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Comment by epistasis | Hacker News Reader

I can't agree with your assessment at all. Deaths are rising, yet what changes are happening?

And in particular the NHSTA doesn't give a damn about those outside of the car.

The very greatest threat to the life of my children is cars. It would be easy, trivial almost, to fix this by legalizing building for houses and businesses that don't allow cars, but are served only by public transit. Yet this very simple, very desirable concept is illegal in the US except for a few tiny islands.

We prioritize cars over life in nearly every single aspect of law. We modified law to make drivers not culpable for the death they inflict on others, because if drivers had to pay for the damage they caused, we would not be driving at all.

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> Deaths are rising, yet what changes are happening?

https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/early-estimate-2021-tra...

I think that is they type of change that is bound to fail, according to the original article. One of the many reasons:

> the growing crash fatality rates are a direct challenge—even a rebuke—to their theory of traffic safety, which relies on applying highway buffering standards to local streets. They need to open up the design process, inviting more voices in—not just to comment, but to share insights into what the design needs to accomplish. And they need to stop attacking dissidents (i.e., those who challenge the status quo), and instead embrace the engineering mindset of problem solvers.

The author is also a much bigger fan of decentralization than I am, as a general political philosophy, though I would be pretty happy if governance was decentralized to the point where I was allowed to build a neighborhood with friends and colleagues like I want.

"Not doing what I think should be done for my particular interest and priorities" isn't the same as "Ignoring." At all.

By all means, continue to advocate, but the idea that "we" ignore car crashes is risible.

Nearly any actual that would result in fewer deaths is so far outside the Overton window.

Claiming that there are ineffective government agencies that pay attention to a few tiny aspects of safety but ignore the vast majority of them-better city designs-, is not a thug except window dressing to enable the neglect of these deaths.

You might find it risible to suggest that we are ignoring car deaths, but given the rise in car deaths and the lack of effective action against them, I find it far more risible to suggest that "we" are paying attention to them.

I've been paying attention to them since high school, when 0.5% of my high school died because of cars. Nobody did anything. Nobody suggested we enable life without cars. Nobody changed an intersection. Nobody suggested new technology. It was completely ignored. Sure, the kids were mourned, but we all ignored any action.

There is almost no way for a sober driver to kill a person and be deemed for their death. Police and highway patrol will just escort the driver off the scene. Kill a person crossing in a crosswalk with flashing lights? You'll walk away from the scene.

What other sort of danger do we allow around us? Much less mandate that a person must be exposed to cars if they want to be around other people? It's a preposterous situation that we have chosen and enforce by law. Until we realize what we are doing and acknowledge the car dependency to our legally required city planning, we will continue to ignore the costs that the law imposes on us.

Have you heard of backup cameras? They are now mandatory on cars and significantly reduce the frequency of hitting pedestrians.

This negates both your point about anything reducing deaths being outside of the Overton window and your point about pedestrians not being considered.

Backup cameras are not going to save any significant amount of lives. What fraction of our car deaths are from backing up? Sure, it sounds like a good idea, and is a good idea, but it will not make the slightest dent in the death and carnage.

There is one place that has solved this, Oslo: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2020/10/16/best-practices-how-os...

Lots of other cities in the US adopted "Vision Zero" policies after seeing how Osls was drastically reducing death. But US cities refuse to make any of the changes that are actually successful at reducing death.

Because what needs to change isn't just the design of the car, what really needs to happen is a change in the design of the road.

We must start designing cities with the assumption that drivers will make mistakes, as all people always do. The design of roads and intersections must minimize the change for a deadly mistake.

And perhaps, and here's the part that's really outside the Overton window, Pepe who want to travel by non-car means should have just as much access and safety as those inside cars. We force everyone in the US to get around by car if they are going to be the median participant in society. What if we had a world where the median person, with a job, was not expected to drive?

> Yet this very simple, very desirable concept is illegal in the US except for a few tiny islands.

I don't see how it can be illegal?

HOAs have extreme power and already impose all kinds of overbearing rules on people subject to them. So you could surely get together with a few hundred likeminded people and build a neighborhood where the HOA prohibits cars.

City and county laws still override HOA rules. And every city and county has minimum parking for businesses, setbacks, and mandated access by cars.

You might be able to build a tiny little enclosed block, but you couldn't also have business there too because of zoning.

Minimum parking requirements are very common in the US. You would also still need some roads for emergency services.

Zoning law in large parts of this country is designed around single family homes, non-walkable suburban layouts, complete separation of residential and commercial development, and minimum parking requirements at businesses.

Interestingly, places that are dense and friendly to walking and bicycling are actually extremely popular with home buyers and renters. These places have seen prices and demand skyrocket, yet building more of them is often against zoning or other planning guidelines.

It's starting to change, many places are starting to convert to denser and mixed-used zoning and remove minimum parking requirements, but it seems to be happening slower than market demand.

Oh boy you are in for a treat. Google parking minimums and single family zoning. And watch some videos from this channel: https://youtu.be/bnKIVX968PQ

Agreed, but that's an increase in scope of the requirements/desires.

I still think it'd be possible to build a neighborhood where the HOA bans driving cars. Yes, it'll still need roads for emergency access (which you'd want anyway, fire trucks and ambulances do need to get in when needed).

If there are minimum parking space rules in the area that's a bit annoying but shouldn't be a showstopper. Just because the parking needs to be present doesn't mean it needs to be used for that purpose, so the HOA can still ban cars. You can then use that driveway for projects, play space, etc.

Are you talking about pedestrian deaths when you mention car risk for your children?

