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I was a cop for several years. I worked hundreds of crashes, and a few fatalities. If cars had a max speed limit of 85 mph, and required the seatbelt to be en
by CodeAndCuffs 4y ago
I was a cop for several years. I worked hundreds of crashes, and a few fatalities.
If cars had a max speed limit of 85 mph, and required the seatbelt to be engaged to work, we'd cut our fatality rate in half.
Most nations' DUI laws consider a 0.05 BAC as illegal. In most US states 0.08 is presumed under the influence, 0.06 - 0.079 is considered no presumption either way, and under .06 is considered not under the influence. My alcohol tolerance is fairly average, but after some off the cuff experiments with whiskey and a preliminary breathalyzer, I shouldn't drive at a .055. My wife shouldn't drive at a .03
Something like 80% of fatal crashes involve either alcohol, no seatbelt, or excessive speed, but not wearing a seatbelt is like a 50 dollar ticket, and a secondary offense, in many jurisdictions.
- JoeAltmaier 4y agoA Patrol officer I knew said once "I never unbuckled a dead man"
- koheripbal 4y agoIt's a nice zinger, but obviously false.
- robotresearcher 4y agoThe quote is not "No one ever unbuckled a dead man".
- bee_rider 4y agoThere were around 42k traffic deaths in 2021 (a 16 year high apparently) and around 610k patrol officers https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/early-estimate-2021-traffic-fatalities https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/early-estimate-2021-tra... https://www.statista.com/statistics/751015/number-of-police-officers-in-the-us-by-industry/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/751015/number-of-police-... So, assuming every fatality is wearing a seat belt and is handled by a cop ('optimistic' assumption for it to be 'obviously false'), it would still be around a 7% chance per year for a cop to "unbuckle a dead man." So this isn't obviously false, depending on the career length. For example, after 10 years, assuming independent probability of such an encounter per year, .93^10 ~= .48.
- unsupp0rted 4y agoThey unbuckled plenty of people who'll never walk/turn their heads/poop normally without chronic pain again though. Cutting fatalities by 50% is a good start, but the other 50% aren't walking away from car accidents trouble-free, with or without seatbelts in play.
- jiveturkey 4y agoWho cares if you kill yourself through your own negligence? There shouldn't be a fine at all for seatbelts. DUI, OTOH, should be treated even more harshly than it is.
- greedo 4y agoBecause your death becomes an externality that others have to pay for.
- goatcode 4y agoShould we treat all behaviors that are associated with a significantly increased mortality rate the same way, or should we pick and choose depending on the political and social context at the time, like we do with seatbelts?
- scoopertrooper 4y agoFew other behaviors associated with increase mortality can also turn you into a missile. https://youtu.be/bdW_3oQFO0c?t=42 https://youtu.be/bdW_3oQFO0c?t=42
- goatcode 4y agoBe that as it may, that wasn't the point I was replying to.
- scoopertrooper 4y agoIs not missiling into another person a form of externality?
- goatcode 4y agoPerhaps, but that's not what the comment was addressing. If it were, your point would not address living after having become a missile.
- WalterBright 4y agoNot wearing a seatbelt is an individual choice, and should not be a crime. P.S. Growing up, my dad had the dealer install seatbelts in the family wagon before he picked it up. We never moved an inch unless everyone was buckled up. Nobody else, and I mean nobody else, had seatbelts in their car at the time. P.P.S. Seatbelts also saved my life.
- BrianHenryIE 4y agoGraphic car safety ad about seatbelts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epTdI-9V6Jk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epTdI-9V6Jk
- WalterBright 4y agoWhen I drive I don't move unless my passengers buckle up. When I'm the driver, it's my rules.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- throwaway0a5e 4y agoThat's like the car equivalent of D.A.R.E. It's so farcical it does more harm than good.
- BrianHenryIE 4y agoAnecdotally, drink driving is more common in California than in Ireland, maybe because I grew up with ads like these on TV: https://youtu.be/xtJqw--DGl8 https://youtu.be/xtJqw--DGl8 And a cursory search says: > threat-based road safety communications that target affective (fear) and cognitive (perceived efficacy) mechanisms can positively affect driving behaviours https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12889-016-3227-2 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12889-016-3227-2
- tzs 4y ago
- sebazzz 4y ago> If cars had a max speed limit of 85 mph, and required the seatbelt to be engaged to work Wait, wearing a seatbelt is not mandatory?
- dmead 4y agoThey are, but cars will function without them being used.
- GuB-42 4y agoAt least in Europe, there is a very annoying beep if you don't wear the seatbelt. You can still drive, and there are ways to disable it, but most people just wear their seatbelt. I don't think it is mandatory, but it counts in the EuroNCAP score, and since it is one of the easiest safety feature to implement, they all have it.
