7 ms·

> Now, on the expansive flat, straight—and empty, thanks to the pandemic—highways of the Midwest, the Audi was able to reach 175 miles per hour in spots. And t

by rob74 5y ago

> Now, on the expansive flat, straight—and empty, thanks to the pandemic—highways of the Midwest, the Audi was able to reach 175 miles per hour in spots. And this, in a nutshell, is the reason why the traffic accidents and deaths statistics didn't really improve during the pandemic, despite reduced traffic.

HPsquared 5y ago
"Risk compensation is a theory which suggests that people typically adjust their behavior in response to perceived levels of risk, becoming more careful where they sense greater risk and less careful if they feel more protected. Although usually small in comparison to the fundamental benefits of safety interventions, it may result in a lower net benefit than expected or even higher risks." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation
Majestic121 5y ago
Strangely, that seems to be highly linked to the country > While Americans drove less in 2020 due to the pandemic, NHTSA’s early estimates show that an estimated 38,680 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes—the largest projected number of fatalities since 2007. This represents an increase of about 7.2 percent as compared to the 36,096 fatalities reported in 2019. > 2,780 people died in 2020 on French roads, in mainland France or overseas territories. This figure, 21% lower than in 2019, is historically low. This evolution is largely explained by the effects of the global epidemic of Covid-19. Accidents are down -19% and injuries are down -20%. +7% in the US, -20% in France. I wonder what is driving this large difference https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/2020-fatality-data-show-increased-traffic-fatalities-during-pandemic https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/2020-fatality-data-show... https://www.onisr.securite-routiere.gouv.fr/en/road-safety-performance/annual-road-safety-reports/2020-road-safety-annual-report https://www.onisr.securite-routiere.gouv.fr/en/road-safety-p...
- pessimizer 5y ago
  It was highly linked to me (I'm in the US.) And I'm on a motorcycle, so it was like 10x as dangerous. I really had to check myself. I chalked it up to being so used to stealing a little speed between traffic clogs to make up for said traffic clogs that when there were no traffic, I hadn't mentally adjusted.
  - tetsusaiga 5y ago
    One thing I noticed— it seemed like people were running red lights with an abandon that I'd never witnessed before. It was like they just didn't care anymore. Anecdotally, whenever I'd mention this to someone they would say they noticed the very same thing, although I realize that data point could be meaningless. Still, let me know if you noticed it where you are too.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      This must be a regional thing. You pretty much[1] NEVER see anyone just blow a light in the northeast. Ignore a no right on red sign or squeak a few extra cars through as a yellow turns red, sure. But I've never seen anybody ever just barrel through an established red like a truck that's lost its brakes in a Russian dash-cam video. Not during the pandemic, not ever. [1] By "pretty much" I mean "literally, but I'm covering my ass lest everyone chime in with that anecdote from a police chase in downtown Boston that you saw on the news in 1998".
      - optimusclimb 5y ago
        Live in Salt Lake City now. Blowing red lights is like a sport here it seems.
      - mitchdoogle 5y ago
        >squeak a few extra cars through as a yellow turns red, sure. For one thing, this counts as blowing through a red light. Secondly, I've seen plenty of this in Philly - people blowing blowing through stop lights and stop signs
      - 5y ago
- i_am_proteus 5y ago
  I've been out to France. Nice country. Legal all over to have those radar-actuated speed cameras, illegal for the folks who live there to have radar detectors. The way I figure, that translates to more people abiding by the speed laws. Lower speeds, less shenanigans, less road deaths. Simple. Those sorts of laws in the USA vary a lot. Out West, especially on the long flats, speed limits end up more a suggestion than a hard-and-fast. USA's got more distance between places, makes sense. Plus it's no secret that the car's a way of life in the USA a bit more than over in Europe, and comparatively we hand our licenses out like child's candy and we're a bit more hesitant to revoke 'em for misbehavior that doesn't involve the bottle. Not saying one way of life is better or anything, don't think that's a thing I'd be qualified to say, but there's plenty to suggest why things are different in one place compared to the other.
  - distances 5y ago
    Are there any average speed cameras in the US, taking two photos with cameras far apart from each other and checking the time between them is possible within the speed limits?
    - Pryde 5y ago
      There are; to my understanding the state of Oklahoma uses a system similar to this on their toll roads.
    - derekp7 5y ago
      The Turnpikes were like this back in the day. You got a timestamped slip of paper when you got on, and you paid based on mileage driven when you go off. And if the times showed your average speed was too high, you would get ticketed also at the exit.
      - Bluecobra 5y ago
        I'm honestly surprised this hasn't been done in more places with electronic tolls. If my state was greedy enough they probably could retroactively go through my toll history and mail me a sizable ticket.
- syshum 5y ago
  I think you would need to look at how much less each nation drove, I have a suspicion that the drop in driving in the US is much less pronounced than in France. US has a much higher driving culture, and we also had much less restrictions in most of the nation, so I suspect the reduction in number of miles driven in the US was not really that much outside the say CA and NY
- johnbatch 5y ago
