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I didn't care for this article. We don't shrug off car accidents. Actually, I feel that driving safety is probably one of the top issues that politicans legisl

I didn't care for this article. We don't shrug off car accidents. Actually, I feel that driving safety is probably one of the top issues that politicans legislate on (in the form of drunk driving legislation, speed camera legislation, distracted driving, safety requirements, etc etc etc). Insurance companies even offer discounts if you put a device in your vehicle to help support that you drive cautiously. Cars have more safety features than ever before. They have lane departure warnings, automatic breaking functionality, drowsiness detection, etc. I'd be more curious to know why we shrug off other things that kill people--like the obesity epidemic--rather than cars.

BitwiseFool 5y ago
There is a significant population of folks who are car-hostile here on HN. Most will tell you that they aren't actually anti-car and they don't hate them - just everything about them.
- dc-programmer 5y ago
  Maybe we just aren’t willing to accept 35k deaths (insert your countries count here) a year plus countless injuries to a problem that could easily be mitigated. The high human cost absolutely does not have to be the trade off of driving considering most car violence is the result of human error (breaking pre-existing laws)
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    > easily be mitigated Your easy solution would be...?
    - dc-programmer 5y ago
      Enforcing existing traffic laws with consistency and social norming good driving behavior. Banning things never works but having people face the consequences of their actions on a consistent basis can change behavior
      - rbanffy 5y ago
        As an example, there are no traffic-related fatalities in the pedestrian-only streets in my city. There are also no pedestrian fatalities inside our mass-transit system. It’s all about priorities.
        kcplate 5y ago
        Ahh yes, hyper-dense populated, walkable cities with good mass transit. Meanwhile where I live, we grow the food you city dwellers eat and to get to just about any store it’s at least a 10 mile trip. Maybe I’ll take the bus…oh wait…the nearest stop is 4 miles from my door.
        Karrot_Kream 5y ago
        ... Yes and? They pay the taxes that fund the development for the miles of power lines and piping that need to be placed to support non-city dwellers. We can play this game all day. Civilization is all about paying into the common good.
        kcplate 5y ago
        Ahh yes, thank you for being so generous to locate your power plants and waste treatment facilities out here and being so gracious to let us ride on your pipes and wires, while we generate the electricity you consume and clean the water you dirty. NIMBY right? However, since my comment was about the need for automobiles in rural areas because the distances between services are not supportive of mass transit and reasonable walkable distances. Folks that live in urban areas seem to forget that the bulk of this earth doesn’t have the luxury of a bus stop or train station a block away from their home and place of employment.
        rbanffy 5y ago
        You do understand that we are talking completely different things here. Obviously farmland is not the right place to put power plants (unless their emissions can be used to benefit crops - think reusing clean CO2 to feed crops in greenhouses) or waste treatment facilities (unless they produce fertilizers that can be used to increase crop yield). Nobody is proposing to ban cars where they are actually needed - and there are a lot of good use cases for cars, but densely populated cities ARE NOT one of them. Also, banning cars from rural areas would probably not make a dent in avoidable pedestrian deaths, as most of them happen in more densely populated areas (such as suburbs, which are kind of in the middle between rural and urban). I'd be totally fine with banning manual driving in suburban areas as soon as self-driving cars prove safer than humans. Furthermore, we could extend the mass-transit system with self-driving cars and trucks - no need to walk to the bus stop if you can have one pick you up by your door upon request. And, since it's per request, it doesn't even need to be a bus. Many short-term car-rental companies are looking for self-driving cars to remove the issue of having to pick up and return the car at a specified spot. For a long time I didn't have a bus stop near my door - what I did was drive (a 15-minute drive) to the subway station parking building and use my tax-deducted park+ride year-long pass to get to my office.
- lbebber 5y ago
  Hahah I don't know if you meant that sarcastically, but I think I fit into that description--I do like, even love, driving, etc., but I do hate most of the consequences of having cars around.
- Sharlin 5y ago
  Yes, those are typically the people who know what the term negative externality means.
- CarelessExpert 5y ago
