Traffic engineers use decades-old manuals that ignore safety in favour of driver convenience. This has to change. Streets built by them are a huge public safety issue.
We should never accept crashes that result in serious injuries or deaths as if they are an inevitable force of nature or something. They’re merely a predictable outcome of a badly built system.
Traffic engineers
They are just doing what they are being told. They don’t have the authority to diviate in practice.
This is a political issue. Everything is captured by the shittiest lobby.
Health care > health insurance and pharma
Infra > cars and oil
Privacy > tech firms
There is nothing a slave can do via direct action in these jobs since they will fire you and out somebody in place who will follow orders.
You need three prongs, infrastructure, training and enforcement. No one wants to spend the large amount of $ it would take to redesign thousands of miles of roads in each city. There is also the issue of how ridiculously low the bar is set for getting a license and how basic safety inspections are. In my state I can count on one hand how many times I’ve seen highway patrols enforcing traffic laws.
that ignore safety in favour of driver convenience
How about one better? Municipalities that ignore both safety and driver convenience in favor of feeling good about helping the environment, or so they perceive. The end result of more pollution, more hazardous navigational conditions for everyone, and more problems.
Example, a state law that made it so bicyclists no longer have to come to a stop at intersections. It was a feel-good measure to make things easier for bicyclists so they’re not having to come to a complete stop over and over. In implementation, it just means a car driving 55MPH comes up to a green traffic light intersection that would ordinarily be safe, except one of the cross-directions has trees blocking the side road, so a bike comes chugging down the hill at 35MPH and blazes through their red light right in front of the much heavier and slower to stop car. (C.R.S. § 42‑4‑1412.5)
Now, couple that with another law that allows large trucks, buses, and RVs preferential treatment at roundabouts. All other vehicles must yield to the large vehicle no matter what. And going back to… the bike doesn’t yield to anything. (C.R.S. § 42‑4‑715)
Welcome to Colorful Colorado.
People think the pandemic invited driver chaos, we were bold, and asked the universe, “hold my beer?”
Are you usually this dishonest, or do you have a particular bias against bikes? I dislike liars, and you are a liar. The law you cited explicitly contradicts your strawman
Here is an excerpt of the law you did not read:
If a stop is not required for safety, the pedestrian or person operating a low-speed conveyance shall slow to a reasonable speed and yield the right-of-way to any traffic or pedestrian in or approaching the intersection. After the pedestrian or person operating a low-speed conveyance has slowed to a reasonable speed and yielded the right-of-way if required, the pedestrian or person operating a low-speed conveyance may cautiously make a turn or proceed through the intersection without stopping.
Here is the law: https://colorado.public.law/statutes/crs_42-4-1412.5
If guns are so alike to cars, why not require a license that you get by passing a written test on gun safety and a practical test on basic competence and safe usage?
They are not alike. It’s a dumb comparison. Transport (albeit flawed) brings many more advantages than shooting people. That’s why people accept cars more than guns.
I agree it was a dumb comparison to start off with.
I wasn’t the one who made it, but the license issue is the logical conclusion if OP insists on the comparison.
America has ~280M cars, and ~500M guns
Americans, at least, are very accepting of guns. There’s a reason the fatality rate is so high
Sorry let me clear that up. I meant people are more accepting of the deaths that cars cause compared to guns
And yet a drivers license requires a lot more than a gun.
Driver’s license requirements honestly should be much higher
I’m a European and in my country driving tests are really hard and it takes a lot of very motivated people 3 or more tries and the better part of a year of frequent training to get a license. When I hear Americans talking about their driving test, most of them didn’t even get on the road and did the test on a separate test terrain. All they need is knowing what a traffic sign is and being nearly able to use their highly automated car. The difference in required knowledge and ability is staggering.
Add to that the tendency to drive huge and heavy SUV 's and trucks that are highly dangerous to other road users and you get an extremely deadly situation.
I agree. But a gun license should be harder too.
That is a pretty high number of shootings then. Practically everyone drives so that is a lot of miles/person. You have to drive, you don’t have to be shot, that is why it draws media attention.
Chicago is pretty different to most of the US. There is actual reliable public transit. The average resident isn’t doing nearly the driving of the average American
Genuine question: do the lines diverge (and in which direction / how much) if you account for the number of cars / guns per person?
I want to see it broken down into the fatal and non-fatal portions and also the mental health of the cars at the time of the crash.
Oh is today your cake day? You have a slice next to your name.
What is a cake day?
I think it’s the “birthday” of when you signed up for your Lemmy account.
Oh my birthday isn’t for a couple more years.
I want to know how many people got shot while driving and then had a fatal car accident
I think the better stat would be time handling a gun/driving a car.
The average person probably spends about an hour in the car per day (based on some loose numbers I saw online). But I suspect the number of hours holding a gun is a lot less.
Its kinda like the fact that new Yorkers bite more people than sharks. It isn’t because new Yorkers are more likely to bite you, but with eight million people interacting daily the amount of interactions outweighs the odds of a bite.
