8 ms·

Traffic Fatalities Are a Choice

129 points by mitchbob 1y ago

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
psunavy03 1y ago
Speed cameras could only be a reasonable solution in a country which has reasonable speed limits . . . which the US often doesn't have. Better to prop up municipal revenue or satisfy the "but the children" crowd by setting them 10+mph too slow for a given road. And that's not touching on the privacy implications.
- AnotherGoodName 1y ago
  I don't see people clamouring for more enforcement anytime soon but there are definitely benefits to automated speed cameras. In many ways i much much prefer driving on freeways where the speed is extremely strictly enforced, forcing everyone to turn on cruise control, rather than dealing with drivers that simply can't maintain a constant speed.
  - sokoloff 1y ago
    Set the speed limit on a typical expressway to 80mph* and plenty of people would be OK with [or even in favor of] speed cameras. * or whatever the 85th percentile speed is, rounded up to the nearest 5 mph.
- freejazz 1y ago
  > crowd by setting them 10+mph too slow for a given road In NYC at least, they are set for speeds that make the roads safer for other users, such as pedestrians. They are not set in order to please the perception of drivers.
- DangitBobby 1y ago
  I have to wonder where you live. In TN, I very rarely feel that the speed limit is too low.
JohnKemeny 1y ago
The USA has great potential to save lives and improve quality of life. As an outsider, it’s unclear whether either is actually a goal.
- terabytest 1y ago
  As a European, American culture baffles me in this regard. Things like school shootings, police violence, traffic deaths, healthcare, alternative (public) transportation, all seem to be linked by a common thread of inaction towards things that should in principle be solved. And it seems baked into the way the system works, if not the culture itself (due to the focus on U.S. exceptionalism/defaultism, individualism and bias towards individual freedom at others’ expense). But I wonder what causes such structural cultural/political issues to just be ignored.
  - umvi 1y ago
    Think of America more like 50 countries. Now take your school shooting example. A lot of states have made changes to their gun laws in response to this. Making federal (i.e. applies to all states) gun law changes is more challenging because you have to get 75% of the states on board with any constitutional changes. Without a constitutional amendment, any gun legislation ultimately must respect the existing 2nd Amendment so it's not possible to have Japan-esque policies without a constitutional amendment. Also USA takes up an entire continent so different regions of the us have different cultures and sentiment towards guns. People living in highly rural areas like Montana probably have favorable gun ownership sentiment. People living in highly urban areas like NYC usually have negative gun sentiment.
    - pc86 1y ago
      And it's important to note that these different gun laws don't actually meaningfully affect crime, particularly something as exceedingly rare as a mass shooting.
      - ShrimpHawk 1y ago
zahlman 1y ago
Traffic is largely a choice in the first place. It's just difficult to undo once you've chosen it.
mjevans 1y ago
I've seen these 'bump out's and I LOATH what they do to traffic. While they are one, pedestrian focused, solution I do not believe they are the __best possible__ solution. """ (with the paragraph broken up into bullet points and some bold text) The U.S. model typically encourages wide lanes and corners to increase driver visibility, but this has the unintended consequence of encouraging cars to go through intersections faster, and and thereby decreasing the peripheral vision they might have retained at a slower speed. Instead, the Safe System intersection is designed to limit car speed and facilitate eye contact between users. It does so by expanding pedestrian areas via * curb extensions or bumpouts, * narrowing crosswalks, and * removing parking within 20-25 feet of an intersection. The crosswalks and narrowing of the lanes encourages cars to slow and to stop well ahead of the crosswalk, while bumpouts shorten the distance pedestrians must be in the road. """ While I agree Eye Contact is important, I think it should not come at the cost of increased driver or pedestrian conative load, but instead in the form of better safety engineering / design. Crosswalks : Take the extreme version of UK's solution. Crosswalks should be either half way along a road segment, or at least half a block from the vehicle intersection. These should include 'bump outs' to disrupt any parking area and LOW, half meter or less tall, shrubs or features should promote HIGH VISIBILITY and Eye Contact between pedestrians and drivers in a dedicated pedestrian / vehicle interaction area. Vehicle Intersections : Should have ZERO interaction with pedestrian features, no pedestrians should cross here. Roundabouts, free inner corner turns, traffic control systems and drivers all interact better in an environment that is less chaotic and more predictable. The optimal engineering safety choice is to remove pedestrians from such danger zones entirely. Yes remove parking within 15 meters (45ft) or better within 2 seconds of vision at road speed. Road Speed : Mark roads at their engineered speed. Do not lie to drivers. Do not intentionally make safety worse by adding distractions and hazardous elements ('traffic calming'). If a road speed IS indicated slower than the conditions appear to permit, time the intersection to intersection speed and post a _suggestion_ to 'lights timed for X speed'. If that's too slow drivers will figure out a more optimal speed within the range of what seems safe.
- lotu 1y ago
  Marking the road at its engineered speed is ineffective. People overwhelmingly do not use speed limits to decide how fast they drive. They look at how wide and straight the road is and how many things they see. The problem is we built a lot of streets that are engineered to be 50mph roads in residential neighborhoods. People then ignore the 25mph sign and drive 50mph and hit little children playing outside their home. Rebuilding and rerouting the road is impractical, so how do we fix the problem? Empirical evidence shows that by adding "distracting things" people drive slower, and this results in few fatalities. You are thinking of them as "distractions" but counter intuitively it might better to think of them "focus holders". Imagine your job is to sit in an empty room with a single button and at random times, a light turns on and you need to push the button within half a second. If this happens every several seconds or so, this is pretty easy, but if it only happens after an hour or so your mind will be wandering and your reaction time will be shit. Now imagine instead you are given a platforming video game like Mario or Hollow Knight, and every time a certain character appears on screen need to push the Y button. This sounds like something that is easy to do for hours, even if the specific character appears infrequently, it would even be enjoyable. Adding those elements like trees, turns and bumps are the same idea, it ensures the drivers focus is always on the road where it needs to be. Also some people just don't care and race down wide straight roads as fast as they can. The only way to slow these people down is to make it impossible to go extremely fast. I can think of this play ground near my house which is across the street from a school. In orders to stop people speeding down this straight street, the placed large rocks in the middle of the road, so you have to dive this zig zag pattern. I sure this can be somewhat frustrating for drivers but it's now impossible to navigate this road at more than ~20 mph which is what we want. As for moving interactions I think the idea of not having pedestrian crossings at intersections is infeasible. Though it might work if you were building a new city from scratch. When you are walking in a city you are going to cross multiple blocks. Walking ten+ blocks to get somewhere is so normal it’s not something you even think about. Crossing in the middle of the block would at least double and could triple or quadruple the length of the of a walk and city dwellers would simply not do it and cross at intersections. They already universally ignore traffic lights, and aren't going to walk out of their way dozens of times a day. I could imagine a city that was designed around walking and all the shops and homes were on car free streets, with streets behind the houses, like alleyways or underground. That I could see working, but the problems with implementation are obvious.
