Why are cars killing more pedestrians?
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
From here I sit on the porch, I can see that about 2/3 of drivers text while driving.
I'm convinced that no amount of campaigning, punishment, or scare tactics will suffice to stop it.
It is just how driving is done nowadays, and everyone feels they can do it safely (but they can't).
There's no going back so if you're on a bike, or a pedestrian, watch out!
Driving is sacred in our societies. Whenever a driver kills a pedestrian or a cyclist in my town, there aren't even any charges laid 99% of the time.
Personally I think smartphones have been a net loss to society, for this and many other reasons.
Don't get why it's gotten more common though, phones haven't changed beyond camera updates in years.
I know cars hold a special place in the mythos, but I think they are a bit like alcohol. They have basically no upsides, and if they were invented today, they would be illegal, except for professional or industrial purposes.
They can transport a group of people, plus significant amounts of load, together, quickly, in relative comfort, at any time, directly from/to a specific place.
It's not practical to have acceptable public transit everywhere and to use it for every purpose.
> a lot of people
~4k out of a population of 320M is not a lot. That's less than what smoking kills in a week. Or, if you look at it differently: assuming a life expectancy of 80 years, if you inconvenience 320M people by two minutes a day, you have taken away a total of ~5.5k human lifetimes from the population.
But, compared to the competition (buses, light rail, bicycles), it's hard to see where cars come out ahead. They are more expensive than every other option, they produce poisonous fumes, they take up enormous amounts of space, they only work for able-bodied people, they are loud, dangerous, and absurdly wasteful.
I don't think they are worse than smoking as a public health risk. But when you consider the amount of pollution they produce, it's likely comparable. And smokers are taxed - while car drivers are massively subsidized.
Look up "traffic calming measures". I doubt any driver who values their vehicle would text/use their phone while going through something like this: https://www.google.com/search?biw=1525&bih=760&tbm=isch&sa=1...:
If a road has a 40km/h speed limit, and then road features designed for 40km/h are added, what's the penalty? The point is to require the driver to focus, which a good driver does anyway.
So maybe not "physically" difficult, but it certainly takes a mental effort.
The best way to save the lives of pedestrians and cyclists from the predation of motorists is to eliminate cars in urban areas. The second-best way is fast, sure, automated enforcement.
Hope to live to see this utopia. In the meantime, I'll take it if public money is invested in traffic calming - this might deter some driving at least, and definitely will make it safer. Also serves as an indicator that the place is not "car-first".
This is in addition to philosophical arguments against:
contest/court fees that are higher than the fine for pleading guilty,
The entire idea that criminal police enforcement can be contracted out,
Or, if civil enforcement, the idea that speeding in-and-of-itself is a justicable suit. Ie, the idea that the city suffered damages by someone speeding, and that an arbitrary fine is the appropriate remedy.
Get rid of companies collecting a rake, as well as the cities keeping the fines, and suddenly no one is fighting for the programs anymore.
Lightly deployed cameras do end up being what you say they are because people just mark them on Waze and drive carefully only in a certain area.
Three E's: Engineering Enforcement Education
Look to Germany for an example of education: my favorite is get off the road while not moving, no matter what.
https://i.imgur.com/PkVYVfj.jpg
The opposite is in the US, where it's become almost universal to put on flashers in heavy rain while still driving, or waving people ahead of you into traffic. Both are illegal and dangerous, yet people think it's the smart/nice thing to do. Both have been socially reinforced to the point where I don't know they can be corrected.
1) increased commute times because distracted drivers don’t follow the flow of traffic well 2) increased likelihood of collisions as traffic starts and stops on highways. I’m certain I see more rear end collisions on the freeway in the last 10 years than the prior 10. 3) Lost productivity at work.
If the phone was an essential component to the car, say to be plugged into the center console as the display, the driver could not futz around with it.
CarPlay/Android are just workarounds, even Tesla is wrong I think. The car should act as an attachment to the driver’s phone.
The smartphone is the true center of modern life. All other interfaces are just artisanal horse and buggy bullshit.
Concepts like 'blame' and 'resposibility' are useful in the context of individual behavior, but misguided when trying to improve systems. That is why the NTSB avoids assigning blame - it would undermine the purpose of what they do.
So, I dont think it's fair to solely put blame on drivers. I do think phones have driven up the rate of incidents, though.
Side note, maybe I am a dick, but I refuse to get out of the way of another pedestrian who is staring at their phone. Just a pet peeve of mine, but I really dislike when people move around without being aware of their surroundings, as if it's everyone else's responsibility to make way for them. (Children and people I could hurt just by bumping into them get a pass.)
Agreed, and to avoid seeming aggressive I usually stop immediately in front of them, which usually triggers an 'oh! sorry' if they bump into or come close.
Hmm. I've found far too often drivers ignore right of way of pedestrians unless you start walking, that being said running a red light is worse.
