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I remember at the beginning of quarantine and social distancing, thinking that at least road deaths would go down because there would be less traffic. Unfortuna

• mhb 6y ago
  It will be interesting to know for how many of these deaths increased DUI could account.
  • rob74 6y ago
    ...and how many to illegal races like the one this article is glorifying?
    • csours 6y ago
      I think way more people are killed by local races, just because there are way more of them, but it's all part of the same culture.
    • leetcrew 6y ago
      by all accounts, the cannonball teams seem to be pretty careful. do you know of any nonparticipants that have ever died in a cannonball run?
      • throwaway894345 6y ago
        Have there been enough cannonball runners to even make for a statistically significant sample?
        • leetcrew 6y ago
          I dunno what "statistically significant" would mean in this context, but people have been doing it since the 1930s, though most of the runs have been in the last fifty years. they claim that no bystanders have been injured in the history of the run, and I can't find any evidence to the contrary. I don't think it's a good idea to go from one US coast to the other as fast as possible, but the pearl-clutching is a bit much.
          • throwaway894345 6y ago
            Presumably you wouldn't argue that because there are zero bystander injuries or fatalities that it is actually perfectly safe (for bystanders), right? You would just argue that there haven't been enough runs to accurately assess its safety. If ordinary "safe" car travel results in one fatality for every ten thousand trips (assuming all trips are equal apart from the 'cannonball' variable for simplicity) and if there have only been 50 cannonball run trips, it's entirely possible that cannonball runs are twice as dangerous as a regular trip and we would still expect to see zero bystander incidents in those 50 trips. The question is "have there been enough cannonball runs to accurately assess safety?".
            • leetcrew 6y ago
              > Presumably you wouldn't argue that because there are zero bystander injuries or fatalities that it is actually perfectly safe (for bystanders), right? of course not. let me explain my perspective in a bit more detail. first of all, these people are all experienced drivers in very capable, well-maintained vehicles. they have a network of scouts to help them avoid police and traffic. even if individual drivers don't care much about safety, there is a strong incentive to route around traffic because of how much time it costs. any sort of speed competition on public roads is inherently reckless, but I would honestly doubt if it's much riskier per mile than my morning commute on I-95. second, and if nothing else, it's cool to see what is essentially the state of the art when it comes to evading law enforcement. it's hard to get an honest test of this stuff without deliberately breaking the rules, and I'm glad someone is out there doing it so I can watch and learn safely from home. anyone thumbing their nose at the cops like this is going to get at least a little respect from me. finally, there just aren't that many people doing this. hard to say for sure but I'd guess the number of attempts per year is somewhere in the low to mid tens. it's sort of like complaining about the fuel efficiency on a new bugatti. you're not necessarily wrong, but they're only going to make 200 of them. who cares?
      • 0xffff2 6y ago
        Characterizing participants in an event where the goal seems to be to drive across the country with the pedal literally to the metal for as much time as possible as "careful" sounds very strange to me.
  • mauvehaus 6y ago
    Possibly fewer since bars are closed (-ish, depending on your location)? We take our recyclables to the transfer station and live in a state with a bottle deposit. The folks who process bottles and cans confirm that we're (collectively) drinking a lot more at home these days.
• GuB-42 6y ago
  It is specifically the death rate per traveled mile, not the absolute death toll, not the number of accidents. It is understandable. Because there are less people on the road, people drive faster, and faster driving means accidents are more deadly. Slow, dense traffic is more likely to cause fender benders than deadly accidents. This is also part of the reason why the night is deadlier than the day, besides the obvious reduction in visibility.
  • floatingatoll 6y ago
    Observation of the road outside my door offers a nuance: People who drive at unsafe speeds have fewer obstacles to doing so. It’s not that a greater percentage people are trying to go faster due to the plague, it’s that there’s fewer cars which reduces the chances of the speeders being slowed down by traffic.
  • leetcrew 6y ago
    or it could be more benign. surface streets already have more fatalities per mile than highways. simply shifting the fraction of total miles traveled to surface streets could be enough to increase the average fatalities per mile by itself.
  • csours 6y ago
    In some places it's also absolute death toll. I think we'll have to wait and see how it all shakes out. It's an interesting "natural" experiment for sure.