
Why Cars Will Kill 30,000 Americans This Year - ssprang
http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/murder-machines/
======
grellas
As the article points out, "auto safety" itself has had a huge push from
consumer advocates at least since Ralph Nader highlighted the risks of car
design defects in the 1960s.

That said, a few points about the law and auto safety:

1\. U.S. law is tied to individual responsibility for conduct that is
wrongful. As the auto industry developed over the past century, that meant
that those who sought to drive by what the law declared to be the rules of the
road were deemed to have done something wrong only if they failed to meet a
reasonable standard of care in driving - that is, if they were negligent,
careless, inexcusably inattentive, or otherwise failed to exercise a
sufficient degree of caution that they created safety risks to others owing to
their manner of driving. Breaking rules (e.g., speeding, driving the wrong way
on a one-way street, and like items) constituted one such failure to exercise
proper caution. In such cases, the law developed so as to hold such drivers
responsible for damages in civil proceedings for the what the law called the
"tort" of negligence. A tort is a civil wrong by which the actor committing
the tort ("tortfeasor") is responsible to pay in damages for all harm caused
by his tortious activity. In layman's terms involving cars, this generally
means careless conduct. If the degree of wrongdoing is more egregious than
mere carelessness, as for example when teenagers in the 1950s used to drag
race through city streets in a way that constituted reckless conduct (that is,
conduct by which the wrongdoer deliberately does things that have a high risk
of endangering public safety), the consequence of this to the wrongdoer is
also a civil wrong for which damages will lie but it is also (usually) defined
as a criminal act by which the person can be prosecuted, fined, or jailed as a
consequence of such actions. As the intent to harm increases even further,
such as an act by which someone deliberately seeks to inflict harm on another
while using a car as an instrument of harm, this can constitute a serious
crime such as murder (for example, when someone deliberately drives at high
speed into a crowd of people and does so with intent to harm or kill others).

2\. Underlying the system of law that has developed around accountability for
auto-related collisions, fatalities, etc. is a social policy judgment that
sees automobiles as a positive good for society. The article notes that such
social policy judgments were made over the years more and more in favor of
promoting more expansive use of the automobile at the expense of pedestrians
and mass transit riders who might also use the roads, especially in urban
environments. This undoubtedly happened, though it is a dubious assertion to
say that some sort of sinister forces ("Motordom" is the term used in the
article) made this happen in some way that somehow overrode the will of
ordinary people. I am old enough to remember as a kid how people perceived
automobiles in, say, the late 1950s, and there is no doubt from my personal
recollection that average people rejoiced and celebrated ever-increasing uses
of the high-speed automobile, cheered on the National Highway Act by which old
two-lane state roads were sent into relative disuse through the creation of a
vast network of interstate freeways, and, as a matter of culture, broadly
celebrated what was called the "car culture." Even dissidents of the time,
such as Jack Kerouac, though a counter-culture figure of his time, broadly
promoted the idea of freedom in driving the open road. If anyone in that era
would have suggested that cars be shut down or limited in favor of bikes, they
would have been laughed at by the average person. Such ideas were basically
considered crank ideas and had no form of popular support whatever. Therefore,
it did not take a secret plot by General Motors (or whomever) to get people to
push widespread auto use. People _wanted_ to get away from cities generally,
_wanted_ to live in the suburbs that were growing rapidly at the time, and
_wanted_ the freedom to use cars to get around whenever and wherever they
wanted with limited restrictions other than having to obey the rules of the
road. Yes, individual cities deployed mass transit with varying degrees of
widespread use but these were limited to a few highly localized areas. People
generally wanted cars, and mainly cars, to get around.

3\. So, coming to the themes of this piece, "auto safety" is one such theme
and the idea of the automobile being inherently "murderous" certainly tries to
highlight this theme. Yet I would say the broader theme is actually more one
of saying that the rules of the road should be rewritten to strike a different
social policy judgment about how roads are used. It is nowhere stated in the
article, but is strongly implied, that perhaps drivers of automobiles should
be subjected to stronger legal consequences than those currently existing in
the event they collide with others in using a road. Given that we are here in
the realm of social policy, and not existing law, this could mean almost
anything. For example, it could mean strict liability for damages if you hit
someone using a car, no matter what the circumstances and regardless of what
the law now calls "fault." This is what happened to the law in other areas
over recent decades, most notably with the expansion of strict product
liability law by which manufactures (who at one time could be held liable for
injuries resulting from use of their products only if the injured party could
show that the manufacturer was negligent or otherwise at "fault" in making the
product) had their liabilities dramatically broadened if injuries resulted
from use of their products. As the law evolved in that area, the courts and
legislatures eventually determined that manufacturers should be held liable
regardless of fault if their products could be shown to have inherent
"defects" (broadly defined). This led to a huge expansion of liability for
manufacturing such products and, for example, pretty much decimated certain
industries such as manufacturers of small aircraft. As a matter of social
policy, the same could be done with the idea of driving an automobile. Courts
and legislatures could determine that it is socially desirable that drivers be
held strictly liable regardless of fault because this would promote greater
driver safety and would also strike a balance in shared road usage that favors
pedestrians and others more than drivers. They could also define as a crime
any collision by which a motorist acts carelessly in a way that results in
death or injury. They could impose strict penalties, such as losing the right
to drive upon the occurrence of even one such event. This sort of change - or
any other like it - would have _huge_ social consequences for the vast
majority of primarily suburban drivers who do in fact continue to value having
the ability to drive freely about as their primary means of transportation.
Young people flocking to cities in favor of "upscale urban lifestyles" (and
others who have a particular viewpoint, in the case of such young people in
favor of mass transit over cars) may see the issue differently. But the law
ultimately is driven by the average people who elect politicians, etc. and I
would suspect will be slow to change in this respect.

