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Sometimes it is more dangerous to follow traffic laws exactly rather than normal human driver when you are surrounded by normal human drivers. It's not as simpl

Sometimes it is more dangerous to follow traffic laws exactly rather than normal human driver when you are surrounded by normal human drivers. It's not as simple as you are making it seem.

acdha 5y ago
How many people are going to be hurt because someone stops at a stop sign?
- notch656a 5y ago
  Multiply the extra few seconds times how many ever millions of people end up using automated driving, times how many stop signs they end up at. The number of lifetimes lost due to stopping at stop signs has got to be the equivalent of the circa-100's area. The real question is why anyone bothers stopping at all if all directions are clear.
  - iainmerrick 5y ago
    Bikes and pedestrians? Although I understand a lot of cities don’t have those.
    - notch656a 5y ago
      Anecdotally as a bicyclist it was infinitely easier to predict rolling stop drivers than those who stop. People stopped are rarely intelligent enough to follow the order of who's next, and constantly would randomly choose when to start up (sometimes just in time to almost hit me). the one rolling through I already know is going and I know the time is now that they're going, so little risk of accident. Biking isn't a game of who wants to kill you (all drivers) but rather _when_ they're going to attempt it.
  - acdha 5y ago
    This is a fallacy popular with bad drivers since it lets them rationalize their decision to put other people at risk. It's designed to shift the focus away from agency — note how the people most at risk aren't given a decision? — and it relies on an assumption which becomes monstrous as soon as you think about it. Trying to phrase it as a math problem with the implication that time is fungible makes it sound like a minor optimization but you really want to consider just how uneven the impact is: you're saving an amount of time so small you'll barely even remember it but the person you hit may be losing the rest of their life or spending the remainder of it significantly degraded. Around here, a lot of the people getting hit are kids so it's an especially unfavorable cost in years of quality life. The other unquestioned assumption is that this is even a serious time savings. In my experience, the average driver _massively_ overestimates how much time aggressive driving actually saves them. In most cases, all it means is that they're spending more time at the next backup — I've had people weaving around me for literally hours on the interstate without appearing to notice that they were doing a LOT more work failing to improve their relative position at all, and in the city I routinely see the same driver “passing” me on every block. Then, of course, if we're talking about lost time, how many years of quality life do people lose because they're deterred from healthier transportation options? It would take rather an awful lot of stop signs to cancel out the savings from even 5% of people switching from driving to bicycling, walking, or transit. > The real question is why anyone bothers stopping at all if all directions are clear. Because the most common excuse for hitting someone is “I didn't see them” or “They jumped in front of me!” (which in the vast majority of cases really means that the driver's attention was directed somewhere else). It's not like traffic engineers don't know yield signs exist: they use them because they're intentionally trying to prevent drivers from staying at a high speed due to the risk to pedestrians and cross traffic. Most people who live in neighborhoods which are popular with commuters have to spend years begging to get a stop sign, often requiring a serious collision to force the local DOT to act.
    - notch656a 5y ago
      It's a popular fallacy to consider the lives lost you see but not the lifetimes lost from wasteful practices. Think of the children is a nice trope to strut around to scared soccer moms during the elections, though. You can't make the presupposition that a rolling 'stop' is always more dangerous than a full stop, either.
- gmadsen 5y ago
  even this reply is framing it like it sounds ridiculous. I'm not sure if this stop sign incident is the best example, but look into all the reports of the waymo vehicle causing road rage due to its "safety-first" driving.
  - acdha 5y ago
    See also regular driving. The solution for road rage is taking away bad drivers’ licenses, not saying everyone should drive like them. If the police refuse to do their jobs, that problem isn’t one Waymo can solve.
    - gmadsen 5y ago
      again, you are removing all nuance. It is not an issue of "bad drivers", it is an issue of local driving norms. If every single driver is doing something, it is not an issue of removing bad drivers. if you are driving under 70 mph on the 101 at 6:00am , you are endangering yourself and those around you.
      - acdha 5y ago
        This thread is about stop signs. That’s a common way for pedestrians and bicyclists to get hit when drivers ignore a safety mechanism because it’s mixing transportation modes, unlike someone going modestly over the speed limit on a controlled highway where everyone else is also in a protective steel cage with various safety mechanisms.
        gmadsen 5y ago
        The article is about stop signs. My point and this discussion are about it is not just, "always follow traffic laws exactly, at all times."

