4 ms·

I wish for every one of these 'not an accident, but it was scary' stories there was a story about the 30+k deaths that yet again happened on US roads last year

I wish for every one of these 'not an accident, but it was scary' stories there was a story about the 30+k deaths that yet again happened on US roads last year and we barely cared. Unfortunately some day there will be another major airline accident because no system is perfect. The stats are clear though, airlines are incredibly safe. We are over reporting these types of issues by orders of magnitude compared to other transportation and safety related issues. I wonder if there is an (unnamed?) psychological effect at play here. When a large activity has very rare issues compared to its peers maybe we tend to over emphasize the few issues found? Possibly because the difference in rates is too extreme for us to comprehend. Hundreds dying on the roads every day, nobody blinks an eye. One plane does what it is supposed to when a mistake was made and it is a news story.

dvngnt_ 3y ago
plane big, car small. planes made 9/11
panick21_ 3y ago
Its incredible how little society cares about road accidents. Its not just the deaths. Also the injuries and the massive amount of property damage and other costs. Somehow this hasn't been identified as systematic issue and the only solution anybody seems to come up with is 'cars are just gone drive themselves and they are going to be perfect'. The solution are so simple and low tech, so much incredible low hanging fruit. If only people actually thought about it in those terms.
- jmward01 3y ago
  People just aren't good at understanding risk. If we do it every day we get numb to it. I actually use cars as a personal risk metric. Most people drive regularly so it is clearly a risk we 'accept' but we also admit it is risky and require training, inspections, vehicle and road standards, dedicated police/fire/ambulance/etc etc etc. Basically, driving is my cut-line. If I am doing an activity that is statistically as dangerous/near the danger of driving I will consider extra precautions or consider avoiding it all together. If it is less dangerous I generally just accept the default safety included with the activity. If it is more dangerous I seriously consider not doing it.
  - panick21_ 3y ago
    Regular people being familiar with it has an effect, but most people don't actually influence the relevant regulations. Personally, I generally avoid driving whenever possible but I live in a city in Switerland it very easy for me. And of course driving here is safer. The plane manufactures are a small group of companies and a slightly larger group of airlines, but even there, its basically a small group of major airlines. Most safety related things can be regulated federally and regular has the ability to learn from incidents, and then cycle that knowlage into regulation. Each incident is big enough that it contains some learning. With road safety non of that exists. You have countless 'small' accidents, and non directly influence regulations. You then have an agency looking at car safety, but they don't look at safety holistically, they car about the people in the car during an accidents, and not much beyond. There is in theory somebody responsible for designing safe infrastructure, but infrastructure standards evolve very slowly and not primarily because of safety. And lets be real, many of those standards haven't been updated since the 60s. There is basically no feedback cycle that connects road safety and road infrastructure. Then there are other people who are responsible for rules about drinking, seat belts and so on. There are plenty of roads where multiple people died in virtually the same place. But there simply is no feedback mechanism. Luckily 'some' forward thinking regulators in Europe have adopted a more areospace like system. Each accidents has learning, each on creates a number of short term recommendations, and longer term recommendations. The short terms ones are actually done. And the long term recommendation are planned for the next overhaul. Other similar places are identified and potentially also upgraded. And then you also take the learning's from those accidents that directly influences the next edition of the infrastructure standard that are regularly updated.
  - mlyle 3y ago
    You know, progress on road safety in the US isn't as quick as we'd like, but it's been tremendous. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USA_annual_VMT_vs_deaths_per_VMT.png https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USA_annual_VMT_vs_death... The death rate per mile has been roughly halving each generation.
    - jmward01 3y ago
      Yeah! I am -very- glad to see this trend. I am guilty of posting deaths per year when other normalized stats are far better. Thanks for pointing that out.
- NikkiA 3y ago
  > Also the injuries and the massive amount of property damage and other costs. I'd put the well documented, utterly massive cost to health and wellness, short and long term, due to pollution, up there too. Pretty much every single case of asthema for a start.
