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"We" don't ignore them. Every major government has a body dedicated entirely to automobile safety. In the USA, this is NHSTA - National Highway Safety & Trans

"We" don't ignore them. Every major government has a body dedicated entirely to automobile safety. In the USA, this is NHSTA - National Highway Safety & Transportation Administration. They maintain an information system of traffic fatality statistics in the USA, called FARS (fatality analysis reporting system). This system is used to determine new safety devices and standards for vehicles and to test their effectiveness. And they are a powerful organization. A car cannot be sold in the USA without NHSTA approval. At the tap of a keyboard, they can cost a company billions of dollars. They power reaches far beyond the USA as well. Not too long ago, the NHSTA issued a recall that bankrupted the largest producer of airbags in the world. I'd say the USA focuses a lot on reducing automotive fatalities.

zucker42 4y ago
US DOTs have people devoted to safety no doubt, but they also endorse road and city designs which have safer alternatives.
epistasis 4y ago
I can't agree with your assessment at all. Deaths are rising, yet what changes are happening? And in particular the NHSTA doesn't give a damn about those outside of the car. The very greatest threat to the life of my children is cars. It would be easy, trivial almost, to fix this by legalizing building for houses and businesses that don't allow cars, but are served only by public transit. Yet this very simple, very desirable concept is illegal in the US except for a few tiny islands. We prioritize cars over life in nearly every single aspect of law. We modified law to make drivers not culpable for the death they inflict on others, because if drivers had to pay for the damage they caused, we would not be driving at all.
- panzagl 4y ago
  > It would be easy, trivial almost, to fix this by legalizing building for houses and businesses that don't allow cars, but are served only by public transit. Is that all? Just move everyone in the country? What do you consider non-trivial?
  - recursive 4y ago
    > Just move everyone in the country? You've misunderstood. No need to move everyone in the country. People buying these new houses would be moving. As you're probably aware, people that buy new houses already regularly move into them. And it certainly wouldn't be everyone.
  - epistasis 4y ago
    When I say "fix this" I'm talking about the greatest threat to my children's life, ie me moving to a walkable neighborhood without cars, along with the subset of the population that also wants to live that way. But my preferred lifestyle has been banned. And it is often because people are afraid that if I'm allowed to live the way I prefer, I'm going to make them live the way I prefer, which just speaks to their basic inability to acknowledge human freedom, or the possibility that people should even be allowed to make their own choice.
- partdavid 4y ago
  "Not doing what I think should be done for my particular interest and priorities" isn't the same as "Ignoring." At all. By all means, continue to advocate, but the idea that "we" ignore car crashes is risible.
  - epistasis 4y ago
    Nearly any actual that would result in fewer deaths is so far outside the Overton window. Claiming that there are ineffective government agencies that pay attention to a few tiny aspects of safety but ignore the vast majority of them-better city designs-, is not a thug except window dressing to enable the neglect of these deaths. You might find it risible to suggest that we are ignoring car deaths, but given the rise in car deaths and the lack of effective action against them, I find it far more risible to suggest that "we" are paying attention to them. I've been paying attention to them since high school, when 0.5% of my high school died because of cars. Nobody did anything. Nobody suggested we enable life without cars. Nobody changed an intersection. Nobody suggested new technology. It was completely ignored. Sure, the kids were mourned, but we all ignored any action. There is almost no way for a sober driver to kill a person and be deemed for their death. Police and highway patrol will just escort the driver off the scene. Kill a person crossing in a crosswalk with flashing lights? You'll walk away from the scene. What other sort of danger do we allow around us? Much less mandate that a person must be exposed to cars if they want to be around other people? It's a preposterous situation that we have chosen and enforce by law. Until we realize what we are doing and acknowledge the car dependency to our legally required city planning, we will continue to ignore the costs that the law imposes on us.
    - kortilla 4y ago
      Have you heard of backup cameras? They are now mandatory on cars and significantly reduce the frequency of hitting pedestrians. This negates both your point about anything reducing deaths being outside of the Overton window and your point about pedestrians not being considered.
      - epistasis 4y ago
- mywittyname 4y ago
  > Deaths are rising, yet what changes are happening? https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/early-estimate-2021-traffic-fatalities https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/early-estimate-2021-tra...
  - epistasis 4y ago
    I think that is they type of change that is bound to fail, according to the original article. One of the many reasons: > the growing crash fatality rates are a direct challenge—even a rebuke—to their theory of traffic safety, which relies on applying highway buffering standards to local streets. They need to open up the design process, inviting more voices in—not just to comment, but to share insights into what the design needs to accomplish. And they need to stop attacking dissidents (i.e., those who challenge the status quo), and instead embrace the engineering mindset of problem solvers. The author is also a much bigger fan of decentralization than I am, as a general political philosophy, though I would be pretty happy if governance was decentralized to the point where I was allowed to build a neighborhood with friends and colleagues like I want.
