5 ms·

In the US, 11 deaths per billion miles driven (or about 47k per year) is currently seen as an OK cost. More than twice as much per mile as places like Sweden a

In the US, 11 deaths per billion miles driven (or about 47k per year) is currently seen as an OK cost. More than twice as much per mile as places like Sweden and Switzerland, and still substantially more than places like Canada, Australia or Germany (all three in the 6-8 deaths per billion miles range). So it's not like there isn't room to improve. The effort to do so just isn't seen as worth the cost at the societal or government level Turning that into a monetary cost would change the ethics slightly, but it wouldn't be a monumental shift

JumpCrisscross 6mo ago
> it's not like there isn't room to improve Losing one's license means destitution for many Americans. That places practical limits on enforcement compared with less car-oriented countries.
- HDThoreaun 6mo ago
  Tons of options other than removing the ability to drive. More stringent enforcement, higher fines.
- embedding-shape 6mo ago
  > Losing one's license means destitution for many Americans. That'd be the same for a Swede who lives in the middle of nowhere too. Although I'm sure both groups, if they'd loose their license, would continue driving anyways.
  - pixel_popping 6mo ago
    Clearly, a bit weird to assume that no license would automatically mean that the driver stops driving, that's not true at all.
  - danaris 6mo ago
    ...But what percentage of Swedes is that? vs the vast majority of working-class Americans. Remember, outside of its few biggest and wealthiest cities, the US just does not have decent, reliable public transport, and most places don't have any.
    - retired 6mo ago
      And how many Americans live in places without any public transport? As a European I spend some time in LA and Las Vegas and while not optimal I could get everywhere without a car. I could even do a day-trip to Bakersfield by bus.
      - jeromegv 6mo ago
        Your anecdata to this one time you took a trip to California doesn’t help. You can just look at % of urban residents that use transit, which is lower in US than any western country. Clearly transit isn’t built or available in a sufficient way to majority of people
- OptionOfT 6mo ago
  I'm from Belgium, and even with public transportation, there are a large group of people dependent on their driver's license. But if you ask someone if they'd drive without insurance, or without driver's license they look at you like you've asked them to do the impossible. Whereas in the US no-one bats an eye when that happens. Half the time the cops just issue a ticket, and don't even tow the car. And now people who obey the law need to take out extra insurance for under/uninsured motorists.
  - JumpCrisscross 6mo ago
    > if you ask someone if they'd drive without insurance, or without driver's license they look at you like you've asked them to do the impossible To wit: Europe's 1.8% (and Belgium's 0.7%) uninsured-driver rates are a fraction of America's 15% [1][2]. [1] https://www.mibi.ie/ireland-may-have-highest-level-of-uninsured-in-eu/ https://www.mibi.ie/ireland-may-have-highest-level-of-uninsu... [2] https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-uninsured-motorists https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-uninsure...
    - deleted 6mo ago
      [deleted]
    - retired 6mo ago
      In countries like The Netherlands it is impossible to drive around uninsured. So that is probably why the number is so low.
      - JumpCrisscross 6mo ago
        > it is impossible to drive around uninsured How?
        retired 6mo ago
        Because fines are automatic. If you register a vehicle to your name and don't insure it within 28 days you get a €500 fine. The government can fine you up to three times a year for a total of €1500. And that is if you actually pay the fines. If you do not pay the fines and let the fees stack up, you are looking at around €4500 per year. And if you are caught driving uninsured that is a €700 fine on top of all that. With many police cars now having ANPR systems it just isn't possible to drive around uninsured without receiving fines that cost way more than just getting insurance.
scoofy 6mo ago
The issue here is that a lot of the concerns about AV's are orthogonal to the standard metrics of concern. I'm a strong transit alternatives advocate, but even I recognize that a firetruck or ambulance being blocked by an AV has the potential to cause an outsized amount of death and destruction, because deaths aren't always linear and a fire that is able to get out of control can do catastrophic damage compared to a single out of control vehicle. I'm genuinely stunned that AV's do not have the ability to be "commandeered" by Police/Fire/EMS in a pinch, and I'm honestly surprised that regular citizens can't just hit a red button that signal "this is seriously an emergency." These are fairly simple steps to mitigate the tail risk of AV's but the platforms aren't going to prioritize that if there are no incentives.
- hombre_fatal 6mo ago
  We already accept that it’s fine for human drivers to block emergency services and we generally refuse to build, say, bus and bike lines that can be used by emergency services. So the uproar over AV’s blocking emergency vehicles seems incredibly manufactured or inconsistent, much like the hoopla over AI and water. e.g. You can take anyone complaining about this and you’ll find they didn’t care about emergency vehicles or water until just now regarding one thing. I’d like to see some consistency.
  - scoofy 6mo ago