> Here is what the frustrated safety experts will tell you: Americans are driving more than ever, more than residents of any other country. More of them than ever are living in cities and out in urban sprawl; a growing number of pedestrian fatalities occur on the fringes of cities, where high-volume, high-speed roads exist in close proximity to the places where people live, work, and shop. Speed limits have increased across the country over the past 20 years, despite robust evidence that even slight increases in speed dramatically increase the likelihood of killing pedestrians (car passengers, too – but the increase is not as steep, thanks to improvements in the design of car frames, airbags and seatbelts). American road engineers tend to assume people will speed, and so design roads to accommodate speeding; this, in turn, facilitates more speeding, which soon enough makes higher speed limits feel reasonable. And more Americans than ever are zipping around in SUVs and pickup trucks, which, thanks to their height, weight and shape are between two and three times more likely to kill people they hit. [emphasis added]
From other statistics I've seen, the massive increase in SUV's is mentioned as the single largest factor.
Indeed, the article directly refutes your theory:
> Ask a room full of safety experts about smartphones and you will get a mix of resignation, bemusement and contempt. “I tend not to buy the smartphone distraction stuff,” says Garrick, echoing nearly identical comments from just about everyone I talked to. “To me, it reads as shoving aside actually dealing with the relevant issues.” What particularly bothers him, he says, is how poorly thought out the distraction discourse tends to be. In the UK, Belgium, Germany, Spain, France, Austria and Iceland, for example, pedestrian deaths occur at a per capita rate roughly half of America’s, or lower. Are we really to believe that the citizens of these countries are 50% less susceptible than Americans to distraction, by their phones or anything else? ... “All this talk about pedestrian distraction, driver distraction? It’s such a distraction,” says Ben Welle of the World Resource Institute for Sustainable Cities. “It puts all the responsibility on individuals, and none on the environment they operate in.” [emphasis added]
Given the prevalence of manual cars there, yes I am actually.
Owning a smartphone and using it while driving aren't the same thing. I think work culture differences my contribute more than mere smartphone ownership.
However, where this starts to break down is highway miles. Shifting into overdrive and having no lights for miles, coupled with the always connected to work ethic might have different results.
I do think it ultimately comes down to culture and conditions on the road.
Drivers in Europe tend to be better because they have more training, and plenty to lose. Simply holding a phone will get you fined and points.
People just not paying attention to traffic lights and walking onto streets. Actually, from what I can tell, very few pedestrians actually pay attention to the car traffic lights.
I've watched people countless times walk onto the street while playing with their phones and not even looking up. I've seen people walking in the dark with headphones on crossing streets without paying the slightest bit of attention.
Personally, as a pedestrian I understand most people driving are fairly terrible at it and honestly when you're driving, most of the time you see pedestrians for about 20-30 seconds before you've passed them and their gone.
When I'm walking around traffic, I always stay concious of this, because I understand that if a ton of metal flying at 60km/h hits me, I'm gonna be seriously hurt or dead and there's not always time for a car to stop if I'm being unsafe as much as they should stop. I really think a lot of people don't understand or appreciate this enough.
1 out of 3 pedestrian deaths involve drunk pedestrians.
https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/pedestrian_safety/ind...
The major difference is that the consequence of being a bad pedestrian isn't death in most countries due to slower speeds and lower prevalence of SUVs.
I often see people arguing that US speed limits being high is fine, because the major killer is speed differential in a crash. The problem is, pedestrians walk at 3mph, so even a speed limit of 40mph on a road with pedestrians leads to a quite high speed differential between a car and a human.
There was an America before cars where walking was the norm, and then it was mostly systematically destroyed and is gone outside of a few metropolitan areas.
Also in Europe people text less; I never understood the US preference for texting, in Europe we simply talk (many countries have affordable or unlimited voice plans). When I drive a car (10-20% of the time) I have a headset in my ear, when I ride the motorcycle I have a helmet headset turned on on auto-answer. I don't talk too often while driving, but it is less distracting than texting, I never have to touch the phone while driving (on the bike it is not even possible).
But to me it doesn't seem like people are more distracted than 10 years ago, so I'm not sure how that would increase pedestrian deaths.
The 1st company I worked for was hyper vigilant in preventing accidents, to a point that kept me from returning. Their data is quite solid, however. With both forward and inner facing cameras, they are able to analyze their drivers extensively, notably where accidents occur. It isn't only because of the mandatory $10,000 federal fine[1] for having a cellphone placed near a driver's ear, it's the observed tendency of the phone as a factor in many events. So strict was the company, that if the camera sensors detected a driver's hand near a cellphone, a safety meeting was held and the driver reprimanded, or terminated. Their means I find intolerable, but their motivation well founded.
1. FMCSA
Edit: I ought take the opportunity to mention the training that occurs in some of these companies, regardless of driver experience. There can be no refutation that such additional education makes a better driver, of any motor vehicle. The prevalent attitude and reception (even among trucker types) is open-minded, sincere and earnest. I view this as strong evidence that education can indeed improve what many appear to think of as incorrigible drivers. The required education for a standard driver's licenses is wholly inadequate considering the stakes. I stubbornly hold that up to a majority of accidents are highly and practically preventable. Our priorities are grotesque.