xnx 1y ago
Did I miss any mention of autonomous driving in this article? Waymo is way more likely to be the cause for reductions in future fatalities than any collective action or behavior change. Waymo vehicles are themselves much safer drivers, calm vehicle traffic overall on the streets they operate, and may reset people's expectations of how safe, efficient, and stress free travel should be.
- TulliusCicero 1y ago
  It's a bit sad that we were never able to solve this problem by designing safer streets, but you're probably right that self-driving cars will end up being the solution in the states.
  - xnx 1y ago
    In the distant future we'll be able to de-design (de-sign?) streets for self-driving cars: no traffic lights, no stop signs, no speed bumps, narrow lanes, fewer lanes, no curbs, no dividers, no street lights, etc.
    - goda90 1y ago
      No pedestrian crossings. No bike lanes. No escape from the noise of thousands of tires going at high speed. No escape from the air pollution of eroding tires and brakes. A vision of that future from a skeptic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0
      - xnx 1y ago
        Certainly some unknowns, but I'm optimistic. > No pedestrian crossings. Everywhere is a pedestrian crossing when you know that every vehicle sees you and will slow/stop if it anticipates you will enter its path. > No bike lanes. I'm an urban bike commuter and would be delighted to share the road with autonomous vehicles instead of human-driven ones. > No escape from the noise of thousands of tires going at high speed. I live 60 ft from a highway and would trade the noise of 1 speeding, honking, revving, modified-exhaust having human driven car for 100 well-maintained speed-limit obeying Waymo's. > No escape from the air pollution of eroding tires and brakes. Gentle starts and stops from a well-maintained (e.g. proper tire inflation) autonomous vehicle will create less of both of those than the average human-driven vehicle. > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0 I like a diversity of viewpoints, and glad there are people advocating for pedestrian and cyclist use of roads, but I find very little I agree with in Not Just Bikes pessimism.
benabbott 1y ago
I generally drive at or below the speed limit. This is to reduce fuel and improve safety. On a multiple lane road, I'm nearly always on the right (slow) lane. Unfortunately, this safety measure is usually torpedoed by other drivers. People (usually driving a 'light truck' (an SUV or pickup)) will drive at a single car length behind me. Even on multi-lane roads. If I had to slam on my brakes, I'd be at risk in my sedan. I absolutely would support wide proliferation of speed cameras. It would be easy, profitable, promote safety, and we could do it today. It would take zero extra policing (in fact, it'd probably reduce workload on police). I acknowledge that you can fight this kicking and screaming with speed enforcement measures—but I think there's two things that are causing people to drive faster: Wide, straight, flat roads that allow no speed reference, and large sealed vehicles that reduces perceived speed. Change these, and I think that will be a great step to reducing "pedestrian fatalities" (or to call it like it is: people getting murdered due to carelessness and impatience).
- nradov 1y ago
  People who drive below the posted speed limit (road boulders) are a menace. They increase the risk to everyone else as other drivers try to get around them.
  - benabbott 1y ago
    Might I direct you to the text on the sign, Speed "Limit"? The ones causing danger are the drivers attempting to pass dangerously, not the person driving slowly. Do cyclists cause danger by using roadways? Or is it the people driving multiple-ton vehicles?
    - potato3732842 1y ago
      If you can't understand the subtle, but still fairly obvious and unmistakeable difference between being a net increase in danger/problem potential without a) breaking the rules b) personally increasing your own financial liability for any bad outcomes you probably ought not to be driving. There's a reason tractors get triangles and oversize stuff gets highly visible signs.
oicu812 1y ago
People over 70 years old in the Netherlands have 2.8 times the fatality rate of drivers under 60 years old. [1] So the road design is not the cure-all that this article suggests since the elderly are still causing fatalities even with the improved road design. It's disappointing that age was not cited as one of the main causes of accidents. Yes, we can and should improve the design of the roads. However, we also need to improve the driving skills of the young and elderly. [1] https://swov.nl/en/fact-sheet/older-road-users https://swov.nl/en/fact-sheet/older-road-users
- goda90 1y ago
  A great thing about the Netherlands is that their infrastructure makes it much easier for them to take away the licenses of older drivers who no longer can pass driving tests without leaving that person stranded at home.
- fbernier 1y ago
  Yes, age diminishing driving skills certainly is a huge factor but I wonder how much of this age stat is due to the different generation in which they learned to drive.
  - ebiester 1y ago
    I remember driving with my grandparents at that age, and there is a reflex issue. Their reflexes slow and it becomes a lot more difficult for them.
- glenstein 1y ago
  I'm not sure the article takes the opposite side on this point, and I don't think it it was claiming to be a cure-all.
- tobyjsullivan 1y ago
  The article you link to specifically calls out that they can't and won't speculate about whether age is a factor in causing car crashes. Elderly people have higher mortality rates in virtually all cases of injury and illness so it shouldn't be surprising this is true when they are involved in a car crash.
semiinfinitely 1y ago
>You are as likely to die driving on an American road as you are driving in Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan not true. I always drive on American roads and I never drive on Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan roads.
- sshine 1y ago
  So you had accidents 100% of your Kazakh roadtrips.
  - Supermancho 1y ago
    Even if you use ponylang to calculate, 0/0 is 0
- pc86 1y ago
  The probability that I've driven on a Kazakh or Kyrgyzstani road is 0, as is the probability that I've died on an American road. The math checks out.
imglorp 1y ago
