Hacker News Reader

Comment by hackingonempty | Hacker News Reader

In the USA, an order of magnitude more people on foot are killed each year by people driving cars and trucks than are killed in mass shootings. [0][1]

It is a massive problem that receives a disproportionate amount of attention.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/pedestrian-bike-safety/about/pedestrian-... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...

View on HN

The standard of driving in most places I've lived in the US is very low for a developed country. People blow through pedestrian crossings, get-there-itis, crawling through stops, don't use their turn signals, make illegal U-Turns, ignore overtaking conventions. Compare to most countries in Europe where a driving test is a rigorous 45 minutes and you can fail for all sorts of minor stuff. I live in a place with decent pedestrian infrastructure fortunately. I'm more worried about being involved in a random fatal crash when I'm driving than on foot.

Making right-on-red illegal wouldn't be bad either. The number of times I've almost been run over when a car is stopped in the middle/straight lane and blocks line of sight to a right-turning car that doesn't look.

DUIs are at least treated seriously. It's one of the few offenses that will get a visa instantly revoked. Same in Canada I think.

45 minutes? In Germany getting your license takes most people around a year and costs thousands of euros.

I assume he meant the actual final practical test.

my point is, in germany it takes longer than a test to get your license, unlike the US.

Is it common in other states that you only need a test for a license. Where I live (in the US) if you are a new driver (under 18) you need 30 hours of classroom instruction, 18 hours of trainer-driving time, a 6 month learner permit period with many restrictions and then a finally test, iirc.

And if you're over 18? In my state it's 1) an easy written test, 2) a few minutes driving around a parking lot, and 3) here's your license kid, have at it.

Only Florida, Maryland, and New York require adults who are new drivers to take any kind of class/instruction. (Most states require it under 18, with a few under 21 or 25.) Everywhere else you can just walk in and take the test.

The perhaps greater problem though is that those tests are completely trivial.

Florida is a declaration of experience for minors and nothing(?) for adults except a (computer) knowledge exam. If you turn 18, you can go and sit the knowledge exam and do a lap round the DMV.

For kids, it's 50 hours of road experience, and 10 at night, but a parent can sign that off. Maryland looks the same? You've got to do a knowledge test to get a learner's permit, 6 hours behind the wheel + 30 class, and then you get a provisional which can be upgraded to full. NY is also a 50/15 hour parent declaration and maybe(?) a supervised course for a few hours.

https://www.stateofflorida.com/drivers-license-steps/ https://dmv.ny.gov/driver-license/complete-pre-licensing-req...

In Czech Republic as well. You need to have driven certain amount of hours, have attented theory lessons, then test, followed by a test drive with a policeman.

Wait...is the massive problem that it should be more than an order of magnitude more people killed than those killed in mass shootings, or is it that it should be less than an order of magnitude more?

They are such completely different categories of ways to die I'm having trouble understand how to compare them in any sensible way.

That I guess is the problem they are highlighting. It is more complicated still when comparing to ill health, war, poverty, terrorism. But OTOH we should strive to make transport safer like we do with commercial flight.

Neither. The OP's point is that shootings consistently make headlines and occasion a lot of passionate debate, while grandma or toddler getting mowed over by a SUV or monster truck doesn't and as a consequence nobody really cares.

Hence the saying: If you want to kill someone and get the lightest possible punishment, kill them with your car!

Best time to get them is when they are riding a bicycle.

But to be fair, mass shootings get no policy changes.

What state are you in? Mine banned anything that "looks scary", limited the number of rounds (and made anyone who didn't read the memo and discard the standard one s a felon), prevented any ear-protection from being mounted to the gun, and found a few new ways to make buying ammo more expensive and difficult. It's hard and expensive to buy a gun just to keep the 2A alive even if you never fire it, and you're put on who knows how many government watchlists.

Schools and Corporations now have "active shooter drills."

Instead of trying to make our streets safer, the USA has responded by not allowing kids to walk or bike to school and have insane lines of cars and elaborate drop-off/pick-up procedures. Paradoxically, all of the additional vehicles on the road makes our streets more dangerous.

This is often brought out as though it should engender gasps, but a moment of thought punctures the whole prospect. We need cars and trucks for a variety of purposes, and while I agree that most people don't need a pickup or a Unimog, there are many people and businesses who do. The ability to rapidly travel is a centerpiece of modern life, and has been for quite some time.

Mass shootings by contrast are not economic or personal drivers of freedom, they're not an intended output of the system that creates them, they're a relatively modern perversity of it. Of course people are more concerned with seemingly random violence that many other countries seem to live without, or with much less of, compared to inevitable accidents.

