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Comment by david-gpu | Hacker News Reader

I wish car testing was less about the safety of the people inside of the car and more about the safety of the people outside of it, like pedestrians, cyclists and other vehicles.

After all, people buying a car already have a strong incentive to purchase something that is safe for themselves, but how many people put any thought into reducing the risk that the force upon others?

For context, pedestrian and cycling deaths have increased for the past decade in North America [0] and it is known that tall blunt hoods increase fatalities [1]. Yet, nothing is being done about it in NA as far as I know.

[0] https://www.npr.org/2023/06/26/1184034017/us-pedestrian-deat...

[1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=YpuX-5E7xoU

View on HN

https://www.euroncap.com/en/car-safety/the-ratings-explained...

NCAP has a dedicated test battery.

Pedestrian figures are alarming, but I doubt vehicle mass and shape are the largest factor contributing to their rise. The numbers have increased since 2009. Smart phones and distracted driving are a huge factor here. That combined with NA’s terrible pedestrian infrastructure is a terrible combination.

The fastest way to curtail pedestrian deaths is to build real pedestrian infrastructure and get serious about anti-cell phone technology for the driver’s seat.

Edit: Oh, also several NA cities just stopped enforcing all traffic laws post summer 2020. Can’t ignore that in the post pandemic spike.

> I doubt vehicle mass and shape are the largest factor contributing to their rise.

Distracted driving might be the biggest factor but it's hard to prevent a human from being distracted. It's easy to make smaller cars, we used to have them.

The shape most definitely has a large impact (pun intended). The visibility from recent SUVs and trucks is abysmal without extensive assistance, like sensors and cameras. [0] Sometimes those cameras and sensors are another source of distraction and increase the cognitive load for what used to be "just look ahead", leading to the distracted driving.

> examined that front visibility with a group of elementary school children, ages 6 to 10, and several adults of different heights in the driver’s seat of four tall, square-hooded vehicles: Ford F-150 and Toyota Tundra pickup trucks and Cadillac Escalade and Jeep Wagoneer SUVs. With the kids seated in a line stretching forward from the vehicle’s front bumper, it took nine to 11 of them before a 5-foot-2 driver could see a child’s head

[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/americas-cars-trucks-ar...

Speaking from a US perspective. I don't believe its hard to prevent a human from being distracted. The problem is these days there is zero enforcement of traffic laws in most parts of the US. Making cars smaller would require new laws that are most certainly impossible to get made at this point. Definitely would be great if cars were smaller but people need to get off their darn phone.

Citing blind spots fullsize SUVs seems misleading at best when their proliferation peaked in the mid 00s and have been waning since while small SUVs have become dominant.

Straight ahead drive overs of unseen pedestrians are vanishingly rare compared to people cornering into pedestrians that are hidden behind pillars. From there the lethality of the vehicle takes over.

The largest of SUVs that you complain about are not increasing in frequency. What is happening is that sedans re being traded in for taller SUVs of comparable footprint and that's where the changes in statistics are coming from.

> Citing blind spots fullsize SUVs seems misleading at best when they peaked in the 00s and have been waning

I'm not sure what's misleading, it's based on data which contradicts your opinion. Every link I can find on this points in the same direction.

As as summary: cars have increase continuously over the past decades and so have their blind spots, between 2012 and 2021 the total number of large cars has increased by 50% and each segment of large cars has seen 25-100% increase, the design can make even smaller cars more deadly, and the number of pedestrian deaths increased by 80% since 2009. [0][1]

> America's cars and trucks are getting bigger, and so are their front blind zones [0] [look for "Getting Bigger"]

> Over the past 30 years, the average U.S. passenger vehicle has gotten about 4 inches wider, 10 inches longer, 8 inches taller and 1,000 pounds heavier [1]

> a blunt profile makes medium-height vehicles deadly too [1]

> Pedestrian crash deaths have risen 80 percent since hitting their low in 2009 [1]

> many safety advocates have also drawn a connection to the growing portion of the U.S. vehicle fleet made up of pickups and SUVs [1]

You call it misleading, I call it supported by data.

[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/americas-cars-trucks-ar...

[1] https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/vehicles-with-higher-more-v...