About a third of those 42,000 dead are due to DUIs. US has historically been lenient here, resulting in many repeat offenders on the road causing preventable tragedies. Distracted driving is around 3,000/yr, while drowsy drivers around 6,000. If self driving cars do nothing better than on par with alert and sober human drivers, that might cut half of those deaths by itself.
- echelon 1y ago
  > If self driving cars do nothing better than on par with alert and sober human drivers, that might cut half of those deaths by itself. Self driving probably fixes the fatality rate entirely once most people use self driving modes. Self driving will be the US' economic superpower. We've got so much vehicular infrastructure and it's practically sitting latent waiting for this opportunity. When most of everything transits this way - food, goods, packages, people, instant fulfillment - it'll be one of the biggest unlocks of the century. Anything we lost due to underinvestment in rail will be dwarfed by the returns from self driving.
jwilber 1y ago
Very surprising that this article does not mention trucks, which in America have become larger, more common, and an ever-growing contribution to the rising number of traffic fatalities. “ Pickups also tend to be more dangerous in collisions between differently sized vehicles — car drivers are 2.5 times more likely to die when colliding with a pickup as compared to another car” [0] Pickup trucks’ weight increased by 32% between 1990 and 2021 [1] As a bonus laughable fact, the first generation of F-150s was 36% cab and 64% bed by length. By 2021, the ratio flipped to 63% cab and 37% bed. So much for the “rugged” weekend warriors. 0: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15389588.2019.1632442 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15389588.2019.1... 1: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02760-8#ref-CR1 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02760-8#ref-CR1
- ourmandave 1y ago
  It used to be about hauling 8' plywood or something. Saw a super duty F-350 extended cab yesterday and I'm not sure the bed was 4'. Suppose it could take a gooseneck hitch for a giant camper trailer.
red_admiral 1y ago
> the [post pandemic] increase in vehicle occupant deaths appears to be heavily weighted towards people who weren't wearing seatbelts Why would you do this? (See also: cycling without a helmet.)
- procaryote 1y ago
  saves on healthcare costs?
- gs17 1y ago
  Some people really, really, hate being told what to do, especially when it's a (in their opinion) significant inconvenience to prevent some (also in their opinion) very unlikely hazard. It's baffling to me too, especially cyclists without helmets. Part of why I don't cycle is because, yes, helmets are annoying, but it's too dangerous to do it without a helmet.
  - amrocha 1y ago
    It’s really not that dangerous. If you’re a safe rider, riding in relatively safe environments, cycling is about as dangerous as jogging. And yet you never see anyone jogging with a helmet. There was a recent video about this that summarized my thoughts on helmets https://youtu.be/g1HgInvm-gY https://youtu.be/g1HgInvm-gY
    - 0xffff2 1y ago
      I can't jog at 20mph. Helmets aren't about the likelihood of an accident, rather they're about the severity of an accident regardless of likelihood.
      - amrocha 1y ago
        I didn’t say jogging was faster than cycling, I said it’s about as dangerous. Which is what the data from the study cited in the video shows. So i’m not sure why you’re bringing up speed.
qingcharles 1y ago
[flagged]
- ihaveajob 1y ago
  In bike-friendly places like Amsterdam and Copenhagen, it's super rare to see a helmet. A bike helmet offers reasonable protection in a solo fall, but it has nearly cosmetic effect if you're hit by a car. But one thing you don't see in those places is huge, flat-front trucks with poor visibility and worse pedestrian impact safety. Until the US mandates pedestrian safety measures, we won't see a reversal in this trend. Edit: I mostly bike places here in California, and I do wear a helmet 99% of the time, but I don't judge those who choose not to, because the biggest factor in bike safety is having other bikes on the road.
  - bagels 1y ago
    "nearly cosmetic effect" Do you have studies to back this up? I did a quick search, and the first study I turned up didn't agree with you.
  - nickff 1y ago
    I was hit by a car while riding my bike, the accident was significant enough to write-off a brand-new bike (I was riding it home from the store), and I was glad to have been wearing a helmet. I would like to know why you think helmets have only a cosmetic effect.
  - giantg2 1y ago
    Just for context of this thread, about half of all pedestrian deaths involve alcohol or drugs as well.
  - clan 1y ago
    Super rare is untrue. Rare would even be a stretch. I live in Copenhagen and use a helmet. I would claim it is common to use a helmet. Not everyone - but many do. And it is not even mandatory. Helmet usage is actually increasing: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022437523001329 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00224... We recommend it for tourists as well. Though it is rare with helmets for that group who might need it the most: https://www.visitcopenhagen.com/sites/visitcopenhagen.com/files/2024-07/How%20to%20cycle%20in%20Denmark.pdf https://www.visitcopenhagen.com/sites/visitcopenhagen.com/fi... Helmets are not compulsory and interest groups works to keep it that way: https://www.cyklistforbundet.dk/english/use-of-helmet https://www.cyklistforbundet.dk/english/use-of-helmet But less scary F150s and good bike infrastructure, yes.
delichon 1y ago
It would be sub-optimal to plan large scale infrastructure improvements without considering the current slope of the S curve in autonomous driving progress. In just a few years we may be choosing fewer fatalities by phasing out steering wheels. Whatever changes the roads and environment need will shift a lot over the next couple of decades.
- tallowen 1y ago
  I think this is great to think about however I think many of the same lessons may still apply and can and should be applied now in a forward looking way: From the article: > Whereas the Netherlands clearly differentiates roads and streets — as do Germany, Spain, and France — the US is known for having “stroads,” roads where cars reach high speeds yet must also avoid drivers entering from adjacent businesses and homes. The majority of fatal crashes in American cities happen on these “stroads,” and impact pedestrians and cyclists in particular. I think this will be _more_ important with autonomous driving. We've developed a built environment where car through traffic and destinations are co-mingled which leaves very little room for people to actually experience their destinations when they get out of their vehicles. Perhaps I'm wrong, but my expectation is that the problem of "stroads" will only become more apparent if less focus is placed on getting from point A to B and more on where a person is trying to go which is my current long term expectations of the impacts of autonomous vehicles.
- vladms 1y ago
  For me the last 20 years showed the opposite. You should plan infrastructure considering current tech and adjust if required. There were so many promises not fulfilled and surprises where there were no promises that I don't see the point planning based on assumptions. I lived in the Netherlands and infrastructure was great now and I am sure it will be great in 10 years, because they constantly think on how to improve given the situation. It will not be perfect in 10 years (and neither is now) but that's just life.
