
Why do Americans view zero road deaths as an impossible goal? - oftenwrong
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/1/6/why-do-americans-view-zero-road-deaths-as-an-impossible-goal
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dang
The story was discussed here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21933868](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21933868)

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WalterBright
Because there are always tradeoffs, and tradeoffs that may actually increase
total deaths. That increase would be "acceptable" because they aren't road
deaths. Such goals replace reason and judgement with slogans.

For example, consider "zero tolerance" laws. They result in convicting kids
who carry a one inch Lego toy gun to school, because "my hands are tied" by
the legislation.

Or the "3 Strikes" laws which send people to jail for life for stealing a
handbag.

BTW, I support removal of cars from high density pedestrian areas. I wish
Seattle would do that.

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CydeWeys
How exactly would this particular trade-off increase total deaths? Do you
think this is happening in Oslo?

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mamurphy
> How exactly would this particular trade-off increase total deaths? Do you
> think this is happening in Oslo?

What if I am having a heart attack and the ambulance is on the way? If it gets
there within 5 minutes, I can be saved, if not I die. Oh well, no going over
20 mph, I'm dead.

I would hope Oslo has a carve out for emergency response, but I don't see one
in the article.

Much, much, more abstractly, as the article points out, suburbs are much
denser in American than in Olso. "If I could work on my lifesaving cancer cure
8hr/day I would cure it in 10 years, but at 7hr/day I only cure it in 12
years. I can only spend so much time at work and commuting. Oh well, no going
over 20mph, it takes me years longer." Lots of productivity losses (some of
which are undoubtedly going to result in loss of life) if a(not atypical)
American 20 mile commute now takes an hour instead of 20 minutes.

It would take restructuring of roadways on a massive scale in America to have
this policy not result in staggering productivity/time losses. The article
admits this ("it's going to require both institutional and far-reaching
cultural changes", "It will take decades"). Without massive changes, adopting
this policy would, as the article states, "incite riots in no time." I'd
welcome taking steps towards transit restructuring.

However, there seems to be little political will for even basic incremental
steps. That's why zero deaths seems impossible - getting even basic,
functioning, public transit is hard in America.

~~~
AstralStorm
Emergency vehicles are exempt from many laws and granted priority exactly for
this reason - so that they reach you in 5 min, quite an impossible task given
the congestion. I'm not sure about Norway, but definitely in Poland.

Suburbs too dense sounds like a virtual problem. Concentrate like Singapore or
Seoul, more density yet less traffic. Even more ecological if public
transportation works properly.

US population density is kept artificially low because everyone wants to own
land. That is a "dream" sold by realtors, with obvious lack of focus on the
costs of it.

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Sindrome
I work on the West Side of Los Angeles. People honk at me when I cross the
streets and they are in a hurry.

In Beverly Hills rich man-children with sports cars speed around with bumper
stickers showing they donate to the Beverly Hill PD.

Just citing some high-level observations that show some issues.

~~~
toasterlovin
Overall, I feel pretty ambiguous about public transit or bikes vs. cars. I see
the hypothetical appeal of public transit and bikes, but I think their
respective proponents ignore a lot of the convenience of a personal
automobile.

That said, West LA is a fucking hellscape and the cars are mostly to blame for
that.

~~~
wutbrodo
The problem isn't transit as much as layout. Build your cities relatively
sanely instead of doing whatever the fuck LA does, and most transportation
options end up reasonable. Build it as a sprawling, poorly-utilized asphalt
stain on the landscape, and your hands are pretty tied.

SF is a pretty mismanaged city in general, but it's telling that complaints
about transport are (IME) far less strident than complaints about everything
else. There's a floor on how bad your transport experience can be based on the
layout of the city: if there as gridlock on every street in San Francisco and
all the subways were flooded, I could still easily walk to the equivalent of
many, many square miles of a place like LA.

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Bostonian
Cars represent freedom. I can get in my car and go where I want, when I want
-- especially helpful with 3 school-age children. Mass transit is important in
cities, but lots of Americans, probably most, live where cars are needed to
get around. They rightly view anti-car advocates are people trying to take
away their freedom and herd them onto mass transit.

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aqme28
It's funny how opposite we are in this. To me, me cars represent a frustrating
burden, whereas walkable spaces, bike lanes, and subway accessibility
represent freedom of movement.

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jakear
Some people have larger distances to cover. I can’t walk to Carrizo Plains on
a weekend. Can’t bike there either. No busses, and definitely no trains. If I
want to go where I want to go, I need a car to get there.