  > There is a significant population of folks who are car-hostile here on HN And there's a significant population of folks who are bike-hostile here on HN. In fact, there's probably a significant population of folks who are X-hostile, for any value of X you can conceive of, given the size of the HN userbase. What's your point?
  - SantalBlush 5y ago
    I think the point is to poison the well. When people point out an issue with cars, it isn't because they're using evidence-based reasoning, it's because they're just a bunch of nasty car haters (and communists.) Contrary to OP's assertions, I actually do enjoy cars, but I don't think they work well at all in the city. I think there are better solutions out there (Japan is a leading example.)
    - BitwiseFool 5y ago
      I am not trying to poison the well. I just can't help but observe how often people here post things anti-car and then ascribe all sorts of societal problems under the sun to the fact that the United States is so car-centric. I've also noticed that the car-hostile folks have a tendency to assume malice whenever someone defends the automobile. I mean right now I was just accused of poisoning the well. The GP mentioned that people here are bike-hostile, but you don't see dozens of submissions from StrongRoads about how terrible bicycles are and how they're responsible for toxic individualism.
      - SantalBlush 5y ago
        >you don't see dozens of submissions from StrongRoads about how terrible bicycles are and how they're responsible for toxic individualism. I think the reason we don't see dozens of submissions about how terrible bicycles are is because they don't kill car drivers to even remotely the same degree. I mean, come on.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
dc-programmer 5y ago
Pedestrian fatalities have increased by over 50% since 2010. Clearly whatever policies politicians are pushing aren’t working. Might the regulatory capture of the car and Highway industries have anything to do about it?
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  Can you share a link? I wonder if it has to do with cities implementing more mixed-use roads Alternatively, I wonder if it is attributable to increased smartphone use by pedestrians and or drivers. Personally, I find operating the UI on phone navigation and audio players very cognitively taxing.
  - kspacewalk2 5y ago
    And (if true), I wonder if it's due to the average size of cars, and safety features that prioritize the vehicle's occupants over that of squishy and brittle street users not inside steel cocoons.
  - dc-programmer 5y ago
    Quick link: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.statista.com/chart/amp/17194/pedestrian-fatalities-in-the-us-by-year/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.statista.com/chart/amp/1719... If you are interested in a deeper dive “Right of Way” by Angie Schmidt is good review of the current research. The biggest issue is the increasing market share of SUVs and trucks which are both more likely to hit and kill pedestrians. Other issues are an increase of poor residents in suburban areas that were not meant for walking, and road design that only considers car efficiency (consider the implications of setting walk sign duration to the average pace of an able bodied middle age male - wheel chair users and the elderly are heavily represented in fatalities). Mixed use roads can mean a lot of things, but narrowing streets actually reduces fatalities because it serves as a traffic easing measure (see Vision zero). My personal take is yes part of the problem is infrastructure, and academics who study systems will hone in on that, but the other problem is the complete abdication of personal responsibility in American society. Politicians are too afraid to hold middle class voters accountable for traffic violence or anything else really. The flip side of personal freedom is having to face the consequences of your actions. In some states a DUI conviction does not automatically suspend the drivers license. So I do appreciate left leaning politicians attempting to improve infrastructure, but my concern is these measures are being used to carefully avoid blaming individuals for their actions this laundering society’s terrible driving habits (which I really do think could be changed through social norming and enforcement. I am very biased though. I’ve almost been hit by multiple cars this year who failed to yield to pedestrians in the cross walk.
syshum 5y ago
>>-like the obesity epidemic--rather than cars. The key here from a government standpoint is Obesity impacts the life of the obese person only. Where as bad driving will kill other people, infact often does not kill the bad driver instead harms innocent people around the bad driver Government has the ethical mandate to protect you from other citizens, not to protect your from your own bad choices. Government has no ethical position for which to control the type and quantity of food I choose to consume the only ethical control the government would have is around food safety for people selling food to others. Ice Cream is perfectly safe to eat as long as you are not eating a gallon a day.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  >Government has the ethical mandate to protect you from other citizens, not to protect your from your own bad choices. What about the choices of the food industry?