  France also had a very strict lockdown with 100,000 police enforcing the no travel laws between March 17th and April 1st had 5.8 million controls and issued 359,000 fines. The US never had a real lockdown. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1110584/fines-controls-of-police-containment-coronavirus-france/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1110584/fines-controls-o...
- Enginerrrd 5y ago
  > I wonder what is driving this large difference I'd bet good money that a huge part of the equation is booze or pills. As a former paramedic, booze or drugs accounted for like 80% of accidents I dealt with. Why so high compared to official stats? I think because I live in a relatively rural area whereas most people live in high density cities. Also, sometimes booze doesn't get counted in the official accident statistics if people don't get charged for whatever reason. People don't generally crash unless they're drunk, high, inexperienced, or something unexpected happens like they hit a deer or something. In this case, I'd venture to guess there's less demand to drive in France, and they have a better safety net, and we probably had a lot more drunks.
- adrianN 5y ago
  The US has roads that are unsafe at the posted speed limit ("stroads"), heavy traffic normally lowers the effective speed to less lethal levels.
- tinus_hn 5y ago
  If you’re going to compile this kind of data you might want to include data on Germany which has many roads that have no speed limit.
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
>And this, in a nutshell, is the reason why the traffic accidents and deaths statistics didn't really improve during the pandemic, despite reduced traffic. This is like a batting practice pitch straight over home plate for the biases of HN. I propose a different theory: All the older and statistically safer white collar workers were at home leaving the younger, poorer, "monster energy is my sleep" essential workers crowd on the roads.
- ballenf 5y ago
  Or to line it up more squarely with the point of staying home: those who make decisions in large part based on risk assessment stayed home (due to covid). That left risk takers on the road with no "safe driver" buffers between them.
- mtoner23 5y ago
  Idk, in your theory if people dont change their behavior and you remove the safer drivers, then maybe accidents per driver are up but overall accidents should be down. But no, overall accidents went up which shows people changed their behavior. Correlate that with overall levels of "disfuction" in society like more airline passanger problems, more grocery store customer incidents i think the other theory makes more sense.
_fat_santa 5y ago
The pandemic was a boon for any car nerd with a lead foot. During the "2 weeks to slow the spread" period when we were all locked inside, all my friends with fast cars were out enjoying the roads. One the one hand, it's incredibly dangerous some of the stuff they did. On other other hand though, you're not getting this chance again so go have fun and try not to kill yourself.
- konschubert 5y ago
  What about the other people that you kill while having fun?
  - taneq 5y ago
    Not condoning anything but I'd imagine the implication is that they should have been at home following the rules.
    - ranko 5y ago
      Unless they were hospital staff, emergency responders, etc, etc...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - frockington1 5y ago
    From the post I don't see any evidence that they killed or even injured anybody.
    - konschubert 5y ago
      If someone shoots into a crowd the fact that they missed doesn’t somehow make the action less evil.
      - bradlys 5y ago
        You know many people go out to roads that there aren’t many people on, right? They went out and did this because they knew people wouldn’t be out there. Thus why they did this when everyone was locked up inside… it lowered risk for everyone.
justinator 5y ago
I don't know what happened in your side of the world, but the police literally stopped policing over on this side. When they did police, they did a pretty terrible job of it. There were some protests about it, if you didn't notice.
kart23 5y ago
germany has no speed limits on many of its highways, and people do take advantage of it. yet they have half the deaths than us highways. speed isn’t the sole problem imo.
jiveturkey 5y ago
At least in the USA, root cause is the poor driving ability of an average driver. At medium to high congestion levels, it's less of a factor because the roads are so congested anyway. Once congestion drops below a certain threshold, in the USA you have these phalanxes of slow moving cars that other (also incompetent) fast moving cars are desperate to get around. Anecdotally, I personally found that the driving experience got much worse due to this effect. Whereas in Europe, people drive right and pass left. In the USA you're actually taught (if taught at all) to avoid lane changes. Now if you tell me that accident counts went up in EU as well, then ok my reasoning is wrong. OK I found https://wjes.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13017-021-00395-8 https://wjes.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13017-021-0... which breaks it down. I didn't read it in detail but most of the increase (but not the single greatest increase) was in the US. For the rest of world, for the most part things got better with reduced traffic. > Overall, the number of annual road death dropped significantly in most countries. However, few had the opposite. There was an overall reduction in the annual absolute number of road deaths in most of the 27 European countries by 17% [24], six Balkan countries by 11% [117], in Saudi Arabia by 20% [118], and in Japan by 12% [119, 120]. In contrast, the absolute number of road deaths increased in some countries like Luxembourg by18%, Ireland by 6%, Finland by 4%, and Switzerland by 21% [24, 117]. Similarly, it generally increased in the USA by 7% [110] with major variations in different states [121]. The study is detailed and they go more into it than just "deaths". Although I very much doubt that they get into studying driver skill.

