 years old. It is entirely possible that there are fewer of them in operation than there were in 1999. >I do not believe that you believe that organizations such as the LA Times and NY Times are incapable of digging up incident reports in the decades before 1999 - that's cognitive dissonance. Do you think there were zero safety incidents involving DUKWs before 1999? You stated they included recent traffic incidents. If they were going back through 70 years of records, why didn't they include any previous traffic incidents? The most likely explanation is that they found the low hanging fruit and didn't bother going back any further. There were 4 days between the incident and the report you mention. What kind of world are you living in where a newspaper has the resources to comb through 70 years of local news reports and accident reports from every relevant municipality for 1 article in 4 under days. >crazy assumptions like pretending these things never existed before 1999 This is absurd. We clearly lack data to make accurate estimations from before 1999. We can try to look at the fatality rate over the last 20 years, or we can spend time arguing over why we can't find 70 year old accident reports from a small hamlet in Wisconsin over the internet. > Reality is rather friendlier, meaning these numbers are going to go from "okayish" to something substantially better...I'm not sure what level of accident rate does make one start pondering a ban, but we're obviously not even in the remotely right ballpark for that sort of discussion. I think that 26 times deadlier per hour than UK passenger boats warrants looking into it, but I'm not the expert. The experts issued a report though. And it recommended banning unmodified DUKWs. >grossly sensationalistic and emotional I think you're the one projecting here. The NTSB called for a ban on unmodified vehicles. Newspaper reporters parroting the NTSB experts can hardly be called sensational. >more safe Your misreading of the NTSB report is incredibly frustrating. The NTSB issued a recommendation that operators immediately make heavy modifications. They then made recommendations to state governments that they ban unmodified vehicles. If you read the report they sent communications back and forth with dozens of individual operators begging them to make these modifications. Here's an excerpt: "THE AMPHIBIOUS VESSELS ARE SUBJECT TO SINKING AND A TRAGEDY LIKE THE ONE THAT OCCURRED IN ARKANSAS COULD BE REPEATED. ACCORDINGLY, THE SAFETY BOARD REQUESTS THAT THE WISCONSIN DUCKS RECONSIDER THEIR POSITION ON THIS MATTER AND CONSIDER TAKING THE REQUESTED ACTION. PENDING FURTHER REPLY FROM THE WISCONSIN DUCKS, M-00-5 HAS BEEN CLASSIFIED "OPEN--UNACCEPTABLE RESPONSE." IN THE INTEREST OF ACCURACY, YOUR LETTER REFLECTS PERCEPTIONS OF THE EXPERIENCE LEVEL OF OUR MARINE STAFF AND SAFETY BOARD - U.S. COAST GUARD RELATIONS THAT ARE NOT FACTUAL. SHOULD WISCONSIN DUCKS WISH TO DISCUSS THESE ISSUES, MY MARINE STAFF CAN BE CONTACTED AT (202) 314-6450." Nothing about the report or subsequent communication is indicative of an opinion that the boats are safe but that they could be made "more safe." A reasonable, rational person would read the NTSB be report as a proclamation that unmodified DUKWs are unsafe. The mental gymnastics you have to go through to read that report and take from it that these vehicles are safe for passengers is truly, spectacularly, amazing.

learc83 8y ago

>If there were significant fatal accidents before 1999 - especially if the fault lay with the vehicles' design, they would have dug them up. So it's safe to assume there were none. That's not even remotely safe to assume. You can't seriously think the LA times has the manpower to comb through 70 years of non-digitized records and local newspaper stories for 1 article. Since they included traffic incidents after 1999, and you think they went through 70 years of data. Why no traffic incidents before 1999? The simplest explanation is that they only included what they could find using digital records that were easy to access. > looks like you missed some decimal points. I looked it over and the data is just wrong. It was based on self reported data, and it looks like people just over report the amount of time they spend in cars. Since there is no way to accurately calculate person hours for cars. I'll just refer you back to the estimation based on operating hours. Or you can compare it to the person hour safety data for passenger boats in the UK. Either way based on my estimations, DUKWs are likely statistically much more dangerous. But who cares. I'm just some guy on the interne with very limited access to the relevant data. You don't need to take my word for it. The NTSB found that the boats were unsafe. Their recommendation to New York and Wisconsin was that they require DUKWs to be modified or cease operations. Their recommendation was that unmodified DUKWs are too dangerous to continue carrying passengers. >Your explodo example is not really reasonable. So you agree that safety flaws that magnify human error can make a vehicle unsafe? Because it seemed like you were arguing the opposite for the last several posts. >And they've also been in operation for millions of hours. There's way more than enough of a sample for lots of things to have gone wrong. Yet of all the incidents that have happened in these millions of hours, and the likely 40,000,000+ people that have used these vehicles, we only had 2 severe accidents - both caused by extreme human incompetence. So you're left with two choices, neither of which I expect you'd really like: This entire paragraph is an appeal to emotion. You've disguised it by throwing in some very dubious numbers that you have no way of verifying. Your argument essentially boils down to: We've had lots of people ride our boats and only a couple really bad accidents--that means they're safe. The rational way to judge their safety is to compare the fatality rate to other vehicles, and in the absence of the ability to accurately do this, defer to a trusted expert. But you just want to focus on what feels right to you. The NTSB thinks that they are dangerous, back of the envelope math shows they are probably more dangerous than other vehicles. Just admit that your gut reaction was wrong in this one case.

