One of the reasons why the Renault Kwid is $4000 is because, well, it uses cheap materials, and with that comes a very bad safety rating. This is enabled by India's nearly non-existent car safety regulations. Everything has a "price".
India's drivers are actually pretty awesome, but they've had cars for a lot longer. Still. More people driving and perhaps being the first in their families to actually own a car means bad news.
Not that I see any good solution other than waiting a few generations, widespread driver's ed is probably cost prohibitive. Still. Ugh.
It will be no more socially acceptable to jaywalk in front of an autonomous car than it would be to cut in line. (And yes, I know, line-cutting is rampant in China... but in India?)
Once in Bangalore airport I brought it to the attention of a guy who just did it, and he said "do you know where you are? You're in India, man."
I love India, but this one aspect is frustrating sometimes. (Along with the mini war that happens when boarding/disembarking local trains)
But yeah, totally, let's blame cars.
There is no “dominance game” – unless you’re trying to dominate the random cows standing in the street, negotiate a path around some random trash fire in the road, avoiding getting ensnarled in a swarm of tuk-tuts or navigating streets with potholes the size of Rhode Island or buses that will deftly try to squeeze you onto the sidewalks without any regard for anything else. Then there is the sea of people flowing along and through the road like refugees fleeing Smyrna.
India is not Brooklyn or San Jose.
I think they are, they just don't care in that part of the world. I remember in Cambodia seeing the Lexus SUVs constantly almost running pedestrians and riders over, if you can afford a Lexus in Cambodia, you can afford to get out of trouble for running someone over (although most of the owners had drivers, who would end up taking the fall).
Sorting by the second column gives a good picture about which country has more dangerous drivers. And Thailand is #2... so your claim tracks well against this reality.
I'd guess wealthy drivers simply paid the deceased's family (and the police if necessary), or in other cases the pedestrian or cyclist was blamed entirely and the accident not recorded as a motor vehicle accident.
If you looked at the page, the road fatalities per 100,000 motor vehicles ranks Thailand somewhere in the middle out of all countries.
One of the best ways to make roads safer would be to just let people drive less. The US has fairly safe roads per VMT (by world standards), but people end up driving a lot more than in most other places, which negates this somewhat.
Of course, one problem is that despite being a very small percentage of the distance traveled, people walking account for 22% of deaths. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...
In 2015 they had the largest car industry in SE Asia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_industry_in_Thailan...
Yeah, god forbid the masses get access to effective means of personal transportation. /s
Regarding a skateboard.. seriously? Effective isn’t just about energy consumption, it’s about time as well. A five mile trip on a skateboard doesn’t sound very “effective” and it’s pretty much impossible in a place like India. Riding a bicycle in India (or a motorcycle) is also rather ineffective unless you want to be scorched by the unrelenting sun and covered with the ubiquitous dirt and dust. If you have a child, it becomes even more ridiculous.
For a single person going from point A to B with zero cargo, a bike or motorcycle might be effective, but as a primary means for family transportation, it’s ludicrous.
“Effective” means safe, reliable and multipurpose, not “smallest possible footprint.”
Case
edit: plus, it can hardly be worse than 6 children in a moped... http://www.nydailynews.com/news/overloaded-vehicles-gallery-...
If you're in a place where everyone drives a moped or bicycle and cars are rare, then mopeds are a lot safer. Stick the moped in traffic surrounded by clueless SUV drivers and now the moped is a death-trap.
Go to a place where everyone rides a bicycle and there's no cars and I guarantee the fatality-per-mile rate is ridiculously low. See downtown Copenhagen for example.
That said walking is very dangerous per mile, but cars get a lot more miles on them.
Maybe I'm just dense but how does that invalidate parent's point? Based on what you are saying (difference in trip length), it appears that fatalities per mile actually does a better job (than fatalities per trip) at representing the relative safety of different classes of vehicles...
Because cars kill a lot of pedestrians, but those count more vs people walking than vs people driving due to the relative distances involved.
