cars
Okay, but we aren’t willing not to license dumb drivers because we have decided as a society that to lose your car is to lose your right to an independent life. We aren’t willing to hold dumb drivers accountable for killing people for the same reason. We establish parking minimums for dive bars even though we know people are going to drink and drive and kill people.
The car doesnt kill anybody. Its the driver on their phone, checking their nails, eating McDonald’s, etc that kill people.
the car absolutely kills people. that same big mac licking driver on a bike or bus or scooter causes 0 deaths. it’s the cars
Build a decent train line and those people using phones or checking they nails will not put anyone in danger.
As much attention EVs get car fires kill about 500+ people per year in the US and cause over 1.9Billion in property damage.
Regular gas cars have been recalled many times for spontaneous combustion while parked burning down garages and homes.
Most of the time however yes it is from operators driving.
Its also people who dont know how to cross the street or anyone who disobeys traffic laws. Ive seen bikes just run red lights, dart through stop signs, people just cross against the light without even looking.
Its general carelessness with regards to the roads
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. You’re not wrong. It’s the operator. If people actually drove responsibly, we probably wouldn’t have as many issues. There are definitely too many distractions, and people in general just naturally mind wander.
That being said, it would be much better to have a mass transit system. Less accidents, I can watch my phone, do my nails, and eat my mcdonald’s without worry of killing someone.
Cars.
Firearm injury 2nd: how to know this is US data without it being labeled as US data.
correct! And even in USA where there is a mass shooting like every day, the car is worse than firearms
Your car.
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Cars
Statistically speaking, you will either die by cancer, or you will die in an automotive accident.
Two way roads.
If they didn’t exist today and someone came up with the brilliant idea of having people in control of machines (cars or bikes) moving in opposite directions at 50mph, separated by a few feet and a painted line, it would be dismissed immediately.
I drive on a lot of rural roads in the UK, mainly Wales, most of the time I’m just happy when the road has space for two cars to squeeze through and some visibility for what’s coming around the corner of that rural lane. Actual physical lines separating the lanes? Oh boy it’s my birthday. Yet with all that, we have a death rate per 100 million miles of just over a third of somewhere like the US, so I’d imagine the size of cars and inadequate licence requirements are probably bigger issues for road safety
I can’t remember which episode it was but in the Cautionary Tales podcast by Tim Harford a guest once explained that cars are too safe. Through the years we blamed cars for not being safe when people get hurt but few alterations were made to our behaviour if you campagne it to the advances they’ve made in car safety. If imminent death would follow everytime we made a mistake people would be more careful. That’s how I feel about the roads in Wales. The lack of oversight made me be more cautious. That and the fact that I normally drive at the other side of the road.
The general concept you’re describing is called Risk Compensation. It feels intuitively correct, but in whatever context it’s been studied in almost all cases it turns out that the safety feature is actually better overall. Some people might be a bit riskier knowing about the safety net, but not enough to counteract the safety improvement.
Also - in the UK - road deaths go down over time, while miles driven goes up. Driving is getting safer. Cars are part of that, but so is road nd signal design and driver training.
Ok, this is a weird hypothetical, but if the world had been overcast for the last thousand years, and then suddenly there was sometimes just a completely blinding light in the sky that you sometimes have to drive straight toward, it would be chaos.
Before COVID I imagined that the death toll would be so high that most roads would be shut down until technology had been developed and distributed so that you could never be blinded by the sun while driving. (Not just a flip down sun visor, but something like an LCD screen front windshield with head tracking that automatically blocks just the sun from your view).
Now I know how quickly and easily people become acquainted with mass death.
Now I imagine there wouldn’t even be a new driver’s test required that requires you to demonstrate that you can safely drive into the sunset.
Just “We recommend, but don’t require, that you have a sun visor in your car when using public roads.”