- vehementi 4y ago
  > I can't agree with your assessment at all. Deaths are rising, yet what changes are happening? More than one factor affecting a phenomenon can exist. They can be making changes to make things safer, while other things can be working against them. It's like saying "I don't believe harm reduction is helping: people still die from ODs"
- jjav 4y ago
  > Yet this very simple, very desirable concept is illegal in the US except for a few tiny islands. I don't see how it can be illegal? HOAs have extreme power and already impose all kinds of overbearing rules on people subject to them. So you could surely get together with a few hundred likeminded people and build a neighborhood where the HOA prohibits cars.
  - epistasis 4y ago
    City and county laws still override HOA rules. And every city and county has minimum parking for businesses, setbacks, and mandated access by cars. You might be able to build a tiny little enclosed block, but you couldn't also have business there too because of zoning.
  - jackson1442 4y ago
    Minimum parking requirements are very common in the US. You would also still need some roads for emergency services.
  - stetrain 4y ago
    Zoning law in large parts of this country is designed around single family homes, non-walkable suburban layouts, complete separation of residential and commercial development, and minimum parking requirements at businesses. Interestingly, places that are dense and friendly to walking and bicycling are actually extremely popular with home buyers and renters. These places have seen prices and demand skyrocket, yet building more of them is often against zoning or other planning guidelines. It's starting to change, many places are starting to convert to denser and mixed-used zoning and remove minimum parking requirements, but it seems to be happening slower than market demand.
  - xputer 4y ago
    Oh boy you are in for a treat. Google parking minimums and single family zoning. And watch some videos from this channel: https://youtu.be/bnKIVX968PQ https://youtu.be/bnKIVX968PQ
    - jjav 4y ago
- tzs 4y ago
  Are you talking about pedestrian deaths when you mention car risk for your children? If so, good news. Those have been going down. Since 1975 pedestrian deaths of under 13 year olds have steadily declined by more than an order of magnitude. For 13-19 year olds the decline hasn't been as big, but is still over a factor of 3 [1]. [1] https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/pedestrians https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/pedes...
  - epistasis 4y ago
    Up until 2020, car deaths were the biggest cause of child death. In 2020, there was a spike in firearm deaths that overtook car deaths: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2201761 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2201761 Fortunately, I'm able to live my life without being forced to own a gun, and am allowed to keep my children out of homes that have guns in them. But Im not allowed to build a life that isn't centered around transporting my child by car, or subjecting them to car violence while on bike or foot. There's no escaping it, especially in places like the Bay Area that have completely fetishized transporting kids by car. There are better lives possible, and my partner and I are just trying to figure out the two-body problem of moving to a better part of the world without one of us sacrificing a career.
    - notch656a 4y ago
      If you're operating on these kind of statistics I think you need to consider the age and race of your child. If you go by likelihood of death, a 19 year old black male (covered by the chart you cited) has a wildly different chance of firearms related death than a 4 year old white child (for that child, they're more likely to die by swimming pool) [0]. In fact the choice to include 18 and 19 year olds at prime age for gang related violence on a study on a decision on what to do with younger children is in fact either a naive or intentionally biased approach. Under teenage years, your kid is much more likely to die by assault by firearm than by suicide/accident by firearm [1]. It is not easier to fight off an assault while you are unarmed. Under age 5, by your rationale you probably also never went to a house or anywhere else with a swimming pool, which at that age is as likely to kill your child as a gun. Operating based on this, a good case could be made a household without teenagers may be safer with a gun (assuming you are the owner and you don't assault children, and you either store the firearm on your person or secured in a safe) for protection against assault, while those with teenagers have to counter the risk of suicide by either not owning a gun or putting it in a secure safe. But then again, teenagers are still yet more likely to die by (firearm) assault than (firearm) suicide, so perhaps even they are better off if their guardian can defend them against armed assailants. As a final note, assuming you do actually take your children places: your hosts probably lied. Not all of them did, but a few probably did, especially if you left the Bay area. Even the ones that are 'honest.' They knew that you would be uncomfortable about firearms in the house, and they themselves would be uncomfortable if their friend found out, so they simply locked them up somewhere in their house where they would never be found or could be accessed and then told you there weren't any there. I don't have the study off hand, but a well researched study I came across showed only ~30% of people truthfully inform guests with children about guns in their house. [0] https://www.nejm.org/doi/suppl/10.1056/NEJMc2201761/suppl_file/nejmc2201761_appendix.pdf https://www.nejm.org/doi/suppl/10.1056/NEJMc2201761/suppl_fi... [1]https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics/guns/data-details/ https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics...