~~~
asdff
And for those people, absolutely keep the car. Maybe a moped would do, but the
car is fine for low density areas like you describe.

But for the millions stuck in rush hour traffic in every major city across the
country, maybe there could be a better way to make that one commute to work.
NYC has a lot of subways and 60% of the population uses transit, but they are
just about all built for moving people to and from their 9-5 job in Manhattan,
not traveling laterally across the outer boroughs.

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userbinator
It's like "zero crime" \--- you end up with authoritarian dystopia. IMNSHO
extremism in all forms is not a good thing, no matter what the cause. There's
plenty of sci-fi on that topic.

I find it ironic that HN seems to be both very pro-freedom/privacy/right-to-
repair, yet also very anti-car. Perhaps two separate demographics.

~~~
wutbrodo
Do you feel the same way about zero polio deaths?

The transportation issue is fairly complicated, and there does exist a
tendency to oversimplify the costs of moving away from the status quo. But
many of the reactions on this thread (this one included) are even more free of
nuance or an attempt at understanding the situation. There's no question for
anyone who's bothered to inform themselves that the US status quo around
transportation is far from ideal for most sets of preferences[1]. Vision Zero
is a bit of a blunt instrument for calling attention to how bad the status quo
is, but it's a lot better than the arguments I'm seeing here.

[1] Obviously you can construct a set of preferences that is optimal for a
given state, but I'm using reasonable priors here.

~~~
arcticbull
Zero polio is a cut/dried thing. We know how much the polio vaccine costs to
manufacture, we know the risk of adverse side effect (very low) and we can
administer the vaccines alongside your normal check-ups. You're not increasing
the risk of death due to something else by decreasing the risk of polio.

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ajmurmann
It sticks out to me how much more homogenous streets and roads are in the US
compared to Europe. All streets have at least two lanes and the speed limits
in practice fall within a fairly narrow range. Even in residential
neighborhoods the speed limit is usually 25 or 35. On the other hand it
doesn't go up much till you are on a freeway. Even streets with a lot of
business will still have lots of through traffic. The suburb I live in has its
historic downtown cut up by multiple high traffic roads (strongtowns calls
them "stroads"). It sucks for cars and it sucks for pedestrians.

As the article calls out, many European cities do a better job at separating
humans and cars. This only works because there is more diversity in roads and
streets. My commute in Germany included an area that literally had a speed
limit of "walking speed" a main road that had 70km/h and of course the
Autobahn worth 160km/h. These streets and roads were much more clearly
differentiated and made a clear trade off between prioritizing pedestrians,
playing children and cars.

I think some European cities got this inadvertantly, since streets and roads
suited for cars had to be fitted on Street the fact. US cities with their grid
layout inherently treat the city and its traffic more like a homogenous blob.

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ken
This article seems to have tunnel vision on _speed_ as the primary cause --
"Speed is what kills", it claims, and links to another page on their same blog
that says:

> Speeding — defined as traveling too fast for conditions or in excess of the
> posted speed limits — contributes to nearly one-third of all roadway
> fatalities. This proportion has remained largely unchanged for decades.

They neglect to mention that, in America, alcohol contributes to about one-
third of all roadway fatalities, too. In Norway, it's much rarer, due to
stricter limits (.02 BAC!) and harsher penalties.

