Anecdotally I've driven in Texas, California, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania over the past 6 months.
Southern Florida, Miami in particular, was far and away the worst (again limited sampling and anecodotal) in overall 'quality' of driver. I was nearly hit on several occasions by people making up their own rules. Constantly seeing people just do whatever they felt like (huge exotic and performance car scene down there though). Horns honking almost nonstop. It honestly felt like a good portion of people behind the wheel didn't actually know US driving laws or dgaf. But possibly to the point in the article, congestion was so bad that you didn't achieve the energy levels to kill a person in a modern vehicle. Zero chance I ride a motorcycle or scooter in that area though.
I drove a couple thousand miles in Texas from Dallas down through Austin, San Antonio, South Padre Island and back over the course of a couple of weeks. Overall the drivers there were middle of the pack, but the speeds were off the charts. Regular excursions into triple digits just to keep with the flow of traffic.
Also drove several thousand miles in and round San Diego over the course of a month. It was kind of a mix of the two, moderate amount of poor decision making but also very high speeds punctuated with traffic accordion stops out of nowhere. More whisps of tire smoke and whiffs of scorched brakes (and, lets face it, weed) on the highway there than anywhere else I drove.
Ohio and PA didn't feel out of the ordinary at all. Basically a toned down San Diego, some bad driving and some high speed. But I'm from the midwest so it's probably just acclimatization, statistically all of the above are within spitting distance.
A lot of this in PA over the past few years. Literally, people out there are driving around while hot-boxing. So much that I can smell it when driving behind them at 45 mph.
I once saw a guy while driving on the 405 through Irvine, put his knee on the steering wheel to hold his truck in the lane, and rip a bong. That's some dedication and I was honestly impressed.
A prevailing flow of traffic moving at 80 mph in the San Diego metro is common in the faster lanes of some highways. But triple digits, like you report in Texas, that I haven't seen.
There are surely a few drivers zipping around at 90-100+, but they're the dangerous ones who are going outside the prevailing flow of traffic. I suspect that the cops make a priority of pulling over such drivers, although I can only speculate about the likelihood of getting busted.
The thing that scared me about San Diego were the lane-to-lane differentials in speed. You'll have an exit lane stopped and people ripping along at 80mph just a few feet away.
The high speeds in Texas were in the long connectors between metro areas. It's so flat out there that honestly it never felt 'dangerous', it's just that a greater percentage of run-of-the-mill mishaps will result in death. You couldn't do that in SoCal, too much terrain. Look at this chunk of 35 between Waco and Austin
>>One thing that Marsh and Pareene get into in their article is the difference between what is actually happening—a lack of congestion allowing people to drive too fast and then crashing their cars—and a much different narrative that’s been appearing in the news.
>>that our roads are inherently dangerous, and congestion has been a major force in keeping the accident rate down
I think this nails the problem. Drivers became dull and unskilled as driving became slower. Split second decisions dwindled, and a minority of drivers lost their split second muscle memory. Now anything beyond mundane stop-and-go traffic causes them to drive beyond their ability. When the roads opened up, they physically couldn't keep the car from crashing into something.
Something nobody seems to write down is that due to the "essential worker" phenomenon the drivers still on the road are selectively the worse part of the driver population. They have obsolete, unmaintained cars. They are overworked and never sleep. They are younger and less experienced. Yeah all the 50-year-old corporate attorneys are working from home, but the guy who stocks the Safeway overnight as his third job is still out there, speeding on his bald tires.
In Canada, our driving tests are reasonably stringent (it's uncommon to pass the first time), but you only have to pass once and the police rarely enforce traffic law. The result is that people are great drivers until they get their license, and then quickly turn into morons and just drive like everyone else.
Mandatory retesting might help, though if there's still no enforcement, we'll just get drivers who are good a taking the test, but not driving.
Some folks are encouraging the use of the word "collision" or "crash" instead of "accident":
> Before the labor movement, factory owners would say "it was an accident" when American workers were injured in unsafe conditions.
