SXSW: 2 dead, 23 injured.
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I've lived here 12 years, and the only improvements to public transportation infrastructure in that time have been the addition of a single train line and a few of those long buses that bend in the middle. As the fastest growing city in the country, a city that relies so heavily on the tax revenues generated by the ~2 weeks of debauchery that is SXSW, we'll need to seriously improve the ability to move folks around without automobiles or the maddening traffic and inability to safely be on the roads (or, indeed, standing near the roads) between 1:30AM-3:30AM will continue to plague us.
There's also the problem of finding a ride home after the bars close, which is far less doable given our current system. We also need to rapidly expand the light rail system, but efforts to do so seem to be floundering at City Hall.
Completely agree here, but this has a really easy solution: let in Uber, Lyft, Sidecar, etc.
1. http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impai...
But in the meantime, it certainly seems that the best we can do is prevent others from getting behind the wheel at all. Which really only works in an environment of peer pressure, backed up with at least one person that will go beyond words and physically restrain the would-be driver if necessary. Avoiding the bystander effect is difficult enough as it is, but when the person is drunk at home and decides that they want to go get some McDonalds...
I'm not sure I would call that "extremely dangerous", though.
Only one major problem with this -- many areas are funded in large part by speeding tickets. If it is impossible for a car to speed, what will these areas do for revenue?
There are obviously arguments in favor of personal liberty that would make some people uncomfortable with this, but they shouldn't be. No one should be. If the speed limit on the road is 70mph, there is no reason for your car to be doing more than 70mph on the road, period. I don't care that you want to pass a vehicle that is only doing 69mph, you'll either lower your speed or pass them at 1mph (which, at least in my state, is also illegal. To pass someone, they must be doing at least 5mph under the speed limit, and you can't break the speed limit in order to pass someone).
Now, it wouldn't help in this situation, but it's something that's always bothered me. As we make better and better performing entry-level cars, we can't change the laws of physics. 90mph isn't unheard of as a common cruising speed on a road where the minimum speed limit is 45mph. That's just stupid and dangerous.
from http://www.motorists.org/speed-limits/faq
Q: Is the National Motorists Association a reliable source for this data?
A: I did the 30 seconds of work to go and Google this, go find your own stats if you don't like mine.
Almost all accidents are "speed related". Very few accidents happen with cars standing still.
1) Speeding is illegal. This is a law that is broken every day by millions. Obviously the law and the punishments aren't working as a deterrent, and the next steps usually involve control rather than deter.
2) Do you know how reaction time and braking time change for every 5mph faster you're going? It might not make you cause an accident, but it sure doesn't help trying to avoid an accident.
If you are actually questioning why car engines have enough power to do that in the first place: An engine capable of hauling a heavy load uphill at the speed limit is capable of exceeding the speed limit on a flat surface. Ditto for an engine capable of accelerating quickly to perform a merge in a short space.
If you are asking why cars don't come with interlocks preventing those kind of speeds: Because they're not required, and they're not a marketable feature.
I think limiting the need to drive is the only feasible option.
* You won't stop people from drinking in places where they can't sleep. Drinking at a bar costs 5-6x as much as drinking at someone's home, and yet people are constantly going out to be in a public drinking environment.
* Hopefully, we won't see mandated technology on vehicles requiring alcohol inspections for driving. Privacy, constitutional and technological issues all exist there. Yes, I know the devices exist, but they're clumsy, frustrating, and in the US are only used for people convicted of a 1st time DUI.
Solution: Incentivize people to walk or taxi home, or have a designated driver.
* By far the biggest immediate change that could be made: Make taxi services as cheap as possible. Stop limiting competition like Uber and the pedbikes in Austin from competition; while there are public safety concerns regarding drivers, I think the economic and safety benefits outweigh the risks. Cheap, responsive drivers = less drunk driving, period. ESPECIALLY in places like Texas, or most of the US, where public transit isn't ubiquitous.
* Allow mixed development and stop making suburban islands. If the hip bars are a three block walk from the houses and apartment complexes, fewer people will need to drive. Or, if you're making a suburban neighborhood, build the bar/drug store/grocer right into the town!