- refurb 4y ago
  I can't agree with your assessment at all. Deaths are rising, yet what changes are happening? Deaths per miles driven have never been lower (2nd table). You can't just add up the negative impacts (deaths) without adjusting for positive impacts (miles traveled). https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatality-trends/deaths-and-rates https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatalit...
  - epistasis 4y ago
    A mile driven is not a positive impact. A trip taken, an amenity experienced, a commute completed would be a positive impact. But every mile driven is a negative impact. If the amount driven is increasing, it's likely because the system is failing more.
    - refurb 4y ago
      Irrelevant to the point - driving is getting safer, not more dangerous. And unless people deriving zero benefit, every mile driven is a positive outcome. To ignore that is to look at the problem incorrectly.
      - epistasis 4y ago
        Given that I only have one life, I actually only care about the cost in lives, not cost per mile. The way we design our society impacts how much we are forced to drive. Our current plans force people to drive more and more. Even without increasing miles, deaths by cars are somewhat decreasing, especially compared to decades ago, and I've posted those graphs elsewhere in this thread. The real way to decrease car deaths isn't to decrease deaths per mile, it's to allow people to avoid the risk at all in the first place. Because a lot of these deaths stents even from people in the cars, it's from cars ramming into those who haven't gotten in cars but still must risk exposure to them in order to live in the world.
        refurb 4y ago
        Wait, you do cost-benefit analyses by ignoring benefits?
Apreche 4y ago
You are correct that they are powerful, but they wield that power rarely. Imagine if Superman was real. There he is standing on a street corner. Vastly powerful. Invincible to everything except kryptonite. Cape flowing majestically. Someone robs a bank right there across the street. He sees it. He hears it. And he stands there and watches, doing nothing. That's the NHSTA.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  > You are correct that they are powerful, but they wield that power rarely. Define rarely? They issued over a thousand recalls in 2021.
  - epistasis 4y ago
    How many of the deaths in the US result in a recall? How many recalls would it take to stop the deaths? I would argue that every single car death is proof of a defect worthy of recalling that car, but Im not sure if the recall could replace the car with a piece of equipment that would have prevented the death.
    - afiori 4y ago
      To be fair most deaths are the fault the the street design that prioritize driver comfort over everything else
      - epistasis 4y ago
        Exactly. We focus on the wrong thing, the design of the car, instead of actual effective policy: allow people to get around without being exposed to car traffic. And when there is car traffic, greatly reducing the possibility for interaction. However, this is quite difficult when nearly all planning in the US puts its top priority as maximum traffic capacity and speed. If there's a dangerous intersection that needs to be fixed, but that fix reduces car speeds, traffic engineers will demand that they need to see a certain amount of death or injury before they will act. They won't phrase it that way, buts it's equivalent. As long as the intersection fits the numbers that are in a book somewhere it's A-OK until the book has been proven wrong, which it is again and again, as shown in our traffic deaths.
partdavid 4y ago
Yeah, "we" don't ignore them at all. I'm not sure I'm able to articulate all the costs and efforts around road safety, but I'm quite certain it's... real high. Not just the directives of the NHSTA and the effort required to comply with them (crash testing and research, etc.), but most law enforcement activity (and the support laws and codes restricting driving activity), driver education and licensing (on passenger and carrier levels), road maintenance including pervasive safety features like guardrails, breakaway posts, collision barriers, road re-grading, safety signals. Maybe the reason it could seem to someone like "we" do is exactly because it is so pervasive. It's second nature to get used to all the safety measures that surround us on the road. It's not that we ignore the danger of road accidents or their consequences: it's that the attention we pay to it is so constant it becomes background noise--humans notice novelty, not stuff we're used to.
- xputer 4y ago
  Watch some videos from this channel and you'll be able to see how the US definitely does not do enough in terms of creating safe road infrastructure for all: https://youtu.be/ORzNZUeUHAM https://youtu.be/ORzNZUeUHAM https://youtu.be/uxykI30fS54 https://youtu.be/uxykI30fS54 https://youtu.be/oHlpmxLTxpw https://youtu.be/oHlpmxLTxpw
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
masterj 4y ago
Safety regulations for the people inside the vehicles. Next to no regulations to protect those obligated to exist alongside them. Ex: No regulations for how a pedestrian body will react in a crash with an SUV
- kyleee 4y ago
  and very light punishment for killing and or maiming pedestrians / cyclists
Schroedingersat 4y ago
