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This is some Orwellian shit. An 88 million dollar investment combined with government-sanctioned Tom-peeping, to save an estimated 100 lives? That money would g

This is some Orwellian shit. An 88 million dollar investment combined with government-sanctioned Tom-peeping, to save an estimated 100 lives? That money would go a lot farther invested in modernizing vehicle safety, requiring lane assist features, etc. instead of fueling the surveillance state. I suspect those pushing this kind of thing are more interested in a solution where they can just defer all the hard work to "Artificial Intelligence" and avoid collaborating on meaningful change.

netsharc 7y ago
If there can be 2 timelines, I'm sure the 100 families in this timeline will be happy in 2022 that their loved one didn't die. Plus, how many injuries and economic damage were there?
megablast 7y ago
I disagree. Cars are killing machines, and should be constantly tracked at all times. Over a million dead every single year, 40k in the USA, and 3 every day in Australia. And that does not include the indirect deaths from pollution, urban sprawl, lack of exercise, etc.... > That money would go a lot farther invested in modernizing vehicle safety Such a meaningless statement. People shouldn't even be in cars most of the time that they are. In Australia, we are addicted to cars, where a large part of the population can not move without them. Disgusting.
- tempsolution 7y ago
  Agreed. Cars should mostly be banned from any urban & sub-urban spaces, replaced by fully automated public transportation. Most people should not be allowed to drive a car, as they are physically incapable of safely operating it.
- akersten 7y ago
  > Over a million dead every single year, 40k in the USA, and 3 every day in Australia. No one is contesting this, and it's good context for visualizing the supposed 100 deaths/year reduction that this $88mm investment would achieve. We'd still be at ~1 million dead per year. > Such a meaningless statement. I gave a precise example immediately following the introduction of the high-level concept. I'm not sure how that's hard to grasp. > People shouldn't even be in cars most of the time that they are. Ok, but not an argument that this is an effective use of 88 million taxpayer dollars. You could probably prevent more deaths by spending that money campaigning for people to drive less resulting reduction of overall number of drivers, compared to these ridiculous cameras. > Cars are killing machines, and should be constantly tracked at all times. I prefer a proactive approach to safety (better, safer, smarter cars) than a reactive approach (better punishment). Besides, the overwhelming majority of auto incidents are accidental. How will surveillance prevent those? It's solving the wrong problem. Think of the end game of either option. With true self-driving cars, mobile phone use won't be an issue. But if we make this monitoring acceptable now, the cameras and surveillance will remain. Don't let the Overton window shift.
emmelaich 7y ago
Pictures get taken at lights, tollway points, car parks already. This is not much more intrusion. Whether it will help us much as they I don't know. I do know that mobile phone use by drivers is a serious problem.
bruce_one 7y ago
Something that is often missed is that the number of lives saved numbers are often low - eg NSW apparently had "only" 354 deaths in 2018; but the under-reported number (imo, as an Australia) is the number of injuries (whether serious or not) which are not talked about. Apparently NSW had ~10950 serious road injuries in 2018. That's a lot more. And, at least to my perception, the impact of serious injuries is under-appreciated (wrt it be under-reported) - in some ways it can be more impactful to those around the victim than death. Then there are minor (or unreported) injuries which can often align well with the mobile-phone-usage/distraction type cause. Anecdotally, about a month ago I was nearly hit by a car that went through a very red light (ie had been red for a long time, it hadn't just changed) at a pedestrian crossing in front of me and I could see that they were looking at a phone. Luckily they didn't hit anyone. But depending on timing; they may have hit me (probably a non-serious-but-not-fun-injury) or they could have hit a child (probable death to my very untrained eye - it was after-school time and there were a lot of (young) primary school students on the same street). I don't see how 88 million dollars is going to stop cars from injuring or killing the things they hit. Who knows the actual efficacy of the 88 million; but the costs of car injuries/deaths look pretty expensive on the after-the-fact side (just found some US stats): > On average, each crash-related ED visit costs about $3,300 and each hospitalization costs about $57,000 over a person’s lifetime > There were more than 32,000 crash deaths in the US in 2013. These deaths cost more than $380 million in direct medical costs. Of note, I'm very anti phones-while-driving, because to my (biased) perception, whenever I see a car doing something that seemed dumb/unsafe/ill-considered, I very (very) often see them using a phone or playing with a gps etc at the same time. https://www.budgetdirect.com.au/car-insurance/research/car-accident-statistics.html https://www.budgetdirect.com.au/car-insurance/research/car-a... https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/crash-injuries/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/crash-injuries/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/motor-vehicle-safety/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/motor-vehicle-safety/index.ht...