* The following thing is a dangerous and controversial thing to say, because it might imply that DUI is "okay": If you're going to drive after drinking, be honest with yourself. Don't say "I'm totally fine to drive". When you're exhausted on a trip, you don't just say you're fine and keep driving. You either pull over and sleep (get a cab) or you recognize your state and roll down the windows, turn on the radio, splash some water on your face, get a Red Bull, etc. If you are inebriated, say "I am drunk, don't speed, check my mirrors, watch out at all the intersections." That is a big cause of accidents, I'd be willing to bet. Whenever you see government propaganda about the dangers of DUI, it's the couple stumbling to the car, kissing each other, and not paying attention to driving. It's not good to drive when your body is impaired in ANY way, but the big problem is not recognizing your impaired state and focusing on the road.
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Postscript: DUI checkpoints are shit, and I don't care what the Supreme Court says. It's an invitation for the police to create probable cause and search your entire self and vehicle, your insurance, and if you piss them off, your cell phone. Even if you're sober, avoid them/fight them whenever possible.
Drinking and alcohol, and their impacts on our society.. and family.. and work, are not overblown. It's completely underestimated. Those who are dealing with the direct impacts of addiction and abuse in their families feel like they're in a bubble, and yet it's absolutely everywhere.
Everyone knows an alcoholic, and drinking&driving&death is only a very small data point in a massive societal issue.
1st time: 10 year suspension of driving privileges, monthly random police tailing to make sure you don't drive that day (funded by the violator); if you drive, the rest of your sentence is spent in jail
2nd time: 10 years in jail, permanent driving privileges revoked, monthly police tailing as above.
3rd time: Life in prison
You ever kill or injure someone while DUI: Life in prison
Seems like the drunk made a run for it but mistakenly went down a street that was closed for pedestrians, which is why there were so many injuries.
I just... I just... WTF. Just WTF. We've had injuries and incidents at SXSW before, but nothing like this. Normally it's just busy nights for paramedics filled with minor injuries. A diabetic might get too drunk to remember to take insulin, or someone might just dehydrate and pass out. The worst I remember is bicyclists hitting pedestrians. I'd like to think the driver was just completely and totally blacked out, but his behaviour certainly seems to indicate at least a modicum of awareness of what he was doing, what with stopping at the gas station as though he were complying with the stop before deciding to tear down the Red River district.
>He was facing two counts of capital murder and 23 counts of aggravated assault with a vehicle, Acevedo said.
We'll be hearing about this case for the next year at least.
So no, I don't think we'll be hearing about this case for the next year - it's actually depressingly typical. It just happens to have occurred at a large event that Hacker News has a strong connection to.
[1] http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impai...
Seeing as I live in Austin though, I suspect we'll all hear about this on the news occasionally, if only for summaries of the proceedings as they unfold over time.
"The suspect was asked to pull over at a sobriety check point and instead sped away from a police car. He smashed through a police barricade and then plowed down people, some of them lined up outside a nightclub, over a span of two blocks."
I'm not anti-checkpoint or anything.
Why do you feel a study is needed in order to form an opinion on this? What logical arguments would you make against sobriety checkpoints?
In any case, turns out that at least one study has been performed. This was just the first google search hit. There's probably more out there.
[1] http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/check...
http://www.scpr.org/news/2014/01/06/41411/california-drunk-d...
BTW my "common sense" says that sobriety checkpoints DO reduce drunk driving and fatal accidents. I'm not any kind of DUI checkpoint denier.
It works here, a lot of people are preferring a cab over the car to go out to places they know they will drink.
The original distinction, in Texas, was between arresting someone for driving drunk and arresting them for another crime discovered during a sobriety checkpoint. The first was legal, the second was not. However, in Lujan, the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals ruled that the latter was acceptable.
Should it? Is baseless conjecture informed by essentially no facts, in the echo of a just-happened tragedy, ever useful?