    The difference is blocking emergency vehicles in predictable, high traffic areas that can be intentionally avoided vs randomly blocking an entire road because you couldn’t handle a weird event. People actually think hard about these problems. The entire point of my post is that it is trivial to mitigate. I was in the middle of the SF blackout, and witnessed the Waymos stopped at lights and actually commended Waymo for handling the emergency so well. At the same time, I’ve seen many ambulances get blocked just seconds away from the hospital because of Waymos unable to navigate complex intersections like oak/fell and stanyan.
- Natsu 6mo ago
  > I'm genuinely stunned that AV's do not have the ability to be "commandeered" by Police/Fire/EMS in a pinch, and I'm honestly surprised that regular citizens can't just hit a red button that signal "this is seriously an emergency." The passenger of a Waymo can, but not anyone outside it. There's a very prominent "call for help" button on the screen when you get inside.
retired 6mo ago
Don't forget to add rail incidents to that metric. I live in Spain, this year we had 4 derailments for a total of 48 deaths and 195 injured. The USA has had 0 passengers killed or injured from train accidents this year. Portugal had 15 death after a tram derailment. In Amsterdam, the tram is more dangerous than the car. Also Germany is very high (for European standards) because of the Autobahn. They can save around 140 lives a year by having a limit on the Autobahn but the car lobby in Germany is very strong. Those 140 lives are seen as an OK cost just to go vroom on the Autobahn.
- lancebeet 6mo ago
  Hm, it's only something like 10% of German traffic fatalities that occur on the autobahn. And according to wikipedia, Germany doesn't rank high in terms of traffic fatalities, even by European standards. France has a similar number of highway deaths. I'm personally not a fan of the autobahn and especially not the unrestricted speed. It seems obvious that it should cause lots of fatalities, but the evidence for it just doesn't seem to be there.
  - AlecSchueler 6mo ago
    > It seems obvious that it should cause lots of fatalities That's not obvious at all to me, what would the reasoning be?
    - lancebeet 6mo ago
      Maybe I expressed myself poorly. Generally, higher speed is associated with higher fatality rates, all else being equal. So, one would assume a highway without speed limits would cause lots of fatalities. Most people would probably be surprised to learn that this is not the case.
      - watwut 6mo ago
        If there is anything remotely potentially dangerous, unlimited speed ends and the road gets well defined and enforced speed limit. If the traffic on that segment of the road gets high, they put in speed limit sign too. Moreover, there is a question of liability for the insurance purpose. If you go above 130, you are assumed to be caused of the accident. So, most Germans go roughly 130 in those segments anyway.
biophysboy 6mo ago
Coming from a bio background, I’ve always been confused why auto fatality stats are normalized per miles driven. Epidemiological metrics like incidence or prevalence seem like they would work fine? Town A would be “safer” than town B if people’s commutes are 20% shorter, even if accidents occur w same frequency
- _vertigo 6mo ago
  What are some other better ways to normalize?
  - cozzyd 6mo ago
    Per trip?
  - biophysboy 6mo ago
    Honestly, just per 1M person per year. If this normal incidence went up while the exposure incidence rate went down over 20 years, I'd wanna know.
  - gsnedders 6mo ago
    Other common approaches: 1. Per capita 2. Per registered vehicle 3. Per trip All of these have upsides and downsides (as does “per vehicle km”), and all will paint different pictures with different distortions.
- andrepd 6mo ago
  Because it yields a simple corollary that to make travelling safer you can reduce the number of miles driven. Mostly by giving people viable alternatives to driving, be it long-distance rail or bike lanes to move around quicker and safer in the city.
- Aloisius 6mo ago
  Pretty sure I've seen exposure-adjusted incidence rates used in clinical trials. Miles is simply a proxy for exposure. Given risk here does vary by exposure time and trip length varies so much, it seems reasonable to use - at least in combination with crude rates.
hluska 6mo ago
Doesn’t that 11 per billion statistic include commercial drivers as well? And doesn’t the United States have by far the largest percentage of commercial miles driven of any developed nation? There’s a far cheaper solution available. Log books.
themafia 6mo ago
> 11 deaths per billion miles driven You should calculate how many are "single vehicle accidents" and how many are "multiple vehicle accidents." In the US the majority are single vehicle. > seen as an OK cost. You cannot build a system that stops every stupid person from doing something stupid without introducing absolute tyranny.
- cindyllm 6mo ago
  [dead]
Aurornis 6mo ago
> So it's not like there isn't room to improve. The effort to do so just isn't seen as worth the cost at the societal or government level That effort being what, exactly? Road fatalities per mile driven don’t translate cleanly from country to country because the type of roads and even types of deaths (single vehicle, multi vehicle) are different. We could set the speed limit at 25mph everywhere and force all vehicles to not exceed that limit and that would make the number go down, but the cost would be extreme for everyone. So what, exactly, are the solutions you are proposing?
- testing22321 6mo ago
  > That effort being what, exactly? Off the top of my head you could do any of these or a combination. - much stricter training and testing to get a license - vehicles where the safety of others is considered - ban stupid dangerous cars (my wife doesn’t stand as tall as an F350, let alone a kid - harsher penalties for drunk driving (see Germany) - harsher penalties for all kinds of dangerous driving None of these are hard to implement, the US just lacks the will.