TangoTrotFox 8y ago
40 million assumes that in the 50 years prior to 1999 average usage was less than 400k per year. Going from 0 in 1946 to 1 million in 1999 with nothing but a linear increase would of course be 500k per year on average. My number was more than 20% below that. It was intentionally an extremely conservative estimate. I do not believe that you believe that organizations such as the LA Times and NY Times are incapable of digging up incident reports in the decades before 1999 - that's cognitive dissonance. And on that note, I feel as though you're projecting here. The numbers we've come up for here look okayish even when you are making crazy assumptions like pretending these things never existed before 1999, or were using some rather creative math to get that person hours estimate. Reality is rather friendlier, meaning these numbers are going to go from "okayish" to something substantially better. The reason we were interested in the rates was not to prove they are safer than cars, but to show that when you look at the incident rates that these calls for bans on them are grossly sensationalistic and emotional. I'm not sure what level of accident rate does make one start pondering a ban, but we're obviously not even in the remotely right ballpark for that sort of discussion. The NTSB investigates literally thousands of incidents, offers probable cause and solutions where available. The presence of solutions that could lessen the dangers of catastrophic failure is not the same thing as the boats themselves being unsafe. For instance, if I were to locate a report from the NTSB proposing some form of vehicular regulation or another, would you then insist that all vehicles are unsafe, simply for the fact that they could be made more safe? I would not have to search long, as you can see from their reports [1] yourself. [1] - https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/AccidentReports.aspx https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/Ac...
- learc83 8y ago
  > Going from 0 in 1946 to 1 million in 1999 with nothing but a linear increase would of course be 500k per year on average. My number was more than 20% below that. It was intentionally an extremely conservative estimate. Here's another example of why these extrapolations are useless without real data. 1. There is absolutely nothing that would allow you to say with any confidence whatsoever what the growth curve looked like. Maybe it was quadratic and there were only a million from 1946 to 1998. From looking at the history of the original Wisconsin Ducks, it looks like they operated with only a handful of DUKWs for decades. Maybe they stayed small until bigger companies got involved and spread to multiple cities in only a few years before 1999? You don't know, which is why trying to use numbers before 1999 is useless. Exponential growth is a very likely explanation for the appearance of an increase in fatalities over the last 20 years (Vehicle aging and easier access to modern records are others) 2. The 1 million number you keep quoting was for all amphibious tourist vehicles, not only DUKWs. There were other amphibious vehicles in operation in 1999, and there are more now. There is no breakdown for the number of riders by vehicle type. Given that newer purpose built vehicles are more expensive, they are more likely to be used in high traffic areas thus they are likely to carry a higher than expected proportion of the total riders. 3. These vehicles are now over 70 years old. It is entirely possible that there are fewer of them in operation than there were in 1999. >I do not believe that you believe that organizations such as the LA Times and NY Times are incapable of digging up incident reports in the decades before 1999 - that's cognitive dissonance. Do you think there were zero safety incidents involving DUKWs before 1999? You stated they included recent traffic incidents. If they were going back through 70 years of records, why didn't they include any previous traffic incidents? The most likely explanation is that they found the low hanging fruit and didn't bother going back any further. There were 4 days between the incident and the report you mention. What kind of world are you living in where a newspaper has the resources to comb through 70 years of local news reports and accident reports from every relevant municipality for 1 article in 4 under days. >crazy assumptions like pretending these things never existed before 1999 This is absurd. We clearly lack data to make accurate estimations from before 1999. We can try to look at the fatality rate over the last 20 years, or we can spend time arguing over why we can't find 70 year old accident reports from a small hamlet in Wisconsin over the internet. > Reality is rather friendlier, meaning these numbers are going to go from "okayish" to something substantially better...I'm not sure what level of accident rate does make one start pondering a ban, but we're obviously not even in the remotely right ballpark for that sort of discussion. I think that 26 times deadlier per hour than UK passenger boats warrants looking into it, but I'm not the expert. The experts issued a report though. And it recommended banning unmodified DUKWs. >grossly sensationalistic and emotional I think you're the one projecting here. The NTSB called for a ban on unmodified vehicles. Newspaper reporters parroting the NTSB experts can hardly be called sensational. >more safe Your misreading of the NTSB report is incredibly frustrating. The NTSB issued a recommendation that operators immediately make heavy modifications. They then made recommendations to state governments that they ban unmodified vehicles. If you read the report they sent communications back and forth with dozens of individual operators begging them to make these modifications. Here's an excerpt: "THE AMPHIBIOUS VESSELS ARE SUBJECT TO SINKING AND A TRAGEDY LIKE THE ONE THAT OCCURRED IN ARKANSAS COULD BE REPEATED. ACCORDINGLY, THE SAFETY BOARD REQUESTS THAT THE WISCONSIN DUCKS RECONSIDER THEIR POSITION ON THIS MATTER AND CONSIDER TAKING THE REQUESTED ACTION. PENDING FURTHER REPLY FROM THE WISCONSIN DUCKS, M-00-5 HAS BEEN CLASSIFIED "OPEN--UNACCEPTABLE RESPONSE." IN THE INTEREST OF ACCURACY, YOUR LETTER REFLECTS PERCEPTIONS OF THE EXPERIENCE LEVEL OF OUR MARINE STAFF AND SAFETY BOARD - U.S. COAST GUARD RELATIONS THAT ARE NOT FACTUAL. SHOULD WISCONSIN DUCKS WISH TO DISCUSS THESE ISSUES, MY MARINE STAFF CAN BE CONTACTED AT (202) 314-6450." Nothing about the report or subsequent communication is indicative of an opinion that the boats are safe but that they could be made "more safe." A reasonable, rational person would read the NTSB be report as a proclamation that unmodified DUKWs are unsafe. The mental gymnastics you have to go through to read that report and take from it that these vehicles are safe for passengers is truly, spectacularly, amazing.