- goda90 1y ago
  Some argue that autonomous driving will enable even worse infrastructure choices if we don't plan ahead. The Youtuber Not Just Bikes, for example, did a video called "How Self-Driving Cars Will Destroy Cities (and what to do about it)"[0]. If we start focusing on making alternatives to cars the most attractive options now, they can still be the most attractive(and efficient and safe) options even with self-driving cars everywhere. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0
giantg2 1y ago
Saying that it's a choice and then proposing thete is only one correct choice is deceptive. I could say that using cars is a choice too.
- potato3732842 1y ago
  Everything can be a choice by that rhetorical framing. It's just a dumb language game, one that the public is both weary of and pretty keen at sniffing out at this point.
ChicagoDave 1y ago
At this point the world should be building or modernizing cities that eliminate self-driven vehicles, reset distinctly separate paths for auto-driven vehicles, bicycles, and pedestrians. This would dramatically reduce injuries, fuel consumption, and air pollution. It would also reclaim concrete spaces for nature.
- goda90 1y ago
  Even autonomous vehicles pale in comparison to good mass transit, so if we're eliminating human-driven vehicles, might as well replace them mostly with mass transit instead.
  - ChicagoDave 1y ago
    Mass transit is a byproduct of large cities. I’d argue that a modern urban plan would by smaller cities with neighborhoods containing every need.
    - goda90 1y ago
      Small cities can support mass transit. Street cars and buses can do an excellent job when you don't have the scale for a subway system. Yes neighborhoods should contain every need, but when you plan neighborhoods to revolve around cars, then there's less space for those needs. If people can't safely and comfortably walk from their home to a place of business, then they'll either take mass transit, or they'll drive. If they drive, then there needs to be more road and parking space to support them. And it starts becoming an unsustainable rat-race where everything ends up spread out with a bunch of pavement in-between, and you can only get places if you have a car.
      - ChicagoDave 1y ago
        Remove the idea of "car" and think of auto-driven cubes with their own pathways within a city. Similar to subways, but can be above ground with covering. You don't need parking, streets, traffic signals, and a whole host of infrastructure is eradicated. You go by behavior: - I need to go to library, store (walk or bike) - I need to go a business or house (cube it) - I need to leave the city for long-distance travel (now we connect to mass-transit)
engine_y 1y ago
The article starts with statistics. Quoting deaths / person. Is this the right metric? Since the US is huge and sprawling - it'd probably be better to use Death / km driven. I checked this: https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/road-accidents.html?oecdcontrol-00b22b2429-var3=2022 https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/road-accidents.html?... Which paints a very different picture than what's stated in the article.
- ajuc 1y ago
  Living in suburbs instead of in dense walkable cities is a choice as well.
  - paddy_m 1y ago
    Also making it illegal to build dense walkable cities like we used to is the choice that causes many people to live in the suburbs. It isn't just a preference for suburban style living. It is more efficient to live in cities and should be less expensive, but because we have made building housing effectively illegal, city real estate is incredibly expensive.
- paddy_m 1y ago
  miles driven/person is also a choice that the US has made. Even in sprawling suburbia, most trips a person takes are under 3 miles, eminently bikeable, but the bike infrastructure and built environment sucks for that. So people drive, from parking lot to parking lot. The fact that the US is huge doesn't mean that the majority of miles driven are on long trips.
  - kube-system 1y ago
    > Even in sprawling suburbia, most trips a person takes are under 3 miles That is surprising to me. Is that factoring in trips to the neighbors or to the mailbox or something? Because the average US driver drives over 39 miles per day.
    - paddy_m 1y ago
stellalo 1y ago
> At 12.8 deaths per 100,000 people, it is double that of Greece, triple that of Austria, and six times more than Japan. Should this not be measured in terms of fatal accidents every million of km driven? To normalize by how much people drive on average, and by the average vehicle occupancy. (Not saying this is easy.)
- bobbylarrybobby 1y ago
  No, because it is not “natural” to have to drive long distances — this was a deliberate choice by the US. The goal is not to get people to drive long distances and then make sure they don't start dying too much more than if they had walked instead. Rather, by removing the need to drive, other countries have reduced their traffic fatalities per capita, which was the goal all along.
- mrighele 1y ago
  If you build your infrastructure in a way that people have to drive much more to do the same, should you really discount this difference ? I rarely drive the car because I can reach by walk any place required by my daily necessities... of course I don't risk a fatal accident as much as somebody that drives daily for work and has to take the car for any kind of shopping. Put in another way: if are considering ways to lower traffic fatalities, lowering the time that people need to spend in their car is one way to do it.
  - kube-system 1y ago
    If someone's house is 20+ miles from their office, that might be an urban planning issue, but it isn't a road design issue.
  - DangitBobby 1y ago
    The article is trying to say Americans are dying more than they have to because we don't invest in safe infrastructure. With that framing, a solution would be to invest in safer infrastructure. But if it turns out we did the wrong thing because we used the wrong metric and spent a bunch of money on it, it would be a gigantic waste. If the reason is because we drive more than other countries, that's what we should try to address.
zamalek 1y ago
Another demonstration of positive-sum: > It does so by expanding pedestrian areas via curb extensions or bumpouts, narrowing crosswalks, and removing parking within 20-25 feet of an intersection. [...] This not only slows traffic, but permits turning cars fuller visibility of the crosswalk. Classical zero-sum thinking would suggest that drivers loose value to pedestrians, with more pavement and less road. However, you don't even have to think about pedestrians to understand why everyone benefits from this: in some American cities (I'm looking at you, Seattle) you have to edge absurdly far into intersections to see perpendicular. Broadening sidewalks improves driver-driver visibility too.
spiffytech 1y ago
I had a professor who said that if we really cared about traffic fatalities, we could end them overnight. Just outlaw seatbelts and airbags, then attach a large steel spike to the center of every steering wheel. Everyone would drive like old ladies, and would only drive when truly necessary. Society has chosen traffic fatalities because at a certain level we've decided that we're okay killing N people if we get XYZ outcome. I think about that a lot.
- tim333 1y ago
  I think you would find it wasn't a very practical solution, hence it's lack of implementation. Making everyone use something like Waymos might work though.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