4\. The article also expresses concern about high speeds and about drivers
themselves being at risk of death or serious injury in driving the so-called
murderous machines. While it is true that high speeds clearly enlarge such
risks, it is a bit disingenuous to claim this as a primary concern while
simultaneously forcing cars to be made smaller and smaller out of concern for
increasing car mileage per gallon and promoting environmental goals. In modern
public policy making, the same people who try to flog the auto companies for
endangering drivers for this or that reason are often the first to decree that
cars be made smaller and smaller even though this might create increasing
safety risks to drivers who wind up in accidents. Again, this is a matter of
social policy, and there are lots of arguments for why smaller cars promote
broader social goals, but I rarely hear the people insisting on smaller cars
acknowledge that an inherent by-product of this is to increase safety risks in
case of collision (perhaps I am wrong on this point but I am going from memory
in saying that this is indeed a known consequence of shrinking the car size).

The real battle here is over a strong push to have the law conform to the
modern urban trends favoring bike riders, transit riders, and pedestrians over
automobiles. That issue should be addressed head on by assessing not only the
potential benefits of limiting auto use but also the social costs (which I
believe could be substantial). The article does not do that and is flawed
because of this, notwithstanding its (many) interesting points made along the
way.

~~~
blahedo
> _I am old enough to remember as a kid how people perceived automobiles in,
> say, the late 1950s, .... Even dissidents of the time, such as Jack Kerouac,
> .... Therefore, it did not take a secret plot by General Motors (or
> whomever) to get people to push widespread auto use. People_ wanted _to...._

This whole paragraph is missing the point---the purported "plot" was not a
product of the 1950s, but of the 1920s. The evidence that you provide in this
paragraph does not support the claim that there was no plot; it might actually
just support the claim that the "plot", such as it was, succeeded!

(That's not to say there was definitely a plot, although I think it's clear
there was. But counterevidence for this claim would need to come in the form
of recollections and data from _much_ earlier.)

~~~
edj
Exactly. Without a doubt there was a literal conspiracy to undermine urban
mass transit during the 1930s and 1940s. Firestone, Phillips, Standard Oil,
and GM were all _convicted_ of conspiracy, for Pete's sake.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy)

~~~
kahirsch
They were convicted of trying to monopolize sales of buses and bus parts, not
eliminate mass transit.

~~~
loup-vaillant
Bayesian evidence. Being convicted of a crime is strong evidence that you
might have committed _other_ related crimes.

If those companies where convicted of collusion, then it is very likely they
conspired about more than a little monopoly.

------
tokenadult
The death rate per miles driven in the United States has fallen dramatically
in my lifetime, and I can remember when the annual number of deaths was much
higher.[1] That said, the article makes a very interesting claim about
attitudes that we should all follow to the end of the article for further
discussion here: "There’s an open secret in America: If you want to kill
someone, do it with a car. As long as you’re sober, chances are you’ll never
be charged with any crime, much less manslaughter." My wife bike-commutes
year-round (yes, even in Minnesota), and as I mention this among Facebook
friends, other friends who are also bike commuters point out that car drivers
can basically kill bicyclists in the United States with no legal penalty at
all. That's not a good social environment for getting more people out for
exercise and energy conservation by substituting bicycling for driving cars.

The history reported in this article is very interesting. There are a lot of
contemporary photographs of changing American cities. The quotations from
experts provide perspective on the visuals: "'If a kid is hit in a street in
2014, I think our first reaction would be to ask, "What parent is so
neglectful that they let their child play in the street?,"' says Norton.

"'In 1914, it was pretty much the opposite. It was more like, "What evil
bastard would drive their speeding car where a kid might be playing?" That
tells us how much our outlook on the public street has changed."

Indeed. Are we really thinking carefully about how to spread the risk around,
when so much of our living space is dominated by cars?