The small SUVs tend to have smaller side blind spots, but for killing pedestrians, the important one is the front blind spot, and that is about hood height, which just keeps going up because it looks "manlier"

Deaths are also about what happens when there is contact: High hoods lead to the unfortunate pedestrian hitting their head against the pavement, followed by the car trying to go over it with all its weight. Do the same with the very heavy, but low Tesla Model 3, and the pedestrian goes over the car, which happens to be much safer. The contact with the sedan is at around knee size, many a modern American truck will hit your ribcage, which is a bit more threatening.

A car can be tall and designed to be relatively safe on impact, but it'd look like a minivan. We all know that those kept losing in the marketplace because they didn't look aggressive enough.

So the switch from sedans to small SUVs was a disaster.

> Distracted driving might be the biggest factor but it's hard to prevent a human from being distracted.

To prevent it entirely, perhaps. But there's quite a few things we could do to reduce the incidence of distracted driving:

* More thoroughly educate drivers on just how bad they are at distracted driving. I know that when I ran the red light while talking on the phone, I forswore any future use of the phone while driving, because I clearly couldn't be trusted to drive safely while doing so.

* Rip out the touchscreens of modern cars, and stop providing stuff in ways that requires distracted driving to operate.

* Laws against distracted driving can be more rigorously enforced by the police.

* Penalties could also be harsher. Drunk driving? You can lose your license. Distracted driving? Here's a $500 fine. Very light penalty for the crime that kills more people.

I'm sure front visibility plays some role, but just as a counter example, squirrels are much smaller and can dart in front of my vehicle faster than any child, yet I have no problem spotting them while driving a large SUV (Kia Telluride).

Places like school parking lots are probably where front and rear visibility are of upmost importance, and that's where I think all of the sensors and cameras are critical and should be mandatory. For example, while backing up out of a parking space a rear sensor can detect cross traffic (people or cars) way before you can see it regardless of the vehicle size. My old Mazda Miata would probably fair far worse than my Telluride as rear visibility was poor and the car was so small and low to the ground it was hard to see over other cars.

> I have no problem spotting them while driving a large SUV

How do you know? You can't know what you didn't see, and when you run over a squirrel there's no mother squirrel screaming her lungs out to stop your car.

I've run over 1 squirrel in 26 years of driving and hundreds of thousands of miles driven and tens of thousands of squirrel encounters. And it was in a tiny 90's Mazda Miata with the ideal front visibility. That car was too small to even meet today's safety regulations ironically (newer Miatas are much larger vehicles).

I'm not sure what we're trying to debate here. I agreed front visibility matters but sensors and cameras are also important (the post I was replying to seemed to indicate that we should go back to a time prior to relying on sensors and cameras).

> I have no problem spotting them while driving a large SUV

That's the bias. It could very well mean "no problem spotting the ones I had no problems spotting". By definition you can't know how many you never spotted and maybe even ended up under your wheels.

Most drivers only kill a pedestrian once in their life, and relatively few actually are that unfortunate, so it's not something you can easily calibrate for from personal experience (with any luck you never will). They all saw and avoided all the pedestrians that jumped in front of them until they didn't.

Many of these accidents happen at low speed when pedestrians thinking they have time meet a driver with a giant blindspot right in front of them and doesn't even try to brake.

Search for "frontover" pictures and you'll realize how ridiculously large that blindspot is.

> get serious about anti-cell phone technology for the driver’s seat.

How does this work?

It remains to be defined, but some of the technology is already there. We have driver monitoring systems. We know which device is paired to the infotainment system. That device could be physically sequestered from driver access while the vehicle is in gear (via NFC, for example).

I don’t want my car to be an arm of the nanny state. I don’t want insurance companies spying on my drives or owning my driver monitoring data. But, there could be a simple “place the connected device on this pad and strap it in while you drive” type system, that actually attempts to enforce the policy. Does it get hard once multiple people/devices get in the car? Sure. Could individual drivers just bring a second device along to defeat it? Yes. But for the average solo driver that doesn’t pre mediate their own misbehavior, it could reduce distraction without trampling on privacy or significantly added nuisance.

> But, there could be a simple “place the connected device on this pad and strap it in while you drive” type system

Why do I have to comply? Is my phone not allowed to be used while in motion or something? Or is this required just to access the infotainment system (hello, car-only phone!)?

If you're putting some kind of radio in my vehicle that tells my (and every passenger's phone) to shut off, I'm going to abuse this signal and broadcast it far more widely than any car would. And then just remove, disable, or block the radio.