I am going to say no, it is never useful. Many misinformed words are spilled, blame is heartily doled out liberally and easily by keyboard warriors, and everyone feels like they've done the world some good, when they've done nothing of the sort.
Sorry if this comes across as overly cynical, but with barely a couple of posts in, the blame has been casually blamed on high-speed pursuits (no evidence of one, but throw it in there regardless), sobriety checkpoints (in response to a freak incident in a nation with 11,000 impaired driving deaths yearly)...and restrictions on Uber. I expect a Thanks, Obama to appear soon enough.
Don't follow FOX news style "who's to blame!?" thought processes.
"Police said the incident started when an officer on a drunken-driving patrol tried to stop the silver Toyota sedan at a gas station a few blocks away. The car took off, weaving between parked cars then driving at high speed the wrong way down a one-way street.
The driver rammed through police barriers — three wooden pieces held up by metal poles — set up on Red River Street on the northeast edge of the entertainment district. It'd had been packed with revelers just minutes earlier, but officials had cleared the area to create a fire lane."
These incidences always force me to think something is wrong -- seriously wrong -- with this world. But keeping the faith.
This is why drunks are dangerous - after X drinks they look at their car and think "I've got this" when in fact they are so drunk they don't know what they have anymore.
Alcohol is often used as an excuse for poor behavior, but in practice with most people it does not have the power to induce most of the behavior that has ever been attributed to it. For example, I might run my mouth and be inconsiderate of other peoples feelings when too drunk, but when I am drunk, I don't start fist fights. The difference? Being inconsiderate of the feelings of others is something that I sometimes want to do but hold back on while sober; starting fistfights is never something that crosses my mind while sober.
For most people, alcohol does not turn them into a different person. It distorts aspects of who they are, blowing some out of proportion, but it doesn't completely replace their set of priorities and desires with ones alien to them.
This is almost certainly not this persons first time driving while drunk. Almost certainly, this person has driven drunk before, sobered up afterwards and realized what the did, and then did little to nothing to prevent it from happening again. A person who drives while drunk is a person with a carefree attitude towards drunk driving even when they sober.
Even if that sort of behavior while drunk caught them completely off guard the first time it happened (which I think is very unlikely, though not impossible), they later made the decision while sober to drink again. The made that decision while sober and with the knowledge that when drunk, they do things like drive drunk.
Edit:
Brief responses, since my commenting appears to be limited at the moment:
justin66: I am not like the person that did this. I do not steal cars. I don't drive while drunk. I don't flee the police when pulled over. I would never flee on foot after crashing into other cars and people. People who drive while drunk typically do it frequently. I never have.
Codhisattva: "meta-consciousness impairment occurs well before losing consciousness from alcohol poisoning." I am not saying that I have never been impaired. I am saying that despite being impaired many times, I have never been impaired in such a way that I had any desire to drive while drunk, or any delusions about my ability to do so.
unclebucknasty: "Yet, you are questioning the judgment of someone who, instead of repeatedly drinking himself into a potential coma, stops somewhere short of that and decides he can operate a vehicle." You bet your ass I am. I may have endangered my life while having a little to much fun in college, but I never drove while drunk, and I never killed anybody.
"Well, that's the thing: the grandparent is judging people who drive drunk repeatedly, while he himself repeatedly drinks to the point of losing consciousness. I just don't see the difference."
I'm going to go with the most obvious difference being body-count. That is obvious right?
Furthermore, don't worry for my health. As I have mentioned on HN in the recent past, my current drinking is down to 4-6 nights a month. I am drawing on my experience drinking, not currently struggling with drinking.
I take exception to your implication that drunk driving is some sort of inevitable phenomenon that people who drink to the point of drunkenness are powerless to avoid through anything but luck. Drunk driving only happens if you allow it to happen. If you drive drunk, it isn't because of alcohol, it is because of you. There is nobody and no thing to blame but yourself.
