3 ms·

Fascinating to consider that within a few decades that annual 32,000 fatality rate could be reduced by some radical amount (95%?) with software. That's an incre

Fascinating to consider that within a few decades that annual 32,000 fatality rate could be reduced by some radical amount (95%?) with software. That's an incredible amount of lives waiting to be saved by some good programming; 300k per decade is a staggering number of people. I'm not aware of too many other private sector problems that you can go to work on that can have such an impact (with programming), outside of biotechnology perhaps.

wazoox 14y ago
In several European countries, fatality rate was reduced by a dramatic amount by being stricter on speed limits, alcohol, reckless driving, etc and building (much) better cars. See the statistics: http://www.securite-routiere.org/Fiches/statistiques/statinter.htm http://www.securite-routiere.org/Fiches/statistiques/statint... In fact, USA are about the only developed country which didn't make any significant progress in the past 20 years.
- Retric 14y ago
  only developed country Sorry, but the numbers don't support your argument. Grèce 1502 1511 1699 1737 1790 1995 2008 2076 1993 2068 2000 2182 2116 2037 1880 1654 1605 1619 1658 USA 46390 47087 45582 44599 44508 39250 40150 40716 41817 42065 42013 41501 41717 41945 42116 42815 42884 42636 43443 http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_pop_totl&idim=country:GRC&dl=en&hl=en&q=population+greece http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&#... http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=kf7tgg1uo9ude_&met_y=population&idim=country:US&dl=en&hl=en&q=population+us http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=kf7tgg1uo9ude_&#... So, both countries has reasonable population growth and the rate of fatalities dropped by a similar amount relative to their populations. What's different is the absolute number peaked in Grece in 1990's and dipped in the US in the 1990's.
  - Wilya 14y ago
    To expand on that: The second table on wazoox's link give the number of fatalities scaled to the population (in death per million) for European countries. It doesn't include the USA for some reason, but you can estimate it from Retric's info. - 1990: 186.3 - 2005: 147.2 So, improvement there has been.
    - wazoox 14y ago
      It still is much worse than most of Europe except Greece which just qualified in the last decade as a developed country for road infrastructure. From my personal experience, the average American driver seems to have a frighteningly low driving ability coupled with a surprising self-confidence; and I've seen more road rage in 6 weeks in the US than in 40 years in Europe (apparently tendency to reckless driving is proportional to distance from the Ocean, too; Californians seem reasonable enough). There are probably lots of progress to be made in teaching and punishing there.

wazoox 14y ago

In several European countries, fatality rate was reduced by a dramatic amount by being stricter on speed limits, alcohol, reckless driving, etc and building (much) better cars. See the statistics: http://www.securite-routiere.org/Fiches/statistiques/statinter.htm http://www.securite-routiere.org/Fiches/statistiques/statint... In fact, USA are about the only developed country which didn't make any significant progress in the past 20 years.

Retric 14y ago
only developed country Sorry, but the numbers don't support your argument. Grèce 1502 1511 1699 1737 1790 1995 2008 2076 1993 2068 2000 2182 2116 2037 1880 1654 1605 1619 1658 USA 46390 47087 45582 44599 44508 39250 40150 40716 41817 42065 42013 41501 41717 41945 42116 42815 42884 42636 43443 http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_pop_totl&idim=country:GRC&dl=en&hl=en&q=population+greece http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&#... http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=kf7tgg1uo9ude_&met_y=population&idim=country:US&dl=en&hl=en&q=population+us http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=kf7tgg1uo9ude_&#... So, both countries has reasonable population growth and the rate of fatalities dropped by a similar amount relative to their populations. What's different is the absolute number peaked in Grece in 1990's and dipped in the US in the 1990's.
- Wilya 14y ago
  To expand on that: The second table on wazoox's link give the number of fatalities scaled to the population (in death per million) for European countries. It doesn't include the USA for some reason, but you can estimate it from Retric's info. - 1990: 186.3 - 2005: 147.2 So, improvement there has been.
  - wazoox 14y ago
    It still is much worse than most of Europe except Greece which just qualified in the last decade as a developed country for road infrastructure. From my personal experience, the average American driver seems to have a frighteningly low driving ability coupled with a surprising self-confidence; and I've seen more road rage in 6 weeks in the US than in 40 years in Europe (apparently tendency to reckless driving is proportional to distance from the Ocean, too; Californians seem reasonable enough). There are probably lots of progress to be made in teaching and punishing there.