6 ms·

"43,000 people were killed last year, the greatest number in 16 years" True, but there were also 250 billion more miles traveled than 16 years ago and a popula

"43,000 people were killed last year, the greatest number in 16 years" True, but there were also 250 billion more miles traveled than 16 years ago and a population of roughly 40 million more people. So though the raw number is higher, the traffic fatalities per mile traveled and per capita is actually lower than it was back then.

Forge36 4y ago
We could try reducing miles driven. Add more pubic transit.
- DocTomoe 4y ago
- bluGill 4y ago
  Not more, a lot more! Public transit is about the entire system. To make a difference we need a lot more transit. A small extension is generally not enough to be useful to anyone, but a large extension could actually be useful. Running transit only during rush hour is useless, as it running transit every hour, you really should aim to run every line every 5 minutes all day (and every half hour late nights) - if you don't cars are not that expensive and so well worth the convenience. The republicans are right when they say most transit funding is just throwing good money after bad. Most transit projects spend far too much on making things look nice and often have been given bad routes that will never result in anything useful. The first paragraph is useful for every country. The second is obviously US specific.
a2tech 4y ago
'Safety' is going to be the thing that kills personal liberty in this country.
- flenserboy 4y ago
  Big Sister is always much, much worse than Big Brother, and he's bad.
- throwaway0asd 4y ago
  We could eliminate food inspection and driver's licenses. That would increase liberty, but I don't think most people would find the freedom worthy of the cost.
  - pigeonhole123 4y ago
    Is anyone suggesting that?
    - kittiepryde 4y ago
      Some libertarians are -- but I think they were trying to employ the slippery slope argument
      - mwint 4y ago
        The slope we’ve slid down so far has been very slippery indeed.
    - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
      No, but I think GP’s point is that there will always be a tradeoff between personal liberty and safety. We can argue about where the line should be, but it needs to be drawn somewhere between the two extremes.
      - eternalban 4y ago
        But GP's OP is not saying there shouldn't be a line, rather that it is that line that will likely be crossed in guise of public safety to unburden us from the burden of having liberties. Food, water, stuff like that have potential to kill off everyone. Drunk drivers on the other hand are not likely to ever pose an existential threat. So I tend to agree with those who insist that, of course there must be regulation, there must be informed discussion, no we shall not consult the i-ching, but definitely loss of liberties require an exceptionally high public good threshold to be considered. tldr; to keep that line in an optimal space between the extremes, clearly two opposing forces are necessary.
- micromacrofoot 4y ago
  Ah yes, that old personal liberty of driving drunk. Who will save us from this nanny state.
- skapadia 4y ago
  Can you define "personal liberty", in the context of living in a society?
- skapadia 4y ago
  Would you be okay with a drunk driver killing one of your family members? What if that could be prevented with tech like this? Does your personal liberty outweigh the need to keep people safe from tons of metal hurtling at them at insane speeds?
  - netr0ute 4y ago
    > Does your personal liberty outweigh the need to keep people safe from tons of metal hurtling at them at insane speeds? I don't see why not, as the US was founded on the principle behind this.
  - david38 4y ago
    By your rationale why don’t you give up cars? If you care for your loved ones so much, Han them from using cars. Does your personal liberty outweigh the need to keep your family safe from tons of metal hurtling at them at insane speeds?
    - aeharding 4y ago
      Because in this country the options are 1. Buy a car because it’s required in order to literally feed yourself, or 2. Live in one of the highly desirable, expensive pre-war neighborhoods that remain walkable Many Americans can’t just “give up cars” even if they wanted to. Car dependency is literally codified in out zoning and street building (MUTCD) Maybe if car dependency wasn’t such a requirement in order to live, maybe if everyone could easily walk to the bar, we wouldn’t need alcohol detection in cars.
      - philipov 4y ago
        > Maybe if car dependency wasn’t such a requirement in order to live, maybe if everyone could easily walk to the bar, we wouldn’t need alcohol detection in cars. This is the goal that is worth spending political action on, not snake oil remedies designed only to advance the careers of politicians peddling them.
      - TrueSlacker0 4y ago
- bluejekyll 4y ago
