The cause was easy enough to identify: Data parsed by Kuhls and her colleagues showed that drivers were speeding more, on highways and on surface streets, and plowing through intersections with an alarming frequency. Conversely, seatbelt use was down, resulting in thousands of injuries to unrestrained drivers and passengers. After a decade of steady decline, intoxicated-driving arrests had rebounded to near historic highs.
… The relationship between car size and injury rates is still being studied, but early research on the American appetite for horizon-blotting machinery points in precisely the direction you’d expect: The bigger the vehicle, the less visibility it affords, and the more destruction it can wreak.
Just my own experience and maybe due to frequency bias, but holy shit everyone seemed to lose their goddamn minds behind the wheel after Covid.
People seem to have gone “feral”.
Animals in the store?
No shoes/shirt?
Waiting your turn?
Treating other people (especially service workers)?
Nope. Just a feral return to “mine mine mine, me me me”
And I swear SOOOO many fucking people on their phones. Bitch, you aren’t that important. Put it the fuck down and drive.
Yes! A TON of people have brain damage from COVID and have no idea they have brain damage from COVID.
https://twitter.com/yash25571056/status/1745048307335119358
A lot of people only go the speed limit because there are cars in the way
I dunno but can we turn down the brightness on some of these fucking headlights
They need to mandate that headlights cannot be installed > 2-2.5 feet off the ground. Putting them higher than that does not benefit you in any way, it just fucks with other drivers.
If an 18 wheeled transport truck can have lights mounted at a reasonable height and brightness, so can your f150 or chevy Suburban.
There are already rules about where they may point (for road legal lights, anyway) you shouldn’t get dipped headlights in your mirror or from oncoming traffic except briefly as they crest hills
The height is a problem as when a large vehicle is tailgating you the angle doesn’t matter much
If the headlights are higher than another driver’s eyes, the light will go straight and downward into their eyes. There’s just no way to highlight the ground without blinding drivers in front of you if the headlights are so high.
I’m pretty biased on this one but I’ve been pretty outspoken that we print too god damn many driver’s licenses.
For the most part, it has nothing to do with people’s general driving competency. It has to do with their anger issues. People really just don’t care about others anymore. Defensive driving is virtually nonexistent for the majority of drivers, because everyone’s mentality is entirely selfish. Most days, many people are just giving in to their rage. And it’s not just behind the wheel either. All aspects of life are being swallowed by people’s indifference and anger.
Someone I knew got their license as an adult recently, and they were terrified at the lack of an actual “test” in the driving test. They drove around the block, never got above 35mph, and encountered a couple other cars.
And once you pass that, as long as you renew it and don’t have any violations, you can drive until you can’t see the gauges or hold the steering wheel.
We should have driving tests like the Finns have.
I think the problem lies more in initial training and retesting. There is very little mandated training for a task as complex as driving and most training is done on open streets, not under controlled conditions with professional supervision. Furthermore, once you get the lisence, you got it for life just keep paying the fees. No need to retest regardless how the rules of the road change, street design changes, and car technology changes.
In my city, police have pretty much given up on doing any traffic enforcement.
same, why? i didnt see any cops during xmas new year, then this morning i see 3 highway patrols, probably on their way to an accident
Same in mine, in Canberra, Australia. Maybe I’m just not driving at the times they’re doing drink driving enforcement. I recall when I was a youth the breathalyzers were set up randomly midnight to 4am
We do have camera enforcement of speed, red lights, and mobile phones
My city definitely did breath testers for people coming home from work in the past
And the place does them well when they do them out of peak hour — they stop all traffic on a major road, test people, arrest them or let them continue
In peak hour they pull over cars they’re suspicious of. Driving badly, young drivers, etc
I saw a police pulling radar in a school zone right around when the kids get let out. Everyone still did 15 over the limit and the officer didn’t pull anyone. I’m sure they pulled people speeding faster than that but it seems they can’t just ticket the entire town when 10-15 over the limit is so normalized. People still tell me all the time a cop isn’t even allowed to pull you for just 10 over (which is false).
… Don’t you guys have speeding cameras? As in, you drive by too fast, it snaps a pic of your license plate and after a couple of weeks you get mail saying “surprise, bitch! Here’s a picture of you speeding. That’ll be $400 or you’re going to jail :)”?
Im just starting to see some of them but they all have warning signs before hand. We have a similar thing where your speed flashes on a lighted sign if it clocks you too fast, but since they aren’t enforced by anything the act more like a high score meter.
I have seen mobile speed cameras and cops with radar guns in school zones in wealthier parts of my town, and they pull over anyone more than 2kph over the limit
I’m not saying it’s the reason, but as soon as they do and the perp wrecks and kills themselves they have dipshits online whingeing about how the poor kid of only 24 didn’t deserve to die for simply speeding.
So its better to just let them keep speeding and wait until they kill or injure someone else rather than themselves? Does that really sound more fair? Many police departments will stop the chase if traffic is too heavy to safely pursue. The cops shouldn’t shoot the speeder but it’s defintely not on the cops if the speeder disobeys traffic laws, refuses to pull over, and attempts to evade police resulting in a collision/personal injury.
It’s because we have so many entitled morons on the road, and we’re all stressed over the worsening human condition.
And because the roads are not designed to keep traffic at safe speeds, and don’t separate traffic from pedestrians and cyclists sufficiently, when those morons do something moronic they kill someone
Infrastructure can fix a lot of this problem - Australia is like mini-America in so many ways, but we allow speed cameras and red light cameras which reduce speeding marvelously, though I have been tailgated by someone offended I was only going 80km/h* in the 80 zone. They passed me illegally and unsafely
Even the fixed cameras do good work, even when everyone knows where they are as it’s hard to speed right after them as slow cars move into the fast lane to pass glacial traffic
I point at the bike I ride as a reason cars give me space, it’s a carbon fibre recumbent. Since it looks odd, people see it. But the bike lane is protected by paint on the route I mostly ride, and one driver was so busy looking at my odd bike that they went out of their lane into the bike lane. Luckily there was no cyclist just that distance in front of me - that’s a pretty regular person, driving mostly safely, but screwing up. If the bike lane was protected by a kerb the car would’ve been deflected.
*I calibrate my speedometer to GPS speed, so it’s accurate
Here in Canada I’ve noticed we are starting to use cameras as well, the only issue is there are lots of signs before it is installed and lots of signs when it is installed. That way you know where you can speed and where you can’t speed, which is usually just 1 or 2 intersections of cameras… It seems like a small improvement but they are too easy to avoid, especially for locals. Imagine if a traffic cop had to walk down the road and put a little sign up that says “radar trap ahead” before doing any radar.
My town has mitigated that problem by putting a mobile camera just after the fixed camera. The sign for the mobile camera is hidden by the slow traffic, but they catch all the people who speed up just after the fixed camera
People are now afraid of speeding anywhere around the cameras
