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Comment by alexwhb | Hacker News Reader

While the methods in this post may not be a super accurate depiction of reality.. I did find it entertaining. Additionally I agree generally with the point the post is making. It is shocking to me that we accept so whole heartedly the risk associated with driving when, comparatively, it is shockingly unsafe relative to other modes of transportation. In the US somewhere around 41,000 people die per year from traffic accidents. If we compare that to train travel (especially in Europe where safety standards are significantly better) it’s somewhere in the ballpark of 32x safer. Additionally we accept the liability of a car shockingly easily. Yes we all should have insurance, but that insurance only goes so far. If you accidentally kill somebody on a bike you’re likely to serve prison time for manslaughter. There are several other downsides we accept that I won’t get into, but it’s pretty interesting to me that especially US society has accepted these facts so seemingly easily.

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> ballpark of 32x safer

That number (edit: rail deaths) feels too high. Other than major train collisions/derailments, is it even possible to die because of trains ?

> In 2022, more than two-thirds (69 %) of these fatalities in the EU were caused by 'accidents to persons by rolling stock in motion', typically involving persons who are unauthorised on the railway tracks and are hit by a running train. Together with level-crossing accidents, which caused 29 % of fatalities, these accidents were responsible for almost 98 % of all deaths occurring in railway accidents in the EU. [1]

So rail accidents where a train was at fault, constituted only 2% of deaths assigned to railways. Unlike train accidents, a car is always to blame (some car) in a car accident. Even if I double the risk of railways to 4% of their total number, railways are still 640x safer than cars.

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/images/2/...

[2] Note: All numbers exclude (alleged) suicides

You meant "That number feels too low"

Yep, I have phrased it badly. Meant that the rail death number feels too high.

clarified. thanks

> That number (edit: rail deaths) feels too high. Other than major train collisions/derailments, is it even possible to die because of trains ?

Pedestrians and others are struck by rail vehicles regularly. Additionally, where rails come into contact with other pathways, they are a hazard to pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists and sometimes even cars when railway is poorly designed or implemented.

Genuine question. How ?

A train is something you can see coming from a mile away. It doesn't blindside you. 'Deer in headlights' events occur, but it not like the person couldn't have foreseen it coming. It's like blaming parkour deaths on walls.

A pedestrian crossing a street can be 'struck' by a car, because a car can actually come out of nowhere. There is a reason that most car deaths in cities occur on a 'unchecked turn right on red'. It is an accident that occurs because of occlusion.

Trams have a risk profile that borrows some of the risks of cars. But, grade separated rail requires active fault form the pedestrian/cyclist to be in fatal accident.

Light rail is rarely grade separated. Heavy rail often has at grade crossings as well.

In most heavy rail, there's no chance of timely stopping if someone trips and falls on the tracks at an inopportune time and is unable to make their way away from the tracks in time. You can blame that on the pedestrian, but it's still a rail death in my book.

How? Easy. Drunk people or kids that Don’t pay attention or it is very crowded.

I looked it up and there are 140 people or so that get killed by train by year here in Germany. Could be a lot of suicids.

People do things like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/trains/comments/11doux4/people_clim...

Looking at rail fatalities without filtering by intent of the persons involved is equally as fruitless as looking at firearm fatalities without filtering to only homicides. Most fatalities are suicides. Suicides are likely preventable in various different ways but don’t tell us anything about passenger safety on rail.

If you eliminate likely suicides, rail travel is stupendously safer than driving.

Back in the late 90's I began teaching my kids how to drive a car after they tested for their learner's permit. I drilled them that a car can be a weapon if used irresponsibility. We talked about the manslaughter issue you mentioned and the terribleness of living with the fact of killing someone because of speeding or distraction.

Today, with cell phones and infotainment screens in our cars, I still see people "flying" down the highway with no apparent thought for other people's safety. Both my vehicles have dash cams for the reason of video proof of what happened if one of these morons crashes into me and takes my life.