AFTER EDIT: The video link shared by pugz[2] in a reply comment elsewhere in
this thread is not to be missed. Car safety standards have improved enormously
in my lifetime, but those protect the occupants of cars better than they
protect pedestrians and bicyclists who are hit by cars.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year#Motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPF4fBGNK0U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPF4fBGNK0U)

~~~
nostromo
I don't think the solution to unsafe roads is to throw everyone that is at-
fault in an accident in jail.

I understand the frustration cyclists have with auto traffic, but we've seen a
million times that harsher penalties don't always have the intended outcome.
And we have a habit in the US of using prison as the answer for every malady.

Instead, I think the answer is better road design, separating cars and
cyclists using dedicated lanes, and automated vehicles.

Also, according to this report, pedestrian fatalities are also on a long-term
downward trend, even without correcting for increased traffic:
[http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/pedbike...](http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/pedbike/03042/part2.cfm)

~~~
mikeash
When people decry using the prison system as a cure-all, it's usually for
things like drugs or mental illness. In essence, why punish people for things
that either don't harm others, or aren't their fault?

You're applying this to a serious crime, at least manslaughter if not murder.
If prison isn't appropriate for that, what _is_ prison appropriate for? I
imagine an argument could be made that prison is never the right thing, but I
don't think you're making that argument.

Harsher penalties don't always have the intended outcome, sure. But this isn't
so much advocating a _harsher_ penalty as advocating a penalty _at all_.

If I'm driving a car, what is my incentive to pay attention and try to avoid
killing cyclists? Simple morals, obviously, but that doesn't work on
everybody. If I'm a selfish asshole (lots of those out there) and I know I
won't suffer legal penalties, why would I care about cyclists?

If you kill someone while driving a car and you are at fault, why should you
_not_ go to jail? That is the standard punishment in that scenario without the
car, so why should adding a car make it go away?

~~~
DougWebb
_and you are at fault_

That's the tricky phrase. How do you prove fault in a car collision, to the
same degree that's required for a charge and conviction of manslaughter or
murder?

In New Jersey, we have "no-fault" laws for insurance, which basically means
that when there is an accident there's no way to prove that either party is
more at-fault than the other, so legally neither is at fault. In practice,
both parties are treated as if the accident is their fault, and both are
penalized with higher insurance rates at minimum.

My concern with any law that holds drivers responsible for deaths in accidents
they're involved in by charging them with manslaughter or murder is that the
same logic will be applied: every driver in every accident where someone dies
will go to jail, unless they're rich enough to bend the rules and escape the
charge. That's unfair, because many accidents really are accidents, and many
people who die in accidents are at least as responsible as the people who
survive.

Besides, there are already additional penalties for drivers in these
situations. Their insurance pays out substantially to the victims or their
families, and the driver's insurance rates go up, potentially to the point
that the driver is no longer insurable and they can't drive anymore. So the
article is wrong in saying that drivers can get away with murder with no
consequences.

~~~
mikeash
Why would the same logic be applied? Surely a conviction for vehicular
manslaughter would be held to the same standard as a conviction for regular
manslaughter, which is to say proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

~~~
DougWebb
If guilt can't be proven for sufficiently to assess which driver's insurance
should pay for the costs of an accident, how can guilt be proven for the much
stricter requirements needed for manslaughter? I think this would be
especially difficult if the courts are overloaded with all accidents that
involve deaths, instead of only the ones where drivers today are being charged
with manslaughter and murder. (eg: cases where there appears to be intent to
kill, rather than just accidental killings.)

~~~
SixSigma
> If guilt can't be proven for sufficiently to assess which driver's insurance
> should pay for the costs of an accident, how can guilt be proven for the
> much stricter requirements needed for manslaughter?

Guilt could be proven for more cases but the cost is prohibitive. It is
cheaper for all concerned to just say "we know what happened, let's not bother
finding out how and just split the costs of repair", the drivers pay higher
premiums for a while, they probably share the blame anyway and both will drive
more carefully from now on.

When one of the parties could go to prison for life, society decides to accept
the burden and does a full investigation.

------
trothamel
In 2004, 42,836 Americans were killed in motor vehicle accidents. So this
number actually represents a huge improvement.

Something to realize is that potential replacements to cars are not that much
safer. Highway travel is responsible for 7.7 deaths per billion passenger-
miles. Mass transit is responsible for 5.4 deaths per billion passenger-miles.
Given the less-direct routings used by transit, it's not totally clear this is
a meaningful difference.

All of this sucks - but it's the price we pay for being able to move a long
distance quickly, something that seems to be a net benefit to society. (How
many lives are saved by ambulances each year? How about by being able to
easily visit a doctor?)

These are all statistics for the US in 2011. Sources are:

[http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub...](http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_01_40.html)
[http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub...](http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_02_17.html)
[http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub...](http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_02_32.html)

~~~
mikeash
I'd really like to see that broken down by _type_ of transit, as well as
deaths for transit passengers versus people killed in e.g. private cars
involved in accidents with busses.

My guess, and this is very much a guess, is that buses will be
disproportionately dangerous, and a fair number of those killed by busses are
in cars that collide with them.

For one random example, the DC metro has seen 9 deaths in the past five years
and appears to run at about 1.8 billion passenger-miles per year, for a
fatality rate of around 0.1 deaths per 100 million passenger-miles (or 1 per
billion). This is _very_ rough as deaths are spiky (those nine deaths happened
all at once almost five years ago) and the long-term average is tough to
judge.