- mantas 4y agoIt was fun when people were sitting on engaged seatbelts to prevent the beep :)
- rootusrootus 4y agoMy brother in law still does exactly that.
- VectorLock 4y agoMy brother does this and it drives me crazy when I'm a passenger in his car, I can't fathom how he just deals with it.
- toast0 4y agoThe beeps in the US are not that annoying. Ding ding ding ding ding for 30?seconds at start up, again when you put it into drive, and then again when you hit a certain speed (around 7-10 mph) and/or periodically. It's not pleasant, but it's tolerable when I'm moving cars around between my house and my barn. Yeah, I probably should still buckle up, but it's not critical for sub 15 mph, private road driving for a minute or two. My first car didn't have a seatbelt reminder, and it needed a bit of time to warm up, so I got in the habit of starting it and then buckling, and 20 years of driving with seatbelt reminders hasn't trained me to switch the order.
- admax88qqq 4y ago> Something like 80% of fatal crashes involve either alcohol, no seatbelt, or excessive speed This is the crux of the issue on why we as a society ignore car crashes and panic about train/plane crashes. I'd wager it mostly comes down to filtering out things we feel we have control over stressing about those we don't.
- gffrd 4y agoLike sharks: so few fatal interactions, but so much large-scale hand-wringing about shark attacks. I'd double-down on that same wager …
- ajmurmann 4y agoI think you are definitely on to something here. For the alcohol and speeding I wonder how many of the fatalities are people other than the person speeding or drunk. I am not even thinking about passengers, but people in other cars, bicyclists or pedestrians.
- lupire 4y ago
- melling 4y agoNobel Prize winner John Nash, and his wife, both died as backseat passengers when their driver lost control, hit the guardrail, and they were thrown from the car on the way home from the airport. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forbes_Nash_Jr.#Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forbes_Nash_Jr.#Death Needless to say we should wear seatbelts even in the backseat of an automobile.
- tifik 4y agoYep I believe that is a pretty well established cognitive bias called Illusion of Control [1]. Going down the rabbit hole of cognitive biases is a fascinating journey, and lot of them are relevant when driving a car. One I found especially interesting is specifically about how improving safety features may not reduce accidents as much as it could, because when people feel safer, they tend to take greater risks [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion_of_control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion_of_control [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation#Peltzman_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation#Peltzman_eff...
- namesbc 4y agoCars should have a regulator installed by the manufacturer to limit speed to 20mph on roads with people, and to 60mph on grade separated highways. This maximum would barely change your time to destination, but it would save thousands of lives per year. - 20mph: 90% survival rate - 30mph: 60% survival rate - 40mph: 20% survival rate https://www.betterstreetschicago.org/blog/chicago-speed-cameras-ticket-threshold-vote https://www.betterstreetschicago.org/blog/chicago-speed-came...
- lsh123 4y agoStaying home on the couch: 100% survival rate
- fipar 4y agoA sedentary lifestyle will increase the chances of circulatory diseases though, so close to 100% survival rate, but not there :)
- drdec 4y agoUntil someone drives into your house
- midoridensha 4y agoThe other thing you can do is move to a city where most people get around with public transit or walking/biking.
- lupire 4y ago
- MontyCarloHall 4y ago>This maximum would barely change your time to destination Yes it would. The drive from LA to San Francisco is about 300 miles on Interstate 5. Much of this highway is completely straight, with excellent visibility through an unpopulated desert. When sparsely trafficked (as it is much of the time), it is safe to drive 80+ MPH on I5 for hours at a time. At 80 MPH, this is a 3 hour 45 minute drive. At your proposed 60 MPH, this would be a 5 hour drive. >but it would save thousands of lives per year. How many lives do you think would be saved by capping speeds to 60 MPH on I5? If alcohol or distracted driving are not factors, I would say probably close to zero. As a fun aside, the fatality rate on the unrestricted German Autobahn is about half the fatality rate across all US highways, and is comparable to other similar European countries’ highway fatality rates. I completely agree about lower speed limits in cities, however, where pedestrian deaths are the main concern. While I don’t think a governor in the car would be practical or safe (what if I’m rushing because of a medical emergency?), automated enforcement would serve the same purpose.
- not-so-jerry 4y agoNot sure if you are implying this or not, but how would lowering the BAC limit prevent fatal crashes? Figure 3 in this report shows a somewhat normal distribution around .15 g/dl and the mode being around .17 g/dl: https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/811606 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/... This is already ~2x the legal limit.
- moistly 4y agoGoogle being what it is these days, I’m finding it difficult to track down the study that was performed a decade after British Columbia reduced the BAC limit and instituted severe penalties for DWI offences, so you’ll have to trust me when I say that there was a significant and long-lasting reduction in DWI cases and automobile accident rates. Our BAC limit is 0.05, except for new drivers, where it is 0.0. http://www.dui.ca/bc.php http://www.dui.ca/bc.php