by rob74 5y ago

HPsquared 5y ago

"Risk compensation is a theory which suggests that people typically adjust their behavior in response to perceived levels of risk, becoming more careful where they sense greater risk and less careful if they feel more protected. Although usually small in comparison to the fundamental benefits of safety interventions, it may result in a lower net benefit than expected or even higher risks." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation

Majestic121 5y ago

Strangely, that seems to be highly linked to the country > While Americans drove less in 2020 due to the pandemic, NHTSA’s early estimates show that an estimated 38,680 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes—the largest projected number of fatalities since 2007. This represents an increase of about 7.2 percent as compared to the 36,096 fatalities reported in 2019. > 2,780 people died in 2020 on French roads, in mainland France or overseas territories. This figure, 21% lower than in 2019, is historically low. This evolution is largely explained by the effects of the global epidemic of Covid-19. Accidents are down -19% and injuries are down -20%. +7% in the US, -20% in France. I wonder what is driving this large difference https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/2020-fatality-data-show-increased-traffic-fatalities-during-pandemic https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/2020-fatality-data-show... https://www.onisr.securite-routiere.gouv.fr/en/road-safety-performance/annual-road-safety-reports/2020-road-safety-annual-report https://www.onisr.securite-routiere.gouv.fr/en/road-safety-p...