  Don’t know why you put safety in quotes. You’re implying that this won’t make streets safer, by reducing drunk driving. But reducing drunk driving would in fact make streets safer. Our goal should be to have zero deaths related to common car usage and driving. For example, the backup camera is there to help reduce the number of people backing up over their own kids. This is a good thing. You can argue that this system may not be the correct implementation to reduce drunk driving. You can argue other things might actually be better. But don’t claim that personal liberty is at stake for people when 43,000 people lost their personal liberty when their lives ended. Why don’t you care about their personal liberty?
  - Frost1x 4y ago
    I'm not aware of any technology reliable, trustworthy, affordable, and quick enough to accomplish said goal without regularly inconveniencing a significantly larger portion of drivers who may need their vehicles in other emergencies. If you could provide a mechanism that didn't infringe non-drunk drivers rights I'd be more apt to accept this idea. I'd also need to know an override mechanism exists because it seems like certain rare situations could arise where you need to operate a vehicle intoxicated, e.g. fleeing for your life in defense with a relatively low risk of injuring someone comparatively. I'm sitting at home sipping a scotch and hear an intruder come in who for some reason is an abusive person after me specifically in my life. I phone the police but also decide it's best if I can safely flee the area. Maybe the police could override it remotely, I don't know. Overall the edge cases seem difficult to deal with and infringe on others liberties. We start talking about the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few and trolly problems with different counts of people on different tracks. I'm just throwing some hypothetical out, it may not be good, but my point is that rare situations can occur and because you were partaking in a legal activity like drinking, due to an emergency change in situation that wasn't predictable, you suddenly need to drive because the risk is now higher than drunk driving. Perhaps a tornado is approaching your house or abusive spouse is out to kill you...
    - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
      An override mechanism seems reasonable to me. How about: when you engage the override, a light on your car turns on, as a signal to everyone else on the road that you may be under the influence. Cops who see the light can consider it "reasonable suspicion" to pull you over.
- ouid 4y ago
  "trusted computing"
pessimizer 4y ago
Doesn't matter. That sentence is going to be read aloud on every television news program, and copied in every article about this, and is never going to be given any context. It's verbatim from the press release. That's how mainstream news works in the US, especially when it's a government press release. Putting a US government press release into context sounds like a very Russian or Chinese thing to do.
magicalist 4y ago
> True, but there were also 250 billion more miles traveled than 16 years ago and a population of roughly 40 million more people. So though the raw number is higher, the traffic fatalities per mile traveled and per capita is actually lower than it was back then. OK, but it's the greatest number of fatalities per mile traveled in 14 years, and the highest number per capita in 13 years, though. The recent trend upwards is pretty alarming and it's not worth pretending otherwise, even if you're dead set against this solution. Both statistics are up over 20% from the lows of a decade ago, 30% in absolute numbers. Personally I'm pretty convinced by the case of rising phone use and vehicle size in the same period and would like to see those addressed.
- pcaharrier 4y ago
  All of those would be great things to point out for context, but this article chose only one number to use. The same goes for talking about causes, as you point out by mentioning phone use and vehicle construction. I can add one more to that list: cars equipped with all the latest gadgets that do everything except help the driver focus on other vehicles and road conditions (vividly illustrated by one of those "Mayhem" commercials for Allstate).
  - magicalist 4y ago
    > All of those would be great things to point out for context, but this article chose only one number to use 13 or 14 vs 16 years isn't all that different, and most people understand absolute numbers better, so if you have to use one it seems like a good choice and isn't misleading with statistics, as the OP implies.
- petre 4y ago
  It's also probably because of all the SUVs that everyone wants nowadays. The greatest pressure against mandates alcohol test devices on cars should come from the auto industry itself. In my country, the most drivers caught under the influence this year were using drugs rather than booze. Alcohol testers do not detect drugs. Also good luck driving a car with such a device to flee a fire or having the kid eat oranges while you're driving.