129 points by mitchbob 1y ago

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

Speed cameras could only be a reasonable solution in a country which has reasonable speed limits . . . which the US often doesn't have. Better to prop up municipal revenue or satisfy the "but the children" crowd by setting them 10+mph too slow for a given road. And that's not touching on the privacy implications.

AnotherGoodName 1y ago
I don't see people clamouring for more enforcement anytime soon but there are definitely benefits to automated speed cameras. In many ways i much much prefer driving on freeways where the speed is extremely strictly enforced, forcing everyone to turn on cruise control, rather than dealing with drivers that simply can't maintain a constant speed.
- sokoloff 1y ago
  Set the speed limit on a typical expressway to 80mph* and plenty of people would be OK with [or even in favor of] speed cameras. * or whatever the 85th percentile speed is, rounded up to the nearest 5 mph.
freejazz 1y ago
> crowd by setting them 10+mph too slow for a given road In NYC at least, they are set for speeds that make the roads safer for other users, such as pedestrians. They are not set in order to please the perception of drivers.
DangitBobby 1y ago
I have to wonder where you live. In TN, I very rarely feel that the speed limit is too low.

JohnKemeny 1y ago

The USA has great potential to save lives and improve quality of life. As an outsider, it’s unclear whether either is actually a goal.

terabytest 1y ago
As a European, American culture baffles me in this regard. Things like school shootings, police violence, traffic deaths, healthcare, alternative (public) transportation, all seem to be linked by a common thread of inaction towards things that should in principle be solved. And it seems baked into the way the system works, if not the culture itself (due to the focus on U.S. exceptionalism/defaultism, individualism and bias towards individual freedom at others’ expense). But I wonder what causes such structural cultural/political issues to just be ignored.
- umvi 1y ago
  Think of America more like 50 countries. Now take your school shooting example. A lot of states have made changes to their gun laws in response to this. Making federal (i.e. applies to all states) gun law changes is more challenging because you have to get 75% of the states on board with any constitutional changes. Without a constitutional amendment, any gun legislation ultimately must respect the existing 2nd Amendment so it's not possible to have Japan-esque policies without a constitutional amendment. Also USA takes up an entire continent so different regions of the us have different cultures and sentiment towards guns. People living in highly rural areas like Montana probably have favorable gun ownership sentiment. People living in highly urban areas like NYC usually have negative gun sentiment.
  - pc86 1y ago
    And it's important to note that these different gun laws don't actually meaningfully affect crime, particularly something as exceedingly rare as a mass shooting.
    - ShrimpHawk 1y ago

zahlman 1y ago

Traffic is largely a choice in the first place. It's just difficult to undo once you've chosen it.

mjevans 1y ago

I've seen these 'bump out's and I LOATH what they do to traffic. While they are one, pedestrian focused, solution I do not believe they are the __best possible__ solution. """ (with the paragraph broken up into bullet points and some bold text) The U.S. model typically encourages wide lanes and corners to increase driver visibility, but this has the unintended consequence of encouraging cars to go through intersections faster, and and thereby decreasing the peripheral vision they might have retained at a slower speed. Instead, the Safe System intersection is designed to limit car speed and facilitate eye contact between users. It does so by expanding pedestrian areas via * curb extensions or bumpouts, * narrowing crosswalks, and * removing parking within 20-25 feet of an intersection. The crosswalks and narrowing of the lanes encourages cars to slow and to stop well ahead of the crosswalk, while bumpouts shorten the distance pedestrians must be in the road. """ While I agree Eye Contact is important, I think it should not come at the cost of increased driver or pedestrian conative load, but instead in the form of better safety engineering / design. Crosswalks : Take the extreme version of UK's solution. Crosswalks should be either half way along a road segment, or at least half a block from the vehicle intersection. These should include 'bump outs' to disrupt any parking area and LOW, half meter or less tall, shrubs or features should promote HIGH VISIBILITY and Eye Contact between pedestrians and drivers in a dedicated pedestrian / vehicle interaction area. Vehicle Intersections : Should have ZERO interaction with pedestrian features, no pedestrians should cross here. Roundabouts, free inner corner turns, traffic control systems and drivers all interact better in an environment that is less chaotic and more predictable. The optimal engineering safety choice is to remove pedestrians from such danger zones entirely. Yes remove parking within 15 meters (45ft) or better within 2 seconds of vision at road speed. Road Speed : Mark roads at their engineered speed. Do not lie to drivers. Do not intentionally make safety worse by adding distractions and hazardous elements ('traffic calming'). If a road speed IS indicated slower than the conditions appear to permit, time the intersection to intersection speed and post a _suggestion_ to 'lights timed for X speed'. If that's too slow drivers will figure out a more optimal speed within the range of what seems safe.

lotu 1y ago
Marking the road at its engineered speed is ineffective. People overwhelmingly do not use speed limits to decide how fast they drive. They look at how wide and straight the road is and how many things they see. The problem is we built a lot of streets that are engineered to be 50mph roads in residential neighborhoods. People then ignore the 25mph sign and drive 50mph and hit little children playing outside their home. Rebuilding and rerouting the road is impractical, so how do we fix the problem? Empirical evidence shows that by adding "distracting things" people drive slower, and this results in few fatalities. You are thinking of them as "distractions" but counter intuitively it might better to think of them "focus holders". Imagine your job is to sit in an empty room with a single button and at random times, a light turns on and you need to push the button within half a second. If this happens every several seconds or so, this is pretty easy, but if it only happens after an hour or so your mind will be wandering and your reaction time will be shit. Now imagine instead you are given a platforming video game like Mario or Hollow Knight, and every time a certain character appears on screen need to push the Y button. This sounds like something that is easy to do for hours, even if the specific character appears infrequently, it would even be enjoyable. Adding those elements like trees, turns and bumps are the same idea, it ensures the drivers focus is always on the road where it needs to be. Also some people just don't care and race down wide straight roads as fast as they can. The only way to slow these people down is to make it impossible to go extremely fast. I can think of this play ground near my house which is across the street from a school. In orders to stop people speeding down this straight street, the placed large rocks in the middle of the road, so you have to dive this zig zag pattern. I sure this can be somewhat frustrating for drivers but it's now impossible to navigate this road at more than ~20 mph which is what we want. As for moving interactions I think the idea of not having pedestrian crossings at intersections is infeasible. Though it might work if you were building a new city from scratch. When you are walking in a city you are going to cross multiple blocks. Walking ten+ blocks to get somewhere is so normal it’s not something you even think about. Crossing in the middle of the block would at least double and could triple or quadruple the length of the of a walk and city dwellers would simply not do it and cross at intersections. They already universally ignore traffic lights, and aren't going to walk out of their way dozens of times a day. I could imagine a city that was designed around walking and all the shops and homes were on car free streets, with streets behind the houses, like alleyways or underground. That I could see working, but the problems with implementation are obvious.