This is especially surprising to me because Chicago is one of the few US cities with decent public transportation, so there’s a significant percentage of people that aren’t driving.
Vehicle fatalities are generally far higher than gun fatalities in the US. For decades it was the #1 cause of death under 45, only recently being dethroned to poisonings thanks to fentanyl
For Chicago, this is brought down by very low car ownership rate (by US standards), and a high gun fatality rate (including suicides by gun)
Still surprising guns have kept up though
Side note:
I’ve always been on the fence about including suicide in gun violence statistics because I can see both sides of the argument. Yes, the death probably wouldn’t have happened without the gun since it’s the “quick solution”, but also I don’t really see self harm as “violence” per se…
Driving is orders of magnitude more likely to kill you at any second you’re in a car, than flying is at any second you’re in a plane.
People who are terrified of flying will get in a car and drive like a monkey like it’s no big deal.
They should fear neither. Orders of magnitude relative risk to a minute risk is still very little.
Phobias are, by definition, irrational.
Driving is orders of magnitude more likely to kill you at any second you’re in a car, than flying is at any second you’re in a plane.
This is an oft-repeated factoid that comes straight from the airlines bending statistics to meet their desires. It’s true that on a per mile basis, planes are safer. But on a per trip basis, cars actually win on safety.
And this makes some sense once you actually think about it. A car ride is typically going to be a frequent, short distance; An average of like 90% of all driving happens within 5 miles of the person’s home. Whereas air trips are infrequent and cover huge distances. So the accident-per-trip stat is watered down with cars having lots of trips, but the short distances tend to inflate the accident-per-mile number. In contrast, the accident-per-mile stat is watered down with planes covering a lot of miles per trip, but the infrequent nature of the trips means the accident-per-trip number is inflated.
And airlines conveniently only ever quote the accident-per-mile number when comparing safety statistics, because they have a vested interest in making airplanes seem statistically safer. If anything, seeing this factoid repeated is just a reminder that even math can be intentionally biased to fit a certain agenda.
So the point you’re making is that going far away is dangerous? No shit.
My point is that the “planes are safer” stat is, at best, disingenuous. Any single trip is going to be more dangerous in a plane. But people tend to fly less than they drive, so cars are cited as being more dangerous.
Any single trip is going to be more dangerous in a plane
So you’re saying driving from London to Shanghai is safer than flying there?
Per trip is a completely useless metric as you say, that’s the reason.
Chicago traffic fatality rate is 6.0, that of Utrecht (where I live) it’s 2.6. (per 100.000 inhabitants). Homicide rate Chicago is 22.8, Utrecht 0.7
Chicago civilians were abducted in the early 1980s and were experimented on. some went back for Johnny and never returned.
Please dont source LLM. You can do better than this.
You had a good point until you revealed it was made by AI.
AI agents get office tasks wrong around 70% of the time. Your figures may be correct, but they are more likely not to be. If you had done your own research this would not have been an issue.
I second this. Pulling any info from ANY AI model without verifying it is dangerous. IMO anything that is AI generated deserves to be smacked with a ban hammer.
Dumb question: which one draws more media attention in Chicago?
In my own experience (not Chicago), the local news is dominated by where the rush-hour crash is today, while national news talks way more about gun deaths.
I’m going to go with the general vibe of Lemmy here and assume you mean that auto deaths need to get more attention in America. To that I would say there is a general cultural attitude that cars are a necessary evil (even among most people who don’t outright love them, which is a huge demographic), and fixing the zoning and infrastructure would take decades and many tens of billions of dollars to restructure a large city around public transit. Besides bumper-sticker-slogan politics (“more public transit!”) there are precious few real, concrete plans for getting from the current situation to the car-free utopia.
Even then, you’d not eliminate cars entirely. Among the more developed western European nations that are known for good public transit, Ireland seems (at a quick glance) to have the fewest cars per person at 536 per 1,000, while the car-happy US has 850/1,000. So best case, you reduce cars by ~35%.
Gun deaths, on the other hand, are easier to imagine as a problem that can be solved relatively quickly and with less disruption. From an advocacy point of view, it’s the lower-hanging fruit.
there are precious few real, concrete plans for getting from the current situation to the car-free utopia.
Ban cars today and let people figure it out themselves.
But the question is deaths by car and you don’t need to entirely get rid of cars to make a huge difference.
- inspections. It boggles the mind that some places don’t have them
Traffic calming really can work. I’m not talking about speed bumps, but things like curb bumps to narrow the road at intersection while increasing pedestrian visibility, traffic islands, roundabouts. Even repainting lines can make a difference. My town’s master plan is driven by accident stats, so every road rework is a noticeable improvement
A couple years ago my town repainted a two lane road into one lane plus turn lanes. Now traffic is slower and calmer yet you get through that area more quickly. Most importantly it’s no longer one of the most dangerous roads in town
Most recently they built a median. This was a dangerous intersection because it always backed up so impatient people would blast straight through in the turn lanes, causing accidents. Now they can’t
And yes, because of Florida Man, my town built medians at every railroad crossing so idiots can’t go around the gates. We never had that problem, but idiocy is contagious.