> Before the movement to combat drunk driving, intoxicated drivers would say "it was an accident" when they crashed their cars.
> Planes don’t have accidents. They crash. Cranes don’t have accidents. They collapse. And as a society, we expect answers and solutions.
> Traffic crashes are fixable problems, caused by dangerous streets and unsafe drivers. They are not accidents. Let’s stop using the word "accident" today.
> If you believe these incidents are accidents then they will happen to you. Don’t just change the word; change the mentality from accident to the collision. Doing this will help you make the switch to believing they are preventable. Many people say accidents happen. Sure they do, but these are not accidents and they are preventable when you change the belief and do you best to avoid them while staying focused on the driving environment.
You’re fighting a losing battle. The issue is the legal / insurance context.
For legal purposes the critical distinction is accident or intentional. “Accident” doesn’t necessarily mean act of god, or unpreventable, it just means it wasn’t intentional.
Agree, yet most people do not understand the distinction. Changing the word in colloquial use could make people attentive by removing the rampant misinterpreted connotation that it was unpreventable.
Then let's keep the term "accident" confined to insurance documents in the context of assigning blame/fault, and call it a "collision" everywhere else.
The law says if it was done with reckless indifference for safety of other, then you may be subject to increased penalties, but it still wasn’t intentional.
I'm just one fool with an opinion on the internet, but FWIW I like "collision" as a substitute for "accident" better than "crash". "Crash" connotes something spectacular and would seem to exclude fender benders, while both "accident" and "collision" would include them.
It will be easier to isolate the different factors once things get back to something like normal. That would have to include pre-pandemic levels of traffic-law enforcement, especially for speeding (e.g. multiple cars going 90-100mph on I-95 where anything over 75-80mph used to be a reliable way to get a ticket). Then we'll be better able to separate what factors contributed to the temporary "divot" in the accident-rate curve vs. what factors contributed to permanent change. All of the psychological factors, if they have any effect at all, are likely to be in the first bucket. App distractions and higher speed on emptier roads are likely to be in the second.
Because some of those numbers, and the causes behind them, are likely to persist in the longer term. Many people who can work from home will continue to do so. Many services that used to require a physical visit will continue to be done via online self-service instead. That's the new baseline against which more transient factors need to be compared to get meaningful results, and we won't know what that baseline is until after things re-stabilize.
Traffic may have been down, but, anecdotally, the pandemic also put a bunch of people on the road who normally wouldn't have been driving themselves, no?
Inexperienced drivers are stupidly dangerous.
In addition to the "congestion" hypothesis, I would also posit that the lack of traffic deprived people of a lot of cues. Most driving in cities is "station keeping"--maintain your position relative to the cars around you and you can pretty much ignore everything else. If you're one of the few cars on the road, you are responsible for maintaining your speed, maintaining your lane, slowing down ahead of curves, etc. in response to all the environmental cues.
And, as the self-driving folks have found out, "station keeping" is WAY easier than controlling your position relative to environmental cues.
My anecdata on this is because of my eyesight going bad (getting old sucks--I recommend against it). I live on a street that I regard as a "target rich environment" (lots of pedestrians, bicycles, and motorcycles with a nice mix of Uber/Lyft drivers who are fscking road hazards)--and driving on that street was what drove me to start wearing glasses all the time. I simply cannot miss somebody because my vision is subpar and my brain edits them out, or I will kill them.
lol, "accidents" are actually results with known causes.
edit: Professor Andrew Gelman[0], if you're reading any of these replies, go fix your title (accident is not in vogue these days per AP Stylebook). You also misspelled Chuck Marohn's surname in the copy a couple of times, so this as a whole looks sloppy.
I don't see enough data in either story presented (average speed is higher leading to more fatalities vs. isolation/disruption) to come to a reliable conclusion.
It's clear enough that higher speeds lead to crashes being more likely fatal on average, but a key part of the argument is acknowledging that there are much fewer cars on the road - which would tend to reduce the number of crashes. You would have to look at the data to see which factor dominates.