Literally almost happened to me on a trip last week. Driving on I95 and two people were headed to change to the same lane, one slow from the left and one flying up on the right (across three lanes). They see each other and react at the same time, the one on the left going back to their lane but the one on the right, with their angle and excess speed, overcorrects and starts to fishtail. Their car is then pointing directly at mine and barely misses t-boning me, instead hitting the barrier head-on to my left. Always practice defensive driving and have a dashcam.

The "flying by on the right" thing feels like a recent (within the last ~decade?) phenomenon. Am I imagining it?

I've seen it longer than that. Although the frequency might be increasing as the other trend I've noticed is that overall driver quality appears to have decreased. It could just be in my area or I could be wrong, but that's what I've noticed.

There's a total lack of "lane discipline" (as Clarkson would say) in the US. In fact I'd argue that it's not a lack of discipline, but just a lack of understanding of how you should drive on a highway.

People tend to migrate to the "fast" lanes (the left), so you naturally end up with people either passing on the right or tailgating them. Of course, you should always be in the right lanes except for passing.

I do wonder if let's say there's someone in lane 3 of 4 going slower than the limit and you can pass them safely on the right in lane 1 that it's probably safer to just do that (assuming you're not flying along!) than moving over 3 lanes to the left, passing then moving 3 over back to the right.

> Of course, you should always be in the right lanes except for passing.

First, I should note that I 100% agree.

However, as the highways have become more crowded, it has become less practical to actually adhere to this.

If I'm going 70MPH (the prevailing speed on the NYS highways where the legal speed limit is 65MPH tends to be somewhere between 70 and 78MPH), and there are a half-dozen cars going 60MPH in the right lane, with just barely enough room between them to safely get in (ie, there's sufficient stopping room between the rear car and me, and between me and the front car), then technically I could pass the first car, pull back into the right lane, pull almost immediately back into the left lane to pass the next car, and repeat several more times. But that's not merely tedious, it's dangerous.

It's even worse when instead of a half-dozen regular cars going 60MPH, it's three tractor-trailers. Particularly since "safe distance" for them is much longer due to visibility issues.

...And, of course, sometimes when I'm doing this, some yahoo going 80MPH will zip up behind me, pass me on the right (completely ignoring the aforementioned safe distances) and then zip back into the left lane to careen onwards.

The way I like to think about is this: If I see a maniac looming in my rearview mirror, where do I want that driver to be? Surely not bottled up behind me, where they can cause all kinds of trouble. I want them out in front of me, where I can keep an eye on them and where I control the distance between us. Furthermore, I would like to put this nutjob in front of me as quickly and as cleanly as possible. Fortunately they are often happy to zip by on my left if I give them the slightest encouragement: Room to do so.

Exactly. Cars who want to go faster than me: I want them ahead of me.

For the same reason, I want cars who wish to go more slowly than I do to be behind me.

> Of course, you should always be in the right lanes except for passing.

I used to adhere to this but it does not work in practice.

Right lanes have the highest churn-- people getting off, people getting on. If you're not planning to do either, you have no business being on that side of the road.

This idea about left lanes only being for passing only ever works when you're overtaking a tractor doing 15mph on a country road. The concept does not scale to freeway speeds or traffic. You're not legally passing anyone already doing 70.

I couldn't disagree more strongly :). I always adhere by "keep right except to pass" and it works fine. I also move into the left lane preemptively while approaching an on ramp to give any traffic entering the highway room to merge. I'll be honest, I usually set my cruise control about 10% over the speed limit, because I find I can minimize the number of times I have to change speed this way. Decelerating only to accelerate again wastes fuel so I do whatever I can to maintain a constant speed, but I also want to get there ASAP. So 10% over seems to be the sweet spot--sometimes I'm overtaking, sometimes I'm being overtaken, but I rarely have to disengage cruise.

EDIT: I also drive with two hands on the wheel, don't listen to the radio, and don't play with my phone.

Agreed, TBH on a quiet 4 line highway I'm in lane 2 to allow the ramp traffic easy on-off. I'll move left to pass if needed, but if there's someone going slower in the far lanes, I'll usually pass on the right to avoid moving over 3 lanes.