As a person who drinks socially and is well-aware of my limits, I've rarely moved past a slight buzz. So, when I see a person state that they've repeatedly been drunk to the point of losing consciousness, I think, "now, why would a person do that?" I would have to think that there is at least some impairment when an already extremely inebriated person decides to continue drinking to the point where the only thing that stops him is that he physically cannot continue because he is unconscious.
Yet, you are questioning the judgment of someone who, instead of repeatedly drinking himself into a potential coma, stops somewhere short of that and decides he can operate a vehicle.
I just don't see the difference except that, of course, you can claim moral superiority in that you are presumably only endangering yourself vs. others. But, therein lies the rationalization. And, of course, if you repeatedly drink to the point wherein you literally lose control of your body, then perhaps it's only a matter of time before you endanger someone else somewhere along the continuum of inebriation.
Well, that's the thing: the grandparent is judging people who drive drunk repeatedly, while he himself repeatedly drinks to the point of losing consciousness. I just don't see the difference. Why is one "sneaking up on you" any better than the other? Why does one demonstrate better judgment when inebriated than the other?
>That said, if someone does so regularly there is probably something else going on.
Well, that would be my take. Or at least that perhaps that person isn't in the position they think to cast judgment on others who make poor choices when inebriated.
I don't know if there's anyone alive who drinks even occasionally and hasn't gone further than they expected. But, it's generally a good distance between "drunker than I thought" and "I almost went into a coma". And, if it happens once or twice, then OK, but repeatedly? Seems like you'd be aware of the dangers you mentioned at some point, which ironically was the grandparent's judgment about repeat drunk drivers.
And that's the irony that was just a bit too much. It's weird, because there doesn't seem to be contrition or anything. Just, "yeah, I'm known to repeatedly drink myself unconscious, but look at the choices those guys make when drunk".
"Why does one demonstrate better judgment when inebriated than the other?"
Well, I do think putting yourself at risk should be judged less harshly than putting others at risk.
Perhaps when judged externally by others. But, when the person is judging himself less harshly in a way that justifies his own questionable behavior, then it comes off as rationalization.
And, again, to say he is only harming himself is part of the fallacy that he is somehow exercising better judgment. That is, I believe that someone who exercises the poor judgement to repeatedly drink himself into unconsciousness is very much susceptible to exercising equally poor judgment, while in that inebriated state, that could result in harm to others. It just hasn't happened yet.
My point is that the fact that you or I believe that we can control our behavior when drunk, or that drinking does not alter our essential character (e.g. "people only do things when drunk that they wanted to do anyway) does not imply that the same is true for everyone unless you don't believe in alcoholism.
I think that not believing in alcoholism because you aren't an alcoholic is harmful.
Maybe anyone can become dependent, but not everyone _does_. I think our model of behavior ought to include the recognition that in some cases people are unable to refrain from drinking even though they know, in the abstract, that something terrible is likely to happen sooner or later. Acknowledging that alcoholism is not an excuse doesn't change the fact that some people are apparently undeterred from driving drunk by potential legal sanction. I too would hope that such people just wouldn't drink, but this seems insufficient. I admit that I haven't proposed a solution, I just think it's an interesting problem.
So, having established blame, what next? Ignition interlocks seem like a stop gap. I few months ago I watched a guy come out of a bar, and ask his friend to blow in the breathalyzer installed in his truck. No shit. A solution that is not strictly technical might be called for, but I'm not sure what a social solution looks like.
It seems like people in general are kind of bad at safely operating cars, and drunk people are just even worse. I fantasize that self driving cars. They would never get drunk, or distracted or sleepy or have road rage. Maybe someday driving your own car will seems reckless, pun fully intended.
One wonders what experimental technique you used to make this determination, if the driver of that car felt the same way, how valuable our judgments about our own behavior while drinking can possibly be, and so on.
You've outlined a belief that acknowledges the horror of what alcohol can bring about but allows you to keep drinking a lot anyhow. And it allows you to think of yourself as completely different than the guy who just killed those people. I'll just float the idea - as a fellow consumer of alcohol and not somebody interested in judging - that you might unconsciously be a little too easy on yourself here, and your drinking might actually put the rest of the world at risk to some degree.