Big complex problems often have multiple contributing factors. Personally, I'd
go after alcohol first. IME, nearly everyone on the road speeds, and
apparently nearly everyone can do it safely. It's hard to argue that drunk
driving can ever be done safely. The best "traffic calming" street designs in
the world won't keep your city center safe from drunks.

~~~
quaquaqua1
Harsher penalties? Driving drunk here is going to cost you 4-5k in fees and
fines in certain parts of the USA. It's approaching mandatory minimum sentence
status here.

The people who are the most down and out in our society don't care about the
cost of their driving drunk. It doesn't occur to them until after they've been
caught.

What needs to change is the attitude.

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tjansen
Truly zero deaths won't be achievable without giving up all forms of
transport. Public transport kills pedestrians and bicycle riders, and there
are even pedestrians killed by bikes. You can certainly reduce the numbers,
but you won't get even close to zero.

I wasn't able to find general statistics, only for Cologne/Germany, a city of
about 1 million with relatively good public transport. In 2016, 18 people were
killed on the roads of Cologne. 6 of them have been killed by a tram. In 2017,
19 were killed, 4 by tram. There are no statistics for pedestrians killed by
bikes, but last year there was at least one such case in Cologne.

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drewcoo
Because about 100 years ago, the auto industry responded to a surge in murder
by the new automobiles by forming auto associations and using those to change
local laws to outlaw behaviors leading the victims to die. Like the newly-
minted term "jay walking." And over several generations that became such a
firm part of the status quo that we can't even imagine it some other way.

Compare with electricity, a danger that Edison terrified everyone into
enshrouding in standard safety features to protect the public.

Both were set in place by a popular sentiment driven by industry manipulation.
That's why. Next question.

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mrfredward
Vending machines kill an average of four Americans per year.

Forgive me for thinking we can't make barreling down the highway safer than
buying a soda. With 300+ million people, it's not a realistic target until
something supercedes driving entirely.

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austincheney
I am statistically more likely to die driving to work than I was serving in
Afghanistan during the surge.

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lacker
If you can afford them, cars are just better than public transportation. They
are faster and it’s much easier to handle children, luggage, or groceries in a
car. Uber also solves the parking problem. It would be nice to have zero road
deaths, but getting there by renouncing cars is going backwards. Instead, we
should have safer cars through better technology.

~~~
Arbalest
Better technology can't patch human issues unless you're able to remove the
human. Self driving cars are still not here.

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pcurve
for the past 15 years, they were averaging about 5 deaths / year for
population of 650k. Down from 40 deaths in 1970s.

If they were as populous as the U.S., it would be 250 deaths per year.

There were over 6,000 pedestrian fatalities last year in the U.S. Yes... we
could do a lot better.

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rwem
Why do Americans [anything]? Because in short they are ignorant.

Americans lack perspective on virtually all topics. They don't read enough,
they don't travel enough, their educations are overwhelmingly technical and
occupational at the expense of philosophy and ethics, and their domestic
brainwashing apparatus has left them collectively unable to think.

Transportation is just like any other topic American's are unqualified to
comment upon, like healthcare. They've been indoctrinated by propaganda
campaigns to believe and repeat a series of false statements: their cities are
too spread out (they aren't); their cities are exceptionally far apart (they
aren't); their weather is somehow unprecedented (it isn't); you can't take
groceries/children/lumber home on the bike/bus/tram/train (you obviously can).

So the answer to the headline's question is the obvious one, the one with the
most hard evidence and the one with the broadest explanatory powers. The
reason Americans believe these things is because of ignorance.

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imgabe
Europeans plundered and enslaved the world for centuries and now act
incredulous that anyone does not have the wealth at their disposal to dole out
to their unproductive citizens.

~~~
tidenly
Are you seriously implying the reason America doesn't have public transport or
the other public amenities Europe does is because they don't have the money?