> Does it get hard once multiple people/devices get in the car?

It doesn't just become difficult, it becomes logically impossible. Current, common radio technology isn't good enough to isolate the driver's seat.

---

Also: good luck getting any technical chain of trust to work and stay safe/secret between numerous phone and automobile manufacturers. Nobody has been able to achieve this with multi-manufacturer DRM so far - DVD, Bluray, etc. Apple is the exception with regards to key material security: auto manufacturers stand no chance, Xiaomi doesn't care, and my Google Pixel is rooted.

Before phones there were DVD playing head units in cars: parking and GPS bypasses have existed for these for at least 20 years.

>common radio technology isn't good enough to isolate the driver's seat

Look man, you don’t know what you’re talking about. UWB can easily position a device in a vehicle. BT direction finding is also quite promising.

But I’m not suggesting any advanced locating, let alone a jammer (lol). I’m literally just suggesting an NFC pad with a phone “seat belt” for the primary device connected to the infotainment. Car makes a beeping noise until you rest the phone in the safe spot. That’s it. Nothing any more extreme than existing seat belt and speed limit warnings (which save lives despite their nuisance).

t. Actual automotive engineer for a major OEM that works on infotainment & mobile software, Bluetooth, UWB, & future RF

> for the primary device connected to the infotainment

Why would I pair it?

Because on solo drives, your user experience would be severely diminished. People like CarPlay, Android Auto, and BT BR/EDR profiles. Want to guess the percentage of owners that NEVER pair a primary device in modern cars? It’s almost zero.

Do you want a pat on the back for defeating the imagined safety mechanism? You can also buy seat belt plugs to turn the seat belt chime off. Very few people end up doing this in practice (because it’s stupid).

What is your specific aversion to your car expecting you to separate control of your phone while driving alone? Assume you have HFP, A2DP, and/or CarPlay/Android Auto with voice control. Why do you need physical control of your phone while your car is in gear/moving? You don’t.

to get it to use the car stereo (and screen) instead of the shitty little ones on your phone.

Easy, don't focus on the cell phone, focus on the driver's focus.

Mandate driver attention monitoring, and require that prolonged inattention (i.e. N seconds continuous, or N seconds of the past 3 minutes) results in escalating consequences, e.g. a warning chime, followed by activation of the hazard lights, followed by cutting the throttle and engaging lane keeping assist if available, and with several minutes continuous inattention, automatically call emergency services if possible.

Ideally, phone manufacturers and car makers could work together so that the driver inattention chime automatically locks the phone and tells the driver to pay attention (or tells the passenger to tell the driver to pay attention).

Hello, Big Brother.

Why not ban all old phones and cars too, to really ensure enforcement of this scheme?

Hardly big brother to say that you should be required to pay attention when driving, and this all stays on-vehicle until you've been gone so long that it must be a medical emergency.

My car won't let me lock the keys in the trunk; it'll pop back open. It seems to be quite precise - leaving them on top of the trunk doesn't trigger it, nor does having them in the back seat (right next to it).

(Very confusing the first time, when you don't realize that's what the issue is.)

I'd imagine something similar is at least possible.

The issue is that this technology isn't that specific. Your passengers will not be able to use their devices.

I'm trying to address that aspect by noting the fairly high specificity of the "you're locking your keys in the trunk" sensors.

If you've ever used an Apple AirTag, they're even better for this; my phone could easily tell me which seat an AirTag is sitting in.

Why not? My 2012 minivan has wireless headphones that don't work in the front two seats (annoying when you are in the navigator seat trying to get them setup for a young kid in the back who can't do it themself). I get it is a tricky problem, but it is one we can solve.

I would also like to understand why the most basic regulations aren't in place on cars to limit their maximum speed, and maximum acceleration and/or power?

It seems like the general public all agrees that it would be insane to allow arbitrarily powerful e-bikes, and so they are limited to (depending on your jurisdiction) 500 watts and 32km/h. This, despite that there are nearly 0 deaths from e-bikes per year. Cars and motorcycles on the other hand, are orders of magnitude more dangerous and we have no restrictions whatsoever. There are street-legal cars with 1000 horsepower and top speeds of over 400km/h.

In most jurisdictions they're limited to that power because they're ebikes. Above that you just have an electric motorcycle, which mandates different brakes and so on, but you can still do that. Just need a another license, more taxes, etc.