Forge36 4y ago

We could try reducing miles driven. Add more pubic transit.

DocTomoe 4y ago
bluGill 4y ago
Not more, a lot more! Public transit is about the entire system. To make a difference we need a lot more transit. A small extension is generally not enough to be useful to anyone, but a large extension could actually be useful. Running transit only during rush hour is useless, as it running transit every hour, you really should aim to run every line every 5 minutes all day (and every half hour late nights) - if you don't cars are not that expensive and so well worth the convenience. The republicans are right when they say most transit funding is just throwing good money after bad. Most transit projects spend far too much on making things look nice and often have been given bad routes that will never result in anything useful. The first paragraph is useful for every country. The second is obviously US specific.

a2tech 4y ago

'Safety' is going to be the thing that kills personal liberty in this country.

flenserboy 4y ago
Big Sister is always much, much worse than Big Brother, and he's bad.
throwaway0asd 4y ago
We could eliminate food inspection and driver's licenses. That would increase liberty, but I don't think most people would find the freedom worthy of the cost.
- pigeonhole123 4y ago
  Is anyone suggesting that?
  - kittiepryde 4y ago
    Some libertarians are -- but I think they were trying to employ the slippery slope argument
    - mwint 4y ago
      The slope we’ve slid down so far has been very slippery indeed.
  - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
    No, but I think GP’s point is that there will always be a tradeoff between personal liberty and safety. We can argue about where the line should be, but it needs to be drawn somewhere between the two extremes.
    - eternalban 4y ago
      But GP's OP is not saying there shouldn't be a line, rather that it is that line that will likely be crossed in guise of public safety to unburden us from the burden of having liberties. Food, water, stuff like that have potential to kill off everyone. Drunk drivers on the other hand are not likely to ever pose an existential threat. So I tend to agree with those who insist that, of course there must be regulation, there must be informed discussion, no we shall not consult the i-ching, but definitely loss of liberties require an exceptionally high public good threshold to be considered. tldr; to keep that line in an optimal space between the extremes, clearly two opposing forces are necessary.
micromacrofoot 4y ago
Ah yes, that old personal liberty of driving drunk. Who will save us from this nanny state.
skapadia 4y ago
Can you define "personal liberty", in the context of living in a society?
skapadia 4y ago
Would you be okay with a drunk driver killing one of your family members? What if that could be prevented with tech like this? Does your personal liberty outweigh the need to keep people safe from tons of metal hurtling at them at insane speeds?
- netr0ute 4y ago
  > Does your personal liberty outweigh the need to keep people safe from tons of metal hurtling at them at insane speeds? I don't see why not, as the US was founded on the principle behind this.
- david38 4y ago
  By your rationale why don’t you give up cars? If you care for your loved ones so much, Han them from using cars. Does your personal liberty outweigh the need to keep your family safe from tons of metal hurtling at them at insane speeds?
  - aeharding 4y ago
    Because in this country the options are 1. Buy a car because it’s required in order to literally feed yourself, or 2. Live in one of the highly desirable, expensive pre-war neighborhoods that remain walkable Many Americans can’t just “give up cars” even if they wanted to. Car dependency is literally codified in out zoning and street building (MUTCD) Maybe if car dependency wasn’t such a requirement in order to live, maybe if everyone could easily walk to the bar, we wouldn’t need alcohol detection in cars.
    - philipov 4y ago
      > Maybe if car dependency wasn’t such a requirement in order to live, maybe if everyone could easily walk to the bar, we wouldn’t need alcohol detection in cars. This is the goal that is worth spending political action on, not snake oil remedies designed only to advance the careers of politicians peddling them.
    - TrueSlacker0 4y ago
bluejekyll 4y ago
Don’t know why you put safety in quotes. You’re implying that this won’t make streets safer, by reducing drunk driving. But reducing drunk driving would in fact make streets safer. Our goal should be to have zero deaths related to common car usage and driving. For example, the backup camera is there to help reduce the number of people backing up over their own kids. This is a good thing. You can argue that this system may not be the correct implementation to reduce drunk driving. You can argue other things might actually be better. But don’t claim that personal liberty is at stake for people when 43,000 people lost their personal liberty when their lives ended. Why don’t you care about their personal liberty?
- Frost1x 4y ago
  I'm not aware of any technology reliable, trustworthy, affordable, and quick enough to accomplish said goal without regularly inconveniencing a significantly larger portion of drivers who may need their vehicles in other emergencies. If you could provide a mechanism that didn't infringe non-drunk drivers rights I'd be more apt to accept this idea. I'd also need to know an override mechanism exists because it seems like certain rare situations could arise where you need to operate a vehicle intoxicated, e.g. fleeing for your life in defense with a relatively low risk of injuring someone comparatively. I'm sitting at home sipping a scotch and hear an intruder come in who for some reason is an abusive person after me specifically in my life. I phone the police but also decide it's best if I can safely flee the area. Maybe the police could override it remotely, I don't know. Overall the edge cases seem difficult to deal with and infringe on others liberties. We start talking about the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few and trolly problems with different counts of people on different tracks. I'm just throwing some hypothetical out, it may not be good, but my point is that rare situations can occur and because you were partaking in a legal activity like drinking, due to an emergency change in situation that wasn't predictable, you suddenly need to drive because the risk is now higher than drunk driving. Perhaps a tornado is approaching your house or abusive spouse is out to kill you...
  - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
    An override mechanism seems reasonable to me. How about: when you engage the override, a light on your car turns on, as a signal to everyone else on the road that you may be under the influence. Cops who see the light can consider it "reasonable suspicion" to pull you over.
ouid 4y ago
"trusted computing"