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  Even in the U.S., the government would be better off with a leaner population. The government pays some fraction of healthcare (VA, Medicare, Medicaid). Also, the military would like to have a better pool of recruits.
  - syshum 5y ago
    Thank you for highlighting why I will never support government healthcare. I do not wish to live in a world where the government is monitoring and regulating what I have for breakfast, "for my own good" No thank you, I will pass on that kind of dystopia
    - Sharlin 5y ago
      I would reply to this, but my government is monitoring my blood pressure and taking me to an intervention camp if it gets too high. (Apologies for the sarcasm.)
    - b112 5y ago
34679 5y ago
Obesity is driven by consumption and consumption drives the US economy. We know that obesity and age are two of the biggest factors in COVID outcomes. We obviously can't make ourselves younger, so I have been genuinely surprised that there hasn't been any push for diet and exercise over the last 20 months. Instead, all we see pushed are pills and shots, sold as working "just like magic", instead of any kind of actual work on the part of each individual. But what president is going to go on TV and tell everyone to consume less when they view the economy as their ticket to reelection?
- TacticalCoder 5y ago
  > so I have been genuinely surprised that there hasn't been any push for diet and exercise over the last 20 months There's been no official push but there have been individuals whom, upon realizing people were dying due to their lungs clogging up and difficulties breathing, organized into online groups and started exercising a lot. > Instead, all we see pushed are pills ... It appeared very early on that there was a gigantic correlation between low vit-D levels and severe Covid-19 complications. Several scientific studies now confirmed this officially. I don't think it's know (yet?) if Vit-D supplementation works or not (it works to raise vit-D levels, but does it help when you then catch Covid-19?) but I don't find it crazy that people, like me, started taking Vit-D (+ K) supplementation. > ... and shots, ah yup, RNA shots. I was basically forced to get mines too (even if it's not totally mandatory they're pretty much rammed down your troath in the EU). The worldwide epidemiological study as to what the consequences of this new kind of vaccine are is ongoing... Stay tuned ; )
- jgwil2 5y ago
  What exactly would this push look like? A massive ad campaign encouraging people to diet and exercise? Do you really think that would make a difference? Most overweight people already want to be skinnier - the fact is that it is extremely difficult to lose weight and keep it off. The focus has been on vaccination precisely because it is both effective and easily implemented.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    > What exactly would this push look like? One way to start it would be in-school cantinas to only offer healthy food, do so for free for every student, and to educate students from the start to be healthy eaters. Remember: we shamed McDonalds into offering salads. It’ll not solve all cases, but will reduce the health issue, save countless lives and allow us to focus on the next problem, whatever it is.
giantg2 5y ago
"Actually, I feel that driving safety is probably one of the top issues that politicans legislate on (in the form of drunk driving legislation, speed camera legislation, distracted driving, safety requirements, etc etc etc)." This is really not a top priority for politicians. I don't see them running on a traffic safety platform. There are very few updates to driving laws. Most of them have nothing to do with actual safety either. Red light cameras are mostly about revenue, for example. The number one thing they can do to enhance safety is to make the testing more strict. The current test is a joke. I haven't noticed any candidates supporting this. The reason this, and others, are shrugged off is that people see value in the things to be regulated (driving, soda, junk food, etc) and don't want government involvement in their lives to increase without a clearly defined benefit. They want to see that it won't negatively impact them while providing a benefit. That's hard to do for the whole population. Not to mention many of the proposals have pretty terrible value propositions.
- arrosenberg 5y ago
  > This is really not a top priority for politicians. I don't see them running on a traffic safety platform. That was Ralph Nader's whole thing in the 70s - "Unsafe at any speed". Politicians don't run on it now because driving has gotten much safer in the last 40 years.
  - neon_electro 5y ago
    For drivers, yes. For other road users, not so much. The job is nowhere near done.
- allturtles 5y ago