Couldn’t you also require a higher tier license for large and dangerous cars, just like motorcycles require extra privileges?

Allow anyone to own a sedan or compact SUV with up to 200hp. If you want to own something larger, you need an “oversized vehicle” endorsement. And if you want to own something more powerful, you need a power-level endorsement. And maybe you need to pay extra to have those endorsements, and they can be taken away if you are reckless.

It could be a grandfathering system too, so not to disrupt the entire market. Automatically grant partial endorsements to people who already have those vehicles when the law goes into effect, but require testing within 5 years or when registering any new vehicle that meets those criteria.

But cars and trucks are incredibly dangerous and it’s ridiculous society has basically zero restrictions. (I own a “small” truck and would be happy to have it restricted if it means the roads start to become safer for cycling and walking)

What evidence do you have that vehicles over a certain size and power are inherently more dangerous? And what about the problem would an endorsement solve?

> What evidence do you have that vehicles over a certain size and power are inherently more dangerous?

Basic physics and historical collision data collected over decades.

But don't take my word for it! Look up your local official collision data -- how many pedestrians have killed people inside a four-wheel vehicle? What about the other way around? Now repeat for cyclists, mopeds/motorcycles, and other four-wheeled vehicles.

The heavier vehicle kills the lighter vehicle, primarily because of momentum.

> What evidence do you have that vehicles over a certain size and power are inherently more dangerous?

It's not the vehicle but the entitled douche bag who thinks they own the road while wildly speeding around, cutting people off and weaving around traffic like a drunkard. No one needs that power save for insecure men.

Sounds like the driver is the problem. A rampaging driver can do pretty much the same damage regardless of the exact car. Police should focus on driver behaviour with stricter enforcement of "road manners" type rules. Broken window theory.

Of course the driver is the problem but you can't fix stupid with police. Also realize that in the USA there has been a reduction in the amount of policing done on the roads for various reasons so don't expect much from the cops.

With less policing the problems will just get worse. The only alternative is some kind of intrusive digital nannying which is what we're starting to see.

> The only alternative is

...or you could look at what is done in countries with a far better safety record and copy it. Hint: street design has a massive effect on the speed at which drivers choose to go. Narrower lanes, curves, intersections with tight corners, raised crossings, speed humps, removing on-street parking next to intersections (daylighting), etc. all reduce fatalities.

Ah yes the "ball pit" option. Sure it probably works but it costs a lot and reduces the utility of the roads.

It increases the utility of the streets for pedestrians and cyclists by, you know, not getting them killed.

Many traffic safety measures cost very little to implement, or even retrofit. You can look up what has been done in Hoboken, NJ -- no pedestrian fatalities since 2017.

Fair enough for dense urban areas, I suppose.

My evidence is that you need a special endorsement already to drive things that are more powerful or complex than a car (e.g., taxi, semi truck, ferry, formula one car). This seems obvious.

> My evidence is that you need a special endorsement already to drive things that are more powerful or complex than a car

In Canada, a standard car license allows driving vehicles up to 11,000 kg (24,250 lbs) [0], including pickup trucks and SUVs that are larger than a WWII Sherman tank [1], such as the Ford F-350 or the Cadillac Escalade [2].

Thus, we are allowing people to drive things that are far more powerful than a car without special licensing requirements -- and without a speed governor.

So it is already pretty lax in terms of licensing requirements for vehicles that kill and maim our neighbors every year. We should be even stricter than we are.

[0] https://drivetest.ca/licences/licences-overview/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4_Sherman

[2] https://www.carsized.com/en/cars/compare/cadillac-escalade-2...

Except perhaps overall length there is no metric by which any vehicle on the roads today is larger than an M4.

No need to speculate: links with the actual data were provided; you can check for yourself that the comparison really isn't all that crazy. Both vehicles have comparable engines, but with the F-350 being much lighter it can achieve much higher accelerations and top speeds. In terms of dimensions they are quite similar as well.