Do you have something substantive to add to the discussion or just a drive by smart remark?
This kind of twitter style cheap points comment does nothing for the discussion, and should be discouraged in adult discourse. Imagine if this was what HN consisted of, people chiming in with clever "words matter" comments with no substance
That's complete and utter nonsense. Crashes not caused by driver error are rare, but not nonexistent.
People can for example get epileptic seizures without having any reason to believe there was something wrong with them before they got in the car. Likewise unforeseen factors can lead to errors in civil and automotive engineering without requiring any negligence or other wrongdoing.
An LA journalist recently got roasted in their Twitter replies after having posted about an "accident" - this is extremely relevant (we're sick of these "outcomes" in Los Angeles):
I agree we should be defaulting to neutral terms like "crash" or "collision". I hesitate to fully agree with "every single crash is someone's fault" though because I think society has to accept some risk (less than we currently accept with driving) and because it's important to say more than one person can be at fault. There are problems throughout the system:
* Drivers need to slow down and be more cautious. I'd like to see criminal charges more often when drivers act out of the expected norms.
* The expected norms for drivers need to change. (I hope this happens as self-driving cars take to the roads more.) When most people are taking risks regularly, I don't think it's as productive to come down heavily in the infrequent case where the risk is realized.
* We should also consider road design, as the article says. There have been other articles about this on HN [1, 2]. I'd like to see a shift from design that overwhelmingly favors cars to design that puts public transit and cyclists on at least a level playing field, if not considering them first.
* Vehicle design may need to change. My (possibly incorrect) understanding is that crash standards have greatly improved the outcome for people inside a particular crashing vehicle, but maybe not for the "other guy", particularly when that's a pedestrian or cyclist.
check some usage notes on your use of "accident"[0]
> Risk management and risk mitigation experts (such as actuaries, systems engineers, and others) generally do not approve of calling motor vehicle crashes (MVCs) "accidents", because they advisedly reserve that term for things not directly caused by human recklessness or negligence. Because it is predictably obvious (and directly causal) that distracted driving (e.g., texting, IMing/DMing, videogaming, or intoxication while driving) produces MVCs, those MVCs are not "accidents". Nonetheless, among the general public, MVCs are quite often called "accidents" rather than "crashes" or "collisions", not only by idiomatic inertia but also because connotatively, it steers clear of broaching the topic of blame assignment, whereas a phrase like "he crashed" connotes blame.
There's also a relevant twitter reply concerning intent[1]
> On the part of the individual drivers, it was accidental.
>
> On the part of the city, it was deliberate - they built an unsafe road, they can see the statistics - it's so unsafe that TV news crews come to talk about how dangerous it is - and they don't fix it.
(final edit) We know how to fix the roads - there's a large body of evidence showing the "Complete Streets" approach (bollards, lane reductions, et cetera) works.
Your not-so-authoritative citation suggests that "accident" should not be used as a general term, which I'm inclined to agree with, but it in absolutely no way suggests - as you do - that there is no such thing as an accident. Accidents do happen. Even a completely attentive and competent driver can fall prey to a mechanical failure, a rock falling in the roadway, etc. Saying that they must have been going "too fast for conditions" without any definition other than "the speed they were going when the collision occurred" is circular bullshit. As long as driving - including the driving done by others to support haughty "non drivers"' lifestyles - is necessary, there will be genuine accidents as well as collisions that are the result of recklessness or negligence.
I found it weird that the article states things without any single data point, study or proof. They say media got it wrong, they claim the increased death are due to street design without any clue where they got that conclusion from. I'm weary of this, because sometimes people want to push agendas.
Auto accidents are increasing because of increasing driving-related app distractions.
Android auto and many other driving-related apps frequently call for attention and they also introduce frustrations and distractions that should not occur. There is also no really way to properly account for how much these apps distract people because of the ideal that they serve vital functions.