  Politicians probably don't run on them because they aren't very controversial and don't excite their base. Nonetheless, there have been lots of changes to car safety laws in my lifetime. These include regulations on drivers/passengers (seat belt laws, car seat laws, open container laws, reduced BAC limits, laws against using a phone while driving) and requirements on manufacturers (air bag requirements, eye-level 3rd brake light requirement, back-up camera requirement). There are new regulations in the big infrastructure bill.
Aeolun 5y ago
This feels like whataboutism to me. Ultimately cars kill more people than all other forms of transport combined. Just because there are other things killing more people doesn’t mean cars get a free pass. We should absolutely do something about the obesity epidemic, but in addition to, not at the expense of, doing something about cars.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  >We should absolutely do something about the obesity epidemic, but in addition to, not at the expense of, doing something about cars. Those two things aren't disconnected either.
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    Huh. Good point.
akira2501 5y ago
Any article examining this that fails to acknowledge the role that youth, alcohol or drugs play in the majority of accidents is not to be taken seriously. Other minor factors that people constantly forget about are motorcycles and the fact that many pedestrian deaths actually happen _outside_ of a city.
- TacticalCoder 5y ago
  > ... people constantly forget about are motorcycles and the fact that many pedestrian deaths actually happen _outside_ of a city. They also forget that pedestrian deaths do actually not happen on the highway.
- SantalBlush 5y ago
  If you're advising us to reject the article due to lack of evidence, it might help if you included any evidence whatsoever for your own assertion. You're not helping to clarify the issue at all here.
  - akira2501 5y ago
    Nearly 42% of all accidents involve alcohol or drugs. [1] Motorcycles are 15% of all fatal accidents, and half of those are "single vehicle accidents." [2] Drivers under 18 are twice as likely to have a fatal accident. [3] Finally, everyone should know: Nearly every single fatal crash in the United States is investigated and the report is put into a federal database. This database is open and easy to access, or download and draw your own reports against. If you care about accidents and want to know more, this is the definitive source and the place to start. [4] [1]: https://www.cdc.gov/transportationsafety/impaired_driving/impaired-drv_factsheet.html https://www.cdc.gov/transportationsafety/impaired_driving/im... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorcycle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorcycle_fatality_rate_in_U.... [3]: https://aaafoundation.org/rates-motor-vehicle-crashes-injuries-deaths-relation-driver-age-united-states-2014-2015/ https://aaafoundation.org/rates-motor-vehicle-crashes-injuri... [4]: https://www.nhtsa.gov/research-data/fatality-analysis-reporting-system-fars https://www.nhtsa.gov/research-data/fatality-analysis-report...
bobthechef 5y ago
Sometimes articles like these are an attempt to push an agenda, regardless of whether this is good or bad (reason: good; sophistry: bad). Something is problematized (whether this is justified on independent grounds or not is not the point) and once it is problematized and people accept it as a problem, you have gained the assent of the public. Solutions are proposed and propagated by those with the power to broadcast their opinions. This can be the same group that problematized the issue in the first place. In order to propose a solution (which is to say, to propose a change), they must first have problematized the issue to make the public receptive. Given background knowledge, it is possible that this sort of article is a way of getting the ball rolling with respect to the reduction of cars or the promotion of self-driving cars or whatever. The chip shortage and general disruption of supply chains and the effect on the prices of cars is opportune.
pshc 5y ago
I disagree, I think America in particular does like to shrug off car violence. It depends on where you live, but a consistently negligent driver can rack up 10 speeding tickets and barely get a slap on the wrist. Vehicular manslaughter charges often become minor misdemeanors if the person is "nice" enough. Regulations are lax to the point that elderly people are assumed to be competent drivers even as they descend into legal blindness. But most people are used to this status quo and shrug it off, we're addicted to car ownership at all costs.
- mordechai9000 5y ago
  I think people also underestimate the risk, and overestimate their ability to mitigate it with good driving skill. Also underestimating (or just not understanding) how much human physiology and physical layout of the vehicle determine what information we are able to process. (Those forward columns...)
shagmin 5y ago
I was thinking along the same lines but with mobile phone usage in cars in particular. It's the fastest growing contribution to car related fatalities in the last decade and as a result laws have been passed for exactly that, in addition to a cultural shaming of distracted driving.
hardsoftnfloppy 5y ago
Shh bro... you don't want to cross the sugar mafia, they're in cahoots with Davita and who knows who else.

