Biggest Spike in Traffic Deaths in 50 Years? Blame Apps

The Snapchat was taken by the passenger. They were even hinting at racing being a factor. It seems like a bad example all around. I am sure apps contribute to some road fatalities but this was clearly a case of a driver crashing because they were going 115 miles a fucking hour on a populated road.

Autonomous cars are around the corner and it's the only way to truly make a leap forward in terms of traffic safety.

And people can spend even more time on their apps while commuting, uninterrupted by this soon-to-be-forgotten distraction called "manual driving".

Incidentally wrote a blog about this today: https://medium.com/self-driving-cars/safer-roads-and-cleaner...

I see so many people looking down now at their phones while driving. I'm not sure why it's acceptable now, but it's commonplace. I counted at least 10 drivers on my 12 minute commute yesterday. The scariest one was someone coming in the opposite direction who didn't look up in the 5 seconds I was driving past him. It would have been easy for him to drift into a head on collision.

And even if we do it's hard to go from circumstantial to causal

But as a driver, I can (un)happily attest that I am distracted from the road if trying to do anything non trivial with my podcast app (the only thing I will let myself use)

Having physical on steering wheel buttons will reduce this but not end it.

Perhaps we just ban radios, phones etc as a precaution.

(Ok actually we can do an experiment - force 50% of drivers to never use a phone or similar and 50% donwhat they like. See who's dead after six months)

I've always thought it was irresponsible that snapchat has a camera mode that overlays your current speed on the picture. What else is it going to be used for? Showing how fast your bus is travelling?

So and uptick could actually mean quite a spike if you normalize.

I cannot count on my drive to work the number of times I see people looking at their phones. The head down move which is all to obvious to the arm out towards the driver seat to the blatant on top of the steering wheel. I used to think it was bad they were using the phones while driving, but that isn't near as bad as what goes on today.

There is enough tech in smart phones to know when they are in modern cars and definitely to know they are moving. If anything they could blank the screen and with full connectivity of Apple and Google play type technologies they easily can tell if the car is operating. I know, but what about passengers. Well what about safety.

Distracted driving is as dangerous if not more than impaired driving. At least the impaired driver is making an effort at driving

"Smartphone usage increase while driving has caused more accidents" is a nice narrative that totally _makes sense_, but unfortunately only becomes newsworthy if there is evidence that the reporter can find-- perhaps from highway patrols and police officers, mobile data usage stats, or I suppose anecdotally from someone who studies this stuff.

But sometimes that's not available, or it is and goes against the original narrative. At that point the reporter can either choose to tell their editor that there is no story, or go out seeking confirmation of the original narrative.

Best comment I've seen in a long while.

It seems like Mark R. Rosekind, head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, is being quoted and is among those experts. Then it goes on to cite a couple cases and claim that the Department of Transportation and the National Safety Council are also worried. I mean really the citations keep going so I don't get your argument

"going 115 mph" on Snapchat. Isn't the mere fact that someone would feel compelled to chat at 115 mph enough? I remember my younger days when I edged closed to that number going from NYC to Troy on 95 and even adjusting the tune or lighting a cig was a very deliberate operation.

If you are texting at that speed, some part of your rational mind has been short circuited.

This is a huge issue. I'm fortunate that my car's infotainment system is controlled by buttons & knobs; I worry about folks in e.g. Teslas who are forced to take their eyes off the road.

So what do I do, give him a bad rating? No, because this person probably needed the money, and a rating under 4.5 gets you shitcanned in an already rigged system.

Quite the revolution indeed.

I always joke on a run it's normal to almost be hit by cars multiple time and typically it is by the same Uber driver. Just last night I am running thru a crosswalk (w/signal) and a car makes a left into the crosswalk almost hitting the first time, this street has no sidewalk so I am running behind the Uber driver who comes to a stop in the middle of the road for a good 45 seconds, as I proceed to catch up to the stopped car and pass it begins to do an unsignaled 3 point turn almost hitting me the 2nd time (this is when I see a phone in the drivers face), and for good measure the driver makes sure to nearly hit me reversing to clear the turn.