JumpCrisscross 6mo ago

> it's not like there isn't room to improve Losing one's license means destitution for many Americans. That places practical limits on enforcement compared with less car-oriented countries.

HDThoreaun 6mo ago
Tons of options other than removing the ability to drive. More stringent enforcement, higher fines.
embedding-shape 6mo ago
> Losing one's license means destitution for many Americans. That'd be the same for a Swede who lives in the middle of nowhere too. Although I'm sure both groups, if they'd loose their license, would continue driving anyways.
- pixel_popping 6mo ago
  Clearly, a bit weird to assume that no license would automatically mean that the driver stops driving, that's not true at all.
- danaris 6mo ago
  ...But what percentage of Swedes is that? vs the vast majority of working-class Americans. Remember, outside of its few biggest and wealthiest cities, the US just does not have decent, reliable public transport, and most places don't have any.
  - retired 6mo ago
    And how many Americans live in places without any public transport? As a European I spend some time in LA and Las Vegas and while not optimal I could get everywhere without a car. I could even do a day-trip to Bakersfield by bus.
    - jeromegv 6mo ago
      Your anecdata to this one time you took a trip to California doesn’t help. You can just look at % of urban residents that use transit, which is lower in US than any western country. Clearly transit isn’t built or available in a sufficient way to majority of people
OptionOfT 6mo ago
I'm from Belgium, and even with public transportation, there are a large group of people dependent on their driver's license. But if you ask someone if they'd drive without insurance, or without driver's license they look at you like you've asked them to do the impossible. Whereas in the US no-one bats an eye when that happens. Half the time the cops just issue a ticket, and don't even tow the car. And now people who obey the law need to take out extra insurance for under/uninsured motorists.
- JumpCrisscross 6mo ago
  > if you ask someone if they'd drive without insurance, or without driver's license they look at you like you've asked them to do the impossible To wit: Europe's 1.8% (and Belgium's 0.7%) uninsured-driver rates are a fraction of America's 15% [1][2]. [1] https://www.mibi.ie/ireland-may-have-highest-level-of-uninsured-in-eu/ https://www.mibi.ie/ireland-may-have-highest-level-of-uninsu... [2] https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-uninsured-motorists https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-uninsure...
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
  - retired 6mo ago
    In countries like The Netherlands it is impossible to drive around uninsured. So that is probably why the number is so low.
    - JumpCrisscross 6mo ago
      > it is impossible to drive around uninsured How?
      - retired 6mo ago
        Because fines are automatic. If you register a vehicle to your name and don't insure it within 28 days you get a €500 fine. The government can fine you up to three times a year for a total of €1500. And that is if you actually pay the fines. If you do not pay the fines and let the fees stack up, you are looking at around €4500 per year. And if you are caught driving uninsured that is a €700 fine on top of all that. With many police cars now having ANPR systems it just isn't possible to drive around uninsured without receiving fines that cost way more than just getting insurance.

