According to the article, your theory is simple yet wrong:
> Here is what the frustrated safety experts will tell you: Americans are driving more than ever, more than residents of any other country. More of them than ever are living in cities and out in urban sprawl; a growing number of pedestrian fatalities occur on the fringes of cities, where high-volume, high-speed roads exist in close proximity to the places where people live, work, and shop. Speed limits have increased across the country over the past 20 years, despite robust evidence that even slight increases in speed dramatically increase the likelihood of killing pedestrians (car passengers, too – but the increase is not as steep, thanks to improvements in the design of car frames, airbags and seatbelts). American road engineers tend to assume people will speed, and so design roads to accommodate speeding; this, in turn, facilitates more speeding, which soon enough makes higher speed limits feel reasonable. And more Americans than ever are zipping around in SUVs and pickup trucks, which, thanks to their height, weight and shape are between two and three times more likely to kill people they hit. [emphasis added]
From other statistics I've seen, the massive increase in SUV's is mentioned as the single largest factor.
Indeed, the article directly refutes your theory:
> Ask a room full of safety experts about smartphones and you will get a mix of resignation, bemusement and contempt. “I tend not to buy the smartphone distraction stuff,” says Garrick, echoing nearly identical comments from just about everyone I talked to. “To me, it reads as shoving aside actually dealing with the relevant issues.” What particularly bothers him, he says, is how poorly thought out the distraction discourse tends to be. In the UK, Belgium, Germany, Spain, France, Austria and Iceland, for example, pedestrian deaths occur at a per capita rate roughly half of America’s, or lower. Are we really to believe that the citizens of these countries are 50% less susceptible than Americans to distraction, by their phones or anything else? ... “All this talk about pedestrian distraction, driver distraction? It’s such a distraction,” says Ben Welle of the World Resource Institute for Sustainable Cities. “It puts all the responsibility on individuals, and none on the environment they operate in.” [emphasis added]
> From other statistics I've seen, the massive increase in SUV's is mentioned as the single largest factor.
I've been saying for years that driving a large SUV or truck without a legitimate need for its capabilities is an antisocial act, for precisely this reason and also the fact that, all other things being equal, a vehicle (and its occupants) colliding with another vehicle will fare worse the larger that other vehicle is. Whether my own assumptions were right or wrong, I'm glad we're finally starting to talk about this. For a long time, it seemed to be a huge blind spot in existing analyses of injurious/fatal road accidents.
It makes me absolutely livid when I walk past a shiny new lifted pickup with an empty bed and my head is just about level with the front of the hood. How have we grown to accept these things driving around on public roads with no higher bar to entry than that required to drive a Geo Metro?
I think we need another license class for vehicles larger than your average 4-door sedan (or saloon, in the UK). An F-150, Highlander, or Suburban drive and handle appreciably different than the Civic or Accord-sized vehicle that most drivers-ed classes use. And it shows when you see how people park or drive these larger vehicles in crowded areas. We’ve essentially discounted the increase in vehicle size to whether you can get financing for it, with no regard to your ability to drive it.
As a biker, Geo Metros are unacceptable. It makes me c absolutely livid when I bike past a shiny new Geo Metro which is 1800 pounds of wasted metal and my knee caps are about level with the front. How have we grown to accept these things driving around on public roads with no higher bar to entry than that required to bike in my BMX?
I see this all the time where I live, and it drives me insane. Truck culture is a waste of resources. What causes someone to pay $$$$ to decrease the efficiency of their vehicle? And don’t even get me started on soft rubber mud tires that only see pavement...
My mother was insistent on driving SUVs because she said she could see the road better from higher up, which to me really just meant that when she would look at cars, she wouldn't consider the feature she actually needed: raisable seats.
However, in practice, she backed into a couple poles in her old SUV and said she didn't see them. Hm.
She now drives a car instead of an SUV and not once has complained about being unable to see, and I don't think it has raisable seats, so I think she may have simply convinced herself of something that was untrue.
Well, I don't want to say trucks shouldn't be allowed on public roads at all. That would exclude working vehicles that serve crucial roles in our society.
The condition of a truck's bed, i.e. is it dusty and marked up by loads carried, is it full of gear, etc., serves as a proxy for whether the operator of the vehicle has been or is currently making use of the capabilities it offers beyond e.g. a compact hatchback. If they are not, I see that as a signal that they belong to the category of truck owners who own them for vanity and/or personal expression reasons rather than because they need the carrying capacity. This sort of ownership is, I believe (as I said) an antisocial act.
This signal is not perfect, but as I keep it to myself in every case I don't feel that I'm harming anybody by making these judgments, and if someone could demonstrate to me that e.g. the majority of F-series truck (the most popular "car" in America, last I checked) owners need that capacity, as in they use it on a regular basis to the extent that a smaller vehicle would not suffice, I'd be happy to change my thinking.
There definitely are truck owners like that, but I think there are a lot of truck owners who don't use them for their job, but extensively for work on and around their home and for recreation (or for activities which are both productive and recreational, like fishing and hunting), and that many of these folks like to take care of their trucks and try to keep them looking clean.
For most people, it's far from a given that those activities require the sort of vehicle I'm talking about.
Regardless, all this fixation on my "empty bed" comment is totally missing the point. We should look at the data, at how many human lives are lost each year because of the proliferation of these vehicles, and on that basis we should decide whether further regulation and/or transit engineering is needed to protect the public. People are, evidently, dying because of said proliferation, and that's just totally unacceptable to me.
Maybe I just don't understand the mindset that I should be able to do whatever I want, for my own vanity/amusement/whatever, at any cost to my fellow humans up to and including the loss of their lives.
The empty bed idea is a terrible one. It'll only encourage people to leave their beds loaded.
The only wrecks (only fender benders) I've ever been in were when I had a heavily loaded bed or was pulling a trailer. Not only does stopping distance increase, but weight is sometimes taken off of the front tires, meaning ability to steer/swerve is also impaired.
This is one of those rules that not only would have the opposite of the desired, but also increase the severity of accidents that do occur.
That an empty bed implies the "truck isn't being used" and therefore isn't needed and that person shouldn't be driving a truck. Extended to include the idea that only people who need trucks should drive trucks, and even then, should only drive them specifically when you need the bed or to pull a trailer.
This topic always devolves into someone suggesting "there ought to be a law..." And some variation suggesting tickets be given to people driving vehicles bigger than what's required for any particular trip, with an empty bed being evidence of guilt.
Well, just to be clear, it is not my opinion that we should be issuing tickets to the drivers of pickup trucks with empty beds.
Do I think the massive proliferation of obviously-underutilized pickup trucks in America is a symptom of a particularly destructive and vapid brand of consumerism? Yes, I do.
I just don't understand why people let it bother themselves so much.
And remember that embedded energy is a thing. It's almost always more efficient to drive a single vehicle that meets all of your needs than to purchase a second one just for occasional use. For trucks specifically, rentals usually don't make sense.
It bothers me because these vehicles apparently kill people at a significantly higher rate than "normal cars". That's what this whole thread below the parent of my original comment is about. When innocent human lives are extinguished by completely avoidable causes, it absolutely bothers me. It bothers me on behalf of myself, my friends and family and loved ones, and every single person out there who deserves better than being snuffed out before their time by some moron who's decided to purchase an identity for themselves by way of an F-250 XLT 4x4 TEXAS RANCH KING EDITION CUMMINS POWER STROKE SIX-POINT-TWO LITER FLEX FUEL. Or whatever.
I've rented many trucks in my life, at times when my car at the time wasn't big enough. In each case it made perfect sense.
Except the claim is for SUVs, not trucks. And even then, the suv connection is grasping at straws, the same way cell phones have been blamed for a decade. Apply the same methods to the 90s, which had more "true" SUVs (on truck frames), and it looks like SUVs save lives with the declining pedestrian deaths. Most SUVs sold today come on car frames and aren't as tall or as those were.
They even make the point in the article- that the rise in fatalities corresponds more with pedestrian safety features than anything else, but we're not blaming them.
this probably isn't what GP cares about, but it is kind of silly to drive around a pickup truck with no weight in the bed. these vehicles are designed to handle a heavy load in the bed. the tradeoff is that a pickup doesn't actually have it's best handling when the bed is totally empty. it's not catastrophically dangerous, but a pickup with an empty bed is more susceptible to stuff like lift-off oversteer than something like an SUV, which isn't designed with the same assumptions.
The 1st company I worked for was hyper vigilant in preventing accidents, to a point that kept me from returning. Their data is quite solid, however. With both forward and inner facing cameras, they are able to analyze their drivers extensively, notably where accidents occur. It isn't only because of the mandatory $10,000 federal fine[1] for having a cellphone placed near a driver's ear, it's the observed tendency of the phone as a factor in many events. So strict was the company, that if the camera sensors detected a driver's hand near a cellphone, a safety meeting was held and the driver reprimanded, or terminated. Their means I find intolerable, but their motivation well founded.