BitwiseFool 5y ago

There is a significant population of folks who are car-hostile here on HN. Most will tell you that they aren't actually anti-car and they don't hate them - just everything about them.

dc-programmer 5y ago
Maybe we just aren’t willing to accept 35k deaths (insert your countries count here) a year plus countless injuries to a problem that could easily be mitigated. The high human cost absolutely does not have to be the trade off of driving considering most car violence is the result of human error (breaking pre-existing laws)
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  > easily be mitigated Your easy solution would be...?
  - dc-programmer 5y ago
    Enforcing existing traffic laws with consistency and social norming good driving behavior. Banning things never works but having people face the consequences of their actions on a consistent basis can change behavior
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      As an example, there are no traffic-related fatalities in the pedestrian-only streets in my city. There are also no pedestrian fatalities inside our mass-transit system. It’s all about priorities.
      - kcplate 5y ago
        Ahh yes, hyper-dense populated, walkable cities with good mass transit. Meanwhile where I live, we grow the food you city dwellers eat and to get to just about any store it’s at least a 10 mile trip. Maybe I’ll take the bus…oh wait…the nearest stop is 4 miles from my door.
        Karrot_Kream 5y ago
        ... Yes and? They pay the taxes that fund the development for the miles of power lines and piping that need to be placed to support non-city dwellers. We can play this game all day. Civilization is all about paying into the common good.
        kcplate 5y ago
        Ahh yes, thank you for being so generous to locate your power plants and waste treatment facilities out here and being so gracious to let us ride on your pipes and wires, while we generate the electricity you consume and clean the water you dirty. NIMBY right? However, since my comment was about the need for automobiles in rural areas because the distances between services are not supportive of mass transit and reasonable walkable distances. Folks that live in urban areas seem to forget that the bulk of this earth doesn’t have the luxury of a bus stop or train station a block away from their home and place of employment.
        rbanffy 5y ago
        You do understand that we are talking completely different things here. Obviously farmland is not the right place to put power plants (unless their emissions can be used to benefit crops - think reusing clean CO2 to feed crops in greenhouses) or waste treatment facilities (unless they produce fertilizers that can be used to increase crop yield). Nobody is proposing to ban cars where they are actually needed - and there are a lot of good use cases for cars, but densely populated cities ARE NOT one of them. Also, banning cars from rural areas would probably not make a dent in avoidable pedestrian deaths, as most of them happen in more densely populated areas (such as suburbs, which are kind of in the middle between rural and urban). I'd be totally fine with banning manual driving in suburban areas as soon as self-driving cars prove safer than humans. Furthermore, we could extend the mass-transit system with self-driving cars and trucks - no need to walk to the bus stop if you can have one pick you up by your door upon request. And, since it's per request, it doesn't even need to be a bus. Many short-term car-rental companies are looking for self-driving cars to remove the issue of having to pick up and return the car at a specified spot. For a long time I didn't have a bus stop near my door - what I did was drive (a 15-minute drive) to the subway station parking building and use my tax-deducted park+ride year-long pass to get to my office.
lbebber 5y ago
Hahah I don't know if you meant that sarcastically, but I think I fit into that description--I do like, even love, driving, etc., but I do hate most of the consequences of having cars around.
Sharlin 5y ago
Yes, those are typically the people who know what the term negative externality means.
CarelessExpert 5y ago
> There is a significant population of folks who are car-hostile here on HN And there's a significant population of folks who are bike-hostile here on HN. In fact, there's probably a significant population of folks who are X-hostile, for any value of X you can conceive of, given the size of the HN userbase. What's your point?
- SantalBlush 5y ago
  I think the point is to poison the well. When people point out an issue with cars, it isn't because they're using evidence-based reasoning, it's because they're just a bunch of nasty car haters (and communists.) Contrary to OP's assertions, I actually do enjoy cars, but I don't think they work well at all in the city. I think there are better solutions out there (Japan is a leading example.)
  - BitwiseFool 5y ago
    I am not trying to poison the well. I just can't help but observe how often people here post things anti-car and then ascribe all sorts of societal problems under the sun to the fact that the United States is so car-centric. I've also noticed that the car-hostile folks have a tendency to assume malice whenever someone defends the automobile. I mean right now I was just accused of poisoning the well. The GP mentioned that people here are bike-hostile, but you don't see dozens of submissions from StrongRoads about how terrible bicycles are and how they're responsible for toxic individualism.
    - SantalBlush 5y ago
      >you don't see dozens of submissions from StrongRoads about how terrible bicycles are and how they're responsible for toxic individualism. I think the reason we don't see dozens of submissions about how terrible bicycles are is because they don't kill car drivers to even remotely the same degree. I mean, come on.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]

