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Comment by rtlfe | Hacker News Reader

> Most accidents are caused by things that are pretty ordinary forms of irresponsibility

This is a big diversion form the actual point, but it's important. The vast majority of these crashes (the word "accident" is rarely used by news/DOTs/etc anymore) could be prevented by designing streets to control speed and improve visibility. So I'd argue that they're caused by poor design which comes as a result of misplaced societal values.

Re the second item in that list of causes, an interesting article came out a couple days ago: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-21/make-the-...

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> could be prevented by designing streets to control speed and improve visibility

And if you make school tests easier, everyone will get a passing a grade, but that’s not the point.

The point here is that responsibility is not an area specific skill, people who are financially responsible, tend to drive responsibly, people who are reckless drivers, tend to be reckless spenders too.

> but that’s not the point.

Yes I literally started my comment by explaining that I was ignoring the point to make a different one.

It's funny how people read what they want to read.

There are road designs that prevent driving while drunk or texting?

Maybe not drunk driving, but road design can reduce distracted driving crashes:

https://news.cision.com/property-casualty-insurers-associati...

There are road designs that significantly reduce the consequences of those actions. Narrow lanes with chicanes prevent driving at high speeds. Concrete barriers prevent cars from swerving into cyclists and pedestrians. Roundabouts eliminate left turn conflicts.

Yes, society can and should do more to encourage people to drive safely, but that doesn't mean it's impossible to do so.

The same logic applies to all sorts of things like obesity, smoking, etc.. These things obviously have multiple causes-- some societal, some individual. It's not a binary.

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