4 ms·

Further support for this theory is provided by this graph, which shows two separate, distinct jumps from 2014-2016 and 2020-2022: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F

Further support for this theory is provided by this graph, which shows two separate, distinct jumps from 2014-2016 and 2020-2022: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FzU9P7iX0AARi1F?format=jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FzU9P7iX0AARi1F?format=jpg What happened in 2014 was Ferguson, followed by the Ferguson Report, and the initial stages of changes in enforcement. Then in 2020 we had Floyd and an even larger pullback. Roads did not change. Phones had been around for years by 2016. SUVs had been gaining in popularity for literally decades. It's not dispositive, but the only thing that fits the timing perfectly are the changes in policing after 2014 and 2020. Police in some cities have almost completely stopped doing traffic enforcement. San Francisco, for example, used to issue something like 12k citations per month. Now they issue just a couple hundred. The change started right after the Ferguson Report was released: https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/10lkdhk/traffic_citations_in_sf_since_2014/ https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/10lkdhk/traff... Other cities have done the same. Police didn't just back off. They practically stopped enforcement altogether. We're talking about 95% drops in enforcement in some places.

pastage 3y ago
You are really cherry picking to come to that conclusion, but if citations correlates that strongly to less accidents that should be easy to show. It can not be the only thing though.
- dionidium 3y ago
  Remember what we're trying to explain here: two distinct step-ups in pedestrian fatalities occurring in just one country. Any proposed explanation needs to address both 1) why it happened when it did; and 2) why it happened in only that one country. Cars are getting bigger everywhere and have been for decades, so that fails both tests. COVID only happened in 2020 and it happened everywhere, so that fails both tests. Smart phones were introduced in 2007 and they're available everywhere, so that fails both tests. But "U.S. police departments drastically reduced both the number of traffic stops performed and the total number of citations issued starting just after the Ferguson Report in 2015" is practically slapping you in the face. As I said, it's not dispositive, but I can't see any reason to reject it (that's not political in nature).
  - pastage 3y ago
    You are postfixing your post saying that this "evidence" is not enough to support you case on its own. My point is that it is even worse. You miss everything that disproves your opinion. The graph does not support your argumentation at all, there is too much noise. You need to explain how citations affect accidents. We fired most of our traffic cops in the eighties here, the number of citations plumeted. The number of deaths are on a steady decline.
    - dionidium 3y ago
      > You need to explain how citations affect accidents. No, I don't. You're plainly demanding a standard of evidence that you wouldn't in any other domain, especially if you were inclined to prefer the explanation. I'm going to take "citations affect driver behavior" as axiomatic, unless you can disprove it. I'm not going to wait until we have 100 studies to confirm that a commonsense mechanism does indeed function in the most parsimoniously explained way. We have to act in the world. We don't have 100 years to figure out if ticketing drivers affects their behavior to some ridiculous standard of evidence you invented just now because you would prefer that explanation weren't true. People really need to stop allowing themselves to be held hostage to this kind of special pleading.

pastage 3y ago

You are really cherry picking to come to that conclusion, but if citations correlates that strongly to less accidents that should be easy to show. It can not be the only thing though.

dionidium 3y ago
Remember what we're trying to explain here: two distinct step-ups in pedestrian fatalities occurring in just one country. Any proposed explanation needs to address both 1) why it happened when it did; and 2) why it happened in only that one country. Cars are getting bigger everywhere and have been for decades, so that fails both tests. COVID only happened in 2020 and it happened everywhere, so that fails both tests. Smart phones were introduced in 2007 and they're available everywhere, so that fails both tests. But "U.S. police departments drastically reduced both the number of traffic stops performed and the total number of citations issued starting just after the Ferguson Report in 2015" is practically slapping you in the face. As I said, it's not dispositive, but I can't see any reason to reject it (that's not political in nature).
- pastage 3y ago
  You are postfixing your post saying that this "evidence" is not enough to support you case on its own. My point is that it is even worse. You miss everything that disproves your opinion. The graph does not support your argumentation at all, there is too much noise. You need to explain how citations affect accidents. We fired most of our traffic cops in the eighties here, the number of citations plumeted. The number of deaths are on a steady decline.
  - dionidium 3y ago
    > You need to explain how citations affect accidents. No, I don't. You're plainly demanding a standard of evidence that you wouldn't in any other domain, especially if you were inclined to prefer the explanation. I'm going to take "citations affect driver behavior" as axiomatic, unless you can disprove it. I'm not going to wait until we have 100 studies to confirm that a commonsense mechanism does indeed function in the most parsimoniously explained way. We have to act in the world. We don't have 100 years to figure out if ticketing drivers affects their behavior to some ridiculous standard of evidence you invented just now because you would prefer that explanation weren't true. People really need to stop allowing themselves to be held hostage to this kind of special pleading.