1. FMCSA
Edit: I ought take the opportunity to mention the training that occurs in some of these companies, regardless of driver experience. There can be no refutation that such additional education makes a better driver, of any motor vehicle. The prevalent attitude and reception (even among trucker types) is open-minded, sincere and earnest. I view this as strong evidence that education can indeed improve what many appear to think of as incorrigible drivers. The required education for a standard driver's licenses is wholly inadequate considering the stakes. I stubbornly hold that up to a majority of accidents are highly and practically preventable. Our priorities are grotesque.
Both the article and the parent poster point out about the behaviour of drivers, but neither really mention pedestrian behaviour. I know bashing on drivers is popular, so this might not go over well. But, as a pedestrian 90% of the time myself, I see a lot more terrible pedestrian behaviour in recent years than I've seen previously.
People just not paying attention to traffic lights and walking onto streets. Actually, from what I can tell, very few pedestrians actually pay attention to the car traffic lights.
I've watched people countless times walk onto the street while playing with their phones and not even looking up. I've seen people walking in the dark with headphones on crossing streets without paying the slightest bit of attention.
Personally, as a pedestrian I understand most people driving are fairly terrible at it and honestly when you're driving, most of the time you see pedestrians for about 20-30 seconds before you've passed them and their gone.
When I'm walking around traffic, I always stay concious of this, because I understand that if a ton of metal flying at 60km/h hits me, I'm gonna be seriously hurt or dead and there's not always time for a car to stop if I'm being unsafe as much as they should stop. I really think a lot of people don't understand or appreciate this enough.
It's worth noting that non-US countries have lower fatalities, even with smartphone technology.
The major difference is that the consequence of being a bad pedestrian isn't death in most countries due to slower speeds and lower prevalence of SUVs.
I often see people arguing that US speed limits being high is fine, because the major killer is speed differential in a crash. The problem is, pedestrians walk at 3mph, so even a speed limit of 40mph on a road with pedestrians leads to a quite high speed differential between a car and a human.
I traveled extensively across most of Europe and also a bit of US. In the northern half of Europe pedestrians are crossing the streets in a very orderly manner, the entire summer I lived in Vienna I haven't seen a single pedestrian crossing a red light, not even on streets with almost no traffic. In the southern part things are different, but on average in Europe people pay more attention to crossing the streets than in US. That explains the lower fatalities.
Also in Europe people text less; I never understood the US preference for texting, in Europe we simply talk (many countries have affordable or unlimited voice plans). When I drive a car (10-20% of the time) I have a headset in my ear, when I ride the motorcycle I have a helmet headset turned on on auto-answer. I don't talk too often while driving, but it is less distracting than texting, I never have to touch the phone while driving (on the bike it is not even possible).
A somewhat cynical, hopefully wrong hypothesis: People in the US text more because we're further down the road of optimizing all human activity to maximize its monetary output, and the asynchronous and more impersonal nature of text messages allows us to transfer data to one another with less interruption to our productivity.
It's interesting to the extent that I always thought it was the opposite - that Europe was the one preferring texting, whereas the US didn't even have (or use much) the SMS service, using phones for just calls until mobile Internet came.
You can walk everywhere and live without a car in most big European cities. You cannot in US. That changes road design, urban planning, law interpretation, driving culture.
It's a catch 22. Nobody walks, so the social expectation is that the environment must accommodate driving, so the zoning and the laws reflect that, but the resulting environment is hostile to walking, so nobody walks.
There was an America before cars where walking was the norm, and then it was mostly systematically destroyed and is gone outside of a few metropolitan areas.
I agree with the point that pedestrians must watch the road (looking at traffic lights is not enough, you need to check wether cars are actually slowing down).
But to me it doesn't seem like people are more distracted than 10 years ago, so I'm not sure how that would increase pedestrian deaths.
Where is the actual evidence that high speed roads near where people live, work and shop are primarily responsible? Speed limit increases tend to be on highways where pedestrians are not allowed.
In the UK, Belgium, Germany, Spain, France, Austria and Iceland, maybe distracted driving and cellphone use is better enforced. Many of the stats I see show that distracted driving is more common in the US vs. other countries: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/comment/texting-driving-tab...
Sorry but those choice of words, 'tend to not buy', does not sound like it's backed by evidence or facts. Similarly to the parent who used anecdata. I myself see an alarming number of people on phones in cars, it's more of a distraction than eating in the car. It is hard to argue that we've not become more and more distracted as we drive, that is the problem to fix. With commutes getting longer, not shorter it seems like an up hill battle.
How do you explain the data they proceed with, that these deaths are much less common in Europe where people also own smartphones? That's not an anecdote or someone simply refusing to acknowledge data.
I can only speculate, but I would say this data doesn't disprove the causality of the other cohorts. Just because the results are absent in another region it doesn't mean those same conditions will yield the same results, although it's idea of something to try.
Owning a smartphone and using it while driving aren't the same thing. I think work culture differences my contribute more than mere smartphone ownership.
However, where this starts to break down is highway miles. Shifting into overdrive and having no lights for miles, coupled with the always connected to work ethic might have different results.
I do think it ultimately comes down to culture and conditions on the road.
Re: work culture I have been ordered to be on conference calls while driving to the airport on a weekly basis. Never would do so otherwise as I hate talking on the phone period let alone while driving in traffic. Feels bad man.
I can say, in France you need 100 hours of driving school before you can even sit in the drivers seat. Then you need 1 year of driving before you are allowed on the national highways, >45kph. It's even tougher in Germany.
Drivers in Europe tend to be better because they have more training, and plenty to lose. Simply holding a phone will get you fined and points.
This kind of comment doesn't really add to the discussion. It is just restating the (grand?)parent's argument and giving a weak response to the parent's counter-argument.
> Are we really to believe that the citizens of these countries are 50% less susceptible than Americans to distraction, by their phones or anything else?
Given the prevalence of manual cars there, yes I am actually.
Came here to say that. Here in the US I see people driving with their phone in their right hand, which is just not possible with a manual transmission car (and I never saw that in France). It might also explain a bit why so many people drive with a giant cup of coffee: they have a free hand.
This makes sense, give both feet and both hands a role in the driving process and we are forced to pay more attention. Perhaps we need to turn the shifters of automatics into Simon says games where if you lose the pattern you hit a soft rev limiter.
> In the UK, Belgium, Germany, Spain, France, Austria and Iceland, for example, pedestrian deaths occur at a per capita rate roughly half of America’s, or lower. Are we really to believe that the citizens of these countries are 50% less susceptible than Americans to distraction
It's a hell of a lot harder to get a license in those countries than in the US. And if you hit a pedestrian in those countries it is assumed you are at fault. Unlike the US, where it is assumed the pedestrian must have done something irrational, like cross a street, and the driver is innocent as snow.
Collectively, Americans are terrible drivers, so the reasons compound. Whether it's fatigue, phones, makeup, food, drinking, or poor judgement we feel safe in our cars and fuck anyone else.
As a Brit, I'd say a lot of the difference is road engineering. We tend to have windy roads and roundabouts that slow things are less prone to fatalities.
This! Things like minimum street and shoulder widths are totally different between the UK and US and they dramatically impact driver behavior. I'm an engineer in the US for the record.
> Are we really to believe that the citizens of these countries are 50% less susceptible than Americans to distraction, by their phones or anything else? .
From my experience, yes.
My perception is that texting while driving just wasn't a thing in Germany at the time it was commonly happening in the US. Maybe nobody was talking about it, but I suspect people just didn't consider it a thing you could do while driving.
I think this is a classic example of expert bias. If you ask a group of people that design roads for a living what the #1 factor in road safety is you are going to hear about road design.
Needlessly obnoxious retort, as gp is exactly right. There is no a priori reason to zero in on road design as a major contributory factor given the huge range of possibilities. One can easily apply profound selection bias in a complex problem simply by choosing which experts to ask.
No, without additional evidence it’s a terrible argument that could apply to almost anything. Data and experience is better than an “a priori reason” every time.
Tfa addresses reasons cell phone use may not be as explanatory as we think. If you want to argue against that, great, but bring some evidence. Anything else is just hot air.
The US is the only country where automatic transmissions are anywhere near as popular as they are. If I am not mistaken, in most other countries, the majority of drivers are driving manuals. That alone probably discourages people from texting while driving. Add in narrower roads and cities that were not designed with cars in mind, and I can see this being the case.
Physically changing road design is the only thing that works. Handing out tickets and traffic cameras are an o.k. way for a government to make some money, but does nothing to stop accidents.
The best way to save the lives of pedestrians and cyclists from the predation of motorists is to eliminate cars in urban areas. The second-best way is fast, sure, automated enforcement.
As someone who's done this type research, it's highly cherry picked and riddled with conflicted interests. It also encourages unpredictable driver behavior, which goes against the basic principles of right-of-way. You want drivers to be as predictable as possible for the benefit of drivers around them.