ChatGPT-produced summary for the lazy:

    +----------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
    | Feature              | M4 Sherman Tank      | Ford F-350 Crew Cab  |
    +----------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
    | Mass                 | 66,800–84,000 lb     | ~7,000–9,000 lb      |
    |                      | (30.3–38.1 tonnes)   | (3.2–4.1 tonnes)     |
    +----------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
    | Length               | 19 ft 2 in–20 ft 7 in| 20 ft 11 in–23 ft 11 in |
    |                      | (5.84–6.27 m)        | (6.27–7.28 m)         |
    +----------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
    | Width                | 8 ft 7 in–9 ft 10 in | 6 ft 7 in–7 ft 11 in  |
    |                      | (2.62–3.00 m)        | (2.03–2.43 m)         |
    +----------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
    | Height               | 9 ft 0 in–9 ft 9 in  | 6 ft 4 in–6 ft 9 in   |
    |                      | (2.74–2.97 m)        | (1.93–2.06 m)         |
    +----------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
    | Engine               | Gasoline/Diesel:     | Gasoline/Diesel:      |
    |                      | 350–450 hp (260–336 kW)| 385–475 hp (287–354 kW)|
    +----------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
    | Power/Weight         | 10.46–13.49 hp/ton   | ~43–53 hp/ton         |
    |                      | (8.60–11.09 kW/t)    | (36–44 kW/t)          |
    +----------------------+----------------------+----------------------+

Let me be more clear:

These are not really comparable vehicles anymore than a wheelbarrow and a sailboat are comparable. Sure you can compare them but there is no useful purpose to doing so. You are actively being dishonest and misleading by trying to push this comparison.

A Sherman tank is something like ninety thousand pounds, for anyone unfortunate enough to have read this post.

The actual data shows that some of the largest and most powerful vehicle models have quite low insurance claims for injuries to others.

https://www.iihs.org/topics/auto-insurance/insurance-losses-...

Can you provide some examples?

Because when I compare between classes, there is a clear trend in the data you provided where large four-door cars have higher rates of bodily injury than midsize cars, and it goes down again for small and mini.

And it makes sense: in a collision, the heavier vehicle crushes the lighter one.

Am I misreading the data?

Did you look at the data for pickups?

This really just looks like a proxy for social class.

Edit: though interestingly there's an uptick when you get to the ultra-ostentatious vehicles like Bentley and Lamborghini.

We already have higher tier licenses for large vehicles. However they are set such that only heavy duty trucks qualify - dump trucks, semis, and other such things. That is the types of things you drive as part of a job, as opposed to personal vehicles.

> I would also like to understand why the most basic regulations aren't in place on cars to limit their maximum speed, and maximum acceleration and/or power?

If you bring this up, the amount of visceral reactions, you get from people who demand that you stop talking about the subject is incredible.

They come up with all sorts of crazy hypotheticals (what if I need to rush to the hospital at 105 miles an hour).

Point taken. But I do think it’s wrong to put no value on the reason behind the popularity of that visceral reaction. Unless safety and efficiency are the only things we are optimizing for.

Being able to drive what you want, where you want, when you want, and how you want, within reason, is one of the emergent freedoms ever granted by the progress of civilization.

I think it's a bit hyperbolic to characterize limiting car speeds to, say, 150 or 170 km/h, as a serious curtailment of our civilization's fundamental freedoms.

How many people are dying because cars are exceeding 150 km/h?

I don't know, but many people are caught driving in excess of 200km/h where I live in BC, when the maximum speed limit anywhere is 110km/h. There's literally never ever one single reason to drive over 150km/h, so any case of anyone ever doing it is already one too many. Even if there is just one death, that's too many, according to me. How many would it take to convince you?

Why would that matter?

How many people are exceeding posted speed limits in highly populated areas? That is what increases collisions with pedestrians and cyclists, and for that reason I would love to see speed governors installed in all motor vehicles, and not only e-bikes, which ironically are the ones that are the least likely to cause serious injury to others.

Because in these "highly populated areas" speed limits are typically around 30MPH. There's a substantial gulf between 30 and 90mph. Are you suggesting that cars should be speed limited to something like 35mph?

Well thankfully I have no intention of making that characterization...?

> But I do think it’s wrong to put no value on the reason behind the popularity of that visceral reaction.

Not being killed is also a very popular visceral reason for pedestrians and cyclists to want cars to slow down in our cities, and for motor vehicle regulations to address the yearly carnage they cause every year.

What value should we give to their desire of not being killed, and how should it be weighted against drivers' desire to drive what they want, where they want, when they want, and how they want?