If so, good news. Those have been going down. Since 1975 pedestrian deaths of under 13 year olds have steadily declined by more than an order of magnitude. For 13-19 year olds the decline hasn't been as big, but is still over a factor of 3 [1].

[1] https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/pedes...

Up until 2020, car deaths were the biggest cause of child death. In 2020, there was a spike in firearm deaths that overtook car deaths:

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2201761

Fortunately, I'm able to live my life without being forced to own a gun, and am allowed to keep my children out of homes that have guns in them.

But Im not allowed to build a life that isn't centered around transporting my child by car, or subjecting them to car violence while on bike or foot. There's no escaping it, especially in places like the Bay Area that have completely fetishized transporting kids by car. There are better lives possible, and my partner and I are just trying to figure out the two-body problem of moving to a better part of the world without one of us sacrificing a career.

If you're operating on these kind of statistics I think you need to consider the age and race of your child. If you go by likelihood of death, a 19 year old black male (covered by the chart you cited) has a wildly different chance of firearms related death than a 4 year old white child (for that child, they're more likely to die by swimming pool) [0]. In fact the choice to include 18 and 19 year olds at prime age for gang related violence on a study on a decision on what to do with younger children is in fact either a naive or intentionally biased approach.

Under teenage years, your kid is much more likely to die by assault by firearm than by suicide/accident by firearm [1]. It is not easier to fight off an assault while you are unarmed.

Under age 5, by your rationale you probably also never went to a house or anywhere else with a swimming pool, which at that age is as likely to kill your child as a gun. Operating based on this, a good case could be made a household without teenagers may be safer with a gun (assuming you are the owner and you don't assault children, and you either store the firearm on your person or secured in a safe) for protection against assault, while those with teenagers have to counter the risk of suicide by either not owning a gun or putting it in a secure safe. But then again, teenagers are still yet more likely to die by (firearm) assault than (firearm) suicide, so perhaps even they are better off if their guardian can defend them against armed assailants.

As a final note, assuming you do actually take your children places: your hosts probably lied. Not all of them did, but a few probably did, especially if you left the Bay area. Even the ones that are 'honest.' They knew that you would be uncomfortable about firearms in the house, and they themselves would be uncomfortable if their friend found out, so they simply locked them up somewhere in their house where they would never be found or could be accessed and then told you there weren't any there. I don't have the study off hand, but a well researched study I came across showed only ~30% of people truthfully inform guests with children about guns in their house.

[0] https://www.nejm.org/doi/suppl/10.1056/NEJMc2201761/suppl_fi...

[1]https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics...

If a bunch of people want to worship hunks of death inflicting metal as idols, I have zero problem with that as long as I'm allowed to live away from it. And I am allowed to! If somebody tells me that they go the firing range, that's just great, and I may even go with them some time. But I'm not allowed to live away from cars as a normal member of society.

Yeah I agree it's a lot harder to live a life on foot, and wish there were better options!

Could be that the reduction has come at the cost of children's freedom of movement?

Yes, now that they have been locked indoors all day they are free of death by car! Sadly there is inexplicable epidemic of obesity, and obesity linked disease appearing in this children later in life, what could possibly be the contributors?

I this attitude a lot, especially from Americans. A 'well if you change this to help A, this other thing B will get worse'. All while the US is at the bottom of list for both A and B.

Americans often get to make the uncomfortable decision as to eat a shit sandwich or a double shit sandwich.

Thanks Nintendo and Instagram!

I can't agree with your assessment at all. Deaths are rising, yet what changes are happening?

Deaths per miles driven have never been lower (2nd table). You can't just add up the negative impacts (deaths) without adjusting for positive impacts (miles traveled).

https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatalit...

A mile driven is not a positive impact. A trip taken, an amenity experienced, a commute completed would be a positive impact. But every mile driven is a negative impact.

If the amount driven is increasing, it's likely because the system is failing more.

Irrelevant to the point - driving is getting safer, not more dangerous.

And unless people deriving zero benefit, every mile driven is a positive outcome.

To ignore that is to look at the problem incorrectly.

Given that I only have one life, I actually only care about the cost in lives, not cost per mile.

The way we design our society impacts how much we are forced to drive. Our current plans force people to drive more and more.

Even without increasing miles, deaths by cars are somewhat decreasing, especially compared to decades ago, and I've posted those graphs elsewhere in this thread.

The real way to decrease car deaths isn't to decrease deaths per mile, it's to allow people to avoid the risk at all in the first place.

Because a lot of these deaths stents even from people in the cars, it's from cars ramming into those who haven't gotten in cars but still must risk exposure to them in order to live in the world.

Wait, you do cost-benefit analyses by ignoring benefits?

> I can't agree with your assessment at all. Deaths are rising, yet what changes are happening?

More than one factor affecting a phenomenon can exist. They can be making changes to make things safer, while other things can be working against them. It's like saying "I don't believe harm reduction is helping: people still die from ODs"

> It would be easy, trivial almost, to fix this by legalizing building for houses and businesses that don't allow cars, but are served only by public transit.

Is that all? Just move everyone in the country? What do you consider non-trivial?

> Just move everyone in the country?

You've misunderstood.

No need to move everyone in the country. People buying these new houses would be moving. As you're probably aware, people that buy new houses already regularly move into them. And it certainly wouldn't be everyone.

When I say "fix this" I'm talking about the greatest threat to my children's life, ie me moving to a walkable neighborhood without cars, along with the subset of the population that also wants to live that way.

But my preferred lifestyle has been banned. And it is often because people are afraid that if I'm allowed to live the way I prefer, I'm going to make them live the way I prefer, which just speaks to their basic inability to acknowledge human freedom, or the possibility that people should even be allowed to make their own choice.

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