There should be an instant ban from driving, you are not allowed to continue your journey, and for at least a week after. Plus fine.
It is ridiculous how lenient the laws are. 40,000 people die every year on our roads.
It is ridiculous how lenient the laws are. 40,000 people die every year on our roads.
I think it is because people who make the laws are breaking them too.
We're largely talking about only the US market here -- in which only (and I say that word relatively) 37,000 people died in any sort of automobile related accident last year.
To put this in perspective, the common Flu (a totally vaccinatable, preventable, and treatable illness) killed about 52,000 people in the US last year alone.
According to the CDC, in 2016, 10,497 people (or 28%) of all automobile related deaths were alcohol-related deaths. Another 16% of automobile related deaths are attributed to drugs other than alcohol in the same year. That accounts for just about 44% of all vehicle related deaths, leaving the true automobile related deaths due to accident at a low number (relatively) of about 21,000 people per year.
According to the CDC, about 3,477 of all automobile related deaths were caused by distracted driving (of all kinds, not just cell phone usage), which amounts to around 9% of all automobile related deaths.
Sure, that number is a lot of people... but it's not some insane cell-phone induced epidemic folks are making it out to be.
Anecdote: As a vehicle driver, I've seen some insane cyclists violate all sorts of road laws, including peddling through red lights and cross multiple lanes of a road without warning... that's just to say, let's not pretend cyclists are totally innocent in all this.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
[3] https://www.cdc.gov/Motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impa...
[4] https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/distracted_driving/in...
There's injuries that never fully heal, trauma, lost wages, loss of a vehicle in some cases, the tremendous waste of resources from unnecessary repairs, etc, all from something that's mostly preventable (very few traffic collisions are true accidents).
Also, the comment you're responding to doesn't say anything about bicyclists, and I don't see anyone in this thread "pretending" they're blameless. And they yearly flu vaccines have a certain rate of effectiveness, which is somewhat less than 100% (the CDC says 40 to 60%).