Those bodies routinely enforce road widening and other measures in residential areas that make things grossly more dangerous. They also have explicit tradeoffs between the changes they make and deaths, proving the article's point. Plus the guidelines often prioritise speed as an end goal rather than caring about throughput, or the fact that it should be a quiet residential street. Plus the destruction of transit. Spending just as much as safe, accessible transport would cost on road widening projects and barely keeping deaths under a high self-declared threshold isn't prioritising safety.
jillesvangurp 4y ago
Different countries deal with this problem in different ways. Roads in the Netherlands have changed dramatically in recent decades. This is due to systematic focus on reducing accident rates, improved standards for road construction, and the roll out of traffic measures to reduce risk; including some of the strictest speed controls in the world. It works. Bureaucracies are really good at data driven improvements, once they are tasked and empowered to do so. Here's a list of measures that I know of that I would say are somewhat unique to the Netherlands compared to Germany where I currently live. - two lane 100km roads now have colored green lines in the middle with white dashed lines on both sides of that green line. This creates a relatively wide area in the middle that is a bit of a neutral zone. This discourages cars from crossing that divider and doing things like driving close to or slightly across the line with half a tire. Reason: these roads are dangerous. Head on collisions at high way speed are usually bad news. - Generally, overtaking on two lane roads is discouraged and limited to zones that are very clearly marked. You can expect traffic cameras near these zones too. Reason: people are stupid and overtaking cars on two lane roads at high speeds is a recipe for lethal accidents. - more colored asphalt is used to separate bike lanes from normal lanes. Wherever bike and car traffic mixes, you'll find clearly marked parts of the road for bikes to use. As well as typically, reduced speeds. Reason, when bikes are involved with traffic accidents, the fatalities are significant. So, reduced speed and better separation, reduces the accident rate. - A lot of country side roads have reduced speed limits. a lot of 80km (default max speed outside of cities) roads have been downgraded to 60km. Reason, narrow roads and high speeds cause lots of accidents. Speeds are clearly indicated both with signs and lettering on the road. - Traffic cameras are used on all types of roads to enforce speeds in addition to moving speed checks. They are absolutely merciless. 1 km above the limit will cost you. People still speed but a lot less and compared to Germany where people will casually drive 70-80km/hour in places where you are supposed to drive 50km/hour,the difference is huge. The net result is that by and large, traffic seems to stick to the limits. Locals usually know where the cameras are and might risk going a few km over. But most chicken out and drive 45-49 km/hour. Better 2 km under than 1 km over. Those fines are not fun. - Lots of roads in cities and villages are limited to 30 km/hour. Basically anywhere bikes and cars mix on the road. The default is 50 km/hour. - Lots of crossings have been replaced with roundabouts. Remaining ones will have traffic lights or at least clearly marked right of way. You get the point here. This is just a short list. This is a bureaucracy being systematic about rolling out measures that work just working the numbers and statistics. Every accident is analyzed and reported. Hotspots for accidents are prioritized for fixing. Traffic deaths are down by double digit percentages since 2006. And they were relatively low to begin with.
sooheon 4y ago
This is like an oil company spending a lot on oil spill cleanup. Or saying we have a very well appointed water bucket brigade to clear water from a ship with a giant hole in the side. When you believe car centric development is harmful to its core, it's poor consolation that we're spending even more ineffectual resources on top of that to try to curtail the harms.
karussell 4y ago
Surely we as a society try to ignore the risks. If we would not ignore them we would immediately stop allowing cars in our cities or completely separate the roads for them. Because a fatal accident with a pedestrian or bike is just a matter of high numbers, i.e. a logical consequence. And btw: I already find the fatality numbers from Germany more than concerning (~3000/year) but in the US you have 13x more although only 4x more people live there. So there is a huge potential for improvement I guess ...
InCityDreams 4y ago
...they could reduce/ angle better the frontal areas of a lot of "cars". This morning a Ram driver came closer than having seen me would surmise - my helmet-protected head was just above the person's bonnet/ hood. I tried calculating the damage if they'd've hit me and it wasn't pretty: everywhere on my right side damaged/ struck except my ankels and feet. not to mention the whole front end parking over any pavements.
panick21_ 4y ago
As Elon Musk often says. You have to ask the right question to find the right answers. If you ask the wrong questions and the optimize to fix the answers to those questions then there is not necessary an improvement. Car designs is just one aspect of overall road network safety. And of course even there, the US is also often holding safety back. For example advanced tracking headlights are still illegal for example. And other backwards regulations.
snarf21 4y ago
While true, the are a government organization susceptible to political influence. We could greatly shrink the number of accidents with some very low tech requirements like mandatory full lights and headlights at all times if the car is in gear plus mandatory fish eye mirrors in all side views. These are literally almost free changes but not law. We all know that distraction (texting, nav, infotainment) is another category but we don't have any car rules to mitigate this. Instead we pass largely unforceable laws like "texting and driving is illegal".