Just a fun experiment: try replacing "driving a car" with "stabbing random people on the street" or any other activity that involves people killing around three people per 100,000 population every year in your country. It's interesting how our perception changes when we get out of the context of motonormativity.

It’s a terrible metaphor but if everyone had to stab someone in the morning and the evening in order for the economy to even begin to function, we would pretty soon get over it. Upton Sinclair and all that.

What if the economy was built that way by stabbing industry lobbyists?

We had a perfectly functioning economy prior to car domination and all the alternatives have progressed by incredible leaps and bounds in the time since as well.

This analogy fails because there's nothing about our economy that specifically demands that people drive cars that can drive over 150km/h. They would be able to commute exactly the same as they do today, if their cars had speed governors.

Other economies work just fine with far fewer pedestrian deaths. We don't need to sacrifice our neighbors in the altar of making mo' money.

I've been to two funerals in as many years for personal friends who died when drivers killed them with their cars. I'll make sure to throw in a good word for "emergent freedoms" and "the progress of civilization" at the next funeral I end up at.

Does any country or government enshrine "Right to Drive" in their constitution?

Is there any evidence showing that cars with 1000 horsepower and top speeds of over 400km/h have higher fatality rates than lower powered cars?

Pedestrian safety, because it's a benefit to society and not the specific owner of the car, should be handled by regulations and government tests.

I don't want the independent kinds of safety rating, like what's included in the article to include anything other than what benefits the purchaser of the car.

I am in an adjacent industry where it's getting increasingly common to hear that these ratings are becoming less trustworthy, and part of it is they include points for gadgets and things seen as irrelevant to the end user.

> I don't want the independent kinds of safety rating, like what's included in the article to include anything other than what benefits the purchaser of the car.

You may not want independent safety ratings to take pedestrians into account, but your insurance company may have other ideas, since pedestrian safety matters to their bottom line. Whose interests do you think matter more to an entity like IIHS?

The problem is one of how to create something that purchasers trust, and you can only do that by creating a rating that addresses the desires of whoever is making the purchasing decisions.

I want to avoid a case where people return to "just buy the biggest x, x make safe cars".

If a consumer is unwilling to trust safety ratings because the consumer doesn't care about pedestrian safety, the problem is not that the safety ratings don't match the consumer's priorities, the problem is that the consumer's priorities are wrong. The consumer should care about pedestrian safety, and making pedestrian safety part of the safety ratings and using those ratings to determine insurance premiums is a reasonable way to give the consumer a financial incentive to care about pedestrian safety.

[0] is kind of a useless article because it doesn't provide a graph and it doesn't provide per-capita statistics.

If the US population has doubled since 1980, then it wouldn't be surprising that some population-level statistic (total pedestrian deaths) is at an all-time high! And it could still be at an all-time high while reflecting a substantial increase in safety - if the population doubled (increased 100%) but deaths only rose 25%, for instance.

Similarly, I anecdotally observe that cycling is more popular than it was 20 years ago. So it would not be surprising (to me) to observe that cycling deaths are higher as well.

But without quantifying any of these factors, the significance of these statistics is difficult to evaluate.

> If the US population has doubled since 1980, then it wouldn't be surprising that some population-level statistic (total pedestrian deaths) is at an all-time high!

Indeed, it is per capita deaths that have increased since 2013 or so [0].

Why speculate when you can Google?

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

Because its not the readers job to support a writers position.

Criticizing that the article I posted doesn't contain rates is understandable.

Nevertheless, in the same amount of time that it took them to write a shallow dismissal they could have googled the raw data and shared a link. They didn't provide any sources whatsoever for their own claims.

Jumping down the rabbit hole of "find a statistic X via google" takes a lot of motivation, and that's also a limited resource.

Just because that information was easy to find this time, doesn't mean it is every time. Often when I go looking for statistics on various population level things, I have to do a lot of work to find and massage it into the form I was looking for.

What part of their claim specifically requires (or would even benefit from) a source?

As far as I am concerned you are conceding the argument by doubling down here. And in spite of potentially being right.

For starters, the question they posed and GP posted a source for benefits from having a concrete answer.

See, the basic presumption needs to be that random statements are false, otherwise you would have to disprove an infinite amount of random statements t arrive at the truth. Hence the asymetric requirements, and why David simply concedes the argument by not sourcing his statements, and why his opponent can simply (until some form of supporting evidence is provided) can reply with a simple 'no'.