Sometimes it is more dangerous to follow traffic laws exactly rather than normal human driver when you are surrounded by normal human drivers. It's not as simple as you are making it seem.

acdha 5y ago

How many people are going to be hurt because someone stops at a stop sign?

notch656a 5y ago
Multiply the extra few seconds times how many ever millions of people end up using automated driving, times how many stop signs they end up at. The number of lifetimes lost due to stopping at stop signs has got to be the equivalent of the circa-100's area. The real question is why anyone bothers stopping at all if all directions are clear.
- iainmerrick 5y ago
  Bikes and pedestrians? Although I understand a lot of cities don’t have those.
  - notch656a 5y ago
    Anecdotally as a bicyclist it was infinitely easier to predict rolling stop drivers than those who stop. People stopped are rarely intelligent enough to follow the order of who's next, and constantly would randomly choose when to start up (sometimes just in time to almost hit me). the one rolling through I already know is going and I know the time is now that they're going, so little risk of accident. Biking isn't a game of who wants to kill you (all drivers) but rather _when_ they're going to attempt it.
- acdha 5y ago
  This is a fallacy popular with bad drivers since it lets them rationalize their decision to put other people at risk. It's designed to shift the focus away from agency — note how the people most at risk aren't given a decision? — and it relies on an assumption which becomes monstrous as soon as you think about it. Trying to phrase it as a math problem with the implication that time is fungible makes it sound like a minor optimization but you really want to consider just how uneven the impact is: you're saving an amount of time so small you'll barely even remember it but the person you hit may be losing the rest of their life or spending the remainder of it significantly degraded. Around here, a lot of the people getting hit are kids so it's an especially unfavorable cost in years of quality life. The other unquestioned assumption is that this is even a serious time savings. In my experience, the average driver _massively_ overestimates how much time aggressive driving actually saves them. In most cases, all it means is that they're spending more time at the next backup — I've had people weaving around me for literally hours on the interstate without appearing to notice that they were doing a LOT more work failing to improve their relative position at all, and in the city I routinely see the same driver “passing” me on every block. Then, of course, if we're talking about lost time, how many years of quality life do people lose because they're deterred from healthier transportation options? It would take rather an awful lot of stop signs to cancel out the savings from even 5% of people switching from driving to bicycling, walking, or transit. > The real question is why anyone bothers stopping at all if all directions are clear. Because the most common excuse for hitting someone is “I didn't see them” or “They jumped in front of me!” (which in the vast majority of cases really means that the driver's attention was directed somewhere else). It's not like traffic engineers don't know yield signs exist: they use them because they're intentionally trying to prevent drivers from staying at a high speed due to the risk to pedestrians and cross traffic. Most people who live in neighborhoods which are popular with commuters have to spend years begging to get a stop sign, often requiring a serious collision to force the local DOT to act.
  - notch656a 5y ago
    It's a popular fallacy to consider the lives lost you see but not the lifetimes lost from wasteful practices. Think of the children is a nice trope to strut around to scared soccer moms during the elections, though. You can't make the presupposition that a rolling 'stop' is always more dangerous than a full stop, either.
gmadsen 5y ago
even this reply is framing it like it sounds ridiculous. I'm not sure if this stop sign incident is the best example, but look into all the reports of the waymo vehicle causing road rage due to its "safety-first" driving.
- acdha 5y ago
  See also regular driving. The solution for road rage is taking away bad drivers’ licenses, not saying everyone should drive like them. If the police refuse to do their jobs, that problem isn’t one Waymo can solve.
  - gmadsen 5y ago
    again, you are removing all nuance. It is not an issue of "bad drivers", it is an issue of local driving norms. If every single driver is doing something, it is not an issue of removing bad drivers. if you are driving under 70 mph on the 101 at 6:00am , you are endangering yourself and those around you.
    - acdha 5y ago
      This thread is about stop signs. That’s a common way for pedestrians and bicyclists to get hit when drivers ignore a safety mechanism because it’s mixing transportation modes, unlike someone going modestly over the speed limit on a controlled highway where everyone else is also in a protective steel cage with various safety mechanisms.
      - gmadsen 5y ago
        The article is about stop signs. My point and this discussion are about it is not just, "always follow traffic laws exactly, at all times."