netsharc 7y ago

If there can be 2 timelines, I'm sure the 100 families in this timeline will be happy in 2022 that their loved one didn't die. Plus, how many injuries and economic damage were there?

megablast 7y ago

I disagree. Cars are killing machines, and should be constantly tracked at all times. Over a million dead every single year, 40k in the USA, and 3 every day in Australia. And that does not include the indirect deaths from pollution, urban sprawl, lack of exercise, etc.... > That money would go a lot farther invested in modernizing vehicle safety Such a meaningless statement. People shouldn't even be in cars most of the time that they are. In Australia, we are addicted to cars, where a large part of the population can not move without them. Disgusting.

tempsolution 7y ago
Agreed. Cars should mostly be banned from any urban & sub-urban spaces, replaced by fully automated public transportation. Most people should not be allowed to drive a car, as they are physically incapable of safely operating it.
akersten 7y ago
> Over a million dead every single year, 40k in the USA, and 3 every day in Australia. No one is contesting this, and it's good context for visualizing the supposed 100 deaths/year reduction that this $88mm investment would achieve. We'd still be at ~1 million dead per year. > Such a meaningless statement. I gave a precise example immediately following the introduction of the high-level concept. I'm not sure how that's hard to grasp. > People shouldn't even be in cars most of the time that they are. Ok, but not an argument that this is an effective use of 88 million taxpayer dollars. You could probably prevent more deaths by spending that money campaigning for people to drive less resulting reduction of overall number of drivers, compared to these ridiculous cameras. > Cars are killing machines, and should be constantly tracked at all times. I prefer a proactive approach to safety (better, safer, smarter cars) than a reactive approach (better punishment). Besides, the overwhelming majority of auto incidents are accidental. How will surveillance prevent those? It's solving the wrong problem. Think of the end game of either option. With true self-driving cars, mobile phone use won't be an issue. But if we make this monitoring acceptable now, the cameras and surveillance will remain. Don't let the Overton window shift.

emmelaich 7y ago

Pictures get taken at lights, tollway points, car parks already. This is not much more intrusion. Whether it will help us much as they I don't know. I do know that mobile phone use by drivers is a serious problem.

bruce_one 7y ago

Something that is often missed is that the number of lives saved numbers are often low - eg NSW apparently had "only" 354 deaths in 2018; but the under-reported number (imo, as an Australia) is the number of injuries (whether serious or not) which are not talked about. Apparently NSW had ~10950 serious road injuries in 2018. That's a lot more. And, at least to my perception, the impact of serious injuries is under-appreciated (wrt it be under-reported) - in some ways it can be more impactful to those around the victim than death. Then there are minor (or unreported) injuries which can often align well with the mobile-phone-usage/distraction type cause. Anecdotally, about a month ago I was nearly hit by a car that went through a very red light (ie had been red for a long time, it hadn't just changed) at a pedestrian crossing in front of me and I could see that they were looking at a phone. Luckily they didn't hit anyone. But depending on timing; they may have hit me (probably a non-serious-but-not-fun-injury) or they could have hit a child (probable death to my very untrained eye - it was after-school time and there were a lot of (young) primary school students on the same street). I don't see how 88 million dollars is going to stop cars from injuring or killing the things they hit. Who knows the actual efficacy of the 88 million; but the costs of car injuries/deaths look pretty expensive on the after-the-fact side (just found some US stats): > On average, each crash-related ED visit costs about $3,300 and each hospitalization costs about $57,000 over a person’s lifetime > There were more than 32,000 crash deaths in the US in 2013. These deaths cost more than $380 million in direct medical costs. Of note, I'm very anti phones-while-driving, because to my (biased) perception, whenever I see a car doing something that seemed dumb/unsafe/ill-considered, I very (very) often see them using a phone or playing with a gps etc at the same time. https://www.budgetdirect.com.au/car-insurance/research/car-accident-statistics.html https://www.budgetdirect.com.au/car-insurance/research/car-a... https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/crash-injuries/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/crash-injuries/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/motor-vehicle-safety/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/motor-vehicle-safety/index.ht...