scoofy 6mo ago

The issue here is that a lot of the concerns about AV's are orthogonal to the standard metrics of concern. I'm a strong transit alternatives advocate, but even I recognize that a firetruck or ambulance being blocked by an AV has the potential to cause an outsized amount of death and destruction, because deaths aren't always linear and a fire that is able to get out of control can do catastrophic damage compared to a single out of control vehicle. I'm genuinely stunned that AV's do not have the ability to be "commandeered" by Police/Fire/EMS in a pinch, and I'm honestly surprised that regular citizens can't just hit a red button that signal "this is seriously an emergency." These are fairly simple steps to mitigate the tail risk of AV's but the platforms aren't going to prioritize that if there are no incentives.

hombre_fatal 6mo ago
We already accept that it’s fine for human drivers to block emergency services and we generally refuse to build, say, bus and bike lines that can be used by emergency services. So the uproar over AV’s blocking emergency vehicles seems incredibly manufactured or inconsistent, much like the hoopla over AI and water. e.g. You can take anyone complaining about this and you’ll find they didn’t care about emergency vehicles or water until just now regarding one thing. I’d like to see some consistency.
- scoofy 6mo ago
  The difference is blocking emergency vehicles in predictable, high traffic areas that can be intentionally avoided vs randomly blocking an entire road because you couldn’t handle a weird event. People actually think hard about these problems. The entire point of my post is that it is trivial to mitigate. I was in the middle of the SF blackout, and witnessed the Waymos stopped at lights and actually commended Waymo for handling the emergency so well. At the same time, I’ve seen many ambulances get blocked just seconds away from the hospital because of Waymos unable to navigate complex intersections like oak/fell and stanyan.
Natsu 6mo ago
> I'm genuinely stunned that AV's do not have the ability to be "commandeered" by Police/Fire/EMS in a pinch, and I'm honestly surprised that regular citizens can't just hit a red button that signal "this is seriously an emergency." The passenger of a Waymo can, but not anyone outside it. There's a very prominent "call for help" button on the screen when you get inside.

retired 6mo ago

Don't forget to add rail incidents to that metric. I live in Spain, this year we had 4 derailments for a total of 48 deaths and 195 injured. The USA has had 0 passengers killed or injured from train accidents this year. Portugal had 15 death after a tram derailment. In Amsterdam, the tram is more dangerous than the car. Also Germany is very high (for European standards) because of the Autobahn. They can save around 140 lives a year by having a limit on the Autobahn but the car lobby in Germany is very strong. Those 140 lives are seen as an OK cost just to go vroom on the Autobahn.