Every city and town can make a difference. Now. Relatively cheaply. Just by collecting accident data and prioritizing by that. Just by making small changes a little at a time
this is not a valid comparison. the number of people in and around cars–and the amount of interactions that the average person has with a car–vastly outstrips those near or using guns. by at least two orders of magnitude, one would estimate.
it’s like saying that the number of papercuts received is marginally higher than the number of intentional stab wounds and the media only focuses on one.
that’s how it should be. one of those two things impacts a larger percentage of the people that encounter it.
That doesn’t make the comparison invalid, it can just be misleading to those with poor data literacy. Knowing how many “preventable” deaths from each source is valuable, but only if people are planning to do something about it.
No one does. Every road safety measure is pretty universally lobbied against.
Given the strong correlation between these two, I hypothesise that in Chicago, cars rather than bullets are shot from guns.
Car guns. Fully automatic.
Fuck cars and guns, ban both.
cars, like guns, should require a mental check and a license to even purchase and own, be kept in secure storage, and only used in highly regulated locations where safety is guaranteed.
This doesn’t super surprise me. Driving should be taken more seriously. You’re controlling a 2 ton death machine and it shouldn’t be taken lightly.
it shouldn’t be taken lightly
Well, of course not. It’s 2 tons!
I’ll get out…
Not gonna make much of a difference unless you take your mum with you.
Ohhh!! Hahahahahajaj that was a good burn! Hahahahahahah
We should be retaking driver tests every seven to ten years to keep our license.
Poorly designed roads, signage, and intersections cause a lot of accidents. Think on ramps that throw you into traffic, and off-ramps that want you to get over three lanes after exiting in order to turn right at your cross street.
Lack of traffic enforcement drives up insurance costs and reduces city revenues. Some states have cheaped out on the reflective paint used to stripe roads, so you can’t see lane dividers in the rain. More of that wonderful “deregulation” and people not wanting to pay taxes I guess.
It also doesn’t help that many states are getting rid of car inspections for some bizarre reason. Not great to avoid shit falling off of the car in front of you when you’re going 70 mph.
all the auto body shops in town are on the same road. they lobbied city hall to have the intersection out front changed so now there’s two, three fender benders a day there.
Yeah my state has gotten rid of inspections and it’s baffling to me.
Inspections were cancelled because it was shown that they actually led to more accidents. A small percentage of the time mechanics didn’t tighten bolts, back on correctly, after removing a wheel to inspect brake pads. The vast majority of accidents are caused by speeding, not because a wheel brakes free and the car swerved.
Hmmm never heard this one. I am pretty sure my state doesn’t require inspection of the actual pads.
Mine has been arguing this point for a while. Apparently there wasn’t really a drop of issues here when they went into place, so they question the usefulness.
That said, they’re just done incorrectly in the first place. They are done by dealers/shops that lose money in doing them and are instead banking on charging you lots of money for problems they find and hope you get fixed with them. They need be done at an independent run spot with no interest in anything but safety and no way to be bought out.
Wouldn’t the dealers / shops by the most motivated to find the problems, if that’s the case?
They’re so motivated, they find problems that don’t exist!
Over my 25 yrs driving and getting inspected here, I’ve found a mix of issues… I always inspect my car before dropping it off, most times in their own parking lot.
- good old boys that don’t care and pass it without obviously checking because they know they won’t make money on it anyway.
- ones that talk down to my wife because she must just believe any BS they make up (until I get involved, call them out, the apologize and I don’t go back)
- dealers that make problems for you to have to fix (had two places… one obviously shoved a screwdriver through my CV boot that was fine when I drove it in and wanted $989 to fix. The other said I was missing lug nuts that I know were there when I dropped it off and wanted to charge me $5/each plus $100 installation.)
- places that are actually good and fair.
One issue with the first is that the state doesn’t actually pay them enough per hour that it makes sense to take their time and do it right… they just crank them through finding obviously high money making issues and skipping the rest.
Texas?
It would have to be a written test to do any good. And for that to be administered properly costs money.
Yes, safety costs money.
The deregulation & lack of inspections is probably so that the people don’t have as many legitimate reasons to demand higher pay.
Where I live, car inspections have never been a thing. Some cities in my state mandate emissions tests, which I think include a basic inspection. Nothing at all in my county. Just pay to re-register it every year.
We need certified driving and accident avoidance systems and local vehicle to vehicle communication to facilitate lane changes, also certified. All systems independent, acting with consensus.
Neither of these topics should even be drawing media attention, considering how frequent and non-notable they are. They just report on this stuff every day because it’s cheaper and easier than exclusively finding and reporting on real notable local news, and television news needs filler content for selling ad spots. Ever had a day where there was no news, and they ended early?
Society has collectively decided that people dying from automobiles is a price it’s willing to pay. I’m rather resentful of our car-centric infrastructure, but here we are.
Craah = Probably unintended
Shootings = Probably very intendedBesides. There are loads of local crash/emergency reports in the local newspaper.