Unpopular opinion: People fly by on the right because someone else is camping in the left lane. The disclaimer is that with too much congestion the whole thing breaks down, and some people are determined to drive like idiots regardless, but it's worth examing why the right lane is open when the left lane isn't.

Note the "across three lanes"--this isn't a case of camping in the left lane as there must be at least 4 lanes for this to happen.

Rather, it's idiots weaving through traffic. They treat the flowing traffic as basically static obstacles and things can go very wrong if they cease to be static.

I've also seen it because the guy who flew by me on the right was impatient with the amount of clearance I left before moving back to the right lane--cut right as soon as there was a gap wide enough to move through.

I've noticed that moving right to allow such people to pass on the left (say, in a 3 lane highway) often results in them riding right up behind me, slamming the brakes, and then being blocked out of the left lane. If they were actually driving attentively they would instead merge left and overtake. I suspect what's actually happening is they're playing with their phones, and here in the US drivers sit on the left hand side of the car. So the worst blind spot is when you're merging right. If you're attention-compromised (e.g. because you're constantly checking myspace or tinder or whatever on your phone) then you'll want to spend all your time in the right lane. It's safest that way because nobody can sneak into the blind spot.

By the time I got my learner's permit I had been operating tractors of various shapes and sizes for the better part of decade. I think that gave me a visceral appreciation for the danger of operating heavy equipment, and the damage you can do with a tiny, momentary mistake. I remember being shocked when I realized my peers didn't understand that.

i just spent three hours on the bus today and i would much rather have spent an hour in a car instead, though my risk of dying would surely be higher

there are a lot of places within 100 km of my house that i'd enjoy visiting but where public transport doesn't go. if i had a car, i could go there easily. if that means shortening my life expectancy by 20 minutes, that seems like a worthwhile tradeoff. the risk i'd be imposing on innocent people around me by driving a car is ethically trickier

I'd you shorten your life expectancy by 20 min but get 2 hours back today it seems like a fair trade.

And that's why public transit in the us is such a mess, if you want people to use it, you have to make it fast and frequent before people need it, so when you do use it, you thin, huh, that's not too bad.

well, i wasn't actually dead on the public transit, although on the bus whose air conditioner was broken it felt like it part of the time

This I definitely agree with. A bus is the worst mode. Most of the downsides of a car with very few if any of rail especially in places with significant traffic. If you replaced that bus experience with light rail, almost certainly you’d be at your destination several times faster

well no, because light rail would necessarily involve walking farther from my house, and it has to wait for car traffic too, albeit less often than buses do. the bus i took actually had a reserved bus lane for a lot of the route, avoiding the traffic thing, but it still only averaged 14 km/hour

I've instructed my kids to avoid public transit, and drive as much as possible, for totally different reasons....

https://nypost.com/2022/10/11/nyc-subway-murders-jump-to-hig...

There were 255 traffic deaths in NYC 2022[0], so according to the statistic on the site you link to, driving is 36x more dangerous.

[0] https://www.silive.com/news/2023/01/nyc-traffic-deaths-drop-....

Bus, specifically, has the worst UX of both worlds. You still get the unreliability of being on road (so still getting/contributing traffic jams) and the suffocation of train (due to being crowded public transportation). I mostly avoid it in favor of trains or cars, or even motorbikes since it's ubiquitous in my country, unless that's literally the only option I can get.

Totally agree. The only exception to this is buses with dedicated lanes. Not say they are as good as trains, but at least don’t have the traffic issues.

I think that analysis captures why people drive very well actually. Let's assume trains are 32x safer in US as well:

Car: 2 hour 32 minutes driving door to door + 37 minutes of death = 3 hour 9 minutes

Train: 2 hour 37 minutes on train + 1 minute of death + 30 minute early arrive buffer + 30 minutes public transport to departure + 30 minutes public transport to destination = 4 hours 8 minutes

Trains already lose, unless both your source and destination are right next to the train stations. And once you factor possibility of other things, like having multiple stops or how you have to adjust the schedule around the trains, the car gets even better.

for any random trip it is far more likely that the car will be a better choice, but likely trip choice is a power law with most trips focusing on few routes.