(not to mention our erroneous human tendency to think of criminals as a completely different species as ourselves, which can also lead to some questionable ideas)
Part of the impairment is your complete unknowing of it happening. It's cognitively a blind spot, so to speak.
People will seek out jurisdictions where driving is less necessary because they are safer there.
It might not be an answer so much as a canary.
Could have done without the sarcasm here, but you are correct. Improving public transit options and treating car-dependent culture is the ultimate solution here.
How about not drink if they know they have to drive later. Drink only when you have alternative means of transport, or a DD.
Based on the judgment that drunkard exhibited (fleeing from the cops) [edit: and the fact that he apparently stole the car], it's pretty clear he wouldn't have taken Uber even if it had been widely available.
So... add more car services? What!? Grade-separated rapid transit (ideally with platform screen doors), aggressive congestion charging, parking maximums, and general Copenhagenization - these are actual solutions, not more cars.
I mean, the rest of your comment stands - I don't know of anybody who got hurt on my street, but that's probably because my street is only open for cars between 8 and 11 (AM, for those of you stuck with 12h clock).
But platform screen doors, nope.
I feel like they would be reduce incidents of people/things falling into the tracks as well as help with queues in front of the doors (i.e., people know where to queue, as opposed to just following the train until it stops).
In practice the incidents are rare (even in case of metros, it's something you read in news papers every time it happens), and the few attempts to implement them were generally underwhelming. And, if anything, the risk of a person getting between them and the vehicle means you're just swapping risks around.
So yeah, they're costly, of dubious use, they're yet another part that can break, and a general eyesore. And, if you want dense networks (and you do, trust me on that), then increasing the amount of space required for a stop is also a Bad Thing.
This is a terribly sad, sad day out here. Your comment, while partially true, is not really appreciated.
That said, you can't really be "surprised" by the enormous amounts of DUIs around here (even by our elected officials). I don't mean to be insensitive, but this is not an isolated incident.
This is a city that practically endorses party behavior, and has absolutely miserable public transportation options and a sprawling suburb area. It's a lethal combination that is getting worse and worse.
Sadly, we deal with on a weekly basis -- driving around here at night is not safe -- and there's no true solution in near sight.
Not happy.
I used to live in Athens, GA, and we had the same problem: nightlife drove much of the local economy, but public transportation was nearly non-existent. The number of clearly intoxicated people getting into cars was astounding to me when I first moved, having previously lived in a city with good public transportation.
The correlation between drunk driving and the availability of public transportation seems pretty clear to me.
With this city's growth, it will be very very bad for at least 20 years to come. The Mayor himself basically said so on an AMA yesterday.
From http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/2-dead-21-injured-in-...
The incident started after a police officer began checking for DWIs. The suspect, fearing arrest, weaved his silver Toyota sedan through a gas station and sped off, driving the wrong way down a one-way street. The officer turned on his lights and pursued the suspect. A second officer stationed at a nearby barricade was forced to move to avoid being struck by the suspect, who proceeded to further accelerate, drive through the barricade and strike multiple pedestrians.
The suspect continued driving "at a high rate of speed" for two blocks before hitting a taxi and striking a male and a female and killing them both. The suspect exited his car after running over the moped and proceeded to flee on foot, where he was apprehended and tased by an Austin police officer before being taken into custody.
"As a result of this person's reckless and willful disregard for the safety of the people, we have two individuals who are now dead," Acevedo said. The entire incident lasted under two minutes.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/2-dead-21-injured-in-... Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook
EDIT:
So, was this a stupid local, a dumb kid from UT, or one of the startup brats from the coast?
EDIT2:
"Acevedo said officers initially tried to pull Owens over at a gas station on the Interstate 35 service road around 12:30 a.m. Thursday. Fort Hood officials tell KVUE that the Toyota he was driving was reported stolen in Killeen."
Huh, interesting.
2) Uber's not involved, unless that was intended as sarcasm of some sort.
3) Per the article, the identity of the driver hasn't been revealed. EDIT: Seems the article was edited?