Tfa addresses reasons cell phone use may not be as explanatory as we think. If you want to argue against that, great, but bring some evidence. Anything else is just hot air.
I've been saying for years that driving a large SUV or truck without a legitimate need for its capabilities is an antisocial act, for precisely this reason and also the fact that, all other things being equal, a vehicle (and its occupants) colliding with another vehicle will fare worse the larger that other vehicle is. Whether my own assumptions were right or wrong, I'm glad we're finally starting to talk about this. For a long time, it seemed to be a huge blind spot in existing analyses of injurious/fatal road accidents.
It makes me absolutely livid when I walk past a shiny new lifted pickup with an empty bed and my head is just about level with the front of the hood. How have we grown to accept these things driving around on public roads with no higher bar to entry than that required to drive a Geo Metro?
The condition of a truck's bed, i.e. is it dusty and marked up by loads carried, is it full of gear, etc., serves as a proxy for whether the operator of the vehicle has been or is currently making use of the capabilities it offers beyond e.g. a compact hatchback. If they are not, I see that as a signal that they belong to the category of truck owners who own them for vanity and/or personal expression reasons rather than because they need the carrying capacity. This sort of ownership is, I believe (as I said) an antisocial act.
This signal is not perfect, but as I keep it to myself in every case I don't feel that I'm harming anybody by making these judgments, and if someone could demonstrate to me that e.g. the majority of F-series truck (the most popular "car" in America, last I checked) owners need that capacity, as in they use it on a regular basis to the extent that a smaller vehicle would not suffice, I'd be happy to change my thinking.
Regardless, all this fixation on my "empty bed" comment is totally missing the point. We should look at the data, at how many human lives are lost each year because of the proliferation of these vehicles, and on that basis we should decide whether further regulation and/or transit engineering is needed to protect the public. People are, evidently, dying because of said proliferation, and that's just totally unacceptable to me.
Maybe I just don't understand the mindset that I should be able to do whatever I want, for my own vanity/amusement/whatever, at any cost to my fellow humans up to and including the loss of their lives.
The only wrecks (only fender benders) I've ever been in were when I had a heavily loaded bed or was pulling a trailer. Not only does stopping distance increase, but weight is sometimes taken off of the front tires, meaning ability to steer/swerve is also impaired.
This is one of those rules that not only would have the opposite of the desired, but also increase the severity of accidents that do occur.
What's the "empty bed idea"?
> This is one of those rules
Which rule?
Why not just reduce the tonnage to 4,000lbs for example? Easy. You want to drive a Humvee, go get a CDL first.
Obligatory MMM article:
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2015/04/28/what-does-your-wor...
However, in practice, she backed into a couple poles in her old SUV and said she didn't see them. Hm.
She now drives a car instead of an SUV and not once has complained about being unable to see, and I don't think it has raisable seats, so I think she may have simply convinced herself of something that was untrue.
It's a hell of a lot harder to get a license in those countries than in the US. And if you hit a pedestrian in those countries it is assumed you are at fault. Unlike the US, where it is assumed the pedestrian must have done something irrational, like cross a street, and the driver is innocent as snow.
Collectively, Americans are terrible drivers, so the reasons compound. Whether it's fatigue, phones, makeup, food, drinking, or poor judgement we feel safe in our cars and fuck anyone else.
Wikipedia says that in 2008 we were one of the best in the world for that but have been overtaken by Holland and Sweden. Also that we could drop deaths 30% more by fixing stuff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roads_in_the_United_Kingdom#Ro...
In the UK, Belgium, Germany, Spain, France, Austria and Iceland, maybe distracted driving and cellphone use is better enforced. Many of the stats I see show that distracted driving is more common in the US vs. other countries: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/comment/texting-driving-tab...
From my experience, yes.
My perception is that texting while driving just wasn't a thing in Germany at the time it was commonly happening in the US. Maybe nobody was talking about it, but I suspect people just didn't consider it a thing you could do while driving.
Robot cars are the answer, yet many innocent non-robot car drivers will perish at the sake of AI car progress. Progress in this instance will be murder!
How would TouchID help in this case?
Concerning AI drivers, a lot of innocent non-robot people are dying because of driving right now. I am unconvinced that more people would die. Of course the road ahead is still long.
One step without a distraction from the road vs. three steps that make you focus your face/attention more on your phone then the road!
Anyways this is hardly a hardware issue, I think that punishment for texting while driving should be way more severe. Why not do it the high-school way and confiscate the cell phone? You can grab it later at a police station or pay for shipping if you are not a local.
Face ID is a step backwards and im sure causing those iPhone owners with Face ID to get into more accidents. Their face/attention shouldn't be diverted from the road to unlock their phone.
