When Rubber Hits the Road, and Washes Away

The obstacles you named(visual obstructions) are all also things that should not exist as much as they do in their current forms. Daylighting intersections to improve sight lines, smaller cars to prevent crushing kids and also improve sight lines, narrower streets to reduce speeds are not idealized abstract scenarios. Plenty of countries outside of the USA have this as a reality and a few have achieved 0 traffic deaths, and that is owed almost entirely to street design, not bigger car tires.

‘Shit Happens’, yes. But there are significantly better ways to make ‘shit happen’ less, and make it less deadly for the people outside of a car.

Assuming speed limits stay the same, but deaths and injuries continue to rise, at what point would you say we have a ‘bad balance’ and should adjust? What is your ‘balance’ based on? Is there some ratio of VMT(vehicle miles traveled) to occurrences of deaths and dismemberment that you keep in mind?

Light car with big tires is veeeery sketchy to drive in rain. I had a Miata with 225 wide super sticky tires and I couldn’t go over 60 on the highway without being very nervous. I went down to 205s and it’s way more street friendly.

Roads with some gravel, dirt, or otherwise not so perfect are also not great with too big of a tire because the car rolls on the little pebbles or rocks instead of shaping itself around it. The pounds per inch go down enough that the tire won’t get pushed around the rock to contact the asphalt.

There is a “safe for the average guy” tire width and a “experienced enthusiast that wants some extra Gs in the turns” width.

Your fence analogy is flawed. The fence is a requirement by law, just as crosswalks and their use are required by law. Neither kid was using a crosswalk or even gave any indication they were going to cross the street (such as turning to look at traffic). They simply stepped into traffic without looking. There's no legal basis for a driver to be held responsible in the scenarios I described where the driver is operating lawfully (attentive, at or under the speed limit, etc) and the pedestrian decides to step out without any indication and in violation of the law. The driver in that scenario performed all their lawful duties but even a lawful driver is not likely to be able to stop a car that takes 30-40 feet to stop at 35mph when someone steps out at 20 feet. Just as someone with a fence around their pool would have fulfilled their lawful duties if a high school kid tresspassed by jumping that fence and drowned.

Parents have a duty to safeguard their children. If you allow your child to go unsupervised, then you could be found responsible their actions if they do something wrong (parent's negligence in not supervising a minor). Some states or cities even make it a crime to allow a child under a specific age to go unsupervised whether they did something wrong or not (curfews are very common). But it is generally up to the parent to decide if their child can safely perform an action such as walking along a street or staying home alone.

I'd hardly call 30-35 mph high speed, unless we're calling bicycles high speed too. Typically when talking about cars, high speed would be considered at least highway speeds in excess of 50mph.

I think there's been a learning process since the adoption of Pb-free processes. Solder alloys have improved, package sizes have conveniently shrunk, you have underfill for BGA if necessary. Also when designing for high-vibe or large ∆temp, there's lab testing (shaker table, env. chamber) work that gets done esp. for safety-related hardware

Like, yes, Pb-free has considerations, but so does any other component of a system. I find that I usually don't have to give it much thought these days, and the fracture failures I've seen could have been mitigated by design changes rather than returning to Pb solder.