zucker42 4y ago

US DOTs have people devoted to safety no doubt, but they also endorse road and city designs which have safer alternatives.

epistasis 4y ago

I can't agree with your assessment at all. Deaths are rising, yet what changes are happening? And in particular the NHSTA doesn't give a damn about those outside of the car. The very greatest threat to the life of my children is cars. It would be easy, trivial almost, to fix this by legalizing building for houses and businesses that don't allow cars, but are served only by public transit. Yet this very simple, very desirable concept is illegal in the US except for a few tiny islands. We prioritize cars over life in nearly every single aspect of law. We modified law to make drivers not culpable for the death they inflict on others, because if drivers had to pay for the damage they caused, we would not be driving at all.

panzagl 4y ago
> It would be easy, trivial almost, to fix this by legalizing building for houses and businesses that don't allow cars, but are served only by public transit. Is that all? Just move everyone in the country? What do you consider non-trivial?
- recursive 4y ago
  > Just move everyone in the country? You've misunderstood. No need to move everyone in the country. People buying these new houses would be moving. As you're probably aware, people that buy new houses already regularly move into them. And it certainly wouldn't be everyone.
- epistasis 4y ago
  When I say "fix this" I'm talking about the greatest threat to my children's life, ie me moving to a walkable neighborhood without cars, along with the subset of the population that also wants to live that way. But my preferred lifestyle has been banned. And it is often because people are afraid that if I'm allowed to live the way I prefer, I'm going to make them live the way I prefer, which just speaks to their basic inability to acknowledge human freedom, or the possibility that people should even be allowed to make their own choice.
partdavid 4y ago
"Not doing what I think should be done for my particular interest and priorities" isn't the same as "Ignoring." At all. By all means, continue to advocate, but the idea that "we" ignore car crashes is risible.
- epistasis 4y ago
  Nearly any actual that would result in fewer deaths is so far outside the Overton window. Claiming that there are ineffective government agencies that pay attention to a few tiny aspects of safety but ignore the vast majority of them-better city designs-, is not a thug except window dressing to enable the neglect of these deaths. You might find it risible to suggest that we are ignoring car deaths, but given the rise in car deaths and the lack of effective action against them, I find it far more risible to suggest that "we" are paying attention to them. I've been paying attention to them since high school, when 0.5% of my high school died because of cars. Nobody did anything. Nobody suggested we enable life without cars. Nobody changed an intersection. Nobody suggested new technology. It was completely ignored. Sure, the kids were mourned, but we all ignored any action. There is almost no way for a sober driver to kill a person and be deemed for their death. Police and highway patrol will just escort the driver off the scene. Kill a person crossing in a crosswalk with flashing lights? You'll walk away from the scene. What other sort of danger do we allow around us? Much less mandate that a person must be exposed to cars if they want to be around other people? It's a preposterous situation that we have chosen and enforce by law. Until we realize what we are doing and acknowledge the car dependency to our legally required city planning, we will continue to ignore the costs that the law imposes on us.
  - kortilla 4y ago
    Have you heard of backup cameras? They are now mandatory on cars and significantly reduce the frequency of hitting pedestrians. This negates both your point about anything reducing deaths being outside of the Overton window and your point about pedestrians not being considered.
    - epistasis 4y ago
mywittyname 4y ago
> Deaths are rising, yet what changes are happening? https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/early-estimate-2021-traffic-fatalities https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/early-estimate-2021-tra...
- epistasis 4y ago
  I think that is they type of change that is bound to fail, according to the original article. One of the many reasons: > the growing crash fatality rates are a direct challenge—even a rebuke—to their theory of traffic safety, which relies on applying highway buffering standards to local streets. They need to open up the design process, inviting more voices in—not just to comment, but to share insights into what the design needs to accomplish. And they need to stop attacking dissidents (i.e., those who challenge the status quo), and instead embrace the engineering mindset of problem solvers. The author is also a much bigger fan of decentralization than I am, as a general political philosophy, though I would be pretty happy if governance was decentralized to the point where I was allowed to build a neighborhood with friends and colleagues like I want.
vehementi 4y ago
> I can't agree with your assessment at all. Deaths are rising, yet what changes are happening? More than one factor affecting a phenomenon can exist. They can be making changes to make things safer, while other things can be working against them. It's like saying "I don't believe harm reduction is helping: people still die from ODs"
jjav 4y ago
> Yet this very simple, very desirable concept is illegal in the US except for a few tiny islands. I don't see how it can be illegal? HOAs have extreme power and already impose all kinds of overbearing rules on people subject to them. So you could surely get together with a few hundred likeminded people and build a neighborhood where the HOA prohibits cars.
- epistasis 4y ago
  City and county laws still override HOA rules. And every city and county has minimum parking for businesses, setbacks, and mandated access by cars. You might be able to build a tiny little enclosed block, but you couldn't also have business there too because of zoning.
- jackson1442 4y ago
  Minimum parking requirements are very common in the US. You would also still need some roads for emergency services.
- stetrain 4y ago