I have noticed some drivers have a glowing U on the dash but ride sharing drivers should be forced to have those old school pizza delivery light on the roof the they can be avoided, especially when they come to a full stop in the middle of traffic.

Drivers are forced to pay attention to their phone and try to figure out if they want to accept the ride, all while driving. It's incredibly distracting and they never have enough time to pull over and safely accept the request.

This puts the driver as well as everyone else on the road at risk for no reason other than some arbitrary response time for ride requests.

I guess it would be expensive, probably too expensive for Uber drivers. Maybe it could still be used in luxury vehicles while full autonomous operation is in the works.

Kind of. There are different studies showing various kinds of impact. For example: http://content.iospress.com/articles/occupational-ergonomics... "Music seems to alleviate driver stress and mild aggression while at times facilitating performance. However, during other conditions of music, driving performance is impaired."

My own experience is that without music or a podcast in the background I get tired much more quickly. (as in, can do 3h drive without getting exhausted -vs- 1-2h) Because if only thing you have is the engine noise and road ahead, that's the only thing you can focus on, and things really don't change that often. (if your mind doesn't start to wonder / phase out in those conditions - great; mine does) It also helps in the evening a lot. If the whole world is just a cone of light 50m ahead, my mind starts to wonder, or just get sleepy really quickly. Having something unrelated that keeps you mildly interested, but not taking attention seems like a good solution.

There is a wide variance in driving difficulty throughout the day, even on the same stretch of road, and varying with the amount and nature of traffic, the sun in your eyes, wind, the weather. And as you say, driver assist and safety systems like widespread adaptive cruise control, electronic stability control, blind spot warning, emergency brake assist, and curtain airbags encourage a style of driving that's 'not truly defensive' at best, oblivious at worst. Because why not go the speed limit if cars are so safe and they've got your back?

This isn't misplaced nostalgia for the days when driving was more dangerous, but I do believe as cars get safer, situational awareness worsens and riskier behaviors are less likely to result in serious accidents -- so some drivers continue to take more risks.

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I would blow my brains out if I didnt have my smartphone to distract me. When you' re driving, everything can be a distraction depending on the ability of the driver. Billboards, eating, applying makeup, smoking, changing the radio and 100's of other different things all can do that. Why pass a smartphones ban, especially since were moving towards a world where most people would get lost driving to their grocery store without gps? It's just an easy, kneejerk response and doesnt solve the real issue.

We have way too low a threshold for who counts as a licensed driver. People who can't parallel park, never use their signals, people who get caught in intersections at a red light, dont look before merging or changing lanes, changing 4 lanes at once to make the exit, elderly people who get their license auto-renewed, etc. The hard truth is that there are far too many people on the road in 2 ton missiles who shouldn't have a license in the first place. One driving test for 10 minutes is not a sufficient way to license a driver.

Off-topic: I'm also amazed at how many people are clamoring for personal driving to be banned once self-driving cars hit the road. Granted, it does solve a lot of the issues I raised above but, if you want to be alpha testers for a closed source product written by software engineers in the auto industry, go right ahead. This is an industry where a company lied about the emissions of their products for years. Since cars can be on the roads for 20+ years, they had to know eventually they would be caught, but they didnt care. No one is in jail and the threat of a fine wasnt a deterrant. And now people implictly trust them with a new technology?

Im going to wait on owning one until an auto company open sources their code and there has been enough time to examine it thoroughly. In short, bring on the self-driving cars but do not make them mandatory. Just make licensing much more strict.

So I guess the title makes sense, but I think it's extremely misleading.

We just sort of... do things, and it's very difficult to map the relationship between an object and its impact on how much time we spend interacting with it

I've always used the toilet breaks to read actual books or newspapers (except at work, where it would look funny carrying a book with me to the toilet), and I hope I'm not the only one still doing that. Otherwise you make very good points, never thought about it that way.

'I'm sorry, I scheduled this meeting so that we could have a conversation. Let's reschedule for when your email-checking schedule is clear.'

Better late than never, I guess.

Nice comfort I'm sure as you lie in your casket.

Both purport situational awareness" to have vastly different consequences and effects.