Just to enable Android auto and Apple Car play a user has to take their eyes off the road and it's freaking dangerous. Make sure roads are totally clear before crossing, or take the long way around, it's your only hope as distracting ads, engagement driven development, and consumerism take hold of app making.
Absolutely. It's a world-wide epidemic. Even software driven vehicles introduce several new distractions into the process of driving.
The accident rate may change in other areas due to lesser driving habits, or better road markings, but the issues of distracted driving are beginning to show and it can't simply be fixed by speed cameras and tickets, it's something that needs to be addressed with mobile phone makers, car makers, and software companies.
I'd be careful with that equivalence, texting while driving is presumably an intermittent and short lived interruption, when you drive drunk you're impaired for the whole trip.
Entire companies like Uber and DoorDash are built upon drivers being distracted by mobile devices while driving. As dysfunction and advertising proliferates apps more and combined with autonomous and software-driven vehicles, we're all going to be in for a wild ride. (unintentional pun)
Of all the in-car distractions I don’t think these are the problem. I’d argue using either of those is much safer because they don’t allow you to do most of the more distracting things.
Not in every car. Each user's experience is different. There are times you need to disable the app, and when you first connect a device or new app to it, it presents distracting prompts that many drivers will not stop properly to address.
The other apps like a music player (etc..) can also easily provide a lot of distracting cues while working in conjunction with Android Auto and Apple Carplay. For example, I use BlackPlayer for music now (Because Google Play Music was retired suddenly) and it frequently malfunctions, does not play, and my volume control is often at the wrong level, and random play never works correctly... Those seemingly little issues are not too hard to address while walking, but while riding a bicycle or driving, they can cause great harm.
It's not like Europeans haven't also been speeding like crazy.
I think one factor is that in Europe cars are generally equipped with brakes, tires and suspension with a much bigger margin of safety for high speed operation. One of the biggest car markets in Europe is the one with a lot of unrestricted Autobahn. And worse yet, many US states don't even have regular technical inspections, so you get away with more deferred maintenance. When you're stuck in 55 mph land, a car can get pretty dilapidated and still mostly hold together, but once you subject it to high speeds and high braking and cornering loads the risk of catastrophic failure skyrockets.
"And worse yet, many US states don't even have regular technical inspections, so you get away with more deferred maintenance."
US inspections are generally a joke (compared to Europe). There's not even a statistically significant difference in accidents caused by mechanical issues between states with inspections and those without.
The overwhelming majority of accidents are caused by things people knew were dumb and did anyway. Shaking down everyone with a 10yo+ car to the tune of one random suspension/steering part a year won't change that. Chasing the long tail of equipment failure will do nothing to address the judgement related accidents so even if you magically solved 100% of equipment accidents you've still only affected a tiny fraction of all accidents.
It's not impossible that "isolation and disruption" tilting people and that people drive faster with less congestion both contribute to more accidents in the US.
Too many people don’t actually know the rules of the road or have understanding of even basic driving etiquette. They don’t understand that you shouldn’t tailgate people. They don’t understand that accidents aren’t accidents, they are all caused by someone’s negligence. People just don’t understand how dangerous driving is.
I think that this driving ignorance is the root problem, the cause of causes. Need to make driving tests much harder.
As a frequent pedestrian/cyclist, I completely agree. We don't let just anyone drive a truck or fly a plane, but somehow piloting a personal automobile is treated with nothing even approaching the seriousness of those other activities.
Unfortunately, we also have decades of built environment that strongly assumes most adults can and will drive. We have significant segments of the population for whom their choice of car is tied into their identity and ego. We have an assumption that many jobs can only be driven to, or even require driving on the job.
We don't have even the political willpower to take away licenses from obviously unfit seniors, much less able-bodied working adults.
People get away with a slap on the wrist for vehicular manslaughter because what's the alternative? Ruining a second life by causing the perpetrator to lose their job? When they already feel terrible about what happened and isn't that punishment enough?
I don't really see a way out of this other than what is already happening in a lot of places, which is trying to break overall car dependence so that taking away a license (or making the tests hard enough that way fewer people can get one in the first place) is no longer a death sentence.