xnx 1y ago

Did I miss any mention of autonomous driving in this article? Waymo is way more likely to be the cause for reductions in future fatalities than any collective action or behavior change. Waymo vehicles are themselves much safer drivers, calm vehicle traffic overall on the streets they operate, and may reset people's expectations of how safe, efficient, and stress free travel should be.

TulliusCicero 1y ago
It's a bit sad that we were never able to solve this problem by designing safer streets, but you're probably right that self-driving cars will end up being the solution in the states.
- xnx 1y ago
  In the distant future we'll be able to de-design (de-sign?) streets for self-driving cars: no traffic lights, no stop signs, no speed bumps, narrow lanes, fewer lanes, no curbs, no dividers, no street lights, etc.
  - goda90 1y ago
    No pedestrian crossings. No bike lanes. No escape from the noise of thousands of tires going at high speed. No escape from the air pollution of eroding tires and brakes. A vision of that future from a skeptic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0
    - xnx 1y ago
      Certainly some unknowns, but I'm optimistic. > No pedestrian crossings. Everywhere is a pedestrian crossing when you know that every vehicle sees you and will slow/stop if it anticipates you will enter its path. > No bike lanes. I'm an urban bike commuter and would be delighted to share the road with autonomous vehicles instead of human-driven ones. > No escape from the noise of thousands of tires going at high speed. I live 60 ft from a highway and would trade the noise of 1 speeding, honking, revving, modified-exhaust having human driven car for 100 well-maintained speed-limit obeying Waymo's. > No escape from the air pollution of eroding tires and brakes. Gentle starts and stops from a well-maintained (e.g. proper tire inflation) autonomous vehicle will create less of both of those than the average human-driven vehicle. > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0 I like a diversity of viewpoints, and glad there are people advocating for pedestrian and cyclist use of roads, but I find very little I agree with in Not Just Bikes pessimism.

benabbott 1y ago

I generally drive at or below the speed limit. This is to reduce fuel and improve safety. On a multiple lane road, I'm nearly always on the right (slow) lane. Unfortunately, this safety measure is usually torpedoed by other drivers. People (usually driving a 'light truck' (an SUV or pickup)) will drive at a single car length behind me. Even on multi-lane roads. If I had to slam on my brakes, I'd be at risk in my sedan. I absolutely would support wide proliferation of speed cameras. It would be easy, profitable, promote safety, and we could do it today. It would take zero extra policing (in fact, it'd probably reduce workload on police). I acknowledge that you can fight this kicking and screaming with speed enforcement measures—but I think there's two things that are causing people to drive faster: Wide, straight, flat roads that allow no speed reference, and large sealed vehicles that reduces perceived speed. Change these, and I think that will be a great step to reducing "pedestrian fatalities" (or to call it like it is: people getting murdered due to carelessness and impatience).

nradov 1y ago
People who drive below the posted speed limit (road boulders) are a menace. They increase the risk to everyone else as other drivers try to get around them.
- benabbott 1y ago
  Might I direct you to the text on the sign, Speed "Limit"? The ones causing danger are the drivers attempting to pass dangerously, not the person driving slowly. Do cyclists cause danger by using roadways? Or is it the people driving multiple-ton vehicles?
  - potato3732842 1y ago
    If you can't understand the subtle, but still fairly obvious and unmistakeable difference between being a net increase in danger/problem potential without a) breaking the rules b) personally increasing your own financial liability for any bad outcomes you probably ought not to be driving. There's a reason tractors get triangles and oversize stuff gets highly visible signs.

oicu812 1y ago

People over 70 years old in the Netherlands have 2.8 times the fatality rate of drivers under 60 years old. [1] So the road design is not the cure-all that this article suggests since the elderly are still causing fatalities even with the improved road design. It's disappointing that age was not cited as one of the main causes of accidents. Yes, we can and should improve the design of the roads. However, we also need to improve the driving skills of the young and elderly. [1] https://swov.nl/en/fact-sheet/older-road-users https://swov.nl/en/fact-sheet/older-road-users

goda90 1y ago
A great thing about the Netherlands is that their infrastructure makes it much easier for them to take away the licenses of older drivers who no longer can pass driving tests without leaving that person stranded at home.
fbernier 1y ago
Yes, age diminishing driving skills certainly is a huge factor but I wonder how much of this age stat is due to the different generation in which they learned to drive.
- ebiester 1y ago
  I remember driving with my grandparents at that age, and there is a reflex issue. Their reflexes slow and it becomes a lot more difficult for them.
glenstein 1y ago
I'm not sure the article takes the opposite side on this point, and I don't think it it was claiming to be a cure-all.
tobyjsullivan 1y ago
The article you link to specifically calls out that they can't and won't speculate about whether age is a factor in causing car crashes. Elderly people have higher mortality rates in virtually all cases of injury and illness so it shouldn't be surprising this is true when they are involved in a car crash.

semiinfinitely 1y ago

>You are as likely to die driving on an American road as you are driving in Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan not true. I always drive on American roads and I never drive on Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan roads.

sshine 1y ago
So you had accidents 100% of your Kazakh roadtrips.
- Supermancho 1y ago
  Even if you use ponylang to calculate, 0/0 is 0
pc86 1y ago
The probability that I've driven on a Kazakh or Kyrgyzstani road is 0, as is the probability that I've died on an American road. The math checks out.