This is in addition to philosophical arguments against:
contest/court fees that are higher than the fine for pleading guilty,
The entire idea that criminal police enforcement can be contracted out,
Or, if civil enforcement, the idea that speeding in-and-of-itself is a justicable suit. Ie, the idea that the city suffered damages by someone speeding, and that an arbitrary fine is the appropriate remedy.
Get rid of companies collecting a rake, as well as the cities keeping the fines, and suddenly no one is fighting for the programs anymore.
Hope to live to see this utopia. In the meantime, I'll take it if public money is invested in traffic calming - this might deter some driving at least, and definitely will make it safer. Also serves as an indicator that the place is not "car-first".
Cameras are effective but only if deployed widely enough that they aren’t a surprise or annoyance. We need red light cameras at every intersection and speed cameras on every road.
Lightly deployed cameras do end up being what you say they are because people just mark them on Waze and drive carefully only in a certain area.
The opposite is in the US, where it's become almost universal to put on flashers in heavy rain while still driving, or waving people ahead of you into traffic. Both are illegal and dangerous, yet people think it's the smart/nice thing to do. Both have been socially reinforced to the point where I don't know they can be corrected.
To look at it another way, it makes the road safer for everyone regardless of the attentiveness and skill of any particular driver. Surely, that's a reasonable trade off in areas with a lot of vulnerable pedestrians.
If a road has a 40km/h speed limit, and then road features designed for 40km/h are added, what's the penalty? The point is to require the driver to focus, which a good driver does anyway.
This isn't really true. Road design is more complicated than people think. There's actually a table (I think in the green book) that gives you what are essentially coefficients for drivers "subconscious" speed, given certain design features. Meaning that reducing lane width, shoulder width, or even sign size will cause a driver to "naturally" drive slower. Setting the speed limit outside of this natural range happens all the time, usually in good faith, but results in speed traps.
So maybe not "physically" difficult, but it certainly takes a mental effort.
A practical answer is “no”. Speed limits were set when cars really couldn’t safely do any more. But, modern cars have better acceleration and braking and suspension. They remain “comfortably” within their handling capabilities even when 30% over the speed limit. (Estimates are my opinion)
One of the article's main points is that when cars drive faster, they are much more likely to kill pedestrians in an accident. So even if modern engineering may allow drivers to stay in control of their cars at higher speeds, cars still become more lethal to non-drivers.
Totally agree - I was more saying that the roads themselves do nothing to control speeds. Or, in a modern car it is easy to speed without realizing it.
>I'm convinced that no amount of campaigning, punishment, or scare tactics will suffice to stop it.
Really? I bet a $10,000 fine and/or 1 year license suspension would be enough. Making it so it shows up on your driving record (and therefore will increase insurance rates) would also help. It's not like drug addiction where you're physically dependent on it, or drinking and driving where you're "forced" into it because of a decision a few hours ago.
I am 100% behind this. I've previously proposed to HN that texting and driving should be classified as a potential felony because of the extremely fatal consequences of being that distracted.
Obviously, I was downvoted by the crowd that believe they are special snowflakes who can text and drive with some arbitrary degree of increased safety relative to all of their peers, and likely also the crowd that believes harsh penalties should never apply because of the historic abuses of these policies in terms of keeping our prisons full. In this case, I don't give a flying shit. If you text and drive and you think it's ok, you shouldn't be on the road. Period. If you can't come to terms with this, maybe you should have your license revoked. If this is still insufficient, perhaps we really do need to put your ass in jail for a while.
Are people so psychologically addicted to their electronics that they'd be willing to skirt jail time? Is anyone actually going to have a bad day because you couldn't send a WhatsApp message while you are hurtling down the freeway at 70mph with barely 5 meters margin between you and every other car?
Just put the damn phones away while you are driving. Like OP mentions, it's not even a physical addiction or a subsequent consequence. Takes 2 seconds to become compliant no matter your current circumstances or state of mind. Some emergency in your head and you absolutely need to use the device? There's this thing called "pulling over and parking" that I would highly recommend trying out. Believe it or not, you are actually allowed to arbitrarily exit and enter the freeway along its route as desired.
Consider that you were far more likely downvoted because you show no awareness that increasingly onerous penalties are ineffective deterrents when people don’t expect to get caught. If pickpockets can work the crowds at a pickpocket hanging, people will keep using their phones. Passing “tough on texting” legislation makes people feel like heroes but it is no panacea for the problem. And much of the danger in utilizing phones exists even when it is completely hands-free, which is unlikely to be banned even in the most restrictive case.
>Are people so psychologically addicted to their electronics that they'd be willing to skirt jail time?
No, it's sort of the opposite. If driving were more difficult, or at least more engaging, people wouldn't feel boredom and the need to multitask.
Since auto pilot type safety features are especially bad at pedestrian detection, expect this to only get worse as "safety features" improve and result in less engaged driving.
> Is anyone actually going to have a bad day because you couldn't send a WhatsApp message while you are hurtling down the freeway at 70mph with barely 5 meters margin between you and every other car?
Maybe the driver's phone should disable itself when driving?
I used regularly watch awful car accidents on /r/watchpeopledie. It made me become a much more defensive safe driver. Then reddit banned the sub and I have slowly become more aggressive. I think exposing people to the brutalities of reality makes them more rational.
I did as well. Made a much more cautious person, seeing how (my only) life is fragile. That and fights. Seeing people get killed by a single punch, or pounced upon by murderous madmen, cleared any temptation to be a tough guy. Now if there's ever a situation, in a bar or whatever, I just walk away. Not worth it to die or be maimed for whatever bullshit.
I think it's been shown to have the opposite effect. Initially you're shocked/dismayed, but after repeated viewings, it becomes normalized in your mind and loses the shock value.
There was no suggestion of 'blame', just an observation of a correlation; it was unfair of you to reframe introspection that way. Our behavior is not "entirely under our control" - indeed, there isn't even a well defined 'I' for behaviour to be under the control of.
Concepts like 'blame' and 'resposibility' are useful in the context of individual behavior, but misguided when trying to improve systems. That is why the NTSB avoids assigning blame - it would undermine the purpose of what they do.
You must be high in executive function. For people like me, free will is easily described with incentives and external causes -- "I'm cooking less because I'm busier at work". "I'm not working out as much because my gym closed down and I haven't established a habit of going to the pool". For people like me, we have to change the things that are under our control, like which media we view, to affect the ones that we have difficulty controlling.
Likewise, I see tons of pedestrians doing the same. Ive seen my share of people blindly walk into intersections without looking (and not having the right of way). Hell, I once had to grab the back of someones shirt amd forcibly pull them back so they didn't get creamed by a car because they were so ingrossed in their phone.
So, I dont think it's fair to solely put blame on drivers. I do think phones have driven up the rate of incidents, though.
I also did this once for someone who walked into the street. She had the right of way, and she wasn't staring at her cellphone. She started to cross because the crosswalk indicated she was allowed to, but a car was running the red light at the same time. Just wanted to say that not being glued to a phone isn't always enough.
Side note, maybe I am a dick, but I refuse to get out of the way of another pedestrian who is staring at their phone. Just a pet peeve of mine, but I really dislike when people move around without being aware of their surroundings, as if it's everyone else's responsibility to make way for them. (Children and people I could hurt just by bumping into them get a pass.)
> I refuse to get out of the way of another pedestrian who is staring at their phone
Agreed, and to avoid seeming aggressive I usually stop immediately in front of them, which usually triggers an 'oh! sorry' if they bump into or come close.
I did that too. I felt cool for saving someone’s life but then three blocks ahead they were doing it again so I figure I probably only gave them another few weeks on Earth.
I completely agree. I walk an hour a day on busy streets. The shit I've seen. Whew. I assume every driver will try to kill me. I've walked, by my estimate, 25,000 miles since 1995. I've jumped out of the way of cars maybe twice. Many times, I saw they weren't looking and just wouldn't step off the curb.
The other rule I have: if I need to use my phone, I move to the side of the sidewalk and stop. I won't walk and use it. 99% of the time, it's in my pocket.
I do try and refrain from texting and driving but will admit I am guilty of reading the occasional text while on the road. Call me crazy but I really think the no texting laws may have had some negative side effects. People still text. Just now they have to be even more distracted. They have to put the phone way down on their laps so a cop won't see it. Then constantly looking up and around if there is a cop watching. This was me 8 years ago when the no cell phone driving laws kicked in. Before I would hold my phone up high and texting seemed much easier as I wasn't distracted with hiding it. Of course I learned better, I grew up a little and had kids. Realised texting and driving is so dangerous but don't expect the rest of the population to get that. I don't think we will see a solution until cell phones are advanced enough that they intergrate with the cars a little more like a HUD or something on the windshield coupled with self driving technology.
I think a simple solution to this is to require everyone to have a minimum of a scooter/moped license first before being able to apply for a driver's license. Maybe we'll inject some more empathy into drivers if they realize how scary it is to be close to a texting driver and have no metal box of armor to protect them.