People also love to present "Vehicle vs Ped" as a de facto accident on the part of the vehicle or the driver, and that can certainly be the case! It's also true that about 30% of pedestrians involved in these accidents have a BAC over the legal limit. There are also issues with poorly designed and maintained lights, safety systems on roads, and so on that play a role. None of this is as simple as, "Just bike to work, dummy."

I'd also add that recent stats show a REDUCTION in pedestrian fatalities, it's just that it's been on a rise since 2009, but it's going back down again. Possibly that comes down to addressing some concerns I've mentioned above, some comes down to fewer megamonsterSUV's, and some comes down to smartphone and in-car tech no longer promoting using said phones on the road.

https://www.ghsa.org/resource-hub/pedestrian-traffic-fatalit...

Nothing in the article is suggesting that we do not need cars and trucks.

It does make a compelling case that specifically large trucks and SUVs are causing preventable deaths. And I certainly find no reason that we need very large trucks or SUVs.

Having any car or truck is a choice. People lived before the automobile. They do provide benefits, just as SUVs and trucks provide benefits. The Amish live without cars, so too could we if we chose to. In fact, the Amish could make the same claim about all automobiles that you make about preventable deaths attributed to larger vehicles.

Is your point that taller trucks and SUVs provide considerable benefits over shorter ones? What are those benefits?

Or do you mean simply that trucks and SUVs, regardless of their height, provide benefits? I don't doubt that and do not mean to imply otherwise.

> Is your point that taller trucks and SUVs provide considerable benefits over shorter ones? What are those benefits?

Ground clearance. In some parts of the US and for some use cases this is non-negotiable. It would be like buying a car in Texas without an air conditioner. There is a Japanese automaker (Subaru) that traditionally caters to this market almost exclusively in the US.

I won't buy a vehicle with less than 8 inches of ground clearance for safety reasons.

Sorry if I'm being dense, but what parts of the USA? Or, I guess more specifically, what is it that you are needing to clear?

The mountainous parts, particularly if you aren't driving on the interstates. You can end up in a freak blizzard in the passes from September through May. Some roads do not have frequent, regular snow clearance in winter. Localized torrential rains from thunderstorms temporarily dump debris on or wash out the road surface. In the western US, unpaved highways are relatively common in some areas. Random unexpected road closures can send you down ranch or forestry trails intended for 4WD trucks because there are few practical alternatives.

When I lived in the area, I regularly rescued people stranded on roads in the Sierra Nevada mountains around Lake Tahoe that found out the hard way that their vehicles were unfit for the changing road conditions. Nearly getting stranded myself a couple times over the decades informed my vehicular requirements.

I currently live in the city and but rarely drive there. Almost all of my driving is done across the western US. I require the vehicle I own to be able to safely navigate all of the road conditions I am likely to see there.

A less common reason is that the nice paved roads are not always the fastest way between two points. I used to regularly commute to a town in Nevada where using the nice paved highway around the mountains took 30 minutes longer than taking an old mining road straight over the mountains. Everyone that lived in the area took the old mining road. That would have been sketchy without decent ground clearance. A lot of locals just drove old Subarus.

>A lot of locals just drove old Subarus.

AKA a large SUV or truck is not necessary.

For normal people AWD and high ground clearance will work. Good range also strongly recommended but these vehicles usually have that by default.

A large 4WD will handle conditions a Subaru will not but a Subaru is fine for getting around the area if you typically stay off most ranch/mining roads. It is illegal to maintain the ranch/mining roads for historical reasons, so they get a bit spicy.

I believe that you don't need one, and I know that I don't need one, but I think it's a little rich to make that a blanket statement for the species. There are people who have jobs, lives, and live in places unlike your own experiences.

Ugh, ok. Most people do not need one.

I'm not sure what the need is for a very tall pickup truck that can also hold a family five? But maybe there is one. Perhaps there is also a need for an excavator that holds a family of five, idk. If a real need is demonstrated, then sure, please do not ban the manufacturing of an excavator that has the necessary hook-ups for modern child carseats simply because I, a commenter on HackerNews, made a statement that was a little too sweeping for the needs of past, present, and future human beings on Earth and across potential settlement across the universe and dimensions beyond.

But most people do not need a very large truck or SUV. Vehicles with hoods closer to the ground and better lines-of-sight are safer for those around them, while having practically no impact on the utility of said vehicles as they drive on roads and highways in the USA.

Yea, depending on where you live in the USA, you practically need a car of some sort. Yes, there are cities where you can get away with not having one, but the vast majority of Americans would have to make a huge lifestyle sacrifice to not have a car. Some people need trucks to haul things, but NOBODY needs giant-grilled zero-visibility monster trucks or monster SUVs where you can't even see a person standing in front. You could get rid of these atrocities and not kill cars/trucks in general.