Every time I bring this up here the solution ppl say here is they shouldn't be texting in the first place.. but newsflash as you can see from this article you can tell them all day long and yet they'll continue to do so.
BTW, your phone is locked because it has detected you're going faster than 20mph. And rather than take that as the big clue to pay attention you continue to bypass the big ass warnings it's throwing at you. Put the fucking phone down!
I am technologist ...looking to solve this problem because no matter how you phrase it they will keep doing it!
Really? I bet a $10,000 fine and/or 1 year license suspension would be enough. Making it so it shows up on your driving record (and therefore will increase insurance rates) would also help. It's not like drug addiction where you're physically dependent on it, or drinking and driving where you're "forced" into it because of a decision a few hours ago.
Obviously, I was downvoted by the crowd that believe they are special snowflakes who can text and drive with some arbitrary degree of increased safety relative to all of their peers, and likely also the crowd that believes harsh penalties should never apply because of the historic abuses of these policies in terms of keeping our prisons full. In this case, I don't give a flying shit. If you text and drive and you think it's ok, you shouldn't be on the road. Period. If you can't come to terms with this, maybe you should have your license revoked. If this is still insufficient, perhaps we really do need to put your ass in jail for a while.
Are people so psychologically addicted to their electronics that they'd be willing to skirt jail time? Is anyone actually going to have a bad day because you couldn't send a WhatsApp message while you are hurtling down the freeway at 70mph with barely 5 meters margin between you and every other car?
Just put the damn phones away while you are driving. Like OP mentions, it's not even a physical addiction or a subsequent consequence. Takes 2 seconds to become compliant no matter your current circumstances or state of mind. Some emergency in your head and you absolutely need to use the device? There's this thing called "pulling over and parking" that I would highly recommend trying out. Believe it or not, you are actually allowed to arbitrarily exit and enter the freeway along its route as desired.
Maybe the driver's phone should disable itself when driving?
No, it's sort of the opposite. If driving were more difficult, or at least more engaging, people wouldn't feel boredom and the need to multitask.
Since auto pilot type safety features are especially bad at pedestrian detection, expect this to only get worse as "safety features" improve and result in less engaged driving.
Changes probably need to be made the to whole traffic system.
The other rule I have: if I need to use my phone, I move to the side of the sidewalk and stop. I won't walk and use it. 99% of the time, it's in my pocket.
I believe strongly in robust mechanisms for keeping drivers responsible. Unfortunately, at least where I live, the justice system is completely impotent and unwilling to punish drivers for causing serious bodily harm or death. A system of heavy fines or imprisonment targeted at drivers would have resolved the inattention issue quicker than a typical driver can make a three-point turn. A year’s worth of income, or one year of imprisonment, for any car-on-ped collision would do the trick.
Do you have data on it?
Even if someone jumps out in front of you with no warning (which is uncommon), as long as you're paying enough attention to apply the brakes, whatever amount of braking you can do is much better than nothing. Trying to prevent accidents isn't mutually exclusive with minimizing the impact of accidents that do occur.
I have encountered this situation at least three times in the last month alone. Distracted pedestrians frequently walk in front of cars during a light change.
Not true at all. A simple thing they can do is drive slow. Ped car collisions under 20mph have a 99.9% survival rate.
(Mainly) in Western culture, humans tend to believe that what other people do reflects their personality, responsibility etc., and disregard the extent to which the environment influences people. This is called the "fundamental attribution error". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error
The point of the article is that the existing environment makes it easier for people - both drivers, and pedestrians/cyclists - to suffer gravely in the event they get distracted.
It's unreasonable to expect people not to get distracted - you can think of it as "baseline" level of distraction inherent to us all, which cannot be optimised beyond a certain point.
It's a much better solution to shape the environment so that people's distractions do not cost lives. _That_ is the point of the article.
Life isn’t some kind of A/B experiment. Stop treating it like one, and stop moving blame from yourself to others.
I don't drive though.
This article argues for preventing deaths, not litigating them. What's the use of assigning blame after the fact?
You cannot force people to be more perfect than they are (or want to be). You can "nudge" the right outcome by shaping the environment.
If you google "chicanes in London", you'll see how people's behaviour can be shaped, regardless of their personality. _That_ is what you want, to ensure people's safety.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothers_Against_Drunk_Driving
The claim they lowered drunk driving deaths by 1/2. I have no easy way to verify that but if true it certainly suggests people's behavior can be changed
This does not discourage drunk driving as much as you would think. It does remove a lot of the drunk drivers from the road by force, however.
Edit: Claiming credit moreso than flawed statistics, although both are highly questionable.
It would be far more effective if you applied a $5 fine every time a person looked at their phone screen while driving than if you instituted the death penalty which applied only when a distracted driver kills a pedestrian.
People are not as rational as you think, making them more scared of the law don’t help much, otherwise death penalty would work very well to reduce crimes, but it doesn’t
Is the world really this absolute to you? Would you mind thinking out your position more carefully or alternatively defending a position that prejudges one group and absolves another of any responsibility?