  Zoning law in large parts of this country is designed around single family homes, non-walkable suburban layouts, complete separation of residential and commercial development, and minimum parking requirements at businesses. Interestingly, places that are dense and friendly to walking and bicycling are actually extremely popular with home buyers and renters. These places have seen prices and demand skyrocket, yet building more of them is often against zoning or other planning guidelines. It's starting to change, many places are starting to convert to denser and mixed-used zoning and remove minimum parking requirements, but it seems to be happening slower than market demand.
- xputer 4y ago
  Oh boy you are in for a treat. Google parking minimums and single family zoning. And watch some videos from this channel: https://youtu.be/bnKIVX968PQ https://youtu.be/bnKIVX968PQ
  - jjav 4y ago
tzs 4y ago
Are you talking about pedestrian deaths when you mention car risk for your children? If so, good news. Those have been going down. Since 1975 pedestrian deaths of under 13 year olds have steadily declined by more than an order of magnitude. For 13-19 year olds the decline hasn't been as big, but is still over a factor of 3 [1]. [1] https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/pedestrians https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/pedes...
- epistasis 4y ago
  Up until 2020, car deaths were the biggest cause of child death. In 2020, there was a spike in firearm deaths that overtook car deaths: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2201761 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2201761 Fortunately, I'm able to live my life without being forced to own a gun, and am allowed to keep my children out of homes that have guns in them. But Im not allowed to build a life that isn't centered around transporting my child by car, or subjecting them to car violence while on bike or foot. There's no escaping it, especially in places like the Bay Area that have completely fetishized transporting kids by car. There are better lives possible, and my partner and I are just trying to figure out the two-body problem of moving to a better part of the world without one of us sacrificing a career.
  - notch656a 4y ago
    If you're operating on these kind of statistics I think you need to consider the age and race of your child. If you go by likelihood of death, a 19 year old black male (covered by the chart you cited) has a wildly different chance of firearms related death than a 4 year old white child (for that child, they're more likely to die by swimming pool) [0]. In fact the choice to include 18 and 19 year olds at prime age for gang related violence on a study on a decision on what to do with younger children is in fact either a naive or intentionally biased approach. Under teenage years, your kid is much more likely to die by assault by firearm than by suicide/accident by firearm [1]. It is not easier to fight off an assault while you are unarmed. Under age 5, by your rationale you probably also never went to a house or anywhere else with a swimming pool, which at that age is as likely to kill your child as a gun. Operating based on this, a good case could be made a household without teenagers may be safer with a gun (assuming you are the owner and you don't assault children, and you either store the firearm on your person or secured in a safe) for protection against assault, while those with teenagers have to counter the risk of suicide by either not owning a gun or putting it in a secure safe. But then again, teenagers are still yet more likely to die by (firearm) assault than (firearm) suicide, so perhaps even they are better off if their guardian can defend them against armed assailants. As a final note, assuming you do actually take your children places: your hosts probably lied. Not all of them did, but a few probably did, especially if you left the Bay area. Even the ones that are 'honest.' They knew that you would be uncomfortable about firearms in the house, and they themselves would be uncomfortable if their friend found out, so they simply locked them up somewhere in their house where they would never be found or could be accessed and then told you there weren't any there. I don't have the study off hand, but a well researched study I came across showed only ~30% of people truthfully inform guests with children about guns in their house. [0] https://www.nejm.org/doi/suppl/10.1056/NEJMc2201761/suppl_file/nejmc2201761_appendix.pdf https://www.nejm.org/doi/suppl/10.1056/NEJMc2201761/suppl_fi... [1]https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics/guns/data-details/ https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics...
refurb 4y ago
I can't agree with your assessment at all. Deaths are rising, yet what changes are happening? Deaths per miles driven have never been lower (2nd table). You can't just add up the negative impacts (deaths) without adjusting for positive impacts (miles traveled). https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatality-trends/deaths-and-rates https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatalit...
- epistasis 4y ago
  A mile driven is not a positive impact. A trip taken, an amenity experienced, a commute completed would be a positive impact. But every mile driven is a negative impact. If the amount driven is increasing, it's likely because the system is failing more.
  - refurb 4y ago
    Irrelevant to the point - driving is getting safer, not more dangerous. And unless people deriving zero benefit, every mile driven is a positive outcome. To ignore that is to look at the problem incorrectly.
    - epistasis 4y ago
      Given that I only have one life, I actually only care about the cost in lives, not cost per mile. The way we design our society impacts how much we are forced to drive. Our current plans force people to drive more and more. Even without increasing miles, deaths by cars are somewhat decreasing, especially compared to decades ago, and I've posted those graphs elsewhere in this thread. The real way to decrease car deaths isn't to decrease deaths per mile, it's to allow people to avoid the risk at all in the first place. Because a lot of these deaths stents even from people in the cars, it's from cars ramming into those who haven't gotten in cars but still must risk exposure to them in order to live in the world.
      - refurb 4y ago
        Wait, you do cost-benefit analyses by ignoring benefits?