This to say that the purpose of trains is not to be better than cars at what car do, but rather to allow as many people as possible not to need a car for most trips.

Depending on how trips are distributed this can be anywhere from easy to impossible.

I think this is true in the US where everything is designed around the car, but not as true in Europe. Somewhere like Amsterdam it’s actually generally faster to ride a bike than anything else. Also for longer trips high speed rail can be significantly faster and cheaper. So I think it really depends on the city context.

I guess it depends on the details. I do a journey regularly that is about the same time, an hour, by car or by train + tube + walk. I tend to do the train because I can sit and work on something whereas in the car you can't. It's changed with time - I used to like driving but find it a bit tedious now.

I think it depends on what type of rail you’re referring to here. If you’re in a city like LA where more or less no matter what your car drive will take hours… I think a dedicated rail would actually save people time. Obviously there would need to be huge investment in new infrastructure for that to happen.

When I lived in NYC same dynamics… it would have actually taken significantly longer in most cases to drive than take the subway.

So I think it depends on how a city is laid out and planned. If public transportation was not a priority and kinda shimmed in then totally, but in cities where they prioritize public transportation generally it’s a better experience than driving.

> it’s pretty interesting to me that especially US society has accepted these facts so seemingly easily

Because in the 1960s and 70s the US was rebuilt to be entirely car-dependent. And most Americans today accept that as the norm, because the only places they know that are different are New York and those quaint European and Asian cities rich people travel to.

Very true. Actually fun fact… historically LA had the biggest rail network in the U.S. i believe it was over 1000 miles. The ripped it all out for lots of reasons, but arguably one was that the car companies bought many of the rail lines and scrapped them. What a shame.

> If you accidentally kill somebody on a bike you’re likely to serve prison time for manslaughter.

The sad reality is that people recklessly kill cyclists and barely get a slap on the wrist.

Yes, it is amazing when the driver says, "I just didn't see him!" and that is accepted as a reasonable explanation.

I think it is because the overwhelming number of drivers (in the US) haven't ridden a bike since they were children. A judge and most of the jurors fall into that category, and they empathize with the driver, as they could imagine themselves doing the exact same thing that the driver did.

I do agree that empathy plays a big part.

However, just like with drivers, often times the cyclists have negligent (or reckless) factors against them as well, which is often used to downplay the contribution of any reckless or negligent actions of the driver. For example, about 20% of cyclist-vehicle fatalities involve cyclist DUI. About 60% of cyclist fatalities are not wearing a helmet despite recommendations and applicaible laws. That's why most cycling-vehicle deaths are handled in civil cases - a lower burden of proof and you can still get a payout even if the cyclist had some level of contributory negligence depending on the state.

I am sure you don't mean it this way, but this suggests a false equivalency.

If a cyclist does not wear a helmet and gets killed by a driver running a red light, it is still 100% the driver's fault.

A kill is still a kill even if the victim didn't wear a bulletproof vest.

You may want to look into what I said about contributory negligence instead of strawmanning in this comment thread. It seems this is a pattern with you as you strawmanned in another thread here too.

If we're talking US law, you are absolutely incorrect and making a false equivalence yourself. A murder victim is not a MVC victim.

Only the collision is 100% the driver's fault (in most states).

The death is up for debate. If you die because you weren't wearing a seatbelt/helmet, you were negligent, so fault is shared.

There is no law mandating everyone wear bulletproof vests. All states have seatbelt laws, and most have helmet laws.

>and most have helmet laws

For cyclists?

Most do have some cyclist helmet law. However, only a few have laws that apply to adults. Most are only applied to children of various ages.

It's because a driver can do everything right and still miss a cyclist. Humans aren't infallible, and driving is an extremely complex task. In many cases it's an issue of bad road design or cyclists not following the rules of the road. For a driver to be held criminally responsible they have to be negligent, eg. using a cellphone, speeding, distracted, etc.

From my own experience interacting with cyclists on the road, the riskiest situations I saw were ones the cyclist created. Eg. Running reds, doing 15+ mph on the sidewalk, lane-splitting, etc.