pessimizer 5y ago
It was highly linked to me (I'm in the US.) And I'm on a motorcycle, so it was like 10x as dangerous. I really had to check myself. I chalked it up to being so used to stealing a little speed between traffic clogs to make up for said traffic clogs that when there were no traffic, I hadn't mentally adjusted.
- tetsusaiga 5y ago
  One thing I noticed— it seemed like people were running red lights with an abandon that I'd never witnessed before. It was like they just didn't care anymore. Anecdotally, whenever I'd mention this to someone they would say they noticed the very same thing, although I realize that data point could be meaningless. Still, let me know if you noticed it where you are too.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    This must be a regional thing. You pretty much[1] NEVER see anyone just blow a light in the northeast. Ignore a no right on red sign or squeak a few extra cars through as a yellow turns red, sure. But I've never seen anybody ever just barrel through an established red like a truck that's lost its brakes in a Russian dash-cam video. Not during the pandemic, not ever. [1] By "pretty much" I mean "literally, but I'm covering my ass lest everyone chime in with that anecdote from a police chase in downtown Boston that you saw on the news in 1998".
    - optimusclimb 5y ago
      Live in Salt Lake City now. Blowing red lights is like a sport here it seems.
    - mitchdoogle 5y ago
      >squeak a few extra cars through as a yellow turns red, sure. For one thing, this counts as blowing through a red light. Secondly, I've seen plenty of this in Philly - people blowing blowing through stop lights and stop signs
    - 5y ago
i_am_proteus 5y ago
I've been out to France. Nice country. Legal all over to have those radar-actuated speed cameras, illegal for the folks who live there to have radar detectors. The way I figure, that translates to more people abiding by the speed laws. Lower speeds, less shenanigans, less road deaths. Simple. Those sorts of laws in the USA vary a lot. Out West, especially on the long flats, speed limits end up more a suggestion than a hard-and-fast. USA's got more distance between places, makes sense. Plus it's no secret that the car's a way of life in the USA a bit more than over in Europe, and comparatively we hand our licenses out like child's candy and we're a bit more hesitant to revoke 'em for misbehavior that doesn't involve the bottle. Not saying one way of life is better or anything, don't think that's a thing I'd be qualified to say, but there's plenty to suggest why things are different in one place compared to the other.
- distances 5y ago
  Are there any average speed cameras in the US, taking two photos with cameras far apart from each other and checking the time between them is possible within the speed limits?
  - Pryde 5y ago
    There are; to my understanding the state of Oklahoma uses a system similar to this on their toll roads.
  - derekp7 5y ago
    The Turnpikes were like this back in the day. You got a timestamped slip of paper when you got on, and you paid based on mileage driven when you go off. And if the times showed your average speed was too high, you would get ticketed also at the exit.
    - Bluecobra 5y ago
      I'm honestly surprised this hasn't been done in more places with electronic tolls. If my state was greedy enough they probably could retroactively go through my toll history and mail me a sizable ticket.
syshum 5y ago
I think you would need to look at how much less each nation drove, I have a suspicion that the drop in driving in the US is much less pronounced than in France. US has a much higher driving culture, and we also had much less restrictions in most of the nation, so I suspect the reduction in number of miles driven in the US was not really that much outside the say CA and NY
johnbatch 5y ago
France also had a very strict lockdown with 100,000 police enforcing the no travel laws between March 17th and April 1st had 5.8 million controls and issued 359,000 fines. The US never had a real lockdown. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1110584/fines-controls-of-police-containment-coronavirus-france/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1110584/fines-controls-o...
Enginerrrd 5y ago
> I wonder what is driving this large difference I'd bet good money that a huge part of the equation is booze or pills. As a former paramedic, booze or drugs accounted for like 80% of accidents I dealt with. Why so high compared to official stats? I think because I live in a relatively rural area whereas most people live in high density cities. Also, sometimes booze doesn't get counted in the official accident statistics if people don't get charged for whatever reason. People don't generally crash unless they're drunk, high, inexperienced, or something unexpected happens like they hit a deer or something. In this case, I'd venture to guess there's less demand to drive in France, and they have a better safety net, and we probably had a lot more drunks.
adrianN 5y ago
The US has roads that are unsafe at the posted speed limit ("stroads"), heavy traffic normally lowers the effective speed to less lethal levels.
tinus_hn 5y ago
If you’re going to compile this kind of data you might want to include data on Germany which has many roads that have no speed limit.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