Apreche 4y ago

You are correct that they are powerful, but they wield that power rarely. Imagine if Superman was real. There he is standing on a street corner. Vastly powerful. Invincible to everything except kryptonite. Cape flowing majestically. Someone robs a bank right there across the street. He sees it. He hears it. And he stands there and watches, doing nothing. That's the NHSTA.

rootusrootus 4y ago
> You are correct that they are powerful, but they wield that power rarely. Define rarely? They issued over a thousand recalls in 2021.
- epistasis 4y ago
  How many of the deaths in the US result in a recall? How many recalls would it take to stop the deaths? I would argue that every single car death is proof of a defect worthy of recalling that car, but Im not sure if the recall could replace the car with a piece of equipment that would have prevented the death.
  - afiori 4y ago
    To be fair most deaths are the fault the the street design that prioritize driver comfort over everything else
    - epistasis 4y ago
      Exactly. We focus on the wrong thing, the design of the car, instead of actual effective policy: allow people to get around without being exposed to car traffic. And when there is car traffic, greatly reducing the possibility for interaction. However, this is quite difficult when nearly all planning in the US puts its top priority as maximum traffic capacity and speed. If there's a dangerous intersection that needs to be fixed, but that fix reduces car speeds, traffic engineers will demand that they need to see a certain amount of death or injury before they will act. They won't phrase it that way, buts it's equivalent. As long as the intersection fits the numbers that are in a book somewhere it's A-OK until the book has been proven wrong, which it is again and again, as shown in our traffic deaths.

partdavid 4y ago

Yeah, "we" don't ignore them at all. I'm not sure I'm able to articulate all the costs and efforts around road safety, but I'm quite certain it's... real high. Not just the directives of the NHSTA and the effort required to comply with them (crash testing and research, etc.), but most law enforcement activity (and the support laws and codes restricting driving activity), driver education and licensing (on passenger and carrier levels), road maintenance including pervasive safety features like guardrails, breakaway posts, collision barriers, road re-grading, safety signals. Maybe the reason it could seem to someone like "we" do is exactly because it is so pervasive. It's second nature to get used to all the safety measures that surround us on the road. It's not that we ignore the danger of road accidents or their consequences: it's that the attention we pay to it is so constant it becomes background noise--humans notice novelty, not stuff we're used to.

xputer 4y ago
Watch some videos from this channel and you'll be able to see how the US definitely does not do enough in terms of creating safe road infrastructure for all: https://youtu.be/ORzNZUeUHAM https://youtu.be/ORzNZUeUHAM https://youtu.be/uxykI30fS54 https://youtu.be/uxykI30fS54 https://youtu.be/oHlpmxLTxpw https://youtu.be/oHlpmxLTxpw
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masterj 4y ago

Safety regulations for the people inside the vehicles. Next to no regulations to protect those obligated to exist alongside them. Ex: No regulations for how a pedestrian body will react in a crash with an SUV

kyleee 4y ago
and very light punishment for killing and or maiming pedestrians / cyclists

Schroedingersat 4y ago

Those bodies routinely enforce road widening and other measures in residential areas that make things grossly more dangerous. They also have explicit tradeoffs between the changes they make and deaths, proving the article's point. Plus the guidelines often prioritise speed as an end goal rather than caring about throughput, or the fact that it should be a quiet residential street. Plus the destruction of transit. Spending just as much as safe, accessible transport would cost on road widening projects and barely keeping deaths under a high self-declared threshold isn't prioritising safety.