dc-programmer 5y ago

Pedestrian fatalities have increased by over 50% since 2010. Clearly whatever policies politicians are pushing aren’t working. Might the regulatory capture of the car and Highway industries have anything to do about it?

s1artibartfast 5y ago
Can you share a link? I wonder if it has to do with cities implementing more mixed-use roads Alternatively, I wonder if it is attributable to increased smartphone use by pedestrians and or drivers. Personally, I find operating the UI on phone navigation and audio players very cognitively taxing.
- kspacewalk2 5y ago
  And (if true), I wonder if it's due to the average size of cars, and safety features that prioritize the vehicle's occupants over that of squishy and brittle street users not inside steel cocoons.
- dc-programmer 5y ago
  Quick link: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.statista.com/chart/amp/17194/pedestrian-fatalities-in-the-us-by-year/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.statista.com/chart/amp/1719... If you are interested in a deeper dive “Right of Way” by Angie Schmidt is good review of the current research. The biggest issue is the increasing market share of SUVs and trucks which are both more likely to hit and kill pedestrians. Other issues are an increase of poor residents in suburban areas that were not meant for walking, and road design that only considers car efficiency (consider the implications of setting walk sign duration to the average pace of an able bodied middle age male - wheel chair users and the elderly are heavily represented in fatalities). Mixed use roads can mean a lot of things, but narrowing streets actually reduces fatalities because it serves as a traffic easing measure (see Vision zero). My personal take is yes part of the problem is infrastructure, and academics who study systems will hone in on that, but the other problem is the complete abdication of personal responsibility in American society. Politicians are too afraid to hold middle class voters accountable for traffic violence or anything else really. The flip side of personal freedom is having to face the consequences of your actions. In some states a DUI conviction does not automatically suspend the drivers license. So I do appreciate left leaning politicians attempting to improve infrastructure, but my concern is these measures are being used to carefully avoid blaming individuals for their actions this laundering society’s terrible driving habits (which I really do think could be changed through social norming and enforcement. I am very biased though. I’ve almost been hit by multiple cars this year who failed to yield to pedestrians in the cross walk.

syshum 5y ago

>>-like the obesity epidemic--rather than cars. The key here from a government standpoint is Obesity impacts the life of the obese person only. Where as bad driving will kill other people, infact often does not kill the bad driver instead harms innocent people around the bad driver Government has the ethical mandate to protect you from other citizens, not to protect your from your own bad choices. Government has no ethical position for which to control the type and quantity of food I choose to consume the only ethical control the government would have is around food safety for people selling food to others. Ice Cream is perfectly safe to eat as long as you are not eating a gallon a day.

tonyedgecombe 5y ago
>Government has the ethical mandate to protect you from other citizens, not to protect your from your own bad choices. What about the choices of the food industry?
inglor_cz 5y ago
Even in the U.S., the government would be better off with a leaner population. The government pays some fraction of healthcare (VA, Medicare, Medicaid). Also, the military would like to have a better pool of recruits.
- syshum 5y ago
  Thank you for highlighting why I will never support government healthcare. I do not wish to live in a world where the government is monitoring and regulating what I have for breakfast, "for my own good" No thank you, I will pass on that kind of dystopia
  - Sharlin 5y ago
    I would reply to this, but my government is monitoring my blood pressure and taking me to an intervention camp if it gets too high. (Apologies for the sarcasm.)
  - b112 5y ago