> We have significant segments of the population for whom their choice of car is tied into their identity and ego.
And that identity is in many cases pathological. It’s amazing how irresponsible our culture is about this. Practically every car commercial depicts a driver doing something in an urban area that is not only plainly illegal, but extremely negligent and dangerous. This is how they market and sell the cars. And then the young men who buy them are told never to exceed the speed limit. Give me a break.
We are selling machines designed to break the law using marketing that emphasizes their law-breaking properties to people who with total certainty will use them to break the law.
Oh for sure. It's nuts that this kind of advertising is allowed— Streetsblog does a semi-regular feature where they recognize America's most toxic car ads, and Dodge in particular is called out as being consistently awful:
> “Automotive ads are generally really bad, but Dodge is, above and beyond, worse than any other car company,” said Harris. “There’s not even a hint that a speed limit even exists, much less that a driver might abide by one. They’re inciting road violence in every single one of their commercials.”
My solution would be to use dangerous/anti-social driving as an extreme revenue generator for Govts. Why print so much money when there are so many ignorant fools we can tax to death whilst also improving the lives of law abiding people as a happy side-effect.
Get caught speeding and get an automatic 1K fine. Do it again and it's 5K.
Tailgating would be 10K and an instant 12 months ban. Same for using a phone/texting.
What reasonable excuse do people have for committing these crimes in the first place? They deserve no sympathy or leniency.
"whilst also improving the lives of law abiding people"
I think only people who think they know the law and believe the system is fair/without error, would take such a hard line.
"Get caught speeding and get an automatic 1K fine. Do it again and it's 5K. Tailgating would be 10K"
These values seem wildly out of touch with, not only severity of criminal fines, but also with the ability of people to pay them. Most people in the US don't even have $1k saved.
Now we could make it a means based fine, like 1% of AGI. It would still be a stiff penalty for people making $50k or $200k. As it stands now, $150 ticket is nothing for some high earners, but may be sufficient punishment for a first time offense for some low earners (eg <$25k).
Most people in the US would, therefore, be extremely incentivised to stay within the law then? If you want financial penalties to be affordable then you get where we are now with offenders accepting the odd fine as part of the game.
I agree with the means test based fine concept but I would make the consequences equally life changing.
Well, if that's your opinion, then my opinion is that I'm glad you aren't a leader. The law should provide a punishment that disincentivises bad behavior. But openly advocating for "life changing" penalties for some minor infraction like speeding is inappropriate. Should we then be executing people for misdemeanors so that the weighting is proportionate for other offenses? If you can't pay the fine, then they might put you in jail, starting a loop where you can't find work and dance never pay. If you make minor, often unintentional traffic offenses oppressively punished with "life changing" penalties, then you can actually have the opposite effect. If I know it's an all or nothing penalty then I might as well go all out in my offense. If I don't have money to pay, then what do I actually lose - the punishment changed basically nothing (aside from the removal of hope/potential which leads to additional crime).
Do you drive? If you don't, then perhaps there is bias in your opinion. If you do, do you really think you've never violated any law or regulation? Have you read all of the statutes and regulations?
I'm looking at driving behaviour in isolation to most other crimes and misdemeanors because there are no mitigating factors for driving in a dangerous and anti-social manner. If a large fine is going to hurt you then you have a simple choice and the correct choice has no negative consequences to you whatsoever, unless reaching the next stop sign a few seconds earlier is that important to you.
Yes I do drive and I don't claim to be always perfect but I do not willingly drive in a dangerous and reckless manner.
"because there are no mitigating factors for driving in a dangerous and anti-social manner."
That depends on how you define dangerous and anti social. What if I exceed the speed limit when driving to a hospital in an emergency? Is 5 mph over the speed limit "dangerous" enough to fit the definition? What mitigating factors do you think exist for other crimes that don't exist for these.
"but I do not willingly drive in a dangerous and reckless manner."
