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The changes in car design both from crash safety regulation, and fashion, increasing size and weight have all tended to make cars safer for the occupant, and in the event of accident far more dangerous for others. So yes, cars play their part. It's about time we considered intentionally started making cars safer for pedestrians at the cost of more dangerous for the occupant. Not quite that cliche 8" knife in steering wheel where airbag used to be, but...

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.

> Penalties for offences whilst driving are often extreme in their leniency compared to same impact caused by other means.

Yes, yes, absolutely. That was my point: change laws to bring punishment in line with crime.

On that point I agree wholeheartedly. Yet it doesn't, and cannot stand alone.

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.

Long-distance, high-speed inter-city transport should be by railways.

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).

Just a thought: making cars comfortable and safe for the drivers also makes them weigh A LOT. Which makes for huge emissions. If we were to consider ecology, taking a 70kg individual somewhere shouldn't be by a 2000kg vehicle.

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.

Yup. Nassim Taleb's skin-in-the-game definitely comes into play when we are considering collisions.

You're right. Even a tax break to encourage the Japanese mini cars, in the same bracket as the European Smart car would be a step in the right direction for EVs. The old 60s-90s mini is about half the size and weight of the new one that would be better called a 'Huge'. We shouldn't keep hauling around 1-2 tonnes.

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.

Yes, and no. I'm afraid you've missed the point of the article. It's not about blame, but about good design that prevents human death.

(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.

I didn’t miss the point of the article; I simply strongly disagree with it. I oppose the constant drive to diminish the need to act responsibly. The idea of “baseline distraction” is used to provide an excuse for killing and maiming other humans. If your loved one were killed by a “baseline distracted” driver who blamed the collision on vehicle and road design, would you consider it fair? Would you willingly lay your child, spouse, or parent on the sacrificial pyre signaling the need for better cars or roads?

Life isn’t some kind of A/B experiment. Stop treating it like one, and stop moving blame from yourself to others.

>>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.

If people can be nudged by street design or transparent B-pillars, they can also be nudged by heavy penalties that are commensurate with the deed.

Which is why there are no murders in states with a death penalty.

It seems like you're effectively saying MADD didn't work. Drunk driving never became less than it was in the late 1970s

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

I don't know about your area, but where I live the police set up checkpoints along common routes home from popular bars/restaurants to catch drunk drivers. Drunk drivers get caught extremely often and many of them lose their licence for long periods of time.

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.

MADD only worked in the sense that it made some mothers feel somewhat absolved of whatever guilt they felt for losing a child. Their statistical claims are quite ridiculous, though.

Edit: Claiming credit moreso than flawed statistics, although both are highly questionable.

Enforcement works in societies which actually enforce their laws. Try finding weed in Singapore for example.

Do NOT try to get weed there.

You probably could, however, find hordes of repressed maniacs and neurotics discouraged enough by it to hesitate a bit. At least if you could keep them out of motor vehicles ;)

This would only work if the penalties were enforced a very large percentage of the time someone did something unsafe, regardless of the outcome. Humans respond to light punishments consistently applied far better than harsh punishments rarely applied.

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.

So you really think not enough punishment explains away the fact that US has double the accidents then Europe? If you don’t, then you did miss the point

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

The personal responsibility argument is always equally true and futile. Systems need to account for irresponsibility, especially those like the transportation system. The thought process of the distracted driver is not that the penalty can be disregarded. People develop a false sense of confidence in that an accident hasn't happened to them, so they can drive faster or look at their phone.

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.

Its still frustrating to see articles stating that "inanimate object most people owns kill someone" rather than "negligent dufus checking on their social media status runs over cyclist"

>>Systems need to account for irresponsibility, especially those like the transportation system. The thought process of the distracted driver is not that the penalty can be disregarded. People develop a false sense of confidence in that an accident hasn't happened to them, so they can drive faster or look at their phone.

Brilliant synopsis of the argument discussed here, so many commenters seem to be talking _past_ this point.

This argument comes up often:

"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.

This would help, but a fundamental problem is that unsafe behavior isn't checked very well (since your odds of killing someone are still pretty low).

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.

In my view, punishing drivers for accidents is always going to be to little too late, because accidents are rare. Also, people who can afford good defense can avoid punishment to a substantial extent.

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."

You are on to something, I fear. The tendency for automotive related carnage to be perceived as normal and acceptable is a glaring disparity with the rest of our expressed values. I see driving as the unspoken modern Ludus Magnus, or Colosseum.

What makes you ask sure that punishment would actually serve as an effective deterrent?

Do you want to spend a year in prison for running over a pedestrian? Does anyone else?

Do people think of the punishment when the commit the crime?

Do you have data on it?

Well, if we take a license away from anyone who texts and drives there will be less unfit drivers on the road. It's likely not enough but heavy penalties for texting when driving would help even if it doesn't deter anyone until the get caught.

>Cars don’t kill pedestrians; drivers kill pedestrians

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?

Even if the guy jumps in front of your car? What kina bs is this? Perhaps peds need to mind their surroundings as well? Because cars can't stop instantly you know.

This is a contrived situation that never actually happens (even here in Manhattan, arguably the craziest place on Earth), but I’ll address it anyway. Where pedestrians are present, there’s never a sound reason for any vehicle operator to accelerate to speeds at which “stopping instantly” becomes the only logical (and physically impossible) option for avoiding a car-on-ped collision. Drive slowly, and suddenly a whole host of problems go away. NYC lowered its default speed limit from 30mph to 25mph a few years ago. This helped traffic move more smoothly and reduced the number of collisions involving pedestrians.

Not that I diagree it's a contrived situation but it does happen. I've seen it with my own eyes driving in rush hour traffic going between 30-40 mph and having a 3-5yr old girl run directly into traffic from the front yard of her house. Brakes were applied, car hit girl, dad ran from porch directly to girl, picked her up, rushed to hospital. I have no idea if she was hurt or not. The car clearly hit her, possibly by 1-inch meaning if the car had managed to stop 1-inch shorter maybe she would not have been hit. 30 or 60 cars were basically moving as a block down a 4 lane street (2 lanes each side). The car that hit the girl is the middle of the pack meaning the girl ran directly between cars. I was in the inner lane, car that hit girl was in outer lane (closer to houses). Somewhere like this, speed limit 45mph

https://goo.gl/maps/iDXj3wnFrhbrdzYQ8

The kinetic energy of a moving object is proportional to its velocity squared. A collision at 30mph is vastly more survivable than at 45mph.

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.

>This is a contrived situation that never actually happens

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.

In many cases it’s the driver’s fault due to inattention or recklessness, other-times the ped is taking liberties with their safety (on phone, not looking, running to beat traffic). So, while drivers do have the responsibility to look out for pedestrians there are cases where there is nothing they can do about a particular circumstance.

Drivers are the ones subject to licensing and insurance requirements. Drivers are the ones operating heavy machinery. Drivers are thus the responsible party, even when pedestrians are clearly not looking out for their own safety. There’s never any downside to being the bigger person and watching out for the well being of fellow humans, even those who should really know better.

> nothing they can do about a particular circumstance.

Not true at all. A simple thing they can do is drive slow. Ped car collisions under 20mph have a 99.9% survival rate.