  - panick21_ 3y ago
    True but that you would have even with properly designed car infrastructure. To change that you need to actually do real modal shift.
- piva00 3y ago
  Not all societies care so little, in the Nordics, Germany, the Netherlands, etc. there has been a constant effort through the last decades to make roads safer. Norway (and I believe Sweden as well) have their own programs aiming for zero road fatalities, it's a dream but there's an aim and concerted effort has made traffic accidents less fatal to all road participants (pedestrians, bikes, and drivers). The technical solutions are low tech: slower speed limits for traffic in denser populated areas, removing space for cars in cities to make drivers more attentive, roundabouts instead of crossings. The issue for the USA is the willingness of the average Joe driving their car to have their privileges taken away, that's not a technical issue but a political/social one.
  - panick21_ 3y ago
    > Not all societies care so little Check out my other comment in response. I did wrote a lot on that. > The issue for the USA is the willingness of the average Joe driving their car to have their privileges taken away, that's not a technical issue but a political/social one. That isn't really true. Many of the changes don't actually take away any privileges. In fact, many of those changes can be done improving both safety and threwput. Most people don't really have input. There are road design standards, and US engineers mostly just implement by the standard. Those standard could and should be changed. Yes there is a deep political issue to really improve everything. But there is a absolutely huge amount of low hanging fruit that would be massively better. And in fact, people in the US, like people everywhere else do actually generally support changes that improve safety. There is just a totally dysfunctional and broken engineering culture supported by a completely incompetent government. I truly believe its not individual people and their privilege driving this. Once you get past much of the easy changes, there might be things that cause some pushback, but a lot of it doesn't.
    - piva00 3y ago
      Look at the backlash the change to maximum speed limits in NYC has gotten, even here on HN where people should be a bit more well educated than the average. Every single change to roads that drivers perceive as detrimental will be met with huge backlash, even in the cases where it will help throughput. Drivers do not care about throughput, they care about what they perceive will benefit themselves to make their journeys in a shorter time. Lowering speed limits doesn't give them that impression (but it does increase safety and throughput), reducing car lanes to make space for exclusive bus lanes has the same effect, shared modality streets (like trams + busses + cars) also help to increase throughput but drivers don't see that way, they only think they will be slowed down by the other traffic. It's a big political change, the car-centric culture of the USA does not allow for much progress in this since it will require a multi-decade concerted effort to actually tackle the problem. If a mayor changes the standards for roads (or governor, or whomever is responsible for it) there will be backlash and a potential political weapon to run against them next election, the next incumbent will have to deliver on the promise of giving cars more space since a reduction for just 2-4 years will create issues that require many other infrastructure projects to compensate for, and you end up at the same spot after a few cycles of this. It's not rational, it's dysfunctional, but it's the culture that the USA created, to change it will require a lot of political capital to be burnt and many administrations in a row implementing projects that move the needle of this culture to something else.
laborcontract 3y ago
It's called the availability heuristic and the response to airplane crashes are frequently used as an example of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic
- Simulacra 3y ago
  Gun violence?
  - Eddy_Viscosity2 3y ago
    Imagine if in the constitution there was some line like 'the right to use an airplane shall not be infringed' or something and so any attempt at regulating airplane safety was declared illegal. As a result thousands of people died every year in airplane accidents and everyone was "well that's what the founder fathers wanted, so what are ya gonna do?"
mynameisnoone 3y ago
The way the world works: dismiss enormous numbers of deaths when they're unknown, nameless, individual, low status people, or happen to Rwandans or Palestinians in distant lands and not pretty children of celebrities.
- sandspar 3y ago
  That's the way our species works. You work that way too.
smitty1e 3y ago
> The stats are clear though, airlines are incredibly safe. The concern among some is that safety is being sacrificed on a political altar, and that there will be a butcher's bill, probably sooner than later.