Now we're getting to the meat of the discussion. So you're only talking about willful violations. That could be hard to prove. You claim that you're not perfect, but that you also don't drive dangerously? So we need to know what defines "dangerously". There's a good chance your unwilling behavior does constitute dangerous behavior.
On top of all this, reckless driving and reckless endangerment are offenses that carry stiff penalties in most places. In many places, these are misdemeanors and result in possible jail time, license revocation/suspension, re-education, and fines. If we already have these then why apply them to minor or even deminimus offenses?
I think you're over complicating things. I don't know what the definition of 'going over the limit' is in the US but in the UK it is 10% plus 2mph. This leaves plenty of leeway for your emergency dash to the hospital at 5mph over the limit and the occasional lapse of concentration.
I concede that you do already have severe penalties for reckless driving but they are not rigorously enforced except for extreme outlying cases and/or where a serious collision has resulted. And, I think, this is where the true solution may be found since more rigid enforcement of existing laws may actually be enough to deter all but the most determined of miscreants.
The problem is most driving laws are selectively enforced. I'd say 90%+ of drivers on the road near me are speeding to some degree. Where do we draw the line, right at the speed limit so that someone going 2 mph over gets a 1k fine?
Tailgating being enforced more heavily (it's already probably illegal under reckless driving laws) would be great.
Current law in the UK is 10% plus 2 mph, which I think is fair? Majority of drivers seem to have a default of limit plus 20% which results in a lot of tailgating for those of us who insist of staying legal.
I completely agree, and you can tell where the Ontario government start to take speeding seriously— going 149km/h where it's signed for 100? $400 fine. Going 151km/h on the same road? Now it's $10000 and roadside vehicle seizure. Pretty clear message about which one actually matters to them.
But ultimately it's the same issue here with everything else; except in extreme cases, it's not realistic to take away people's licenses when driving is a critical part of getting themselves to work.
We can fly ultralights without a license. Granted those "vehicles" technically aren't airplanes and generally only result in loss of life to one's self.
"We don't have even the political willpower to take away licenses from obviously unfit seniors"
I believe many states do require a retest after a certain age.
"or making the tests hard enough that way fewer people can get one in the first place"
Fewer, sure. Way fewer, maybe not. I think most people are capable of safely operating a car. I think there would be a large percentage that would just need to put more effort into learning. The way it is now is that people remain ignorant on the subject because they aren't required to study and learn, because licenses are practically given away. Plus, why waste time learning the law if nobody else follows it either?
Tougher licensing isn't (or shouldn't be) primarily about depriving people of licenses, but rather providing forced incentives to learn through testing standards. The standards shouldn't be so high as to prevent most people from driving. If they are then we could change some of the rules or designs to simplify the process, although likely at the expense of rate of flow.
> providing forced incentives to learn through testing standards
Fair, yes. I think I meant that with an implicit "... unless the license-seeker is willing to expend considerably more effort."
Of course we could also be talking about some technological components, such as an insurance-style OBD box you plug in for the duration of your learning period, that submits you to a more extensive evaluation if you're detected to be driving aggressively or whatever.
I don't really like the OBD boxes. They have to use GPS to be effective. Even then, it's mostly about speed and misses other things. There could be scenarios where rapid speed changes are prudent. I don't want to be penalized for slamming on the brakes if a deer jumps our in front of me just because the sensor registers a rapid deceleration.
Fair, yeah— it's not really a super thought-through suggestion. More just saying that we have 25 years of technological change in the space since graduated licensing was introduced in the 90s, and that alone is probably reason to revisit the whole thing.
Not over a city, also, how many pedestrians to ultralights kill anually? Generally people are not greatly bothered by someone engaging in solo risky behavior in the middle of nowhere.
> I think most people are capable of safely operating a car.
Great, now if we could just figure out who those people are and get the rest of them off the road, that would be amazing, but as it currently stands, car drivers are regularly killing people.
"Great, now if we could just figure out who those people are and get the rest of them off the road, that would be amazing, but as it currently stands, car drivers are regularly killing people."