Maybe that's where effort should be focused.

Removing the 'light truck' hole in CAFE standards would be a good start.

I think you're take is a bit off for multiple reasons.

First, people need transportation, not cars. For the vast majority of people, if you truly need a car, it's because your infrastructure was built in a way that doesn't provide any other modes of transportation.

Second, mass shootings aren't the intended effect of guns in the same way pedestrian fatalities aren't the intended effect of cars. Both cars and guns are providing some perceived value (personal transportation freedom and self-defense/safeguard against tyranny/national defense) with a significant number of deaths as a tradeoff.

Third, implying someone with a BAC over the legal limit for DRIVING is somehow responsible for getting killed while WALKING instead of driving is comical and darkly ironic considering drunk driving accounts for almost a third of traffic deaths in the US [1].

1. https://www.cdc.gov/impaired-driving/facts/index.html#:~:tex...

I would argue that cars provide a tangible value, and guns only provide a perceived / emotional value. Guns make you objectively less safe, and at enormous social cost. Cars are (unfortunately) necessary in a lot of cases for the economy to work, there is really no comparison to guns.

Cars are not necessary nearly as much as most Americans think they are.

It is a difficult problem to untangle, but not impossible. Accepting this level of tragedy and violence because cars are sometimes “economically necessary” is very sad. And again they are not nearly as necessary as is perceived. I drive my car maybe once or twice a week now and I live in a suburb of about 40k people, not in a major city.

We never invest effort in things that provide the most value; we invest in what we're the most emotional about. The number of people killed in 9/11 and every plane hijacking is dwarfed by any single year of deaths due to either vehicle accidents or gun shootings. But we do nothing about either of those things, and instead spend $180B on TSA, to save zero lives. We then roll back things like vaccine mandates, to kill more people (mostly kids).

That’s a very uncharitable way to interpret public opinion. A more charitable way is that people have different ethical intuitions. Some of us lean more utilitarian than others, and almost no one is a pure utilitarian. It isn’t merely a matter of being more emotional; people very reasonably have different views on this stuff.

I think it’s rational to lean more utilitarian if you’re administering a city, state or country.

Not that I object to the findings, but the Center for Disease Control getting involved in traffic safety is massive scope creep. Especially since we already have the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board.

more europeans are killed from not having AC/heat-related deaths than both of those.

I don't think any of these are apples to apples comparisons tbh your point still stands without the extreme analogy.

This comparison seems bizarre to me, but what do I know about the US?

8000 pedestrians killed by cars and 762 in mass shootings. Obviously in raw numbers 8000 is bigger than 762, but think how many people drive in America, and how useful it is! 762 is an absolutely astoundingly crazy number and it definitely deserves the most attention.

> but think how many people drive in America, and how useful it is

You should tell that to the families of the 8000 that are killed each year. I’m sure it’ll help them accept the accept the loss of their loved ones.

The US is the only developed country that has seen a steady increase in the number of pedestrian deaths per 1000km driven over the past 10-15 years. And 10-15 years ago it was one of the worst performing developed countries for pedestrian deaths. Every other developed country has seen decreases in pedestrian deaths over the same time period, which means the US is an extreme outlier when it comes to pedestrian safety, or lack there of.

> You should tell that to the families of the 8000 that are killed each year. I’m sure it’ll help them accept the accept the loss of their loved ones.

I mean, yes? Society has decided that cars are worth the convenience because of all their advantages. Now is America too obsessed with cars, and totally ignorant of pedestrian safety? Yes of course. But other countries aren't so bad on that front and they still accept some deaths. It's easy to see the utility of cars.

Less so for guns.

> it was one of the worst performing developed countries for pedestrian deaths

How's it performing on the mass shooting front?

Actually many cities aren’t accepting traffic deaths at all and are adopting Vision Zero. I believe it’s Norway that adopted it for the entire country and was able to go over a year with exactly zero traffic related deaths.

This problem is solvable and people in this thread saying that it’s not are absurd.

It was just Oslo actually, but I do agree with you. I wasn't saying 8000 is good, just that it's less insane than 762.

All of the time and money put into trying to reduce mass shooting deaths would save more people if it went into trying to reduce vehicular pedestrian deaths. No enumerated rights are involved in driving, making it vastly easier to implement legal solutions.

Mass shootings kill almost no one. They're a red herring. Even with a really stupid, inclusive "3 or more people injured" criterion. If you use that criterion for defining what a mass shooting is, the modal number of people killed is...one.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com