dvngnt_ 3y ago

plane big, car small. planes made 9/11

panick21_ 3y ago

Its incredible how little society cares about road accidents. Its not just the deaths. Also the injuries and the massive amount of property damage and other costs. Somehow this hasn't been identified as systematic issue and the only solution anybody seems to come up with is 'cars are just gone drive themselves and they are going to be perfect'. The solution are so simple and low tech, so much incredible low hanging fruit. If only people actually thought about it in those terms.

jmward01 3y ago
People just aren't good at understanding risk. If we do it every day we get numb to it. I actually use cars as a personal risk metric. Most people drive regularly so it is clearly a risk we 'accept' but we also admit it is risky and require training, inspections, vehicle and road standards, dedicated police/fire/ambulance/etc etc etc. Basically, driving is my cut-line. If I am doing an activity that is statistically as dangerous/near the danger of driving I will consider extra precautions or consider avoiding it all together. If it is less dangerous I generally just accept the default safety included with the activity. If it is more dangerous I seriously consider not doing it.
- panick21_ 3y ago
  Regular people being familiar with it has an effect, but most people don't actually influence the relevant regulations. Personally, I generally avoid driving whenever possible but I live in a city in Switerland it very easy for me. And of course driving here is safer. The plane manufactures are a small group of companies and a slightly larger group of airlines, but even there, its basically a small group of major airlines. Most safety related things can be regulated federally and regular has the ability to learn from incidents, and then cycle that knowlage into regulation. Each incident is big enough that it contains some learning. With road safety non of that exists. You have countless 'small' accidents, and non directly influence regulations. You then have an agency looking at car safety, but they don't look at safety holistically, they car about the people in the car during an accidents, and not much beyond. There is in theory somebody responsible for designing safe infrastructure, but infrastructure standards evolve very slowly and not primarily because of safety. And lets be real, many of those standards haven't been updated since the 60s. There is basically no feedback cycle that connects road safety and road infrastructure. Then there are other people who are responsible for rules about drinking, seat belts and so on. There are plenty of roads where multiple people died in virtually the same place. But there simply is no feedback mechanism. Luckily 'some' forward thinking regulators in Europe have adopted a more areospace like system. Each accidents has learning, each on creates a number of short term recommendations, and longer term recommendations. The short terms ones are actually done. And the long term recommendation are planned for the next overhaul. Other similar places are identified and potentially also upgraded. And then you also take the learning's from those accidents that directly influences the next edition of the infrastructure standard that are regularly updated.
- mlyle 3y ago
  You know, progress on road safety in the US isn't as quick as we'd like, but it's been tremendous. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USA_annual_VMT_vs_deaths_per_VMT.png https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USA_annual_VMT_vs_death... The death rate per mile has been roughly halving each generation.
  - jmward01 3y ago
    Yeah! I am -very- glad to see this trend. I am guilty of posting deaths per year when other normalized stats are far better. Thanks for pointing that out.
NikkiA 3y ago
> Also the injuries and the massive amount of property damage and other costs. I'd put the well documented, utterly massive cost to health and wellness, short and long term, due to pollution, up there too. Pretty much every single case of asthema for a start.
- panick21_ 3y ago
  True but that you would have even with properly designed car infrastructure. To change that you need to actually do real modal shift.
piva00 3y ago
Not all societies care so little, in the Nordics, Germany, the Netherlands, etc. there has been a constant effort through the last decades to make roads safer. Norway (and I believe Sweden as well) have their own programs aiming for zero road fatalities, it's a dream but there's an aim and concerted effort has made traffic accidents less fatal to all road participants (pedestrians, bikes, and drivers). The technical solutions are low tech: slower speed limits for traffic in denser populated areas, removing space for cars in cities to make drivers more attentive, roundabouts instead of crossings. The issue for the USA is the willingness of the average Joe driving their car to have their privileges taken away, that's not a technical issue but a political/social one.
- panick21_ 3y ago
  > Not all societies care so little Check out my other comment in response. I did wrote a lot on that. > The issue for the USA is the willingness of the average Joe driving their car to have their privileges taken away, that's not a technical issue but a political/social one. That isn't really true. Many of the changes don't actually take away any privileges. In fact, many of those changes can be done improving both safety and threwput. Most people don't really have input. There are road design standards, and US engineers mostly just implement by the standard. Those standard could and should be changed. Yes there is a deep political issue to really improve everything. But there is a absolutely huge amount of low hanging fruit that would be massively better. And in fact, people in the US, like people everywhere else do actually generally support changes that improve safety. There is just a totally dysfunctional and broken engineering culture supported by a completely incompetent government. I truly believe its not individual people and their privilege driving this. Once you get past much of the easy changes, there might be things that cause some pushback, but a lot of it doesn't.
  - piva00 3y ago
    Look at the backlash the change to maximum speed limits in NYC has gotten, even here on HN where people should be a bit more well educated than the average. Every single change to roads that drivers perceive as detrimental will be met with huge backlash, even in the cases where it will help throughput. Drivers do not care about throughput, they care about what they perceive will benefit themselves to make their journeys in a shorter time. Lowering speed limits doesn't give them that impression (but it does increase safety and throughput), reducing car lanes to make space for exclusive bus lanes has the same effect, shared modality streets (like trams + busses + cars) also help to increase throughput but drivers don't see that way, they only think they will be slowed down by the other traffic. It's a big political change, the car-centric culture of the USA does not allow for much progress in this since it will require a multi-decade concerted effort to actually tackle the problem. If a mayor changes the standards for roads (or governor, or whomever is responsible for it) there will be backlash and a potential political weapon to run against them next election, the next incumbent will have to deliver on the promise of giving cars more space since a reduction for just 2-4 years will create issues that require many other infrastructure projects to compensate for, and you end up at the same spot after a few cycles of this. It's not rational, it's dysfunctional, but it's the culture that the USA created, to change it will require a lot of political capital to be burnt and many administrations in a row implementing projects that move the needle of this culture to something else.

laborcontract 3y ago

It's called the availability heuristic and the response to airplane crashes are frequently used as an example of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic

Simulacra 3y ago
Gun violence?
- Eddy_Viscosity2 3y ago
  Imagine if in the constitution there was some line like 'the right to use an airplane shall not be infringed' or something and so any attempt at regulating airplane safety was declared illegal. As a result thousands of people died every year in airplane accidents and everyone was "well that's what the founder fathers wanted, so what are ya gonna do?"

mynameisnoone 3y ago

The way the world works: dismiss enormous numbers of deaths when they're unknown, nameless, individual, low status people, or happen to Rwandans or Palestinians in distant lands and not pretty children of celebrities.

sandspar 3y ago
That's the way our species works. You work that way too.

smitty1e 3y ago

> The stats are clear though, airlines are incredibly safe. The concern among some is that safety is being sacrificed on a political altar, and that there will be a butcher's bill, probably sooner than later.