~~~
DougWebb
In my town and the towns around me (suburbs of NYC in New Jersey) there are a
lot of deaths from people being hit by commuter trains. It's quite possible
that we have more people dying that way than in traffic accidents, especially
if you don't count deaths on the highways in the area which don't have any
pedestrians.

The problem here is that the trains mostly run at ground level, and the
stations are mostly completely open. It's very easy to walk around behind of
or in front of the train while it's still in the station or approaching the
station. We've had incidents where individuals or groups of commuters who just
got off the train try to cross the track behind the train, assuming that the
gates are down because the train hadn't left yet, only to be struck by a train
arriving on the other track. There was a big public education campaign after
the last incident like that, but the town had to resort to a police officer
stationed there during rush hour handing out jay-walking tickets before people
would stop trying to cross while the gates were down.

There's also a strong suspicion that a lot of these deaths are suicides, but
that's pretty hard to prove.

~~~
mikeash
That's exactly the sort of thing I mean. I imagine that the safety of commuter
trains with open stations and at-grade crossings must be vastly different from
the safety of subways with closed stations and full grade separation. But I
would love to see real numbers.

------
AnimalMuppet
"Murder Machines"? Come on. Not all deaths are murder.

We Americans have this idea that nothing bad should ever happen, that we
should find a way to prevent it. It's a goal to shoot for, certainly. But
calling it murder if you don't reach that goal? No.

Can we climb down from the overheated rhetoric? It smells like propaganda.

~~~
ryandrake
Also, cars are not killing people. Drivers are. Unless we're talking about
self-driving cars that spontaneously turn themselves on, back down the
driveway, and mow down pedestrians on their own.

~~~
rtpg
What about things like Toyota's unintended acceleration debacle?

Just because driver's actions count for a lot of accidents doesn't mean that
car manufacturer are absolved from doing anything. Considering how many
accidents there are, cars need to be designed _with that in mind_ , much like
how touch keyboards work around our fat finger inputs.

User error is a design consideration (or else we wouldn't have undo commands
in all of our software).

~~~
Dylan16807
The Toyota debacle where they had buggy code but no evidence of anything other
than driver error?

~~~
joncrocks
[http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1319897](http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1319897)

[http://www.edn.com/design/automotive/4423428/Toyota-s-
killer...](http://www.edn.com/design/automotive/4423428/Toyota-s-killer-
firmware--Bad-design-and-its-consequences)

~~~
Dylan16807
That doesn't contradict what I said.

Even if the code failed in some situations I would comfortably bet that most
cases were user error.

------
kiba
It's such a shame. The automobile is built as a requirement to live in society
rather than something that complement and argumented our lifestyle.

~~~
_delirium
Really depends on where you live, but unfortunately true for much of the U.S.
and Canada. Not true in the biggest North American city (NYC), though. Also
not true in much of Europe.

~~~
crazy1van
"Really depends on where you live, but unfortunately true for much of the U.S.
and Canada"

What is unfortunate about this? Americans on average are so rich that most of
them can afford a car that allows them to both live where they want and still
get to the job they want even if those two places are tens of miles apart and
there is no public transportation.

Sounds terrible.

~~~
Gracana
You're kind of missing what was said. We're talking about the automobile being
necessary to function in the majority of the US and Canada. If you don't have
a car (whether you can't afford one, can't drive, or choose not to own one),
you're going to struggle to get to work, get to the grocery store, visit
people, etc. Even in densely populated areas where cycling is a better option,
the infrastructure is heavily oriented towards cars, and cycling can be quite
dangerous.

Yeah, it's great if you have a car. What's not great is that you _need_ to
have a car. And yet it doesn't have to be that way, as other countries have
shown us.

------
kristianp
No mention of present and future automation options that increase the safety
of cars? On hacker news?

    
    
        Reversing sensors
        Automatic braking at low speed to prevent collisions
        Driverless cars.
    

For me, these features can't come fast enough. They should be phased into
being mandatory too.

~~~
LanceH
Making them mandatory also has the effect of making sure they never again
improve.

~~~
mikeash
Like how seat belts and air bags stopped improving when they were made
mandatory?

------
dxbydt
What happened to those concept cars that were encased in rubber/(or some other
bouncy material) so when they bumped against each other, they would harmlessly
bounce off ? I distinctly remember reading about them in Wired some years
back.

~~~
gambiting
Any amount of rubber would only work up to a certain speed. And all modern
cars are designed to provide 100% safety to passangers up to 30mph - crumple
zones, multiple airbags, engine block sliding underneath the body of the
vehicle, early collision warning, automatic breaking and so on. Encasing cars
in rubber would not improve anything above 30mph, while I am fairly certain
would increase the weight of the vehicle - making it consume more fuel and
also heavier vehicles take longer to stop,so the benefit might actually be
null.

------
sologoub
The dedicated bike lane is surely a great invention, but the implementation is
often luck-luster and I think causes more harm than good.

Santa Monica probably has more good bike lanes than most other US cities, but
I am terrified to even try the new on 28th leading from Ocean Park to Pico and
beyond to Olympic. They basically took a narrow street and tried to leave
space for parking and add a bike lane on top of that. As a result, most SUVs
or wider cars don't fit into the designated lanes.