Similarly: I am certain that using bicycles as my main means of transportation for the past 3 years has made me a more cautious and methodical driver on the rare occasion that I use a car.
Came here to make sure this point was made. The increased death of bicyclists, pedestrians is a pretty easy thing to measure. There are other things that are overlooked or at least not mentioned due to smartphone users driving-
1) increased commute times because distracted drivers don’t follow the flow of traffic well
2) increased likelihood of collisions as traffic starts and stops on highways. I’m certain I see more rear end collisions on the freeway in the last 10 years than the prior 10.
3) Lost productivity at work.
I think many pedestrians (including boarders, bicyclists, etc.) don't help things at all by also (in some proportion) constantly looking at devices and in many cases also clogging their ears with turned up music and podcasts.
Yup texting isn't helping. I don't think that's the whole story. I would guess that the automation of cars, even automatic transmission is making drivers less engaged in driving and less alert because they don't have to be. The extreme version of this is Tesla drivers sleeping in there cars while it drives. One thing I noticed about 5 years ago also was pedestrians not defensively walking across the roads, it's probably nothing new but I noticed there's a lot of people that see the green walk light and then just start walking.
Changes probably need to be made the to whole traffic system.
I think it's pretty legitimate to be distracted while walking around. Being distracted while operating heavy machinery, on the other hand, is kinda bad.
Being distracted while waking around heavy machinery is bad as well, but the risk of hurt is less. Being distracted while walking has more risk to self and lesser others. Being distracted while driving has more risk to self and to others.
Well, yes - but a preponderance of distracted walkers isn't a argument against smartphones. It's an argument against cars. If somebody uses a dangerous device in a public area, they are responsible if they hurt someone. If a certain category of dangerous devices is implicated in the injury of a lot of people who were in public places, then it should be banned.
I know cars hold a special place in the mythos, but I think they are a bit like alcohol. They have basically no upsides, and if they were invented today, they would be illegal, except for professional or industrial purposes.
I don't own a car, and rely mostly on public transit, but "they have basically no upsides" is just bullshit, sorry.
They can transport a group of people, plus significant amounts of load, together, quickly, in relative comfort, at any time, directly from/to a specific place.
It's not practical to have acceptable public transit everywhere and to use it for every purpose.
> a lot of people
~4k out of a population of 320M is not a lot. That's less than what smoking kills in a week. Or, if you look at it differently: assuming a life expectancy of 80 years, if you inconvenience 320M people by two minutes a day, you have taken away a total of ~5.5k human lifetimes from the population.
Well, everything has upsides if you don't compare it to the competition. Even if cars were incapable of transporting people, you could say the upside is, they're a good source of scrap.
But, compared to the competition (buses, light rail, bicycles), it's hard to see where cars come out ahead. They are more expensive than every other option, they produce poisonous fumes, they take up enormous amounts of space, they only work for able-bodied people, they are loud, dangerous, and absurdly wasteful.
I don't think they are worse than smoking as a public health risk. But when you consider the amount of pollution they produce, it's likely comparable. And smokers are taxed - while car drivers are massively subsidized.
Feels like this has got a lot worse in my experience in the past 2 years, while walking to work in the city it feels like almost half of all people are holding their phone right up to their face.
Don't get why it's gotten more common though, phones haven't changed beyond camera updates in years.
Exactly and thats why Face ID is terrible compared to Touch ID! Added steps/fidgeting with your phone to just get to the point of unlocking it; a unsafe UX step backwards!
Robot cars are the answer, yet many innocent non-robot car drivers will perish at the sake of AI car progress. Progress in this instance will be murder!
If you're behind the wheel there is no reason to be on the phone whatsoever. If it's that important you can pull off to the side and face/touch/swipe away.
Ummmm tell that to the millions of people who continue and will continue to do so! There's a huge problem and just telling all the millions to stop isn't doing jack! Thus, as technologists we need to come up with solutions until we have 100% bullet proof robot cars owning our roads.
Face ID is a step backwards and im sure causing those iPhone owners with Face ID to get into more accidents. Their face/attention shouldn't be diverted from the road to unlock their phone.
Every time I bring this up here the solution ppl say here is they shouldn't be texting in the first place.. but newsflash as you can see from this article you can tell them all day long and yet they'll continue to do so.
I'm not telling everyone. I'm telling you to stop doing it.
BTW, your phone is locked because it has detected you're going faster than 20mph. And rather than take that as the big clue to pay attention you continue to bypass the big ass warnings it's throwing at you. Put the fucking phone down!
> Exactly and thats why Face ID is terrible compared to Touch ID!
How would TouchID help in this case?
Concerning AI drivers, a lot of innocent non-robot people are dying because of driving right now. I am unconvinced that more people would die. Of course the road ahead is still long.
When I grab my iPhone 8 in any instance the phone opens instantly. Now if Im a dumb driver texting which is millions and now have Face ID .. i have to grab my phone...look at it and swipe up vs. the one step mentioned; grab it while not looking at it and it's opened.
One step without a distraction from the road vs. three steps that make you focus your face/attention more on your phone then the road!
iPhone has "driving in the car" detection, afaik it only stops you from receiving texts but maybe they should go further and don't even let you unlock it (you can always dismiss it by saying that you are a passenger).
Anyways this is hardly a hardware issue, I think that punishment for texting while driving should be way more severe. Why not do it the high-school way and confiscate the cell phone? You can grab it later at a police station or pay for shipping if you are not a local.
Hinting at a massive design miss in modern cars: not embracing the smartphone.
If the phone was an essential component to the car, say to be plugged into the center console as the display, the driver could not futz around with it.
CarPlay/Android are just workarounds, even Tesla is wrong I think. The car should act as an attachment to the driver’s phone.
I'm waiting for the app to come out that lets you drive your car using your phone. Then people could play with their phones as much as they want while they drive, and do it safely.
The smartphone is the true center of modern life. All other interfaces are just artisanal horse and buggy bullshit.
Cars don’t kill pedestrians; drivers kill pedestrians. This is a case of lopsided stakes: pedestrians have everything to lose in case of car-on-ped collision, while drivers will merely have their day’s schedule derailed. The fundamental problem here is that drivers simply don’t care, and fail to operate their vehicles with due compassion towards vulnerable road users. An attentive driver who accelerates modestly and takes the time to become sure of his surroundings will not collide with anything: pedestrian, cyclist, another vehicle, or street furniture.
I believe strongly in robust mechanisms for keeping drivers responsible. Unfortunately, at least where I live, the justice system is completely impotent and unwilling to punish drivers for causing serious bodily harm or death. A system of heavy fines or imprisonment targeted at drivers would have resolved the inattention issue quicker than a typical driver can make a three-point turn. A year’s worth of income, or one year of imprisonment, for any car-on-ped collision would do the trick.
The changes in car design both from crash safety regulation, and fashion, increasing size and weight have all tended to make cars safer for the occupant, and in the event of accident far more dangerous for others. So yes, cars play their part. It's about time we considered intentionally started making cars safer for pedestrians at the cost of more dangerous for the occupant. Not quite that cliche 8" knife in steering wheel where airbag used to be, but...
An attentive driver placed in a car with current permitted distractions - far in excess of 30 years ago, or 70 years ago when traffic laws started accumulating - radios, hifi, visual displays and touch screen UIs that increasingly need lengthy attention rather than glance, thickening A B and C pillars over the years - for rollover, airbag and space to stick more driver toys, is to a pedestrian, cyclist or motorcyclist a fucking liability in need of immediate life-long ban. I try and remember this attitude when I get in my car...
There are no robust mechanisms to keep drivers responsible. It's expected everyone will speed, get tickets, accumulate parking violations. Penalties for offences whilst driving are often extreme in their leniency compared to same impact caused by other means. Driving offences are considered entirely separate from the "rest" of a criminal record.
On that point I agree wholeheartedly. Yet it doesn't, and cannot stand alone.
Car design is, after regulation has been accounted for, simply ignoring or forgetting its role in safety for everyone. Cars focus way too much on driver entertainment in a super comfy place to relax, and occupant safety. Drivers are being set up to fail. That then seems to be a distinct hole in regulation. Air, rail and industrial sets up for safety first.
Road design remains too car-centric. We know shared street designs with equal priority for all users increase safety for all, yet they are the exception not the rule. Cyclists and pedestrians shouldn't be second class users except on restricted highways and motorways.
Just a thought: making cars comfortable and safe for the drivers also makes them weigh A LOT. Which makes for huge emissions. If we were to consider ecology, taking a 70kg individual somewhere shouldn't be by a 2000kg vehicle.
As a pedestrian/cyclist/driver I'd love to see cars that are basically motorized tents weighing something like 100kg. That would make me feel much safer when outside the car, and much more considerate of others while inside.
You're right. Even a tax break to encourage the Japanese mini cars, in the same bracket as the European Smart car would be a step in the right direction for EVs. The old 60s-90s mini is about half the size and weight of the new one that would be better called a 'Huge'. We shouldn't keep hauling around 1-2 tonnes.