What's your point; or is this just a rant ignoring my comments on increasing testing?
I’m living in Poland which is known for notoriously hard driving exam (only one in three candidates pass on first try, you can fail exam at any time if examinator thinks you aren’t aware of cars surroundings). I’ve passed mine on sixth attempt.
We are also no. 2 most deadly country to drive in in EU.
Looking at my country road safety is propably 1/3 infrastructure (awful road surface, bike lanes sandwiched between regular speed car lanes, 3-lane wide roads that require you to go from one edge lane to other on short distance to get to target) and 2/3 shitty driving culture.
Because its very hard and rare to be caught by police for dangerous driving (and there are plenty of yotube videos of police just ignoring dangerous driving or doing it themselves), people here are conditioned to drive in alternative and dangerous way. A saying goes that real drivers ed. starts when you are alone in your own car. And if you are fresh after exam and trying to drive legit, you will also be conditioned to drive shitty because alternative to not exceeding the speed limit yourself is having somebody else speeding drive into back of your car.
Running red light (called „late orange”) is also very common, and despite there being cameras on most of crossroads, those are used only to measure traffic and not for ticketing.
People force their way in traffic because yielding way to car that wants to change lane is very rare and considered dumb.
When people are stopped by police, they dismiss it as bad luck.
People only follow the limits when there is automated system in area for ticketing. Because they know there is no way to cheat the system.
Top app on Google Play is Janosik (named after polish Robin Hood countrpart) - navigation app that has warnings about speed cameras, police patrol routes and speed controls.
I think people know the rules of the road, but driving is a social activity with it's own norms like any other. That's why drivers from different parts of the country drive differently. (I'd also argue if you want to fix this you need to make police enforce traffic stuff only instead of using it as a pretext for other kinds of enforcement.)
If we want to make driving tests much harder then we need to not make driving required for day to day life.
I'd argue that there are true "accidents", they're just not all collisions.
In our laws we have even have different levels of fault, accident -> negligence -> recklessness -> premeditation, and criminal vs civil.
You're right thou all of humans don't adequately understand + calculate risk.
I agree that enforcement needs to change. We should be trying for universal/consistent enforcement. Ticketing 1 person our of 100 violators can easily lead to bias in application of the law.
We can call them collisions and then wait for an investigation (ha ha ha) to categorize it. Of course they only perform investigations for fatal accidents most of the time. You can't even get police to write an accident report in some major cities, like Philly.
Most do, of course, but there is a significant portion of drivers who have no idea of the rules or blatantly go against them. It's obvious to anyone paying attention.
It's even worse if you include things like being courteous to others or anticipating and mitigating potential risks on the road as part of "following the rules".
Traffic enforcement is rare even in major cities. You have a very small chance of getting caught doing something illegal, unless there are automated traffic cameras enforcing the rules.
Right, but they're general police (eg, they also handle non-traffic enforcement such as drugs), right?
I believe GP's point was not about "specific enforcement of traffic laws by police" but "law enforcement agencies who are specifically charged with traffic".
True, they are full law enforcement but assigned traffic duty.
"law enforcement agencies who are specifically charged with traffic"
Are there really any that are? I didn't think that was common, even in cities. In fact, many cities are issuing guidance to not enforce basic traffic violations to prevent pretextual stops.
Not to single you out, but so many responses are trying to offer some single factor that is suddenly making this worse when most of them are long term trends that should apply to other places this isn't happening.
So while driver's education probably should look a lot more like civilian pilot licensing with required x hours of instruction time, that by itself isn't going to have noticeable effects for years as the median age driver cohort benefitting from that becomes larger.
It'll take years to tease out what is going on here, but if nothing else the take-away is to be careful out there, and it's not just anecdata that it's more dangerous.
> ... as the median age driver cohort benefitting from that becomes larger
There's already a lot of benefits "in the pipeline" that take decades to fully manifest. For example, Ontario introduced the current graduated licensing scheme in 1994 [0], but that means there are still millions of increasingly older drivers on the road who were never required to pass the G2 and G tests that anyone under 40 has.