An attentive driver placed in a car with current permitted distractions - far in excess of 30 years ago, or 70 years ago when traffic laws started accumulating - radios, hifi, visual displays and touch screen UIs that increasingly need lengthy attention rather than glance, thickening A B and C pillars over the years - for rollover, airbag and space to stick more driver toys, is to a pedestrian, cyclist or motorcyclist a fucking liability in need of immediate life-long ban. I try and remember this attitude when I get in my car...
There are no robust mechanisms to keep drivers responsible. It's expected everyone will speed, get tickets, accumulate parking violations. Penalties for offences whilst driving are often extreme in their leniency compared to same impact caused by other means. Driving offences are considered entirely separate from the "rest" of a criminal record.
Yes, yes, absolutely. That was my point: change laws to bring punishment in line with crime.
Car design is, after regulation has been accounted for, simply ignoring or forgetting its role in safety for everyone. Cars focus way too much on driver entertainment in a super comfy place to relax, and occupant safety. Drivers are being set up to fail. That then seems to be a distinct hole in regulation. Air, rail and industrial sets up for safety first.
Road design remains too car-centric. We know shared street designs with equal priority for all users increase safety for all, yet they are the exception not the rule. Cyclists and pedestrians shouldn't be second class users except on restricted highways and motorways.
Inter-city should be either low-speed (max 25Km/h) electric golf-buggies, trams, buses, light-rail or cycling or walking.
Cars are a temporary aberration that relied upon apparently cheap energy and resulted in a selfish, aggressive privatization of public space.
Time for their misuse to be curtailed. (Leave them to the emergency services).
As a pedestrian/cyclist/driver I'd love to see cars that are basically motorized tents weighing something like 100kg. That would make me feel much safer when outside the car, and much more considerate of others while inside.
Considering the number of vehicles that are single occupant, it's an incredible waste, and mostly needless. That's quite apart from what could be saved by appropriate public transport.
The logistics of the penalty need to be considered too. Are are the people at fault in fatal collisions to be put into the already crowded prison system indefinitely? It's cheaper in the long run to evolve the system to restrict the potential harm that can be inflicted by irresponsible people.
Brilliant synopsis of the argument discussed here, so many commenters seem to be talking _past_ this point.
"tool X doesn't cause Y, people do"
However people _act differently_ when they are using tool X. When we are driving a vehicle, we _become_ the vehicle. When we hold a tool, the tool becomes part of our body. Our brains fuse clothing and tools with the body via the senses. To the brain, the car is part of our body so that we feel the road through the suspension and tires. You can't make a conveniently neat separation.
Generally, I think, we need to error more on the side of license suspension (hell, a good percent of people that have licenses really shouldn't) and less on prison - especially for unsafe behavior. In CA, a 2nd time DUI results in only a 1 year license suspension -- that's ridiculously short for someone who has repeatedly proven themselves unable to drive safely.
To solve these problems, you either have to enforce crimes at a lower level (e.g., punish them for poor driving rather than for killing someone) or make it harder for people to mount a defense. Both of these things encourage abuses of the justice system, e.g., "driving while black."
There are reams of research to back this stuff up. There were massive reams of research to back it up 40 years ago. There are demonstrably better ways to do this. Why are we so fucking stupid?
It won't make you feel any better, but perhaps this was inevitable.
...and our hearts!
https://now.tufts.edu/articles/big-road-blues-pollution-high...
It’s kind of like asking, why do we take chemotherapy for cancer when it makes people so sick? Because it can sometimes cure cancer, that’s why!
This manifests itself in several ways:
1. Low-density sprawl. Without the auto, density would be higher and it'd be possible to get to wherever you need to be on alternate forms of transit (biking and public transit are much more viable)
2. Prioritization: Already in an urban (or higher density suburban) environment, at commute times, biking is barely slower than driving (in part due to congestion and parking overhead) on city streets. It'd actually be faster than driving is today if it weren't for infrastructure explicitly prioritizing cars (long signals, freeways and expressways blocking the shortest path, etc.)
If you did a "do-over design", with high-capacity electric batteries and smartphones, you could probably achieve mostly car-less, higher density cities (barring delivery and emergency vehicles) around (e-)bikes and public transit, with cars more used for leisure/travel or folks lacking mobility. Population would also be a lot more physically fit.
Many people also claim its not safe to bike in the city but this is also a symptom of designing the system around cars. If we simply dedicated all the roads to biking and only a few sporadic car-lanes it would be much safer to bike.
I could say the most important benefit is fundamental: none of your propositions change the fact that a bike will not shelter its rider from the weather, which around here, by some standards, is at best lousy for approximately half of the year (cold, damp or both to various degree). When I look at homes, or offices, I see a pattern. Do you not?