As the result, they either try to leave room for bicycles and drive slightly
over the center or in the bike lane. If they try the former, they end up
swerving violently into the bike lane to avoid on-coming traffic, so I don't
know which is worse.

If the bike lanes were actually well implemented the entire way to the office,
I would leave my car parked most days... as it stands now, that's not
happening any time soon.

~~~
_delirium
As a result of issues with those kinds of lanes, Copenhagen changed direction
a bit ago and now puts in only bike lanes physically separated by a curb from
the car lanes, at least where possible (excluding some narrow streets). If
there's street parking, the lane is also typically on the _other_ side of the
parked cars (the sidewalk side), making it even more impossible for someone to
swerve from the car lanes into the bike lane. Also reduces "door" incidents,
since the lane isn't on the driver-door side of parked cars. In addition to
being much safer for cyclists, it also helps reduce drivers' need to watch out
for the other direction, cyclists unexpectedly swerving into the auto lanes,
e.g. to pass another cyclist. That part becomes particularly important if
getting people to bike is actually successful: if you have a major route with
a steady stream of >10 cyclists/minute, you really want that stream managed in
its own space, segregated from both the cars and pedestrians.

I believe some of these kinds of "really separated" bike lanes exist in the
U.S., but not many. The last statistics I saw were that the U.S. (in total)
has about 200 miles of physically protected bike lanes (including bike-only
routes), while Greater Copenhagen alone has 600 miles of them.

edit: some photos of various configurations,
[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Physically_separ...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Physically_separated_bikeways)

~~~
sologoub
I have big hopes for the metro line project in SM that includes a dedicated
bike path that is linked with the path along the beach. The beach path is
fully separated and the link that is not would only be a few blocks long.

The ocean bike path stretches from past Redondo beach to Pacific Palicades.

------
clienthunter
> In contrast, traffic fatalities in countries like the United Kingdom, where
> drivers are uniformly viewed as the greatest danger on streets, are about a
> third of U.S. rates.

Britain here.

This is absolutely false. We uniformly view _cyclists_ as the greatest danger
on the streets. No joke, ask around.

I would suggest the reason for our better stats is down to a) a bloody
difficult driving test; b) the thing inside a lot of us that makes the
nervous/apologetic stereotype _actually be true_ also makes a lot of us quite
risk averse and cautious; c) drink driving is a big no-no with very practical
consequences near 100% of the time; d) education of how to cross a road starts
at a _very_ young age, the result being no jaywalking laws required and
watching people cross busy, fast moving roads in cities looks like doing the
same in some developing country except we're proper pro at it; e) the
speedbump pandemic, an enormous pain in the arse to have them every 3 ft in
residential areas but probably highly effective; f) many, many (most?)
pedestrian-accessible roads predate almost all vehicles and are twisty,
narrow, and generally difficult to navigate; f) motorways/dual carriageways
(70mph) were designed in such a way that they are not at all accessible on
foot; g) B-roads (60mph usually, narrow) join 2 interesting places through
vast expanses of farmland, there's rarely a reason to be on foot near them.

Lots of reasons, none are fear.

~~~
mikeash
> a bloody difficult driving test

I think this is key. I'm always amazed at how easy the US "driving test" is. I
put it in quotes because it's barely more than a check to see whether or not
you're capable of writing your own name. You can pass the practical test
without ever exceeding 25MPH.

Worse, you never re-test. I haven't had anyone check my driving in almost two
decades. License renewals come in the mail by magic. For all they know, I
could have gone blind and senile, but here I am, legal to drive a car. I have
to prove my ability to fly a plane every two years to keep doing it legally,
but the car is far more dangerous to others when mishandled.

I think we would benefit enormously in the US if we enacted a _real_ driving
test that requires actual skill and knowledge, and required re-testing every
couple of years. Unfortunately it will never happen. While the American public
doesn't really care if their government wastes trillions and invades countries
for no reason and spies on everybody and tortures people, try to get between
them and their cars and you will see politicians' heads on pikes on the
National Mall.

------
socrates1998
I have always felt one of the saddest things about our society is that we
accept these very preventable deaths.

When I was a teacher, about once a year a student would die in an accident. It
just seemed so unnecessary, a 17 year healthy kid dead because we can't make
cars safe.

I can't imagine cars without seat belts, but most Americans didn't bother with
them before Nader came along.

It's definitely a black eye on our whole society when we can't be bothered to
keep a basic right of transportation safe.

Maybe driverless cars are the answer, I don't know.

------
datalus
Still lower than suicide, sadly. Not many articles about that except the ones
about statistics. No real op-ed pieces? Not as newsworthy or good for
business?

~~~
Houshalter
Suicides are voluntary. You can die in an accident through no choice of your
own.

------
pdonis
The article quotes the 30,000 per year number, but it only really talks about
fatalities or injuries to pedestrians by cars. The 30,000 number includes
fatalities or injuries to people in cars as well. So a lot of relevant data is
being left out.

