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I think a huge part of the problem is that car companies aren't properly incentivized to protect pedestrians. It's easier and cheaper to prevent my car from hit

I think a huge part of the problem is that car companies aren't properly incentivized to protect pedestrians. It's easier and cheaper to prevent my car from hitting something that can damage it than to prevent my car from hitting something that it can damage (easier to detect buildings and other cars than to detect children). If you were the CEO of a car company and had a finite amount of money to spend on research on driver assist features would you rather spend it on the easy problem of protecting your customers or the expensive problem of protecting other people? Furthermore, as a consumer, would you rather buy a car that costs x dollars that protects you or costs x+y that protects other people?

chooseaname 7y ago
> I think a huge part of the problem is that... ... people just don't give a shit. They are so self absorbed that they only care about getting where they need to go and everyone and everything else can piss off.
- wcunning 7y ago
  Including the pedestrians in my college town that walk out in the middle of the road nowhere near a crosswalk without looking at anything but their phone while I was doing 5 under. This is in no way unique to drivers or car companies or road designers or Waze or anything else.
  - soperj 7y ago
    None of those other people are operating a machine capable of killing someone.
    - kelnos 7y ago
      It... kinda doesn't matter? If you're stepping out into a street, not at a crosswalk, not looking where you're going, with your face buried in your phone, you're not only an idiot, you're being incredibly self-centered. Obviously a driver should be paying attention in that situation, and if they still hit the person, unless it was impossible to stop in time, they should be held responsible. But that's not really the point. Someone just got hurt or died, and it was completely avoidable if the pedestrian had taken some very basic steps to be aware of their surroundings.
      - soperj 7y ago
        Kind of does. Person who isn't paying attention and walks in the road only has themselves to blame if they get killed. People who get killed because some jackass has decided that they want to answer text messages while they drive is completely different.
        kelnos 7y ago
        Please don't set up a strawman to attack; I'm not claiming what you are suggesting. My response was directly to [0] which was specifically about people walking into a road randomly without paying attention to their surroundings. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21151908 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21151908
        soperj 7y ago
        I wasn't. You responded to me specifically saying that "It... kinda doesn't matter? " How am setting up any kind of strawman in this instance?
wcunning 7y ago
This is a fundamentally uncharitable take. Protecting pedestrians with technology solely mounted on a car is basically impossible given the regulations on size of vehicle and such. I suppose you could make a vehicle sized squishy balloon tied to a motorcycle within the legal limits, but other than that, if you accept the general shape of a vehicle, the problem is really hard. Automatic braking is becoming regulatorily required in the nearer future and in general the ability of a car to stop quickly in more situations has improved. What else should a car company be doing in your opinion?
- asdff 7y ago
  If I were a car company I'd lobby to improve infrastructure. Like you said, the technology does not exist to package everything on every vehicle without beefing up cars (the last thing we need in congested cities). Make jaywalking a huge fuck you ticket and put sensors and cameras over every crosswalk to detect everyone from the 7 foot basketball player to their chihuahua the minute they set foot on asphalt, and send that data to the car to make it physically impossible to go forward while the crosswalk is in use. Put up a gate on the sidewalk like a train crossing if you need to really manage people, maybe a short little fence along non crossable parts of the curb too to make it even more difficult to jaywalk (ideally doubling as bike lane protection).
gridlockd 7y ago
> Furthermore, as a consumer, would you rather buy a car that costs x dollars that protects you or costs x+y that protects other people? Reducing the chance of having to live with the fact that I ran somebody over and seriously harmed or even killed them, that's indeed worth an extra y dollars to me. Furthermore, it is in the interest of my insurance company too, they might factor that into the premium.
- lutorm 7y ago
  I seem to remember somewhere that insurance companies have been reluctant to factor the risk of injury to others into the liability premiums for cars. This was in the context of a discussion of the externalities when SUVs and trucks became popular. It's hard to separate driver inattention from the effect of having vehicles that are much more deadly these days, too. If you get hit by a sedan, it'll take out your legs and you'll get flung up on the sloping hood/windshield. If you're hit by a truck/SUV, on the other hand, the majority of your body will take the direct hit.
  - gridlockd 7y ago
    It is my understanding that driving an SUV pushes up liability premiums, but this is offset by them being generally safer for the driver.
- megaremote 7y ago
  > Reducing the chance of having to live with the fact that I ran somebody over and seriously harmed or even killed them, that's indeed worth an extra y dollars to me. If you actually cared, you wouldn't drive at all.
  - gridlockd 7y ago
    This is useless black-and-white thinking. If you really cared about not getting food poisoning, you would only eat sterilized food instead of following basic food preparation guidelines. If you really cared about not getting an STD, you wouldn't have sex at all instead of using a condom. If you really cared about the environment, you would be living as a forager in the woods instead of reducing your garbage footprint. And so on and so forth...