But in moderate places, e.g. the entire West coast of the US, I find it a non-issue to bike nearly every day
Even in places with excellent public transport, there will be trips where cars are necessary, either because that specific public transit connection is atrocious (e.g. 10 minutes by car turn into 40+ minutes public transit), or you need to transport more than you can carry.
I don't own a car, and I suffer from their effects, but I do recognize their usefulness.
I was skeptical but I've run the numbers and sure enough, once you also factor in the time I spend working to pay for my car & gas I'd save quite a bit of time commuting by bike if my city could be squished closer together by removing most of the car-only stuff (gotta still have a few arteries for goods and for when you need to travel further, but you could cut out like 90%, easy—parking lots are so big, out in the 'burbs). IOW widespread private car ownership actually makes my life worse than if they were outlawed, effectively, and I'm not in the city core.
[EDIT] and my family buys cheapish cars and we make way over the median household income for our city—the math's way worse for most people here than it is for me.
(This factoid from "Energy and Civilization A History" by Vaclav Smil)
It’s not such a mystery then.
It's a shame there isn't an equally strong indoctrination campaign in the other direction when those same children become old enough to drive, to say that it's their job not to hit people under any circumstances.
The education that is needed is more universal - cars will crush people. Whether you are behind the wheel or not, do what is needed to respect that fact and avoid anyone getting hurt.
My worry is that once this idea has been thoroughly instilled in children's heads when they're small, it's still there when they're older and in charge of dangerous machinery, so somewhere deep down they believe that avoiding death-by-car is naturally the pedestrian's job.
I don't suggest this is a reason not to put the idea there in the first place, rather that we should work as hard as possible to get to a situation where once they're driving they behave as if they believe the responsibility is all theirs.
US Diplomat's wife flees the UK and hides behind diplomatic immunity after killing 19 year old in a head on collision: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/ddm5ia/us_diplom...
No one is denying she did it. They had her in custody. She was released on the previso that she would not leave the country.
Turns out that the sort of person that flees the scene of an accident is also the sort of person that doesn't stick around for the full investigation.
I was guilty as hell until it turned out I hadn't been drinking, wasn't speeding and the dog suffered only a few bruises and a bit of embarrassment for his owner who had a tendency to wildly exaggerate.
The owner was warned not to let her dog run off the lead near to traffic in future.
Are you saying you think we'll later find out that no one was killed or that the US Embassy is wrong in admitting that a diplomat's wife was invloved in a hit and run collision?
Both of these things appear to be facts beyond dispute.
It is a crime in the UK to leave the scene of a traffic collision even if the collision was not your fault. Legally you must wait for the police and you must provide care to others involved including calling the emergency services.
Just pointing out that there is a reason why people are presumed innocent until proven guilty?
Adding 'allegedly' doesn't detract from what your saying.
Fleeing from the authorities does, I think, give us a reason to suspect she might be guilty.
I know it might not seem fair, but sometimes the smooth workings of international diplomacy is more important than justice for an individual crime.
(The expulsion option prevents diplomats from using this as a loophole to repeatedly commit crimes)
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/harry-dunn-death-us-di...
Harry Dunn's mother will be flying to the US to try to appeal for justice for him.
They can literally kill civilians in proverbial broad daylight and just get a free flight home at taxpayer expense?
But, I’d propose another one, too. New aerodynamic designs locate the A pillars in a place in most cars that eliminates huge swaths of my peripheral vision. Backup cameras also make up for increasingly awful side vision and rear vision.
I drive an 1990s land cruiser a few weeks ago and the visibility was amazing. You didn’t need cameras because the hood was low, the windshield was flat and upright and the side windows weren’t tinted black. Old land rovers and pickups were the same.
Yes! There's a large area to the left and right of me where I can't see anyone which makes it particularly dangerous when turning a corner.
On another note, I walk in Seattle a lot and I do my best to look for oncoming cars when crossing, I don't trust them to see me or even the red light.
It cites a study [0] claiming almost all of additional pedestrian deaths happen at night, while daytime fatalities haven't increased much.
[0] - https://www.ghsa.org/sites/default/files/2019-02/FINAL_Pedes...
1. More Vertical space on the front of the vehicle - making it harder to see pedestrians right in front of you, this is particularly the case for large trucks and SUV's.
2. Reduced greenhouses in modern cars (all the windows are smaller, meaning its harder to see anything around you)
3. Vehicles in general are taller, higher and wider in the front and rear.
There are also other human factors in play, like more distracted driving from smart phones, and more complex infotainment systems in the vehicle.
It's not just the drivers that are being distracted by their phones - pedestrians are as well. Every time I drive downtown, I'm having to make allowances for people with a total lack of situational awareness because they're walking around heads-down.
I'm not singling out the pedestrians - the drivers are equally at fault. Like the guy in the GL450 on I-85 last night who couldn't stay in his lane at 70mph because he was checking his phone.
Distracted walking isn't a crime, so surely it's not equal.