imglorp 1y ago

About a third of those 42,000 dead are due to DUIs. US has historically been lenient here, resulting in many repeat offenders on the road causing preventable tragedies. Distracted driving is around 3,000/yr, while drowsy drivers around 6,000. If self driving cars do nothing better than on par with alert and sober human drivers, that might cut half of those deaths by itself.

echelon 1y ago
> If self driving cars do nothing better than on par with alert and sober human drivers, that might cut half of those deaths by itself. Self driving probably fixes the fatality rate entirely once most people use self driving modes. Self driving will be the US' economic superpower. We've got so much vehicular infrastructure and it's practically sitting latent waiting for this opportunity. When most of everything transits this way - food, goods, packages, people, instant fulfillment - it'll be one of the biggest unlocks of the century. Anything we lost due to underinvestment in rail will be dwarfed by the returns from self driving.

jwilber 1y ago

Very surprising that this article does not mention trucks, which in America have become larger, more common, and an ever-growing contribution to the rising number of traffic fatalities. “ Pickups also tend to be more dangerous in collisions between differently sized vehicles — car drivers are 2.5 times more likely to die when colliding with a pickup as compared to another car” [0] Pickup trucks’ weight increased by 32% between 1990 and 2021 [1] As a bonus laughable fact, the first generation of F-150s was 36% cab and 64% bed by length. By 2021, the ratio flipped to 63% cab and 37% bed. So much for the “rugged” weekend warriors. 0: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15389588.2019.1632442 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15389588.2019.1... 1: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02760-8#ref-CR1 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02760-8#ref-CR1

ourmandave 1y ago
It used to be about hauling 8' plywood or something. Saw a super duty F-350 extended cab yesterday and I'm not sure the bed was 4'. Suppose it could take a gooseneck hitch for a giant camper trailer.

red_admiral 1y ago

> the [post pandemic] increase in vehicle occupant deaths appears to be heavily weighted towards people who weren't wearing seatbelts Why would you do this? (See also: cycling without a helmet.)

procaryote 1y ago
saves on healthcare costs?
gs17 1y ago
Some people really, really, hate being told what to do, especially when it's a (in their opinion) significant inconvenience to prevent some (also in their opinion) very unlikely hazard. It's baffling to me too, especially cyclists without helmets. Part of why I don't cycle is because, yes, helmets are annoying, but it's too dangerous to do it without a helmet.
- amrocha 1y ago
  It’s really not that dangerous. If you’re a safe rider, riding in relatively safe environments, cycling is about as dangerous as jogging. And yet you never see anyone jogging with a helmet. There was a recent video about this that summarized my thoughts on helmets https://youtu.be/g1HgInvm-gY https://youtu.be/g1HgInvm-gY
  - 0xffff2 1y ago
    I can't jog at 20mph. Helmets aren't about the likelihood of an accident, rather they're about the severity of an accident regardless of likelihood.
    - amrocha 1y ago
      I didn’t say jogging was faster than cycling, I said it’s about as dangerous. Which is what the data from the study cited in the video shows. So i’m not sure why you’re bringing up speed.

qingcharles 1y ago

[flagged]

ihaveajob 1y ago
In bike-friendly places like Amsterdam and Copenhagen, it's super rare to see a helmet. A bike helmet offers reasonable protection in a solo fall, but it has nearly cosmetic effect if you're hit by a car. But one thing you don't see in those places is huge, flat-front trucks with poor visibility and worse pedestrian impact safety. Until the US mandates pedestrian safety measures, we won't see a reversal in this trend. Edit: I mostly bike places here in California, and I do wear a helmet 99% of the time, but I don't judge those who choose not to, because the biggest factor in bike safety is having other bikes on the road.
- bagels 1y ago
  "nearly cosmetic effect" Do you have studies to back this up? I did a quick search, and the first study I turned up didn't agree with you.
- nickff 1y ago
  I was hit by a car while riding my bike, the accident was significant enough to write-off a brand-new bike (I was riding it home from the store), and I was glad to have been wearing a helmet. I would like to know why you think helmets have only a cosmetic effect.
- giantg2 1y ago
  Just for context of this thread, about half of all pedestrian deaths involve alcohol or drugs as well.
- clan 1y ago
  Super rare is untrue. Rare would even be a stretch. I live in Copenhagen and use a helmet. I would claim it is common to use a helmet. Not everyone - but many do. And it is not even mandatory. Helmet usage is actually increasing: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022437523001329 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00224... We recommend it for tourists as well. Though it is rare with helmets for that group who might need it the most: https://www.visitcopenhagen.com/sites/visitcopenhagen.com/files/2024-07/How%20to%20cycle%20in%20Denmark.pdf https://www.visitcopenhagen.com/sites/visitcopenhagen.com/fi... Helmets are not compulsory and interest groups works to keep it that way: https://www.cyklistforbundet.dk/english/use-of-helmet https://www.cyklistforbundet.dk/english/use-of-helmet But less scary F150s and good bike infrastructure, yes.

delichon 1y ago

It would be sub-optimal to plan large scale infrastructure improvements without considering the current slope of the S curve in autonomous driving progress. In just a few years we may be choosing fewer fatalities by phasing out steering wheels. Whatever changes the roads and environment need will shift a lot over the next couple of decades.

tallowen 1y ago
I think this is great to think about however I think many of the same lessons may still apply and can and should be applied now in a forward looking way: From the article: > Whereas the Netherlands clearly differentiates roads and streets — as do Germany, Spain, and France — the US is known for having “stroads,” roads where cars reach high speeds yet must also avoid drivers entering from adjacent businesses and homes. The majority of fatal crashes in American cities happen on these “stroads,” and impact pedestrians and cyclists in particular. I think this will be _more_ important with autonomous driving. We've developed a built environment where car through traffic and destinations are co-mingled which leaves very little room for people to actually experience their destinations when they get out of their vehicles. Perhaps I'm wrong, but my expectation is that the problem of "stroads" will only become more apparent if less focus is placed on getting from point A to B and more on where a person is trying to go which is my current long term expectations of the impacts of autonomous vehicles.
vladms 1y ago
For me the last 20 years showed the opposite. You should plan infrastructure considering current tech and adjust if required. There were so many promises not fulfilled and surprises where there were no promises that I don't see the point planning based on assumptions. I lived in the Netherlands and infrastructure was great now and I am sure it will be great in 10 years, because they constantly think on how to improve given the situation. It will not be perfect in 10 years (and neither is now) but that's just life.
goda90 1y ago
Some argue that autonomous driving will enable even worse infrastructure choices if we don't plan ahead. The Youtuber Not Just Bikes, for example, did a video called "How Self-Driving Cars Will Destroy Cities (and what to do about it)"[0]. If we start focusing on making alternatives to cars the most attractive options now, they can still be the most attractive(and efficient and safe) options even with self-driving cars everywhere. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0

giantg2 1y ago

Saying that it's a choice and then proposing thete is only one correct choice is deceptive. I could say that using cars is a choice too.

potato3732842 1y ago
Everything can be a choice by that rhetorical framing. It's just a dumb language game, one that the public is both weary of and pretty keen at sniffing out at this point.