>From my own experience interacting with cyclists on the road, the riskiest situations I saw were ones the cyclist created. Eg. Running reds, doing 15+ mph on the sidewalk, lane-splitting, etc.

In the UK the most common cause of cycling fatalities is being rear ended. Risky behaviour by cyclists is rarely to blame for accidents.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/dec/15/cycling...

I don't think "I just didn't see him!" is considered a reasonable explanation in court. Now, if the cyclist came out from the gap between parked cars or a tight corner...

Cyclists can absolutely be at fault. I don't see why you'd think otherwise. Humans are uniquely fallible, cyclist and drivers are both human (if you ignore Waymo et al).

> we accept…. We accept…

I’d like to point out that as individuals, our ‘acceptance’ is not required nor even checked for. As Americans (speaking for my own countrymen only) we accept it the same way we accept our air quality. We, in broad strokes, may choose only to drive, or to remain stationary - just as we can breathe the air, or just stop breathing. Other practical options only even exist in very specific exceptional places or situations (most of them require you to commit to stay in an urban core 100% of the time, and that space physically cannot contain all Americans at once, due to space constraints, which we perceive via cost signals).

Of course, if the entire country were built out when NYC was built out, without cars even being hypothesized, things may have been very different today. But we shouldn’t pretend that most car-dependent people are choosing to be so, except maybe those who made an unforced decision to move from say, Manhattan to Phoenix. And even they may have accepted it only grudgingly in exchange for some other benefit such as weather, lower taxes, proximity to family, etc.

Note: I personally would like to not be car dependent, so please don’t try to explain to me why cars are bad. I cringe every time i see 327 SUVs idling in the street waiting to drop off each student in a school, on a warm, dry morning in the ‘burbs.

It's hard to compare the risks of personal vehicles and door to door trips with the risks of rails and planes and maybe even city busses.

I'm pretty sure door to door personal planes would be a lot more risky than door to door personal cars.

As a cyclist, I've personally been injured by rail infrastructure and never by cars. So I'm more worried about street car projects with rails in the road than I am about cars. (Although, I certainly check for unexpected cars more than I check for unexpected rails.)

> If you accidentally kill somebody on a bike you’re likely to serve prison time for manslaughter.

In the US, I’d bet heavily against this outcome (provided you were sober).

Do you have data to back up that trains in Europe are safer than the US (for passengers, pedestrians get hit a lot. Getting hit by a train is bad regardless)?

The FRA refuses to let us use European light trainsets because they're "unsafe", because they're too light. They're worried about collisions with freight trains.

There is e.g. [1], which puts the EU-27 at about 4 times safer than the US.

As for European light trainsets not surviving collisions with freight trains: trains generally don't fare well in high speed collisions. And at low speed collisions European commuter trains (something like [2]) would be doing fine, meanwhile light rail (like [3]) isn't designed to collide with anything heavier than a truck. I don't think anybody in Europe runs freight trains on shared tracks with light rail.

1: https://pedestrianobservations.com/2011/06/02/comparative-ra...

2: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/DB-Baureihe_430#/media/Datei:1...

3: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/K4500_VB...

Why are we comparing US cars versus European trains again?

Are you comparing nominal mortality instead of rates (per hour of travel or per mile)?

"I did find it entertaining."

I found it a bit disgusting due to how shotty the logic/ application was, even if the methods were sound.

"If you accidentally kill somebody on a bike you’re likely to serve prison time for manslaughter."

I wouldn't find this "likely". You have to be involved in some reckless or negligent action that directly resulted in their death. It is possible of course, and does occasionally happen. It's even less likely that it results in prison time, rather fines, probation, and diversionary programs.

"It is shocking to me that we accept so whole heartedly the risk associated with driving"

This shouldn't be shocking. Yes, there is a lot of risk. But people who understand the risks know that it's not as bad as what it's being made out as. About 45% of occupant fatalities are related to not being buckled in. Just buckling makes your stats look almost twice as safe. So buckle up (45%), don't drink (35%), and don't speed excessively (30%) and you've just reduced the largest risks significantly (not these are not additive due to overlap and other party risk).