> In the UK, Belgium, Germany, Spain, France, Austria and Iceland, for example, pedestrian deaths occur at a per capita rate roughly half of America’s, or lower. Are we really to believe that the citizens of these countries are 50% less susceptible than Americans to distraction, by their phones or anything else? Plus, within the US, pedestrian death occurs disproportionately in neighbourhoods populated by people with low-incomes and people of colour. Is distraction really more endemic in those neighbourhoods, or among people driving through them, than it is in wealthier, whiter areas? Or is it more likely that these neighbourhoods are more likely to be criss-crossed by high-speed roads, and less likely to receive investment in transit interventions that protect pedestrians? Advertisement
> “All this talk about pedestrian distraction, driver distraction? It’s such a distraction,” says Ben Welle of the World Resource Institute for Sustainable Cities. “It puts all the responsibility on individuals, and none on the environment they operate in.”
While not mentioned in this article, the premise of Vision Zero (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero ) is "In most road transport systems, road users bear complete responsibility for safety. Vision Zero changes this relationship by emphasizing that responsibility is shared by transportation system designers and road users". Emphasis mine.
“All this talk about pedestrian distraction, driver distraction? It’s such a distraction,” says Ben Welle of the World Resource Institute for Sustainable Cities. “It puts all the responsibility on individuals, and none on the environment they operate in.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error >>In social psychology, fundamental attribution error (FAE), also known as correspondence bias or attribution effect, is the tendency for people to under-emphasize situational explanations for an individual's observed behavior while over-emphasizing dispositional and personality-based explanations for their behavior. This effect has been described as "the tendency to believe that what people do reflects who they are
Worse, drivers “seem” a lot angrier in recent years, and much more impatient. They’re likely to just go through, crosswalks be damned, missing people by a hair.
They are not less important when they account for 1% vs. 0.0001% of walking people, per mile/km or whatever, are they?
Talk about a sudden and needless distraction. What engineer thought this was a good idea?
I've taken to using a 5mm cord to connect my phone to the car speakers so I can control what plays and when it plays. Thankfully my phone still has a 5mm jack.
Trying to anticipate what the user wants is obnoxious, but it becomes dangerous when the computer doing so is installed in a heavy metal box with an engine and the ability to move fast.
If I need to remember to hit a switch on one computer to prevent another computer from unpredictably blasting audio whenever I use the second computer, that's a design and safety failure.
- - - -
I imagine you could have five separate interconnected networks:
1 Pedestrians
2 bicycles
3 personal cars
4 trucks and buses
5 light rail and inter-urban trains
Better title: "Why are drivers killing more pedestrians?"
I disagree. That title lacks information and might lead to some people to think drivers are beating the pedestrians to death or maybe they're more prone to gun violence against pedestrians.
Maybe, a better title could be: "Why are drivers who are currently driving a car, pedestrians currently walking on the street, by running them over with said car"
however,
The fact that we're talking about decidedly non-suburban Europe, and that 2010 is identified as the local minimum, pretty strongly implies that the rise of smartphones and other touchscreen-based devices is the culprit.
[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/onmyway-drive-safe-get-paid/id...
All new cars, trucks, etc. are tall with very narrow windows for better collision safety. Not to mention American's latest obsession with hideous "cross-overs." As a result, its much harder to see in front of you and the extra clearance means you actually suck someone underneath the car instead of over.
Also, is it just me or are cars just plain ugly these days (yuck)
https://www.motortrend.com/cars/land-rover/range-rover-evoqu...
https://www.diariomotor.com/2010/05/09/el-morris-mini-minor-...
I drive a crossover and I'm not sure where you get this idea from - let alone it being the issue. In can see much better out of my crossover than my sedan because I have a higher seating position and a smaller engine bay to look over. Height would really only be an issue in a parking lot if a child was hiding in front of a car.
I would disagree that its limited to children as a quick look right and then left might mean that much less of the person is visible and could possibly not catch your eye as you drive forward.
https://imgur.com/gallery/PUfmP
disclaimer: I was almost hit on a green walk light on 6th av in NYC by a cross over speeding on a left turn... I had to jump
How many accident actually stem from this. Even your own disclaimer has nothing to do with hood radius. That car that almost hit you was well out of "hood range" when he started to turn.
Likely, it was either a failure to check the corner or you where in his A-pillar blindspot. Every single car in the world has an A-pillar blindspot. In my experience, the A-pillar blindspot is worse on smaller cars because it's closer to the driver and blocks more of his/her vision.
Also, children are important too and if one gets in front of you pulling up on a driveway using a modern SUV could be a recipe for disaster.
https://www.wardsauto.com/news-analysis/new-pillars-enhance-...
Electric, self-driving cars? Reduction of parking lots to make room for something more lucrative? Generating support for getting cities to pay for new mass transit systems? New taxes on vehicle ownership?
It is a common pattern in HN that a popular post on a topic will cause a spate of postings on the same topic by other HN readers.
That's simply because HN readers will often do some additional web surfing on that topic, and then share back some HN worthy discoveries.