ChicagoDave 1y ago

At this point the world should be building or modernizing cities that eliminate self-driven vehicles, reset distinctly separate paths for auto-driven vehicles, bicycles, and pedestrians. This would dramatically reduce injuries, fuel consumption, and air pollution. It would also reclaim concrete spaces for nature.

goda90 1y ago
Even autonomous vehicles pale in comparison to good mass transit, so if we're eliminating human-driven vehicles, might as well replace them mostly with mass transit instead.
- ChicagoDave 1y ago
  Mass transit is a byproduct of large cities. I’d argue that a modern urban plan would by smaller cities with neighborhoods containing every need.
  - goda90 1y ago
    Small cities can support mass transit. Street cars and buses can do an excellent job when you don't have the scale for a subway system. Yes neighborhoods should contain every need, but when you plan neighborhoods to revolve around cars, then there's less space for those needs. If people can't safely and comfortably walk from their home to a place of business, then they'll either take mass transit, or they'll drive. If they drive, then there needs to be more road and parking space to support them. And it starts becoming an unsustainable rat-race where everything ends up spread out with a bunch of pavement in-between, and you can only get places if you have a car.
    - ChicagoDave 1y ago
      Remove the idea of "car" and think of auto-driven cubes with their own pathways within a city. Similar to subways, but can be above ground with covering. You don't need parking, streets, traffic signals, and a whole host of infrastructure is eradicated. You go by behavior: - I need to go to library, store (walk or bike) - I need to go a business or house (cube it) - I need to leave the city for long-distance travel (now we connect to mass-transit)

engine_y 1y ago

The article starts with statistics. Quoting deaths / person. Is this the right metric? Since the US is huge and sprawling - it'd probably be better to use Death / km driven. I checked this: https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/road-accidents.html?oecdcontrol-00b22b2429-var3=2022 https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/road-accidents.html?... Which paints a very different picture than what's stated in the article.

ajuc 1y ago
Living in suburbs instead of in dense walkable cities is a choice as well.
- paddy_m 1y ago
  Also making it illegal to build dense walkable cities like we used to is the choice that causes many people to live in the suburbs. It isn't just a preference for suburban style living. It is more efficient to live in cities and should be less expensive, but because we have made building housing effectively illegal, city real estate is incredibly expensive.
paddy_m 1y ago
miles driven/person is also a choice that the US has made. Even in sprawling suburbia, most trips a person takes are under 3 miles, eminently bikeable, but the bike infrastructure and built environment sucks for that. So people drive, from parking lot to parking lot. The fact that the US is huge doesn't mean that the majority of miles driven are on long trips.
- kube-system 1y ago
  > Even in sprawling suburbia, most trips a person takes are under 3 miles That is surprising to me. Is that factoring in trips to the neighbors or to the mailbox or something? Because the average US driver drives over 39 miles per day.
  - paddy_m 1y ago

stellalo 1y ago

> At 12.8 deaths per 100,000 people, it is double that of Greece, triple that of Austria, and six times more than Japan. Should this not be measured in terms of fatal accidents every million of km driven? To normalize by how much people drive on average, and by the average vehicle occupancy. (Not saying this is easy.)

bobbylarrybobby 1y ago
No, because it is not “natural” to have to drive long distances — this was a deliberate choice by the US. The goal is not to get people to drive long distances and then make sure they don't start dying too much more than if they had walked instead. Rather, by removing the need to drive, other countries have reduced their traffic fatalities per capita, which was the goal all along.
mrighele 1y ago
If you build your infrastructure in a way that people have to drive much more to do the same, should you really discount this difference ? I rarely drive the car because I can reach by walk any place required by my daily necessities... of course I don't risk a fatal accident as much as somebody that drives daily for work and has to take the car for any kind of shopping. Put in another way: if are considering ways to lower traffic fatalities, lowering the time that people need to spend in their car is one way to do it.
- kube-system 1y ago
  If someone's house is 20+ miles from their office, that might be an urban planning issue, but it isn't a road design issue.
- DangitBobby 1y ago
  The article is trying to say Americans are dying more than they have to because we don't invest in safe infrastructure. With that framing, a solution would be to invest in safer infrastructure. But if it turns out we did the wrong thing because we used the wrong metric and spent a bunch of money on it, it would be a gigantic waste. If the reason is because we drive more than other countries, that's what we should try to address.

zamalek 1y ago

Another demonstration of positive-sum: > It does so by expanding pedestrian areas via curb extensions or bumpouts, narrowing crosswalks, and removing parking within 20-25 feet of an intersection. [...] This not only slows traffic, but permits turning cars fuller visibility of the crosswalk. Classical zero-sum thinking would suggest that drivers loose value to pedestrians, with more pavement and less road. However, you don't even have to think about pedestrians to understand why everyone benefits from this: in some American cities (I'm looking at you, Seattle) you have to edge absurdly far into intersections to see perpendicular. Broadening sidewalks improves driver-driver visibility too.

spiffytech 1y ago

I had a professor who said that if we really cared about traffic fatalities, we could end them overnight. Just outlaw seatbelts and airbags, then attach a large steel spike to the center of every steering wheel. Everyone would drive like old ladies, and would only drive when truly necessary. Society has chosen traffic fatalities because at a certain level we've decided that we're okay killing N people if we get XYZ outcome. I think about that a lot.

tim333 1y ago
I think you would find it wasn't a very practical solution, hence it's lack of implementation. Making everyone use something like Waymos might work though.

deleted 1y ago

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