And this, in a nutshell, is the reason why the traffic accidents and deaths statistics didn't really improve during the pandemic, despite reduced traffic.
> While Americans drove less in 2020 due to the pandemic, NHTSA’s early estimates show that an estimated 38,680 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes—the largest projected number of fatalities since 2007. This represents an increase of about 7.2 percent as compared to the 36,096 fatalities reported in 2019.
> 2,780 people died in 2020 on French roads, in mainland France or overseas territories. This figure, 21% lower than in 2019, is historically low. This evolution is largely explained by the effects of the global epidemic of Covid-19. Accidents are down -19% and injuries are down -20%.
+7% in the US, -20% in France. I wonder what is driving this large difference
https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/2020-fatality-data-show... https://www.onisr.securite-routiere.gouv.fr/en/road-safety-p...
It was like they just didn't care anymore.
Anecdotally, whenever I'd mention this to someone they would say they noticed the very same thing, although I realize that data point could be meaningless.
Still, let me know if you noticed it where you are too.
You pretty much[1] NEVER see anyone just blow a light in the northeast. Ignore a no right on red sign or squeak a few extra cars through as a yellow turns red, sure. But I've never seen anybody ever just barrel through an established red like a truck that's lost its brakes in a Russian dash-cam video. Not during the pandemic, not ever.
[1] By "pretty much" I mean "literally, but I'm covering my ass lest everyone chime in with that anecdote from a police chase in downtown Boston that you saw on the news in 1998".
For one thing, this counts as blowing through a red light. Secondly, I've seen plenty of this in Philly - people blowing blowing through stop lights and stop signs
I'm in southern Mississippi, and that's the socially accepted way to go through an intersection. I'm only partially joking.
I don't know that it happens more often here now, because it wasn't enforced to begin with. I saw someone run a red light to make a left turn, in front of a police car who had a green light and had to slam on the brakes to let the guy run the red light in front of him. The police officer simply continued down the road afterwards. That kind of stuff happens all the time here. There's a few police that might give you a speeding ticket but mostly they only care if you have drugs, alcohol, or cash.
Those sorts of laws in the USA vary a lot. Out West, especially on the long flats, speed limits end up more a suggestion than a hard-and-fast. USA's got more distance between places, makes sense. Plus it's no secret that the car's a way of life in the USA a bit more than over in Europe, and comparatively we hand our licenses out like child's candy and we're a bit more hesitant to revoke 'em for misbehavior that doesn't involve the bottle.
Not saying one way of life is better or anything, don't think that's a thing I'd be qualified to say, but there's plenty to suggest why things are different in one place compared to the other.
I used to feel the same way, until some combination of experience with traffic cameras in other countries and maturity changed my mind.
Traffic-stops are dangerous for all concerned, expensive, don't scale, and are rife with the opportunity for profiling/abuse.
To the extent that we can agree on speed limits that delineate the difference between safe and unsafe behavior, average-speed cameras are a great way to ensure that those limits aren't radically exceeded.
There are places, like Highway 20 in Washington State, where the privacy risk is limited. If you pass through Newhalem, you're either going to the mountains or you're going to Mazama, 60 miles away. On that stretch of road, if a car arrives >10% earlier than can possibly be safe, why can't we fine the car's owner?
That's what's happened in NYC. All the drivers who go out intending to blatantly violate the law just started making it so their plates can't be read (or are outright missing) and don't care about the cameras at all.
As someone much further north, unless I just came out of the car wash, my plates are basically illegible 4-6 months a year because of the heavy level of salt/sand/crap on the road in winter.
I don't think you're getting away from requiring a high level of traffic stops to influence driver behavior significantly.
That's the rub, in many places. You can't fine the owner unless you can prove that the owner was in control of the vehicle. I know some identical twins, one was driving a car and got caught by a red light camera with a clear picture of the driver. Both twins show up to court, claim that they share the car, and the photo can't distinguish between them. They got out of the ticket.
Personally, I'd be in favor of turning speed camera pings into an "excessive use fee" on the car's registration (pay on renewal, or no renewal).
Edit: the notion of moving speed infractions to an administrative fee does have some issues -- in cases of dangerously excessive speeding, it seems like a good idea for a cop to intervene. A sloppy implementation would result in double-jeopardy. If a car is stolen and used to commit a crime, but the thief isn't identified, that could result in significant legal difficulty for the owner.
That can’t be the case though? If the posted limit is the boundary between safe and unsafe, drivers will be close to the limit all the time, and really in danger should they exceed it. The limits have to be set well away from that boundary, and the boundary itself has to assume the lowest common denominator of driver and vehicle.
I think that's why average speed cameras feel especially unsporting. A reasonable driver in a modern car could beat a posted limit by 10% while remaining so far inside their safety envelope they wouldn't even notice.
For an extreme example, see: School Zones.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndil/pr/former-redflex-ceo-liai... https://ww2.motorists.org/blog/6-cities-that-were-caught-sho...
I mean, I could literally find 100000 links to various stories. These were just the first two that came up with a quick search.
The highway was open to the public, but you had to check in at both ends as you entered and left the site. You were given a pass with time written on it, and if you took too long to pass through the site, you could be subject to additional interrogations and searches.
As far as I know, it was the only highway where taking to long to cover distance could get you into trouble.
US (2018 figures): 12.4
France: (2019): 5
Of course this neglects many confounding variables, but a factor of nearly 2.5 is quite large.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...
Figure that it's the bit about traveling in the vehicle that bears the risk, not just being a person in the country.