Overall, it's just absurd that driver's licenses don't require a retest every 5-10 years, but that kind of change would obviously a much harder sell to the public than giving them a pass to blame the reckless youth with one hand, and a pull-up-the-ladder type fix to the problem with the other.
> driver's education probably should look a lot more like civilian pilot licensing with required x hours of instruction time
To get my driver's license in Alabama I was required to do this at the time. But it was self-attested, there was no independent verification of driving experience.
I don't think it's ignorance of the rules, I think a lot of drivers consider themselves to have above average driving skills and what you consider dangerous tailgating is your failure to understand that these people have extraordinary reactions and can actually manipulate the laws of physics.
I'm not being flippant either, they really do think this.
Certainly people not understanding vehicle dynamics can be an issue. This sort of information should be added to the test - just like for a CDL you need to understand how loads, grades, and gearing works beyond just the laws around them. So the test shouldn't just be about the law. And I'd argue many do not know the law when the test is only 50 questions and there are many more laws/signs/etc than 50.
I would argue complacency + selfishness + a small amount of ignorance. Some people really do not know that you shouldn’t get in the left lane unless you plan to pass a vehicle or want to drive faster than your current lane. A lot of people know you shouldn’t tailgate or cut people off or smash the accelerator just so you can smash the brakes 10 seconds later when you get to the red light or stopped traffic that was clearly visible, but don’t give a shit because when they’re in control of a car they feel entitled to drive however the hell they want.
Depends on the type of test (book, practical, etc). If someone is complacent, then they likely were complacent when preparing for the test (didn't study, no drivers Ed course, etc). A reasonable test can weed out those complacent people who don't care to know or follow the law/instructions.
I think part of the problem is that even people who don't want to drive or hate driving are all but forced to do it in many areas because of lack of other "affordable" options. More work from home has improved that at least.
There would certainly still be ignorant people on the road if driving was entirely voluntary, but maybe there would be less impatient drivers and it would be more tenable to universally require driver's ed/have intense standards.
As for the danger part, I think some type of VR based visceral experience of an actual accident should be required. Most people think it’s just a pillowy experience solved by the airbag from auto commercials
I don't think anyone thinks a car crash is no biggie. They just don't think it'll happen to them. Or they give themselves a pass to send that quick text at a red light because they're usually so safe and it really is important, and nothing happened the last time they did it, etc etc.
Maybe scaring people would help them out of this mindset but I really doubt it.
https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...
Anecdotally I've driven in Texas, California, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania over the past 6 months.
Southern Florida, Miami in particular, was far and away the worst (again limited sampling and anecodotal) in overall 'quality' of driver. I was nearly hit on several occasions by people making up their own rules. Constantly seeing people just do whatever they felt like (huge exotic and performance car scene down there though). Horns honking almost nonstop. It honestly felt like a good portion of people behind the wheel didn't actually know US driving laws or dgaf. But possibly to the point in the article, congestion was so bad that you didn't achieve the energy levels to kill a person in a modern vehicle. Zero chance I ride a motorcycle or scooter in that area though.
I drove a couple thousand miles in Texas from Dallas down through Austin, San Antonio, South Padre Island and back over the course of a couple of weeks. Overall the drivers there were middle of the pack, but the speeds were off the charts. Regular excursions into triple digits just to keep with the flow of traffic.
Also drove several thousand miles in and round San Diego over the course of a month. It was kind of a mix of the two, moderate amount of poor decision making but also very high speeds punctuated with traffic accordion stops out of nowhere. More whisps of tire smoke and whiffs of scorched brakes (and, lets face it, weed) on the highway there than anywhere else I drove.
Ohio and PA didn't feel out of the ordinary at all. Basically a toned down San Diego, some bad driving and some high speed. But I'm from the midwest so it's probably just acclimatization, statistically all of the above are within spitting distance.