Wikipedia has a link to NHTSA figures that give more detail. The link is here:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year#cite_note-
NHTSA10-1)

From the 2010 data:

* 32,885 total fatalities

* 23,303 (70.8 percent) of those were vehicle occupants

* 4,502 (13.7 percent) were on motorcycles (drivers or passengers)

* 4,280 (13.0 percent) were pedestrians

* 618 (1.9 percent) were cyclists

* 182 (0.6 percent) were "other/unknown non-occupants"

So the article is focusing in on something that's, at most, only 15 percent or
so (counting pedestrians and cyclists, since the article talks about both) of
the problem. I say "at most" because of other interesting statistics from the
NHTSA report:

* 31 percent of fatalities were in incidents involving alcohol-impaired drivers.

* 47 percent of the crashes that resulted in pedestrian fatalities had alcohol use reported by either the driver or the pedestrian or both. Interestingly, 33 percent of the pedestrians involved in these crashes were alcohol impaired, but only 14 percent of the _drivers_ involved were; in 6 percent of the crashes, _both_ the driver and the pedestrian were alcohol impaired.

* 32 percent of fatalities were in incidents where the driver was speeding. (42 percent of the drivers who were speeding were alcohol-impaired.)

* 42 percent of motorcycle drivers, and 51 percent of motorcycle passengers, who were fatally injured were not wearing helmets.

* 51 percent of vehicle occupants killed were not restrained (not wearing seat belts, or not in child seats/restraints).

* 11 percent of fatalities involved large trucks (gross vehicle weight over 10,000 pounds); of those, 76 percent were occupants of other vehicles, 14 percent were occupants of the trucks, and 10 percent were pedestrians.

Taking all this into consideration, I see a very different picture from
"vehicles are murder machines". It looks to me like the major factors causing
fatalities are individual choices made by people that put them at higher risk.
And it's not like those choices are difficult, or about things that most
people don't know. How hard is it to wear a seat belt? To put a helmet on if
you're on a motorcycle? To not drink and drive?

~~~
bruce511
There seems to be some serious low-hanging fruit here with regard to improving
these numbers. Imagine if you took the billions currently spent by the TSA and
applied it to road safety?

Given what the rest of world does with airport security, it's possible to
maintain airport security while at the same time freeing up massive resources
which could be channeled into education (seriously, no seatbelts in 2014? ),
policing of drunk driving, zero tolerance for speeding and so on.

Of course this won't happen. Regardless of the fact it is waay more dangerous
to drive to the airport than it is to fly on a plane - it's easy to do a big
song and dance at the airport to "make flying safer" (hint: it's exactly as
safe as it is everywhere else where they don't succumb to the TSA rhetoric).

Americans don't care about the TSA at airports precisely because most
Americans don't fly. So politically it costs no votes, (and with enough
rhetoric some Americans even believe it's making things safer) whereas if you
started creating or enforcing speed restrictions or drunk driving there'd be
endless Libertarian arguments about the perils of big government, and the
"freedom" of motor cyclists to not wear a helmet if they so choose.

There actually could be a really useful agency with the words Trasportation
and Safety in the name, but it isn't the one that currently exists.

~~~
pdonis
_most Americans don 't fly_

I'm not sure that's actually true. According to the Bureau of Transportation
Statistics, there were 646 million enplaned passengers in 2013. ("Enplaned
passengers" means passengers boarding originating flights, i.e., either
nonstops to the destination or the first leg of an itinerary with at least one
connection.) That's more than twice the population of the US, and about 2.7
times the population of the US that's over 18. Even allowing for the fact that
many business travelers take many trips per year, there are still a lot of
people who only take one or two airline trips per year, for vacations or
special events, so it's hard for me to see how the percentage of Americans who
don't fly can amount to "most"; I'd be surprised if it was half.

BTS link: [http://www.transtats.bts.gov/](http://www.transtats.bts.gov/)

 _if you started creating or enforcing speed restrictions or drunk driving
there 'd be endless Libertarian arguments about the perils of big government,
and the "freedom" of motor cyclists to not wear a helmet if they so choose_

I think you're seriously underestimating the costs of enforcing driving
regulations to the extent that you would need to to improve the numbers
significantly by that means; I suspect that a more realistic estimate of those
costs is what would lead most people (including me) to oppose such
regulations. Whatever one's opinion about airport security, the amount spent
on it is still a small fraction of government budgets and an even smaller
fraction of GDP; and even for business travelers that take many trips per
year, the overall cost in time of security screening is not that much compared
to the time spent on the flight itself, particularly since most business
travelers are easier to screen since they're familiar with the process and so
get through it more quickly than people who only fly occasionally. (Note that
I'm not arguing here that what is spent is justified by the benefits; I'm
merely trying to compare the cost of airport security, in both time and money,
with the cost of the sort of traffic regulation you're proposing.)