pessimizer 4y ago

Doesn't matter. That sentence is going to be read aloud on every television news program, and copied in every article about this, and is never going to be given any context. It's verbatim from the press release. That's how mainstream news works in the US, especially when it's a government press release. Putting a US government press release into context sounds like a very Russian or Chinese thing to do.

magicalist 4y ago

> True, but there were also 250 billion more miles traveled than 16 years ago and a population of roughly 40 million more people. So though the raw number is higher, the traffic fatalities per mile traveled and per capita is actually lower than it was back then. OK, but it's the greatest number of fatalities per mile traveled in 14 years, and the highest number per capita in 13 years, though. The recent trend upwards is pretty alarming and it's not worth pretending otherwise, even if you're dead set against this solution. Both statistics are up over 20% from the lows of a decade ago, 30% in absolute numbers. Personally I'm pretty convinced by the case of rising phone use and vehicle size in the same period and would like to see those addressed.

pcaharrier 4y ago
All of those would be great things to point out for context, but this article chose only one number to use. The same goes for talking about causes, as you point out by mentioning phone use and vehicle construction. I can add one more to that list: cars equipped with all the latest gadgets that do everything except help the driver focus on other vehicles and road conditions (vividly illustrated by one of those "Mayhem" commercials for Allstate).
- magicalist 4y ago
  > All of those would be great things to point out for context, but this article chose only one number to use 13 or 14 vs 16 years isn't all that different, and most people understand absolute numbers better, so if you have to use one it seems like a good choice and isn't misleading with statistics, as the OP implies.
petre 4y ago
It's also probably because of all the SUVs that everyone wants nowadays. The greatest pressure against mandates alcohol test devices on cars should come from the auto industry itself. In my country, the most drivers caught under the influence this year were using drugs rather than booze. Alcohol testers do not detect drugs. Also good luck driving a car with such a device to flee a fire or having the kid eat oranges while you're driving.