jillesvangurp 4y ago

Different countries deal with this problem in different ways. Roads in the Netherlands have changed dramatically in recent decades. This is due to systematic focus on reducing accident rates, improved standards for road construction, and the roll out of traffic measures to reduce risk; including some of the strictest speed controls in the world. It works. Bureaucracies are really good at data driven improvements, once they are tasked and empowered to do so. Here's a list of measures that I know of that I would say are somewhat unique to the Netherlands compared to Germany where I currently live. - two lane 100km roads now have colored green lines in the middle with white dashed lines on both sides of that green line. This creates a relatively wide area in the middle that is a bit of a neutral zone. This discourages cars from crossing that divider and doing things like driving close to or slightly across the line with half a tire. Reason: these roads are dangerous. Head on collisions at high way speed are usually bad news. - Generally, overtaking on two lane roads is discouraged and limited to zones that are very clearly marked. You can expect traffic cameras near these zones too. Reason: people are stupid and overtaking cars on two lane roads at high speeds is a recipe for lethal accidents. - more colored asphalt is used to separate bike lanes from normal lanes. Wherever bike and car traffic mixes, you'll find clearly marked parts of the road for bikes to use. As well as typically, reduced speeds. Reason, when bikes are involved with traffic accidents, the fatalities are significant. So, reduced speed and better separation, reduces the accident rate. - A lot of country side roads have reduced speed limits. a lot of 80km (default max speed outside of cities) roads have been downgraded to 60km. Reason, narrow roads and high speeds cause lots of accidents. Speeds are clearly indicated both with signs and lettering on the road. - Traffic cameras are used on all types of roads to enforce speeds in addition to moving speed checks. They are absolutely merciless. 1 km above the limit will cost you. People still speed but a lot less and compared to Germany where people will casually drive 70-80km/hour in places where you are supposed to drive 50km/hour,the difference is huge. The net result is that by and large, traffic seems to stick to the limits. Locals usually know where the cameras are and might risk going a few km over. But most chicken out and drive 45-49 km/hour. Better 2 km under than 1 km over. Those fines are not fun. - Lots of roads in cities and villages are limited to 30 km/hour. Basically anywhere bikes and cars mix on the road. The default is 50 km/hour. - Lots of crossings have been replaced with roundabouts. Remaining ones will have traffic lights or at least clearly marked right of way. You get the point here. This is just a short list. This is a bureaucracy being systematic about rolling out measures that work just working the numbers and statistics. Every accident is analyzed and reported. Hotspots for accidents are prioritized for fixing. Traffic deaths are down by double digit percentages since 2006. And they were relatively low to begin with.

sooheon 4y ago

This is like an oil company spending a lot on oil spill cleanup. Or saying we have a very well appointed water bucket brigade to clear water from a ship with a giant hole in the side. When you believe car centric development is harmful to its core, it's poor consolation that we're spending even more ineffectual resources on top of that to try to curtail the harms.

karussell 4y ago

Surely we as a society try to ignore the risks. If we would not ignore them we would immediately stop allowing cars in our cities or completely separate the roads for them. Because a fatal accident with a pedestrian or bike is just a matter of high numbers, i.e. a logical consequence. And btw: I already find the fatality numbers from Germany more than concerning (~3000/year) but in the US you have 13x more although only 4x more people live there. So there is a huge potential for improvement I guess ...

InCityDreams 4y ago

...they could reduce/ angle better the frontal areas of a lot of "cars". This morning a Ram driver came closer than having seen me would surmise - my helmet-protected head was just above the person's bonnet/ hood. I tried calculating the damage if they'd've hit me and it wasn't pretty: everywhere on my right side damaged/ struck except my ankels and feet. not to mention the whole front end parking over any pavements.

panick21_ 4y ago

As Elon Musk often says. You have to ask the right question to find the right answers. If you ask the wrong questions and the optimize to fix the answers to those questions then there is not necessary an improvement. Car designs is just one aspect of overall road network safety. And of course even there, the US is also often holding safety back. For example advanced tracking headlights are still illegal for example. And other backwards regulations.

snarf21 4y ago

While true, the are a government organization susceptible to political influence. We could greatly shrink the number of accidents with some very low tech requirements like mandatory full lights and headlights at all times if the car is in gear plus mandatory fish eye mirrors in all side views. These are literally almost free changes but not law. We all know that distraction (texting, nav, infotainment) is another category but we don't have any car rules to mitigate this. Instead we pass largely unforceable laws like "texting and driving is illegal".