chooseaname 7y ago

> I think a huge part of the problem is that... ... people just don't give a shit. They are so self absorbed that they only care about getting where they need to go and everyone and everything else can piss off.

wcunning 7y ago
Including the pedestrians in my college town that walk out in the middle of the road nowhere near a crosswalk without looking at anything but their phone while I was doing 5 under. This is in no way unique to drivers or car companies or road designers or Waze or anything else.
- soperj 7y ago
  None of those other people are operating a machine capable of killing someone.
  - kelnos 7y ago
    It... kinda doesn't matter? If you're stepping out into a street, not at a crosswalk, not looking where you're going, with your face buried in your phone, you're not only an idiot, you're being incredibly self-centered. Obviously a driver should be paying attention in that situation, and if they still hit the person, unless it was impossible to stop in time, they should be held responsible. But that's not really the point. Someone just got hurt or died, and it was completely avoidable if the pedestrian had taken some very basic steps to be aware of their surroundings.
    - soperj 7y ago
      Kind of does. Person who isn't paying attention and walks in the road only has themselves to blame if they get killed. People who get killed because some jackass has decided that they want to answer text messages while they drive is completely different.
      - kelnos 7y ago
        Please don't set up a strawman to attack; I'm not claiming what you are suggesting. My response was directly to [0] which was specifically about people walking into a road randomly without paying attention to their surroundings. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21151908 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21151908
        soperj 7y ago
        I wasn't. You responded to me specifically saying that "It... kinda doesn't matter? " How am setting up any kind of strawman in this instance?

wcunning 7y ago

This is a fundamentally uncharitable take. Protecting pedestrians with technology solely mounted on a car is basically impossible given the regulations on size of vehicle and such. I suppose you could make a vehicle sized squishy balloon tied to a motorcycle within the legal limits, but other than that, if you accept the general shape of a vehicle, the problem is really hard. Automatic braking is becoming regulatorily required in the nearer future and in general the ability of a car to stop quickly in more situations has improved. What else should a car company be doing in your opinion?

asdff 7y ago
If I were a car company I'd lobby to improve infrastructure. Like you said, the technology does not exist to package everything on every vehicle without beefing up cars (the last thing we need in congested cities). Make jaywalking a huge fuck you ticket and put sensors and cameras over every crosswalk to detect everyone from the 7 foot basketball player to their chihuahua the minute they set foot on asphalt, and send that data to the car to make it physically impossible to go forward while the crosswalk is in use. Put up a gate on the sidewalk like a train crossing if you need to really manage people, maybe a short little fence along non crossable parts of the curb too to make it even more difficult to jaywalk (ideally doubling as bike lane protection).

gridlockd 7y ago

> Furthermore, as a consumer, would you rather buy a car that costs x dollars that protects you or costs x+y that protects other people? Reducing the chance of having to live with the fact that I ran somebody over and seriously harmed or even killed them, that's indeed worth an extra y dollars to me. Furthermore, it is in the interest of my insurance company too, they might factor that into the premium.

lutorm 7y ago
I seem to remember somewhere that insurance companies have been reluctant to factor the risk of injury to others into the liability premiums for cars. This was in the context of a discussion of the externalities when SUVs and trucks became popular. It's hard to separate driver inattention from the effect of having vehicles that are much more deadly these days, too. If you get hit by a sedan, it'll take out your legs and you'll get flung up on the sloping hood/windshield. If you're hit by a truck/SUV, on the other hand, the majority of your body will take the direct hit.
- gridlockd 7y ago
  It is my understanding that driving an SUV pushes up liability premiums, but this is offset by them being generally safer for the driver.
megaremote 7y ago
> Reducing the chance of having to live with the fact that I ran somebody over and seriously harmed or even killed them, that's indeed worth an extra y dollars to me. If you actually cared, you wouldn't drive at all.
- gridlockd 7y ago
  This is useless black-and-white thinking. If you really cared about not getting food poisoning, you would only eat sterilized food instead of following basic food preparation guidelines. If you really cared about not getting an STD, you wouldn't have sex at all instead of using a condom. If you really cared about the environment, you would be living as a forager in the woods instead of reducing your garbage footprint. And so on and so forth...