I can't get over the idea that its illegal possess devices sensitive to certain types of RF like radar detectors. I don't use radar detectors, I don't see the logic of paying hundreds to attempt to avoid paying a ticket instead of just following speed limits and save hundreds overall. However, the basic concept of outlawing a machine sensitive to certain EM waves seems absurd. Imagine if IR cameras were made illegal or it was illegal to own a SDR.
I can own a blue flashing light. I can operate it in my house. I can't operate it attached to my vehicle on a public road. There is a very high chance this is also true in your country/state. Context is king.
Your blue flashing light example makes sense to prohibit because it is misleading other people. Whereas a radar detector is increasing your own senses. Should there be aspects of your personal physical reality that you are legally prohibited from finding out?
Or alternatively, what basic tort would using a radar detector be similar to?
Operating a blue flashing light on a car on a public road is partially impersonating an emergency vehicle or police officer. You're directly affecting the people around you with that.
A radar detector is a fancy radio receiver that beeps when it sees certain wavelengths. Its not directly affecting anyone else. I do agree things like radar jammers should be illegal to operate in public spaces, which they are already separate from anything about attaching them to your car, as that's directly affecting other people especially with modern car safety features utilizing radar and laser systems. Public radar jammer operation is illegal though under FCC rules, so there's already things in place to punish those operating such equipment.
FWIW in Virginia and D.C. it really is illegal to possess a radar detector. The police will confiscate them. I imagine there are other places in the world which have similar rules.
So while e.g. in Switzerland listening to air traffic control is legal and Zurich airport's official plane spotter info page even provides a direct link to liveatc.net, in Germany it's officially illegal unless you're a pilot (and even then it might possibly be technically illegal if you're listening in not directly in conjunction with flying, i.e. while not wearing your pilot hat figuratively speaking).
Would operating a general SDR would be illegal in Germany? How would they even begin to know you're listening to those frequencies as opposed to something else? I've got a hand-held amateur radio which easily tunes into the air bands, would such a radio be illegal to operate in Germany?
FWIW, this is one place in US laws which is like this. There's a section of frequency ranges which analog cell phones operated on, and supposedly radios which are designed to tune to those frequencies aren't allowed. I'm not entirely sure how SDRs work in such a legal system, but they seem generally legal despite physically being able to tune in to those frequencies easily. Its kind of a moot law these days anyways, there are no analog radios susceptible to this basic "attack".
> How would they even begin to know you're listening to those frequencies as opposed to something else?
Or course the can't know that – what it effectively means is you can't do in public and shouldn't talk about it too loudly (hence e.g. liveatc.net doesn't have any coverage in Germany).
You can actually have it in your vehicle, as long as it's not accessible to the driver/passengers and not connected to a power source. They cannot be sold in Virginia.
Here in the US, people are too busy doing everything but driving. Mind wandering, waiting for their Wall-e chairs to be developed to take them to McDonalds. Surfing Facebook, reading their iPads car wandering all over the lane, bouncing off the lane reflectors. People in the US can't even be bothered to use their turn signals for fucks sake. We have the absolute shittiest driving habits in the world, the worlds slowest, least attentive drivers. The driving exams are a joke in every state. We let anybody behind the wheel.
US has a much higher driving culture, and we also had much less restrictions in most of the nation, so I suspect the reduction in number of miles driven in the US was not really that much outside the say CA and NY
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1110584/fines-controls-o...
I'd bet good money that a huge part of the equation is booze or pills. As a former paramedic, booze or drugs accounted for like 80% of accidents I dealt with. Why so high compared to official stats? I think because I live in a relatively rural area whereas most people live in high density cities. Also, sometimes booze doesn't get counted in the official accident statistics if people don't get charged for whatever reason. People don't generally crash unless they're drunk, high, inexperienced, or something unexpected happens like they hit a deer or something.
In this case, I'd venture to guess there's less demand to drive in France, and they have a better safety net, and we probably had a lot more drunks.
It's also the one time I went by a cop and got a "slow down" gesture instead of a ticket. Just the local speed trap, so it wasn't crazy fast, like 65 in a 45. For a highway, with ramps! Don't ask me why the speed limit is 45. I'm sure if I had been going legitimately fast he'd have overcome his desire to avoid the covid plague.
There were some protests about it, if you didn't notice.
Now if you tell me that accident counts went up in EU as well, then ok my reasoning is wrong.
OK I found https://wjes.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13017-021-0... which breaks it down. I didn't read it in detail but most of the increase (but not the single greatest increase) was in the US. For the rest of world, for the most part things got better with reduced traffic.
> Overall, the number of annual road death dropped significantly in most countries. However, few had the opposite. There was an overall reduction in the annual absolute number of road deaths in most of the 27 European countries by 17% [24], six Balkan countries by 11% [117], in Saudi Arabia by 20% [118], and in Japan by 12% [119, 120]. In contrast, the absolute number of road deaths increased in some countries like Luxembourg by18%, Ireland by 6%, Finland by 4%, and Switzerland by 21% [24, 117]. Similarly, it generally increased in the USA by 7% [110] with major variations in different states [121].
The study is detailed and they go more into it than just "deaths". Although I very much doubt that they get into studying driver skill.
speed isn’t the sole problem imo.
This is like a batting practice pitch straight over home plate for the biases of HN.
I propose a different theory: All the older and statistically safer white collar workers were at home leaving the younger, poorer, "monster energy is my sleep" essential workers crowd on the roads.
That left risk takers on the road with no "safe driver" buffers between them.