Considering the number of vehicles that are single occupant, it's an incredible waste, and mostly needless. That's quite apart from what could be saved by appropriate public transport.
Yes, and no. I'm afraid you've missed the point of the article. It's not about blame, but about good design that prevents human death.
(Mainly) in Western culture, humans tend to believe that what other people do reflects their personality, responsibility etc., and disregard the extent to which the environment influences people. This is called the "fundamental attribution error". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error
The point of the article is that the existing environment makes it easier for people - both drivers, and pedestrians/cyclists - to suffer gravely in the event they get distracted.
It's unreasonable to expect people not to get distracted - you can think of it as "baseline" level of distraction inherent to us all, which cannot be optimised beyond a certain point.
It's a much better solution to shape the environment so that people's distractions do not cost lives. _That_ is the point of the article.
I didn’t miss the point of the article; I simply strongly disagree with it. I oppose the constant drive to diminish the need to act responsibly. The idea of “baseline distraction” is used to provide an excuse for killing and maiming other humans. If your loved one were killed by a “baseline distracted” driver who blamed the collision on vehicle and road design, would you consider it fair? Would you willingly lay your child, spouse, or parent on the sacrificial pyre signaling the need for better cars or roads?
Life isn’t some kind of A/B experiment. Stop treating it like one, and stop moving blame from yourself to others.
This article argues for preventing deaths, not litigating them. What's the use of assigning blame after the fact?
You cannot force people to be more perfect than they are (or want to be). You can "nudge" the right outcome by shaping the environment.
If you google "chicanes in London", you'll see how people's behaviour can be shaped, regardless of their personality. _That_ is what you want, to ensure people's safety.
This would only work if the penalties were enforced a very large percentage of the time someone did something unsafe, regardless of the outcome. Humans respond to light punishments consistently applied far better than harsh punishments rarely applied.
It would be far more effective if you applied a $5 fine every time a person looked at their phone screen while driving than if you instituted the death penalty which applied only when a distracted driver kills a pedestrian.
The claim they lowered drunk driving deaths by 1/2. I have no easy way to verify that but if true it certainly suggests people's behavior can be changed
I don't know about your area, but where I live the police set up checkpoints along common routes home from popular bars/restaurants to catch drunk drivers. Drunk drivers get caught extremely often and many of them lose their licence for long periods of time.
This does not discourage drunk driving as much as you would think. It does remove a lot of the drunk drivers from the road by force, however.
MADD only worked in the sense that it made some mothers feel somewhat absolved of whatever guilt they felt for losing a child. Their statistical claims are quite ridiculous, though.
Edit: Claiming credit moreso than flawed statistics, although both are highly questionable.
You probably could, however, find hordes of repressed maniacs and neurotics discouraged enough by it to hesitate a bit. At least if you could keep them out of motor vehicles ;)
So you really think not enough punishment explains away the fact that US has double the accidents then Europe? If you don’t, then you did miss the point
People are not as rational as you think, making them more scared of the law don’t help much, otherwise death penalty would work very well to reduce crimes, but it doesn’t
The personal responsibility argument is always equally true and futile. Systems need to account for irresponsibility, especially those like the transportation system. The thought process of the distracted driver is not that the penalty can be disregarded. People develop a false sense of confidence in that an accident hasn't happened to them, so they can drive faster or look at their phone.
The logistics of the penalty need to be considered too. Are are the people at fault in fatal collisions to be put into the already crowded prison system indefinitely? It's cheaper in the long run to evolve the system to restrict the potential harm that can be inflicted by irresponsible people.
>>Systems need to account for irresponsibility, especially those like the transportation system. The thought process of the distracted driver is not that the penalty can be disregarded. People develop a false sense of confidence in that an accident hasn't happened to them, so they can drive faster or look at their phone.
Brilliant synopsis of the argument discussed here, so many commenters seem to be talking _past_ this point.
Its still frustrating to see articles stating that "inanimate object most people owns kill someone" rather than "negligent dufus checking on their social media status runs over cyclist"
However people _act differently_ when they are using tool X. When we are driving a vehicle, we _become_ the vehicle. When we hold a tool, the tool becomes part of our body. Our brains fuse clothing and tools with the body via the senses. To the brain, the car is part of our body so that we feel the road through the suspension and tires. You can't make a conveniently neat separation.
This would help, but a fundamental problem is that unsafe behavior isn't checked very well (since your odds of killing someone are still pretty low).
Generally, I think, we need to error more on the side of license suspension (hell, a good percent of people that have licenses really shouldn't) and less on prison - especially for unsafe behavior. In CA, a 2nd time DUI results in only a 1 year license suspension -- that's ridiculously short for someone who has repeatedly proven themselves unable to drive safely.
In my view, punishing drivers for accidents is always going to be to little too late, because accidents are rare. Also, people who can afford good defense can avoid punishment to a substantial extent.
To solve these problems, you either have to enforce crimes at a lower level (e.g., punish them for poor driving rather than for killing someone) or make it harder for people to mount a defense. Both of these things encourage abuses of the justice system, e.g., "driving while black."
You are on to something, I fear. The tendency for automotive related carnage to be perceived as normal and acceptable is a glaring disparity with the rest of our expressed values. I see driving as the unspoken modern Ludus Magnus, or Colosseum.
Well, if we take a license away from anyone who texts and drives there will be less unfit drivers on the road. It's likely not enough but heavy penalties for texting when driving would help even if it doesn't deter anyone until the get caught.
Is the world really this absolute to you? Would you mind thinking out your position more carefully or alternatively defending a position that prejudges one group and absolves another of any responsibility?
Even if the guy jumps in front of your car? What kina bs is this? Perhaps peds need to mind their surroundings as well? Because cars can't stop instantly you know.
This is a contrived situation that never actually happens (even here in Manhattan, arguably the craziest place on Earth), but I’ll address it anyway. Where pedestrians are present, there’s never a sound reason for any vehicle operator to accelerate to speeds at which “stopping instantly” becomes the only logical (and physically impossible) option for avoiding a car-on-ped collision. Drive slowly, and suddenly a whole host of problems go away. NYC lowered its default speed limit from 30mph to 25mph a few years ago. This helped traffic move more smoothly and reduced the number of collisions involving pedestrians.
Not that I diagree it's a contrived situation but it does happen. I've seen it with my own eyes driving in rush hour traffic going between 30-40 mph and having a 3-5yr old girl run directly into traffic from the front yard of her house. Brakes were applied, car hit girl, dad ran from porch directly to girl, picked her up, rushed to hospital. I have no idea if she was hurt or not. The car clearly hit her, possibly by 1-inch meaning if the car had managed to stop 1-inch shorter maybe she would not have been hit. 30 or 60 cars were basically moving as a block down a 4 lane street (2 lanes each side). The car that hit the girl is the middle of the pack meaning the girl ran directly between cars. I was in the inner lane, car that hit girl was in outer lane (closer to houses). Somewhere like this, speed limit 45mph
The kinetic energy of a moving object is proportional to its velocity squared. A collision at 30mph is vastly more survivable than at 45mph.
Even if someone jumps out in front of you with no warning (which is uncommon), as long as you're paying enough attention to apply the brakes, whatever amount of braking you can do is much better than nothing. Trying to prevent accidents isn't mutually exclusive with minimizing the impact of accidents that do occur.
>This is a contrived situation that never actually happens
I have encountered this situation at least three times in the last month alone. Distracted pedestrians frequently walk in front of cars during a light change.
In many cases it’s the driver’s fault due to inattention or recklessness, other-times the ped is taking liberties with their safety (on phone, not looking, running to beat traffic). So, while drivers do have the responsibility to look out for pedestrians there are cases where there is nothing they can do about a particular circumstance.
Drivers are the ones subject to licensing and insurance requirements. Drivers are the ones operating heavy machinery. Drivers are thus the responsible party, even when pedestrians are clearly not looking out for their own safety. There’s never any downside to being the bigger person and watching out for the well being of fellow humans, even those who should really know better.
Almost daily HN covers some aspect of why everybody driving around in their own personal automobile is stupid. Cars kills and main people. Cars release particulate matter that's bad for our lungs. Cars promote sedentarism, that bad for our physical health. Car rubber washed off roads releases microplastics into the ocean. Cars are noisy, they cause congestion, and make our cities stressful, hostile and dysfunctional. Cars promote inequality. Cars and their associated sprawl cost us insane amounts of money. Cars are destroying the planet.
There are reams of research to back this stuff up. There were massive reams of research to back it up 40 years ago. There are demonstrably better ways to do this. Why are we so fucking stupid?
Because cars are often the fastest and most convenient, and sometimes only practical, way to get from A to B.
Even in places with excellent public transport, there will be trips where cars are necessary, either because that specific public transit connection is atrocious (e.g. 10 minutes by car turn into 40+ minutes public transit), or you need to transport more than you can carry.