34679 5y ago

Obesity is driven by consumption and consumption drives the US economy. We know that obesity and age are two of the biggest factors in COVID outcomes. We obviously can't make ourselves younger, so I have been genuinely surprised that there hasn't been any push for diet and exercise over the last 20 months. Instead, all we see pushed are pills and shots, sold as working "just like magic", instead of any kind of actual work on the part of each individual. But what president is going to go on TV and tell everyone to consume less when they view the economy as their ticket to reelection?

TacticalCoder 5y ago
> so I have been genuinely surprised that there hasn't been any push for diet and exercise over the last 20 months There's been no official push but there have been individuals whom, upon realizing people were dying due to their lungs clogging up and difficulties breathing, organized into online groups and started exercising a lot. > Instead, all we see pushed are pills ... It appeared very early on that there was a gigantic correlation between low vit-D levels and severe Covid-19 complications. Several scientific studies now confirmed this officially. I don't think it's know (yet?) if Vit-D supplementation works or not (it works to raise vit-D levels, but does it help when you then catch Covid-19?) but I don't find it crazy that people, like me, started taking Vit-D (+ K) supplementation. > ... and shots, ah yup, RNA shots. I was basically forced to get mines too (even if it's not totally mandatory they're pretty much rammed down your troath in the EU). The worldwide epidemiological study as to what the consequences of this new kind of vaccine are is ongoing... Stay tuned ; )
jgwil2 5y ago
What exactly would this push look like? A massive ad campaign encouraging people to diet and exercise? Do you really think that would make a difference? Most overweight people already want to be skinnier - the fact is that it is extremely difficult to lose weight and keep it off. The focus has been on vaccination precisely because it is both effective and easily implemented.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  > What exactly would this push look like? One way to start it would be in-school cantinas to only offer healthy food, do so for free for every student, and to educate students from the start to be healthy eaters. Remember: we shamed McDonalds into offering salads. It’ll not solve all cases, but will reduce the health issue, save countless lives and allow us to focus on the next problem, whatever it is.

giantg2 5y ago

"Actually, I feel that driving safety is probably one of the top issues that politicans legislate on (in the form of drunk driving legislation, speed camera legislation, distracted driving, safety requirements, etc etc etc)." This is really not a top priority for politicians. I don't see them running on a traffic safety platform. There are very few updates to driving laws. Most of them have nothing to do with actual safety either. Red light cameras are mostly about revenue, for example. The number one thing they can do to enhance safety is to make the testing more strict. The current test is a joke. I haven't noticed any candidates supporting this. The reason this, and others, are shrugged off is that people see value in the things to be regulated (driving, soda, junk food, etc) and don't want government involvement in their lives to increase without a clearly defined benefit. They want to see that it won't negatively impact them while providing a benefit. That's hard to do for the whole population. Not to mention many of the proposals have pretty terrible value propositions.

arrosenberg 5y ago
> This is really not a top priority for politicians. I don't see them running on a traffic safety platform. That was Ralph Nader's whole thing in the 70s - "Unsafe at any speed". Politicians don't run on it now because driving has gotten much safer in the last 40 years.
- neon_electro 5y ago
  For drivers, yes. For other road users, not so much. The job is nowhere near done.
allturtles 5y ago
Politicians probably don't run on them because they aren't very controversial and don't excite their base. Nonetheless, there have been lots of changes to car safety laws in my lifetime. These include regulations on drivers/passengers (seat belt laws, car seat laws, open container laws, reduced BAC limits, laws against using a phone while driving) and requirements on manufacturers (air bag requirements, eye-level 3rd brake light requirement, back-up camera requirement). There are new regulations in the big infrastructure bill.