On the other hand, the kind of regulation you would need to have in order to,
for example, make a serious dent in the rate of speeding, would be extremely
draconian and would have huge costs. You would need traffic police on every
major road, stopping people left and right; and you would need to do this
continuously, or at least often enough that people would have a fairly high
probability of getting caught if they speed. After all, most people do not
speed just for the fun of it; they speed because it benefits them, because
they get to wherever they are going faster. (I would also argue that most
speed limits on highways are set too low, particularly given how the
performance and handling of cars has improved over the years.) To make people
not speed, you would have to raise its costs, in money and time lost, enough
to outweigh the benefits, and that's a very tall order. Plus, you would have
to hire all those traffic police, and pay them, and all the time they spend
catching speeders would _not_ be spent dealing with other issues that might
actually be more important.

Similar remarks apply, although possibly with less force, to other types of
regulations: for example, trying to enforce seat belt laws, or motorcycle
helmet laws, or drunk driving laws. I say "possibly with less force" because
the "benefits" to people of doing these things are less clear than the obvious
benefit in time saved of speeding. I don't understand any more than you do why
anyone would fail to use a seat belt; it only takes a few seconds to buckle
up. (I don't ride motorcycles so I won't try to speculate on why people would
not wear helmets.) People obviously derive pleasure from drinking, but that
doesn't mean they necessarily derive pleasure from drunk driving; that seems
more like bad planning than anything else. So it might not be quite as costly
to try to regulate these behaviors as it would be to try to regulate speeding.
But I think it would still be a lot more costly than airport security is.

Education is a different matter; but I'm not sure there's much that can be
done with education that isn't already being done. Are there really many
people who haven't been told that seat belts are a good idea?

The only other suggestion I have is to impose more severe consequences on the
kinds of decisions that can significantly affect risk. For example, consider
this modest proposal: if you are involved in any accident and you are found to
be driving drunk, even if no one is injured or killed, you lose your driver's
license, _forever_. Or consider this: allow auto insurance companies, and
health insurance companies to the extent that their coverage extends to
injuries suffered in auto accidents, to make you pay a higher deductible, or
possibly even deny part or all of your coverage, if you are injured in an
accident and are found not to have been wearing a seat belt, or you are found
to be at fault and to have been driving at a clearly unsafe speed. (This would
have to be explicitly stated in the policy, of course.) That would make people
stop and think.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Speed enforcement is a political issue these days, not a cost issue, it is
quite cheap to put speed cameras everywhere and many countries do. We could
eliminate speeding if we wanted to, Americans just don't want to. So what if a
few more people die every year...freedom!

~~~
Dylan16807
Oh shut up with half-baked emotional arguments, if a 'few people' dying in
accidents was always a good enough reason to slow down traffic there wouldn't
be a road in the world faster than 20mph.

At any rate, speed limits are set extra low with the _expectation_ that people
will go faster than the number on the sign. Trying to 'eliminate speeding' by
itself is a nonsense goal.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
I'm not making any arguments. Is it ok to go 90mph when the speed limit is
75mph? Even if its straight I90 freeway in the middle of Central Washington?
I'm not sure, but today we have that choice as enforcement is choppy.

Anyways, we'll be into self driving cars in 10 or 15 years regardless, the
question is almost outdated.

~~~
Dylan16807
"So what if a few more people die every year...freedom!" is the emotional and
clearly-wrong argument I'm referring to.

As to your question, it depends on the road and 15mph is an unusually large
number. I'm used to things more like '70-72 in a 65 zone' and '39 in a 35
zone'. On a straight freeway 90 is probably safe.

But my point was that the current system is broken in such a way that rigorous
enforcement of the exact numbers on speed limit signs would make things even
worse.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Do you go to Canada often? There speed limits are more strict than ours and
they have pretty sophisticated enforcement (speed cameras). The world didn't
come to an end there. It is even worse in Europe and Japan; I think our
American ideas of "broken" is a bit warped, but I actually like going 90 mph
to get from Seattle to Spokane; once you get across the mountains it is a
boring trip. Europe and Canada annoy me. But then maybe we could have
something like the German Autobahn.