I don't own a car, and I suffer from their effects, but I do recognize their usefulness.
Car infrastructure (parking lots, streets) and buffers to make being around car infrastructure less horrible (useless "green space" buffers which can be much wider than the road itself, medians, front lawns so you're set back from the road, et c.) are a big part of why it's so hard to get anywhere without a car.
I was skeptical but I've run the numbers and sure enough, once you also factor in the time I spend working to pay for my car & gas I'd save quite a bit of time commuting by bike if my city could be squished closer together by removing most of the car-only stuff (gotta still have a few arteries for goods and for when you need to travel further, but you could cut out like 90%, easy—parking lots are so big, out in the 'burbs). IOW widespread private car ownership actually makes my life worse than if they were outlawed, effectively, and I'm not in the city core.
[EDIT] and my family buys cheapish cars and we make way over the median household income for our city—the math's way worse for most people here than it is for me.
I'm not talking about the US suburbs, I'm talking about a highly walkable European city with excellent public transit. Once you get a bit further out, you will still find (combinations of) places where public transit connections just don't work well enough.
We're the dumbest animals that could possibly build a technical civilization, because if we'd been any smarter then we'd have built it earlier, when we were dumber.
It won't make you feel any better, but perhaps this was inevitable.
True, but a lot of those marginal benefits (over say electric bikes) exist because our society ended up being designed around everyone having a car.
This manifests itself in several ways:
1. Low-density sprawl. Without the auto, density would be higher and it'd be possible to get to wherever you need to be on alternate forms of transit (biking and public transit are much more viable)
2. Prioritization: Already in an urban (or higher density suburban) environment, at commute times, biking is barely slower than driving (in part due to congestion and parking overhead) on city streets. It'd actually be faster than driving is today if it weren't for infrastructure explicitly prioritizing cars (long signals, freeways and expressways blocking the shortest path, etc.)
If you did a "do-over design", with high-capacity electric batteries and smartphones, you could probably achieve mostly car-less, higher density cities (barring delivery and emergency vehicles) around (e-)bikes and public transit, with cars more used for leisure/travel or folks lacking mobility. Population would also be a lot more physically fit.
I agree, cars are only more practical and efficient since we designed the infrastructure around them. We have immense highways, fairly available and relatively inexpensive parking, even in major cities. Without this infrastructure it would be extremely impractical to get around with a car, see for example some old European cities. For example, I remember being in Toledo, Spain and my rental car that I needed for the countryside was completely useless, I left it parked in an expensive lot the whole time and walked everywhere. Even the compact hatchback could barely fit down the narrow cobblestone streets and there was certainly no parking in the areas around the shops or restaurants. Compare that to Oakland, CA where I live now and there are massive freeways going right through the center of the city, in fact, I can use one for my 5mi commute to work when I drive, this is the only reason that its about 1-2min faster to drive than to bike.
Many people also claim its not safe to bike in the city but this is also a symptom of designing the system around cars. If we simply dedicated all the roads to biking and only a few sporadic car-lanes it would be much safer to bike.
>True, but a lot of those marginal benefits (over say electric bikes) exist because our society ended up being designed around everyone having a car.
I could say the most important benefit is fundamental: none of your propositions change the fact that a bike will not shelter its rider from the weather, which around here, by some standards, is at best lousy for approximately half of the year (cold, damp or both to various degree). When I look at homes, or offices, I see a pattern. Do you not?
Yes, because we love our cars. I mean literally, articles about autonomous driving always seem to have that one person who loves to drive and had a "you'll have to pry my dead hands off the steering wheel" mentality. And SNL wasn't making up a joke in the void when they made "The Mercury Mistress" sketch.
> And more Americans than ever are zipping around in SUVs and pickup trucks, which, thanks to their height, weight and shape are between two and three times more likely to kill people they hit.
An interesting side effect of the new safety regulations for cars is that their weight has increased. A base VW golf weighs 3,000 pounds and has huge blindspots where the roll-over-ready columns are. The safety regulations only maximize safety for drivers in the event of an accident. They do nothing to minimize the chance of accidents or the deadlines of accidents to pedestrians. Science lagged legislation.
It's probably both fashion and crash safety, but car design really has gone astray with the heavy-handed "aggressive" styling and tiny windows everywhere. Where's the elegance?
Rear windows have shrank to almost nothing with the rise of backup cameras, but backup cameras are probably one of the few inventions that actually increase pedestrian safety over driving safety.
For good reasons, parents thoroughly indoctrinate small children with the idea that it's their job to keep out of the way of cars; if they step into the road they're being Very Naughty Indeed, and cars are an uncaring force of nature that can't be expected to slow or keep out of the way.
It's a shame there isn't an equally strong indoctrination campaign in the other direction when those same children become old enough to drive, to say that it's their job not to hit people under any circumstances.
Not where I live, in Utah. Here, people constantly stop, and block traffic, if kids are anywhere near crossing a street. It is very sweet, but terribly dangerous, as it teaches kids exactly the opposite of what you are saying. They grow up here thinking that cars will stop. Kids run into the street all the time. I go blocks, or sometimes miles, out of my way to avoid driving anywhere near elementary schools at the times kids are going to or leaving school because I fear how often they simply run out in front of you.
The education that is needed is more universal - cars will crush people. Whether you are behind the wheel or not, do what is needed to respect that fact and avoid anyone getting hurt.
As a parent of 4 I am shocked to see some kids run into the road without looking out for cars first. More parents should “indoctrinate” their kids about safety. You can’t control other people’s/driver’s actions, but you can teach your kids about basic safety.
My worry is that once this idea has been thoroughly instilled in children's heads when they're small, it's still there when they're older and in charge of dangerous machinery, so somewhere deep down they believe that avoiding death-by-car is naturally the pedestrian's job.
I don't suggest this is a reason not to put the idea there in the first place, rather that we should work as hard as possible to get to a situation where once they're driving they behave as if they believe the responsibility is all theirs.
Yep like something out of Succession she was driving on the wrong side of the road, left the kid where he was to die and then fled the country with the US Embassy's help.
> The US Embassy confirmed the incident involved "a vehicle driven by the spouse of a US diplomat assigned to the United Kingdom" and that the family has left the UK.
No one is denying she did it. They had her in custody. She was released on the previso that she would not leave the country.
Turns out that the sort of person that flees the scene of an accident is also the sort of person that doesn't stick around for the full investigation.
This is how diplomacy loosely works: visiting diplomats accused of a serious crime have the option of facing the charges locally, facing the charges under their home jurisdiction, or leaving the country either voluntarily or by being expelled. The one exception to this is if the visiting country waves diplomatic immunity, which generally only happens if someone was doing something outside of the nature of normal activities of living and working there.
I know it might not seem fair, but sometimes the smooth workings of international diplomacy is more important than justice for an individual crime.
(The expulsion option prevents diplomats from using this as a loophole to repeatedly commit crimes)
As someone who was once accused of killing a dog as a result of speeding/drink driving, I'm hoping I never have to appear in your court?
I was guilty as hell until it turned out I hadn't been drinking, wasn't speeding and the dog suffered only a few bruises and a bit of embarrassment for his owner who had a tendency to wildly exaggerate.
The owner was warned not to let her dog run off the lead near to traffic in future.
Not sure how your personal story is relavant here.
Are you saying you think we'll later find out that no one was killed or that the US Embassy is wrong in admitting that a diplomat's wife was invloved in a hit and run collision?
Both of these things appear to be facts beyond dispute.
It is a crime in the UK to leave the scene of a traffic collision even if the collision was not your fault. Legally you must wait for the police and you must provide care to others involved including calling the emergency services.
I agree that texting while driving is a key part of it, no doubt.
But, I’d propose another one, too. New aerodynamic designs locate the A pillars in a place in most cars that eliminates huge swaths of my peripheral vision. Backup cameras also make up for increasingly awful side vision and rear vision.
I drive an 1990s land cruiser a few weeks ago and the visibility was amazing. You didn’t need cameras because the hood was low, the windshield was flat and upright and the side windows weren’t tinted black. Old land rovers and pickups were the same.
Agreed! A-pillars have gotten extremely thick over the last 10 or so years to accommodate airbags and the increased rake angle of the windshield brings the pillar much closer to the eye. In my vehicles (2008 & 2018), the left pillar blocks the destination of a left turn (intersections or twisty mountain roads) and the right pillar at intersections block traffic and pedestrians from the right. I bob and weave to try and compensate, but it's definitely more work.
I am quiet driver. I have horror stories every single day with pedestrians who cross the street in the wrong spots, giving you 0 secs to react. I cannot tell how many guys could I be killed them because they've crossed the street texting and using headphones. Pedestrians go really in distracted mode, that's why when I approach some areas, I go really paranoid and try to foresee anything.
It's even worse when you're on a bike and this happens. The number of times I've yelled at people who open doors or just meander into the bike lane and hit them or nearly hit them because they had headphones in is one too many...