Aeolun 5y ago

This feels like whataboutism to me. Ultimately cars kill more people than all other forms of transport combined. Just because there are other things killing more people doesn’t mean cars get a free pass. We should absolutely do something about the obesity epidemic, but in addition to, not at the expense of, doing something about cars.

tonyedgecombe 5y ago
>We should absolutely do something about the obesity epidemic, but in addition to, not at the expense of, doing something about cars. Those two things aren't disconnected either.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  Huh. Good point.

akira2501 5y ago

Any article examining this that fails to acknowledge the role that youth, alcohol or drugs play in the majority of accidents is not to be taken seriously. Other minor factors that people constantly forget about are motorcycles and the fact that many pedestrian deaths actually happen _outside_ of a city.

TacticalCoder 5y ago
> ... people constantly forget about are motorcycles and the fact that many pedestrian deaths actually happen _outside_ of a city. They also forget that pedestrian deaths do actually not happen on the highway.
SantalBlush 5y ago
If you're advising us to reject the article due to lack of evidence, it might help if you included any evidence whatsoever for your own assertion. You're not helping to clarify the issue at all here.
- akira2501 5y ago
  Nearly 42% of all accidents involve alcohol or drugs. [1] Motorcycles are 15% of all fatal accidents, and half of those are "single vehicle accidents." [2] Drivers under 18 are twice as likely to have a fatal accident. [3] Finally, everyone should know: Nearly every single fatal crash in the United States is investigated and the report is put into a federal database. This database is open and easy to access, or download and draw your own reports against. If you care about accidents and want to know more, this is the definitive source and the place to start. [4] [1]: https://www.cdc.gov/transportationsafety/impaired_driving/impaired-drv_factsheet.html https://www.cdc.gov/transportationsafety/impaired_driving/im... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorcycle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorcycle_fatality_rate_in_U.... [3]: https://aaafoundation.org/rates-motor-vehicle-crashes-injuries-deaths-relation-driver-age-united-states-2014-2015/ https://aaafoundation.org/rates-motor-vehicle-crashes-injuri... [4]: https://www.nhtsa.gov/research-data/fatality-analysis-reporting-system-fars https://www.nhtsa.gov/research-data/fatality-analysis-report...

bobthechef 5y ago

Sometimes articles like these are an attempt to push an agenda, regardless of whether this is good or bad (reason: good; sophistry: bad). Something is problematized (whether this is justified on independent grounds or not is not the point) and once it is problematized and people accept it as a problem, you have gained the assent of the public. Solutions are proposed and propagated by those with the power to broadcast their opinions. This can be the same group that problematized the issue in the first place. In order to propose a solution (which is to say, to propose a change), they must first have problematized the issue to make the public receptive. Given background knowledge, it is possible that this sort of article is a way of getting the ball rolling with respect to the reduction of cars or the promotion of self-driving cars or whatever. The chip shortage and general disruption of supply chains and the effect on the prices of cars is opportune.

pshc 5y ago

I disagree, I think America in particular does like to shrug off car violence. It depends on where you live, but a consistently negligent driver can rack up 10 speeding tickets and barely get a slap on the wrist. Vehicular manslaughter charges often become minor misdemeanors if the person is "nice" enough. Regulations are lax to the point that elderly people are assumed to be competent drivers even as they descend into legal blindness. But most people are used to this status quo and shrug it off, we're addicted to car ownership at all costs.

mordechai9000 5y ago
I think people also underestimate the risk, and overestimate their ability to mitigate it with good driving skill. Also underestimating (or just not understanding) how much human physiology and physical layout of the vehicle determine what information we are able to process. (Those forward columns...)

shagmin 5y ago

I was thinking along the same lines but with mobile phone usage in cars in particular. It's the fastest growing contribution to car related fatalities in the last decade and as a result laws have been passed for exactly that, in addition to a cultural shaming of distracted driving.

hardsoftnfloppy 5y ago

Shh bro... you don't want to cross the sugar mafia, they're in cahoots with Davita and who knows who else.