Having a slower vehicle doesn't always mean safer, despite contrary belief -- I can get out of the way of a car merging into my lane far easier on my motorcycle than any moped rider can.
If the cars drive themselves and we are then less rushed as we can entertain/work during a drive, will lower speeds be accepted? And if they're safer as a result of the self-driving and lower speed, could a cheaper shell work? And even more so if price is a primary consideration and you don't own the car?
In Australia, a scrape on your car feels like the beginning of the end. In Europe, where people cram into tiny parks out of necessity, bumps and scrapes seem more like a fact of life.
Given that this car is targeting people who own 2-wheelers and want to upgrade, I'd still say it is a safer option
In the immediate cities sure. But go outside to the "highways", and it's like Mad Max out there. Seriously. Everyone is hauling ass on no lane roads, passing each other constantly into oncoming traffic. Also NO ONE wears seat belts. I had to demand them in cars that were picking me up. Usually they were either disconnected, or hiding away never used. It's terrifying.
Still, better safety rating than a scooter, and that's the most important part (next to way better emission control, as scooters generally use nasty 2-stroke engines).
That is a job for the government to actually hire and train cops to enforce traffic rules (red lights, DUI, right-of-way)...
Is it? I mean maybe it is, I don't know, but I'm guessing you don't really know either. I can imagine that maybe a scooter could be safer than a very bad car. You can get crushed in a car, cars go faster, you've got less situational awareness.
I'm not sure this is one of those things that is just obviously true.
Situational awareness is a thing, though - especially in extremely crowded traffic.
But the scooter beats traffic jams.
In my experience, motorcycle riders are much less attentive to blinkers and take a lot more risks on the road.
This affects all drivers.
However, AFAIK, in most of the USA (that's it, not in California) motorcycle riding is a lot more strict, with regard to lane-splitting. Only where lane-splitting is banned I can agree with your point.
In most of the world, where lane-splitting is the norm, my point stands.
Cars are slow to crush. If you're involved in a collision while on a scooter, you don't have a crumple zone to slow down whatever might be eventually hitting you.
Cars have seatbelts. If you're hit on a scooter, you are more likely to be thrown out of the vehicle, compared to being hit while in a car. Being thrown out of a vehicle is not good for your survival rate.
I actually have no clue what safety features scooters have, if any. Cars have a ton.
In the UK you can drive a scooter at 16 but not a car until 17. Is that because they are safer for an inexperienced driver and other road users?
(Personally I'd rather ride a scooter than drive a tiny car in a dense urban area, because my awareness is much higher on a scooter, and also I've ridden scooters around London for a decade.)
The problem is, even if no new ones are sold, there will be a mass of old 2-stroke scooters being used/sold until they break...
There is one more important thing its urban parking spaces. You can never build enough car parking for India's urban population density. This is apart from the fact that scooters give better mileage(Motorcycles even better).
My Bajaj discover 150cc gives 60-70 kilometers/litre.
Also, if we think of other road users, less safe cars might encourage the driver to drive more carefully and less likely to endanger others.
Edit: I mean that in the context of India where cars, mopeds, bikes, tuk-tuks, and pedestrains intermingle. See the image in the article.
I really hope you intended this as satire. Over a million people die each year in road traffic accidents because people aren't perfect and have accidents. Feeling safe in a car has very little to do with how safe the car itself it, and more to do with how "normal" travelling in a car feels.
Also, the driving and road culture in most lower income developing countries are very different from those in developed countries.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-lock_braking_system#Eff...
"Anti-lock brakes are the subject of some experiments centred around risk compensation theory, which asserts that drivers adapt to the safety benefit of ABS by driving more aggressively. In a Munich study, half a fleet of taxicabs was equipped with anti-lock brakes, while the other half had conventional brake systems. The crash rate was substantially the same for both types of cab, and Wilde concludes this was due to drivers of ABS-equipped cabs taking more risks, assuming that ABS would take care of them, while the non-ABS drivers drove more carefully since ABS would not be there to help in case of a dangerous situation.[26]"