I don't use a bike, but I comute on my escooter and it's insane the amount of people who uses the bike lane for whatever reason is. It's so insane. I had 3 accidents in the last 3 months made by pedestrians and 1 motorcycle woman who did it everything wrong.
YES! The number of times I was almost hit by gas motor-scooters in the lane during traffic (while commuting with an electric scooter) was insane. I was mostly surprised by how slow most people ride their bikes. A meager 17mph even downhill on a dinky electric scooter is faster than most people ride their bikes, joggers also like to run in the bike lane at times...
I think that vehicle designs have evolved in a couple ways over the last 15 years in negative ways:
1. More Vertical space on the front of the vehicle - making it harder to see pedestrians right in front of you, this is particularly the case for large trucks and SUV's.
2. Reduced greenhouses in modern cars (all the windows are smaller, meaning its harder to see anything around you)
3. Vehicles in general are taller, higher and wider in the front and rear.
There are also other human factors in play, like more distracted driving from smart phones, and more complex infotainment systems in the vehicle.
> The post-crash investigation indicated that she had probably been watching the singing contest The Voice on her phone.
It's not just the drivers that are being distracted by their phones - pedestrians are as well. Every time I drive downtown, I'm having to make allowances for people with a total lack of situational awareness because they're walking around heads-down.
I'm not singling out the pedestrians - the drivers are equally at fault. Like the guy in the GL450 on I-85 last night who couldn't stay in his lane at 70mph because he was checking his phone.
If someone is distracted and gets under your car or bycicle and gets killed or otherwise causes you to crash killing you or killing others, would you still say it's not a crime?
It is if somebody gets killed. Recently a guy wearing headphones and listening (apparently) to his cell phone walked across the street against the light and directly in front of my car. He was completely oblivious that there was a light and didn't even hear me slam on the brakes to avoid hitting him.
You don't have sidewalks on streets with speeds of 50mph or more ?
Here in AZ if you walk in front of a car and get hit, it is your fault. Legally.
Arizona law does say that at no time, even when entering a crosswalk, should a pedestrian step out so quickly in front of a vehicle that a vehicle does not have time to come to a full stop.
§ 46.2-924: ... No pedestrian shall enter or cross an intersection in disregard of approaching traffic. ...
Sadly, that clause is never enforced on pedestrians who do "enter or cross ... in disregard of approaching traffic". I've even seen some who seem to have some kind of personal death wish. They approach an intersection at full walking speed, do not even look to see what traffic is doing (and are not phone distracted either), do not slow down, and just burst out into traffic.
Yes, drivers bear a large responsibility here, given that they are operating the 3000+lb machine. But some enforcement of the statute clauses that already exist against the worst offenders on the pedestrian side, to reduce the incidents of pedestrian forcing their way in front of moving vehicles without regard to the presence of those vehicles, would also go a long way towards reversing the statistics direction.
You wrote "I'm not singling out the pedestrians - the drivers are equally at fault". The article highlights that we need to look at more than just pedestrians and drivers.
> In the UK, Belgium, Germany, Spain, France, Austria and Iceland, for example, pedestrian deaths occur at a per capita rate roughly half of America’s, or lower. Are we really to believe that the citizens of these countries are 50% less susceptible than Americans to distraction, by their phones or anything else? Plus, within the US, pedestrian death occurs disproportionately in neighbourhoods populated by people with low-incomes and people of colour. Is distraction really more endemic in those neighbourhoods, or among people driving through them, than it is in wealthier, whiter areas? Or is it more likely that these neighbourhoods are more likely to be criss-crossed by high-speed roads, and less likely to receive investment in transit interventions that protect pedestrians?
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> “All this talk about pedestrian distraction, driver distraction? It’s such a distraction,” says Ben Welle of the World Resource Institute for Sustainable Cities. “It puts all the responsibility on individuals, and none on the environment they operate in.”
While not mentioned in this article, the premise of Vision Zero (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero ) is "In most road transport systems, road users bear complete responsibility for safety. Vision Zero changes this relationship by emphasizing that responsibility is shared by transportation system designers and road users". Emphasis mine.
Did you read the article? The claim is that focusing on driver and pedestrian distraction is beside the point:
“All this talk about pedestrian distraction, driver distraction? It’s such a distraction,” says Ben Welle of the World Resource Institute for Sustainable Cities. “It puts all the responsibility on individuals, and none on the environment they operate in.”
This sort of false equivalence is depressingly common and is a big part of the denial that let's us ignore the actual issue... I mean the design of roads/cities to maximize traffic flow (for those that have not read the article).
So pedestrians have to stay on guard and avoid all distractions when they venture outside of their home, just because other people cannot move around without their petrol engine and one ton of steal?
The point of the article was _not_ to place blame on either drivers or pedestrians/cyclists.
The article speaks about how the environments created in the US and Western Europe make for the right conditions to
"trip" all humans, who naturally do get distracted (even despite their best efforts).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error
>>In social psychology, fundamental attribution error (FAE), also known as correspondence bias or attribution effect, is the tendency for people to under-emphasize situational explanations for an individual's observed behavior while over-emphasizing dispositional and personality-based explanations for their behavior. This effect has been described as "the tendency to believe that what people do reflects who they are
Pedestrians are very distracted (texting/phone/music) and drivers are very distracted (texting/phone/music). I’m actually amazed that I see people walk right into the street while looking at their phones the entire time, with either misplaced trust in their surroundings or dangerous obliviousness.
Worse, drivers “seem” a lot angrier in recent years, and much more impatient. They’re likely to just go through, crosswalks be damned, missing people by a hair.
So, it's an important problem, but the first thing I thought was, "are people walking more or less than they did 20 years ago?" Certainly where I live, there are more cyclists than there were 20 years ago, and while I could believe that pedestrianism does not necessarily go up or down in tandem with cycling, I cannot believe it has stayed exactly the same. Do we walk to places more than 20 years ago (perhaps because more people are unable to afford a car, as wealth inequality grows)? Or do we walk less, such that the increase in pedestrian deaths is even worse than this article suggests, indicating a downward spiral in which people walk less because it seems too dangerous, which makes drivers less aware that there are pedestrians to look out for, which makes people walk even less? This article doesn't say. It seems a pretty fundamental point to be leaving out of a discussion of pedestrian death rates. They don't even mention whether these rates represent an increase in per capita deaths, or just reflect population increases. Without turning pedestrian death rates into per-person-per-mile-walked kind of rates, I don't see how you can draw many conclusions at all.
I believe these calculations are not as relevant for policy because practically you care that people keep dying from being hit by cars. Say, 10 people dead are 10 people dead.
They are not less important when they account for 1% vs. 0.0001% of walking people, per mile/km or whatever, are they?
Sure, but the rate is what helps to figure out why the change. If the rate of pedestrian death per mile walked is actually going down, but they are walking lots more, then you want to keep doing whatever you're doing, to keep the rate going down. If the rate per mile walked is going up, you need to consider some sort of about face, changing what you have been doing before.
Design of cars can be as much a safety issue as design of roads. The Honda Civic I drive will auto-play whatever audio my phone was last playing when it syncs via Bluetooth. It does so inconsistently, and somewhere between 30 seconds and 2 minutes after successfully syncing.
Talk about a sudden and needless distraction. What engineer thought this was a good idea?
I've taken to using a 5mm cord to connect my phone to the car speakers so I can control what plays and when it plays. Thankfully my phone still has a 5mm jack.
Trying to anticipate what the user wants is obnoxious, but it becomes dangerous when the computer doing so is installed in a heavy metal box with an engine and the ability to move fast.
I usually turn the Bluetooth off when I'm done with it. The problem is when I occasionally forget, just like any human eventually will.
If I need to remember to hit a switch on one computer to prevent another computer from unpredictably blasting audio whenever I use the second computer, that's a design and safety failure.
As a thought experiment, imagine that you could design a city from the ground up and try to invent a transportation network that doesn't have pedestrians and cars next to each other.
- - - -
I imagine you could have five separate interconnected networks:
1 Pedestrians
2 bicycles
3 personal cars
4 trucks and buses
5 light rail and inter-urban trains
Add in e.g. Christopher Alexander's Pattern Language (like "Country City Fingers), and I think you would really have something.
>Better title: "Why are drivers killing more pedestrians?"
I disagree. That title lacks information and might lead to some people to think drivers are beating the pedestrians to death or maybe they're more prone to gun violence against pedestrians.
Maybe, a better title could be: "Why are drivers who are currently driving a car, pedestrians currently walking on the street, by running them over with said car"
Normally I'm the first to blame suburban sprawl for unsafe roads - an environment where you have to drive everywhere all the time breeds complacency...
however,
The fact that we're talking about decidedly non-suburban Europe, and that 2010 is identified as the local minimum, pretty strongly implies that the rise of smartphones and other touchscreen-based devices is the culprit.