Edit: why disagree?

I you commute by bike you know that the risks are significant.

I stopped cycling because I have a family to come home to. This has negatively impacted my quality of life.

This article and comment chain scope was on speeding risks to the speeders or personal vehicle occupants in general. The changes needed to reduce pedestrian and cyclist fatalities are fairly different.

Okay, on this narrow point, you are of course right.

Yup. I used to bike a lot in a small town. Move to the big city and quit--the first place we lived there was no safe bike route, period. Second place, likewise. Where we live now there is a safe path to one store. I haven't actually eyeballed it but now I think there's an acceptable route to one other.

I am excited for self-driving cars.

Public transport is great but it won't convince reckless drivers to stop driving.

Self-driving cars will finally open up a realistic political path to eliminate traffic deaths. And ironically, if all cars were self-driving, I would choose to bike much more often than today. Because I can trust that the computer will follow the rules and I will be able to return home to my kids.

In the meantime, we should make gps-based speed governors and automatic breaking systems mandatory.

"realistic political path to eliminate traffic deaths"

Just a note, they may be able to greatly reduce fatalities (guessing since the tech is not fully rhere yet), but no system will entirely eliminate them.

Even a reduction by a factor 10 means thousands of fathers every year who do not have to explain to their children that mommy won't come home tonight.

Ok...?

I'm seeing a lot of emotional comments that are not following the comment chains on this post. Are you meaningfully engaging in the conversation or trying to hijack them?

I am fairly emotional about this but I don't think my comments are off-topic or unfair.

I find it incredibly frustrating how we as a society have accepted the high number of traffic deaths as a fact of nature. Imagine we had the technology to reduce childhood cancer rates by 50%, but chose not to use it.

Traffic accidents kill more children than cancer. And we have the technology to reduce them: GPS-based speed limiters, automatic breaking system, speed bumps, red light cameras.

Yet we choose not to act because ... people think that would be too uptight?

"I am fairly emotional about this but I don't think my comments are off-topic or unfair."

This one wasn't off-topic, but it didn't really add anything. One of your other ones was off-topic, switching from driver risks to cycling risks, which had nothing to do with the article or the preceeding comments.

"Imagine we had the technology to reduce childhood cancer rates by 50%, but chose not to use it."

This is literally the case with traffic deaths today. About 45% of traffic fatalities are due to not wearing a seat belt. The technology has existed for decades but people choose not to use it. This then overstates the risks in the high level stats for the people who do use seatbelts. The number of childhood fatalities not buckled in was about 30-35%, and childhood restraint misuse is between 80-90%. If we want to make improvements in child survivability, then we should start by utilizing the most effect safety systems for the biggest focused gains.

"Traffic accidents kill more children than cancer. And we have the technology to reduce them: GPS-based speed limiters, automatic breaking system, speed bumps, red light cameras."

There is resistance to this because of the overstated risks, feasibility of implementation, and questions of effectiveness. For example, red light cameras have been shown to increase accidents because of the funding contracts many use. It's odd that you leave off enhanced driver testing when this is one of the most universal benefits. That and stricter enforcement are some of the main causes for lower fatality rates in many European nations, even in unrestricted speed sections of roads.

"Yet we choose not to act because ... people think that would be too uptight?"

No, that's more of a strawman than reality.

> red light cameras

I’m all for everything else on your list, and I’m all in favor of protecting the children, but I draw the line at increasing the surveillance state. Big Brother gets to watch enough of what we do, already. Let’s not give him even more eyes.

I'm surprised you draw the line at cameras but not at GPS enforced speed, which of course includes location data for jurisdiction purposes at least.

GPS-enforced speed could be done fully internal to the vehicle. THe jurisdiction data would have to be accurately stored internally, but that’s not incredibly difficult; e.g. Apple Maps has speed limit info for something north of 90% of US roads.

True. But they can do that with red-light cameras to where only the offenders data is captured. I think the issue is more on how they will implement the system than how they could implement the system. I can't see them setting up GPS enforced speed and not wanting the ability to track the location because of theft/national security/[insert favorite soapbox].

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