Hard disagree. Do these arguments not apply to the conjecture by Avalys? Why is a shallow rebuttal backed by "it wouldn't be surprising" and anecdotes more credible than the sourced response?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42203613#42204292

For what it’s worth - my comment was more about my frustration over what a useless article it was and how low our journalistic standards and expectations are that no one involved in writing or editing it bothered to ask the very obvious questions I posed - rather than about the actual topic of pedestrian deaths and crash testing.

The joke in flyover provinces/states, is it’s difficult to cause an accident, because it’s flat and there are few trees, people, boulders or buildings to crash into.

If you fall asleep while driving, you’ll just ruin some corn/wheat crops until you get stuck in a rut or get yourself back on the road.

Tried to google for the longest distance anyone drove asleep at the wheel but only getting results about semi-conscious sleepdriving, but I bet it’s quite a distance.

How much of that increase can also be attributed to distracted driving (ie driving under the influence of mobile phones)?

As a motorcycle commuter, who sits about 3 feet higher than most sedans in my area and can see into all the cars around me as I drive, I can confirm that at least half of the ones I see every morning on the road have the driver either staring at their lap using their phone, or rolling giant vape clouds out their window, and are probably high. Often, I see someone doing both.

We need to nurture a culture of competency on the roads and excellence in automobile operations. My personal fav idea to help with that is build more race tracks :)

Another moto / cycle rider here. Recent phenomenon that makes me weep for road going competency: Phone or tablet on a suction cup mount playing YouTube, Netflix, whatever. Preferably at night with the screen 4" from your face to really make visual acuity dicey.

I thought this was a one-off, but I see probably 5-10 of these idiots a week.

Pedestrian safety is a very big part of European car crash testing - some cars even have front / hood airbags that will deploy for pedestrians.

Pedestrian safety is already accounted for in a cars exterior design (American cars and ‘trucks’ being the exception). Most of pedestrian safety is about pedestrian awareness.

I can only speak for myself but when I’m driving, cycling or walking I’m always on the alert for idiots, there are plenty around. In almost all contexts it is people distracted by music and phones and are not paying attention to their surroundings.

And I think cyclists who don’t already have a driving license should have to do a basic provisional theory test. It’s for their own safety to understand the rules of the road.

The "rules of the road" argument here assumes that giving up huge amounts of public space for car infrastructure is inevitable and right, and that it's the fault of people walking or riding bikes if they get injured or killed since the system is not built for them.

Roads in the US are designed almost entirely around the speed and convenience of cars, and don't account for the externalities they impose on everyone else. As cars get larger and more dangerous, and as drivers get more careless, the cost borne by society is only going up. Asking people walking and riding bikes to be even more extra careful not to get killed is not the right solution. Changing the design of our roads and public spaces to make them safer for everyone is.

Sorry, I’m speaking from a European perspective (UK/London).

When driving I’ve had idiots on e-scooters dressed in black with no lights zooming towards me on a one way street at night, I’ve had people walk out in front of me when distracted by their phones. When cycling I’ve often seen other casual cyclists with headphones on, in their own dreamland, no helmet either, and I’ve seen the same when walking about. People are too careless and distracted thinking others are going to look out for them, everyone needs to pay more attention.

A simple "what color is this traffic light?" test would go a long way towards saving cyclist lives thats for sure, but when you're that exposed to 4,000lbs vehicles moving at ~50+ MPH operated by people who took at best, 8 hours of instruction from their health class teacher, well, a lot of the issues you run into are not going to be your fault.

That's a fair point. My context is London England which can be dangerous if cycling on roads, but in most instances traffic is so congested and there are specific cycle paths and routes. From reading some of the other posts, it sounds like distraction is a major issue regardless of the mode of transport.

I just walked a mile in Los Angeles for lunch.

I had the following near misses where I would have died or been severely injured if I hadn't been alert: a Tesla coming out of an alley (driver was on his phone, never saw me), old diesel Mercedes running a stop sign (couldn't see the driver), a Ford F150 in a parking lot (guy was fixated on a spot that just opened up).

This does not include the woman in the Lexus who intentionally crawled up on me because I had the temerity to be in the crosswalk when she wanted to be someplace.

They should be charged with dangerous driving, but unfortunately won't be. Had you been distracted you might be in the hospital with a serious injury.

Stay safe!

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