>And this, in a nutshell, is the reason why the traffic accidents and deaths statistics didn't really improve during the pandemic, despite reduced traffic. This is like a batting practice pitch straight over home plate for the biases of HN. I propose a different theory: All the older and statistically safer white collar workers were at home leaving the younger, poorer, "monster energy is my sleep" essential workers crowd on the roads.

ballenf 5y ago
Or to line it up more squarely with the point of staying home: those who make decisions in large part based on risk assessment stayed home (due to covid). That left risk takers on the road with no "safe driver" buffers between them.
mtoner23 5y ago
Idk, in your theory if people dont change their behavior and you remove the safer drivers, then maybe accidents per driver are up but overall accidents should be down. But no, overall accidents went up which shows people changed their behavior. Correlate that with overall levels of "disfuction" in society like more airline passanger problems, more grocery store customer incidents i think the other theory makes more sense.

_fat_santa 5y ago

The pandemic was a boon for any car nerd with a lead foot. During the "2 weeks to slow the spread" period when we were all locked inside, all my friends with fast cars were out enjoying the roads. One the one hand, it's incredibly dangerous some of the stuff they did. On other other hand though, you're not getting this chance again so go have fun and try not to kill yourself.

konschubert 5y ago
What about the other people that you kill while having fun?
- taneq 5y ago
  Not condoning anything but I'd imagine the implication is that they should have been at home following the rules.
  - ranko 5y ago
    Unless they were hospital staff, emergency responders, etc, etc...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- frockington1 5y ago
  From the post I don't see any evidence that they killed or even injured anybody.
  - konschubert 5y ago
    If someone shoots into a crowd the fact that they missed doesn’t somehow make the action less evil.
    - bradlys 5y ago
      You know many people go out to roads that there aren’t many people on, right? They went out and did this because they knew people wouldn’t be out there. Thus why they did this when everyone was locked up inside… it lowered risk for everyone.

justinator 5y ago

I don't know what happened in your side of the world, but the police literally stopped policing over on this side. When they did police, they did a pretty terrible job of it. There were some protests about it, if you didn't notice.

kart23 5y ago

germany has no speed limits on many of its highways, and people do take advantage of it. yet they have half the deaths than us highways. speed isn’t the sole problem imo.

jiveturkey 5y ago

At least in the USA, root cause is the poor driving ability of an average driver. At medium to high congestion levels, it's less of a factor because the roads are so congested anyway. Once congestion drops below a certain threshold, in the USA you have these phalanxes of slow moving cars that other (also incompetent) fast moving cars are desperate to get around. Anecdotally, I personally found that the driving experience got much worse due to this effect. Whereas in Europe, people drive right and pass left. In the USA you're actually taught (if taught at all) to avoid lane changes. Now if you tell me that accident counts went up in EU as well, then ok my reasoning is wrong. OK I found https://wjes.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13017-021-00395-8 https://wjes.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13017-021-0... which breaks it down. I didn't read it in detail but most of the increase (but not the single greatest increase) was in the US. For the rest of world, for the most part things got better with reduced traffic. > Overall, the number of annual road death dropped significantly in most countries. However, few had the opposite. There was an overall reduction in the annual absolute number of road deaths in most of the 27 European countries by 17% [24], six Balkan countries by 11% [117], in Saudi Arabia by 20% [118], and in Japan by 12% [119, 120]. In contrast, the absolute number of road deaths increased in some countries like Luxembourg by18%, Ireland by 6%, Finland by 4%, and Switzerland by 21% [24, 117]. Similarly, it generally increased in the USA by 7% [110] with major variations in different states [121]. The study is detailed and they go more into it than just "deaths". Although I very much doubt that they get into studying driver skill.