I don't drive anymore. In my city, people barely get up to 80 kph given the
traffic, but sometimes I get a crazy Beijing taxi driver who knows where all
the cameras are, then I fear for my life.

~~~
stefan_kendall3
You don't drive, and yet you make a lot of claims about how driving should be.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
I did drive back when I lived in the states, got my license at 15 (in a state
where that was possible), you have to drive there as a matter of reality. I
live in a city right now where driving is very expensive, and taxis are very
cheap, so it makes sense not to. I get that America is completely different
than the rest of the world.

------
tim333
The article says a lot about the politics and legal aspects of car deaths but
the way forward is through engineering. With existing technology you can make
a big difference by segregating fast traffic from pedestrian areas. Slow the
traffic in towns and residential areas by speed bumps, closed streets, 20mph
limits and the like and build multilane pedestrian free roads for people to
get from A to B.

In the future self driving cars and similar safety systems are the way forward
and probably the only practical way to drop the death toll from 30,000 to
below 10,000.

------
jwatte
I've always seen this as "30,000 deaths and 120,000 permanent disabilities is
the price we pay for allowing the sale of cars that can go faster than 25
mph."

------
spikels
Some Context: in 2010 the 121,000 annual US accidental deaths are roughly
evenly split between vehicles (35,000), unintentional poisoning (33,000),
falls (26,000) and other causes. Collectively accidents are the 5th leading
cause of death after heart attack, cancer, respiratory disease and stroke.

[http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr61/nvsr61_04.pdf](http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr61/nvsr61_04.pdf)

------
owenversteeg
I really like the design on some of the posters from the article:
[http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/wp-
content/uploads/...](http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/wp-
content/uploads/2014/03/AAA-posters-1024x434.jpg)

------
moron4hire
jeez, they make it sound like every driver on the road is probably going to
kill someone at some point.

------
MattHeard
"99% Invisible" by Roman Mars did a very good, 24-minute radio show on this:

[http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-76-the-
modern-...](http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-76-the-modern-
moloch/)

------
michaelochurch
First, our attitude toward speed in the U.S. is self-contradictory and
bizarre. It's far worse to drive 35 mph on a city street in Manhattan than 90
mph (assuming no or low traffic) on the highway. The first is "only 5 over"
(the NYC speed limit is 30, which is way too high) and might get you a small
fine; the second can put you in jail, in some states.

The issue with cars is that the vehicle that is best for highways (capable of
speeds up to at least 80 mph) is not great for city driving. Automatic
transmissions make it even worse, because there are now idiots who have no
idea how fast they're driving (yeah, I'm a stick snob).

Second, the car did a great job of something in the 1950s. It was a
rent/house-price control mechanism that actually worked-- without causing a
shortage. It scaled back the power of landlords by allowing development of
low-value land. Suburbia turned into something ugly-- racist, detached,
gluttonous, environmentally harmful, and ultimately (paradoxically?)
expensive-- for a variety of reasons, including increased specialization in
the economy (more driving, more scaling problems with traffic) and a
Parkinson's Law effect of consumer capitalism. Isolated people turned out to
be _more_ needy, confused, and liable to overspend, making a market for
gigantic houses, ridiculous cars, and tons of low-quality consumer dreck
(bought on credit) that no one really needed. Slowly, the tyranny of the
landlords crept back in, and things people actually needed (healthcare,
education, and finally housing) became again expensive, then extortionate.
That's where we are now.

The car is actually a huge money-hole for most working families, and auto
loans a "gateway drug" to yet more unnecessary consumer debt. The car was
supposed to liberate them from landlords. Now, it's a white elephant they can
only afford because they have no choice: the jobs are all 10-50 miles away,
public transportation is expensive and emasculated in most places-- even
Amtrak is unaffordable for most; and the roads are unsafe to bike or walk
(highways and ghettos, both products of suburbanization). So people drop
hundreds of dollars per month on car payments, fuel, insurance, parking,
tolls, and repairs (plus the involuntary payment through taxes, but that could
be argued to be a win for most; if you eat, you use the roads). For people out
of cities, the car has become the new landlord.

In the 1930s to '50s, however, no one saw all these unintended consequences.
Now, it's an open question whether the benefits of widespread automobile usage
merit the risk to public safety and the slashing of public spaces. I'd say
"no". On the other hand, if you were a working-class person in the 1940s and
this new invention had the promise of liberating you from the landlord so you
could send your kids to school and actually retire, you might think
differently. They didn't have the foresight to see all the negative unintended
consequences or car-reliance.

------
ansimionescu
In Romanian 'car crash' is called literally 'accident' [0]. Something that's
always baffled me is how friggin' thin the metal plates that make up the car
are. Why the fuck does a whole industry consider this normal?! [1]

Edit: thanks for the info (and for the downvotes <3)

0:
[http://translate.google.com/#en/ro/car%20crash](http://translate.google.com/#en/ro/car%20crash)

1:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhCXFsQ6kKQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhCXFsQ6kKQ)

~~~
Crito
Car crashes are often called "accidents" in America too. I found it
interesting and insightful when my driving instructor back in highschool spent
a good 10 minutes ranting about there not being any such thing as a car
'accident' (students mentioning the word "accident" later in the course were
scolded, to drive home the point). Obviously you can dream up scenarios that
you might be able to _really_ call an accident, but the point was that even
when legal blame or liability cannot be found, nearly all car crashes could
have been prevented by both drivers driving more defensively and being more
alert.

Edit

 _" "You can do things to reduce your risk of accidents" is a vital message,
using words in an atypical way can be a pedagogical tool to drive it home"_

That was the instructors intent. He wasn't trying to propose a new way for
insurance companies or the courts to look at liability, but rather trying to
combat thought terminating cliches like _" shit happens"_ (by arguably
introducing his own).

~~~
cek
In firearms circles there's a saying "There is no such thing as a firearms
accident. There are only negligent acts."

SOMEONE is always responsible, and should be held accountable.

~~~
Crito
Similarly _" the gun is always loaded"_.

On it's face, it is a silly thing to say because obviously a gun can be
unloaded. The point however is to drive home a respectful attitude towards
guns, for the sake of safety.