lancebeet 6mo ago
Hm, it's only something like 10% of German traffic fatalities that occur on the autobahn. And according to wikipedia, Germany doesn't rank high in terms of traffic fatalities, even by European standards. France has a similar number of highway deaths. I'm personally not a fan of the autobahn and especially not the unrestricted speed. It seems obvious that it should cause lots of fatalities, but the evidence for it just doesn't seem to be there.
- AlecSchueler 6mo ago
  > It seems obvious that it should cause lots of fatalities That's not obvious at all to me, what would the reasoning be?
  - lancebeet 6mo ago
    Maybe I expressed myself poorly. Generally, higher speed is associated with higher fatality rates, all else being equal. So, one would assume a highway without speed limits would cause lots of fatalities. Most people would probably be surprised to learn that this is not the case.
    - watwut 6mo ago
      If there is anything remotely potentially dangerous, unlimited speed ends and the road gets well defined and enforced speed limit. If the traffic on that segment of the road gets high, they put in speed limit sign too. Moreover, there is a question of liability for the insurance purpose. If you go above 130, you are assumed to be caused of the accident. So, most Germans go roughly 130 in those segments anyway.

biophysboy 6mo ago

Coming from a bio background, I’ve always been confused why auto fatality stats are normalized per miles driven. Epidemiological metrics like incidence or prevalence seem like they would work fine? Town A would be “safer” than town B if people’s commutes are 20% shorter, even if accidents occur w same frequency

_vertigo 6mo ago
What are some other better ways to normalize?
- cozzyd 6mo ago
  Per trip?
- biophysboy 6mo ago
  Honestly, just per 1M person per year. If this normal incidence went up while the exposure incidence rate went down over 20 years, I'd wanna know.
- gsnedders 6mo ago
  Other common approaches: 1. Per capita 2. Per registered vehicle 3. Per trip All of these have upsides and downsides (as does “per vehicle km”), and all will paint different pictures with different distortions.
andrepd 6mo ago
Because it yields a simple corollary that to make travelling safer you can reduce the number of miles driven. Mostly by giving people viable alternatives to driving, be it long-distance rail or bike lanes to move around quicker and safer in the city.
Aloisius 6mo ago
Pretty sure I've seen exposure-adjusted incidence rates used in clinical trials. Miles is simply a proxy for exposure. Given risk here does vary by exposure time and trip length varies so much, it seems reasonable to use - at least in combination with crude rates.

hluska 6mo ago

Doesn’t that 11 per billion statistic include commercial drivers as well? And doesn’t the United States have by far the largest percentage of commercial miles driven of any developed nation? There’s a far cheaper solution available. Log books.

themafia 6mo ago

> 11 deaths per billion miles driven You should calculate how many are "single vehicle accidents" and how many are "multiple vehicle accidents." In the US the majority are single vehicle. > seen as an OK cost. You cannot build a system that stops every stupid person from doing something stupid without introducing absolute tyranny.

cindyllm 6mo ago
[dead]

Aurornis 6mo ago

> So it's not like there isn't room to improve. The effort to do so just isn't seen as worth the cost at the societal or government level That effort being what, exactly? Road fatalities per mile driven don’t translate cleanly from country to country because the type of roads and even types of deaths (single vehicle, multi vehicle) are different. We could set the speed limit at 25mph everywhere and force all vehicles to not exceed that limit and that would make the number go down, but the cost would be extreme for everyone. So what, exactly, are the solutions you are proposing?

testing22321 6mo ago
> That effort being what, exactly? Off the top of my head you could do any of these or a combination. - much stricter training and testing to get a license - vehicles where the safety of others is considered - ban stupid dangerous cars (my wife doesn’t stand as tall as an F350, let alone a kid - harsher penalties for drunk driving (see Germany) - harsher penalties for all kinds of dangerous driving None of these are hard to implement, the US just lacks the will.