I'm really disappointed to see all the one word or low effort answers here. It looks like most people didn't bother to read the article and are instead just trying to post their anecdotal responses to the title. Perhaps it's the title as a question which causes such poor responses.
All new cars, trucks, etc. are tall with very narrow windows for better collision safety. Not to mention American's latest obsession with hideous "cross-overs." As a result, its much harder to see in front of you and the extra clearance means you actually suck someone underneath the car instead of over.
Also, is it just me or are cars just plain ugly these days (yuck)
> As a result, its much harder to see in front of you and the extra clearance means you actually suck someone underneath the car instead of over.
I drive a crossover and I'm not sure where you get this idea from - let alone it being the issue. In can see much better out of my crossover than my sedan because I have a higher seating position and a smaller engine bay to look over. Height would really only be an issue in a parking lot if a child was hiding in front of a car.
Not in a close radius to the hood. Think about the extreme example of a semitruck which undoubtedly can see far far ahead, but imagine now that you are taking a right turn at a light.
I would disagree that its limited to children as a quick look right and then left might mean that much less of the person is visible and could possibly not catch your eye as you drive forward.
How many accident actually stem from this. Even your own disclaimer has nothing to do with hood radius. That car that almost hit you was well out of "hood range" when he started to turn.
Likely, it was either a failure to check the corner or you where in his A-pillar blindspot. Every single car in the world has an A-pillar blindspot. In my experience, the A-pillar blindspot is worse on smaller cars because it's closer to the driver and blocks more of his/her vision.
Agreed, its not just crossovers that are difficult to see out of but all new cars - one of the issues is that SUVs have the ground clearance to run someone over much easier.
Also, children are important too and if one gets in front of you pulling up on a driveway using a modern SUV could be a recipe for disaster.
This must be the fourth or fifth article/discussion against cars that I've seen on HN in the last couple days, and the second on the front page right now. Is someone trying to push something here?
Cars are very dangerous things. They are used to kill an awful lot of people every day without much comment at all.
I've read a lot of articles about agressive or dangerously incompetant drivers in the UK, I have never once seen someone given a lifetime driving ban.
Drivers no mater if they were serving a temporary ban, were uninsured, on drugs, on the pavement (sidewalk) or reading their phones they always get the chance to get their licence back once they've paid a small fine or occationally got out of prison.
That goes for repeat offenders too.
Maybe startups using technology to provide alternatives such as electric bikes, scooters, self-driving cars would have some value to society.
In my opinion, yes. There are activists who understand it is valuable to influence the HN crowd, and continually post 'urbanist' articles from CityLab or the like in order to push one particular view above all others. I've seen a pattern on comments in such articles too, where anything defending the benefits of cars gets a swift train of downvotes (the votes sometimes reverse later, but the lack of visibility for the comment following the initial downvotes hurts).
Electric, self-driving cars? Reduction of parking lots to make room for something more lucrative? Generating support for getting cities to pay for new mass transit systems? New taxes on vehicle ownership?
Our current vehicle are great for many things and the improvements to them have increased safety and reduced deaths of occupants, blah blah blah.
Let's regulate these death machines to roads where they can be death machines, like highways, in the city you switch to driving an open air buggy whose seat belt is there to help you not slide out of a slippery plastic seat.
Am easy start here in NYC - demand that serial driving offenders lose their licenses and face serious penalties if they violate than ban. If you systematically run red lights in this city you should face consequences. Until that happens a subset of awful people who don’t care will be deadly threats.
Probably not much impact yet because there are so few EVs relative to ICEs. But, I've almost stepped in front of a few Teslas that "snuck up" on me in parking lots (typical US open parking lot with no pedestrian access - you just walk through a sea of cars and hope they're all paying attention).
actually it's even simpler: don't let humans drive. Even today's rudimentary driverless systems are already vastly superior to humans in terms of events per mile driven. (i.e. pedestrians killed)
Conjecture: the obsession with "safety" cams has led to a massive decrease in road policing by officers and a corresponding decline in the correction of poor and unsafe driving.
I'm surprised that hardly anyone mentions pedestrians that cross roads without a care in the world. Pedestrians wearing earphones or just not paying attention. Easy to blame vehicles but there are multiple factors.
Good grief. Another tired, lengthy article attacking cars. Sorry but cars provide a lot of benefits, and are well worth the trade-offs in deaths. If you want to avoid deaths entirely, stay in your house. And even that might not keep you fully safe. But vehicle-related deaths are not even in the top 10 causes of unnatural death in the US, and making such a big deal out of it without considering the positives is absurd.
Cars are fast, and in areas that are not ultra high-density, they save time relative to ANY alternative (walking, biking, buses, trains) and therefore drastically improve your quality of life. They don't require you to wait on someone else's schedule, especially given the often inconsistent timing of buses. They don't require you to risk sitting down on dirty seats (6-year-old girl stabbed by uncapped needle on bus: https://metro.co.uk/2019/06/08/girl-6-injected-needle-hidden...). They don't require you to expose yourself to violence (40 to 60 teens rob BART train: https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/BART-takeover-robbery-5...). They let you travel all over the land, including away from cities, and therefore give you a greater degree of freedom than the reach of fixed rails or transit systems that are limited to cities.
Yes cars can cause deaths. So do a lot of other things. But the rate of vehicle-caused injuries/deaths has been dropping sharply since the 80s (see CDC data). It will continue to drop as backup cameras, lane departure prevention, collision detection, collision avoidance, and other assistance features become ubiquitous or required. Nothing is ever perfect, and this is the fundamental reason why efforts like Vision Zero are flawed. "Zero deaths" is not the goal, and generally any such absolute goal is unrealistic.
We get massive benefits from fast, private point-to-point transport. Let's not forget that and work to retain those benefits, instead of damaging the benefits of vehicles with low speed limits and other 'road diet' suggestions.
* Transition away from physical controls to touchscreen controls in new cars
* American's love affair with the automatic transmission
* Car-unfriendly "progressive" movements and the return of population towards city centers
It seems like people have very little actual interest in making things better but only interest in blaming something they have a built-in bias against or promoting a technology they find interesting.
The article completely failed to mention manual transmissions in America and the rest of the world while wondering loudly why it is so different here and the prevalence of touch-screens not just on phones in cars. Automatics are much more popular in the US and having a manual transmission forces you to pay much more attention to driving and simply occupies both hands more often especially inside cities.
One thing emphasized way too little is the responsibility of the pedestrian for not getting hit – the feeling of entitlement to right of way leading to people just not paying attention to cars or expecting behavior instead of watching for it.
I grew up around farm machinery often with little visibility and it teaches you to pay attention to what is going on around you a lot more. Not just in a way of being ready to react because there are circumstances where reacting is impossible, but in knowing what movements a machine is capable of and what the operator intends to do as well as if the operator knows you are there at all.
This is one of the primary reasons I think robot cars will go absolutely nowhere. It is impossible to come up with a theory of mind for a robotic car. As a pedestrian all you usually need to know the intentions of a driver (or vice versa) are an instant of eye contact. We are evolved to use tiny signals to decide intent and many people are barely aware of this. That kind of information just can't be reliably exchanged with a machine.
And people just aren't expecting the kinds of things which will happen when people start to believe robots with super fast reaction times will do anything not to hit pedestrians. Pedestrians will start running into the street without a care (or as a cheap thrill)
The article missed a lot and spent too much time on the wrong topics.
> American's love affair with the automatic transmission
I don't agree with your point here. I switched to auto boxes around 10 years ago, and (if anything) they free me up a bit to be more aware of my surroundings, because I don't have to spend any of my attention on using a clutch and gear stick.
Fully agree about touchscreen controls though - if controls are physical and tactile, I can easily use them without diverting my eyes from the road.
"American's love affair with the automatic transmission"
I don't buy this as a contributing factor at all -- when you drive a manual transmission car regularly, the shifting becomes second nature and you don't need to actively think about it -- I can zone out in my manual transmission car just as much as when I drive the no-transmission EV.
In Japan, cars are almost all entirely automatic transmission cars, but their accident rate is less than 30% compared to the USA.
This is one of the primary reasons I think robot cars will go absolutely nowhere. It is impossible to come up with a theory of mind for a robotic car.
It's not impossible for the autonomous car to tell you that it sees you -- it could aim a "I see you" light at you, or maybe pop up an indicator on your smart watch or Google Glass to say that it sees you. It's not like catching a driver's eye is 100% reliable -- I've had drivers look right at me while they pull out in front of my bike at an intersection.
From here I sit on the porch, I can see that about 2/3 of drivers text while driving.
I'm convinced that no amount of campaigning, punishment, or scare tactics will suffice to stop it.
It is just how driving is done nowadays, and everyone feels they can do it safely (but they can't).
There's no going back so if you're on a bike, or a pedestrian, watch out!
Driving is sacred in our societies. Whenever a driver kills a pedestrian or a cyclist in my town, there aren't even any charges laid 99% of the time.
Personally I think smartphones have been a net loss to society, for this and many other reasons.