Hacker News Reader

Comment by akira2501 | Hacker News Reader

> Motor vehicles are the most dangerous things we interact with on a daily basis.

Hardly. Self-inflicted injury leading to death is the #3 leading cause of death in the US. Mostly, that's ladders and falls that kill you. Suicides are more common than car accident fatalities. _YOU_ are the most dangerous thing you interact with on a daily basis.

The flu is more common. Emphysema is more common. So is Alzheimer's.

Most car accidents are single vehicle accidents where the driver was drunk or impaired.

Again, _you_ are dangerous to yourself. Which makes sense, you have to be around yourself all the time, so you _would_ be the most likely cause of your own death.

> The US doesn't even factor in safety of non-occupants in safety requirements.

The vehicle can never be made safe for these circumstances. The road and pedestrian walkways _can_ be, though.

View on HN

> The vehicle can never be made safe for these circumstances.

This is not true at all. Vehicles have been getting taller and heavier, which has led to worse outcomes for pedestrians and cyclists. We could be going the other direction, but instead we're continuing to make it worse without regulation.

[1] https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/vehicles-with-higher-more-v... [2] https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/new-study-suggests-todays-s... [3] https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/higher-point-of-impact-make...

Ironically, it's regulation that made them like this. Obama-era emissions rules stipulated that trucks had to get a certain fuel economy, unless they were heavy duty trucks, which did not have the same requirements. The option was to either make all trucks less capable to meet requirements, or to start selling almost every truck as a heavy duty truck. Nobody would want to buy a truck that cost just as much or more while delivering less, so everybody got jacked up mega trucks instead.

While it definitely contributed to it, the trend towards SUV/crossovers was already underway[1][2] far before with CAFE standards[3]. It's also just higher margins for the auto companies (mostly similarly priced components, but upcharge for size), so they've been pushing it everywhere. While not drastic as US, the same trend can be seen outside US even without the same laws[4].

[1] https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2018/05/the-changing-mix-... [2] https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/research/the-rise-of-th... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy [4] https://www.forbes.com/sites/judeclemente/2019/10/23/suvs-a-...

>Hardly. Self-inflicted injury leading to death is the #3 leading cause of death in the US. Mostly, that's ladders and falls that kill you. Suicides are more common than car accident fatalities. _YOU_ are the most dangerous thing you interact with on a daily basis.

Isn’t that saying that if you combine all other accidental injuries it edges out cars. So cars are almost as dangerous as all the other things put together? Why are cars broken out into their own category from all the other things? Is it because they are incredibly dangerous?

> The vehicle can never be made safe for these circumstances. The road and pedestrian walkways _can_ be, though.

Pedestrian crash safety standards exist, in Europe, for example. As a result, some European cars offer active pedestrian safety systems that are stripped from North American equivalents. Cars certainly can be designed for passive and active pedestrian safety, and they are notably safer in areas where this is a requirement.

> Most car accidents are single vehicle accidents where the driver was drunk or impaired.

That seems unlikely to be true. Most fatal car accidents are single vehicle, but I doubt that most car accidents are single vehicle. It wasn’t immediately obvious how to search for reliable data there (since many single vehicle minor accidents would likely go unreported into a reliable/authoritative database).

Among fatal crashes, I found data to state that the majority of single car fatals involved excessive speed or alcohol, but not data to say that single car alcohol-related fatals were a majority of fatal crashes or of overall fatalities. The data I did find suggested that around 1/3 of car crash fatalities were alcohol-related (though some sources were as low as an 1/8th).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com