It's a virtuous cycle.
I've read a lot of articles about agressive or dangerously incompetant drivers in the UK, I have never once seen someone given a lifetime driving ban.
Drivers no mater if they were serving a temporary ban, were uninsured, on drugs, on the pavement (sidewalk) or reading their phones they always get the chance to get their licence back once they've paid a small fine or occationally got out of prison.
That goes for repeat offenders too.
Maybe startups using technology to provide alternatives such as electric bikes, scooters, self-driving cars would have some value to society.
I'm not saying it's a topic that should not be talked about. I'm against the proliferation of cars and all else that comes with them as well.
The frequency of a single topic being repeatedly posted, however, should be viewed with healthy skepticism.
As someone who does a lot of cycling, I'm used to road rage directed at me in the form of punishment passes mostly.
Let's regulate these death machines to roads where they can be death machines, like highways, in the city you switch to driving an open air buggy whose seat belt is there to help you not slide out of a slippery plastic seat.
Cars are fast, and in areas that are not ultra high-density, they save time relative to ANY alternative (walking, biking, buses, trains) and therefore drastically improve your quality of life. They don't require you to wait on someone else's schedule, especially given the often inconsistent timing of buses. They don't require you to risk sitting down on dirty seats (6-year-old girl stabbed by uncapped needle on bus: https://metro.co.uk/2019/06/08/girl-6-injected-needle-hidden...). They don't require you to expose yourself to violence (40 to 60 teens rob BART train: https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/BART-takeover-robbery-5...). They let you travel all over the land, including away from cities, and therefore give you a greater degree of freedom than the reach of fixed rails or transit systems that are limited to cities.
Yes cars can cause deaths. So do a lot of other things. But the rate of vehicle-caused injuries/deaths has been dropping sharply since the 80s (see CDC data). It will continue to drop as backup cameras, lane departure prevention, collision detection, collision avoidance, and other assistance features become ubiquitous or required. Nothing is ever perfect, and this is the fundamental reason why efforts like Vision Zero are flawed. "Zero deaths" is not the goal, and generally any such absolute goal is unrealistic.
We get massive benefits from fast, private point-to-point transport. Let's not forget that and work to retain those benefits, instead of damaging the benefits of vehicles with low speed limits and other 'road diet' suggestions.
* Transition away from physical controls to touchscreen controls in new cars
* American's love affair with the automatic transmission
* Car-unfriendly "progressive" movements and the return of population towards city centers
It seems like people have very little actual interest in making things better but only interest in blaming something they have a built-in bias against or promoting a technology they find interesting.
The article completely failed to mention manual transmissions in America and the rest of the world while wondering loudly why it is so different here and the prevalence of touch-screens not just on phones in cars. Automatics are much more popular in the US and having a manual transmission forces you to pay much more attention to driving and simply occupies both hands more often especially inside cities.
One thing emphasized way too little is the responsibility of the pedestrian for not getting hit – the feeling of entitlement to right of way leading to people just not paying attention to cars or expecting behavior instead of watching for it.
I grew up around farm machinery often with little visibility and it teaches you to pay attention to what is going on around you a lot more. Not just in a way of being ready to react because there are circumstances where reacting is impossible, but in knowing what movements a machine is capable of and what the operator intends to do as well as if the operator knows you are there at all.
This is one of the primary reasons I think robot cars will go absolutely nowhere. It is impossible to come up with a theory of mind for a robotic car. As a pedestrian all you usually need to know the intentions of a driver (or vice versa) are an instant of eye contact. We are evolved to use tiny signals to decide intent and many people are barely aware of this. That kind of information just can't be reliably exchanged with a machine.
And people just aren't expecting the kinds of things which will happen when people start to believe robots with super fast reaction times will do anything not to hit pedestrians. Pedestrians will start running into the street without a care (or as a cheap thrill)
The article missed a lot and spent too much time on the wrong topics.
I don't agree with your point here. I switched to auto boxes around 10 years ago, and (if anything) they free me up a bit to be more aware of my surroundings, because I don't have to spend any of my attention on using a clutch and gear stick.
Fully agree about touchscreen controls though - if controls are physical and tactile, I can easily use them without diverting my eyes from the road.
I don't buy this as a contributing factor at all -- when you drive a manual transmission car regularly, the shifting becomes second nature and you don't need to actively think about it -- I can zone out in my manual transmission car just as much as when I drive the no-transmission EV.
In Japan, cars are almost all entirely automatic transmission cars, but their accident rate is less than 30% compared to the USA.
This is one of the primary reasons I think robot cars will go absolutely nowhere. It is impossible to come up with a theory of mind for a robotic car.
It's not impossible for the autonomous car to tell you that it sees you -- it could aim a "I see you" light at you, or maybe pop up an indicator on your smart watch or Google Glass to say that it sees you. It's not like catching a driver's eye is 100% reliable -- I've had drivers look right at me while they pull out in front of my bike at an intersection.