In addition to the sensible measures explained in the article you should also do the thing they excluded from the analysis upfront: drive less. Move closer to your job, move closer to a train station, move to a country with proper public transport. Factor in car dependence when choosing a new job or a new home.
it's strange these articles keep on about "other drivers trying to kill you" and the prevelance of multiple-vehicle collisions in deaths, while their only suggestions are driving better. Defensive driving only takes you so far. As well as driving less, it would also make a big difference avoiding driving in the evening after dark, avoiding dangerous roads, and the biggest one, driving a taller and heavier vehicle will make sure you are the killer not the killed. I'm not advocating for this stupid arms race of vehicle size, but I think it's quite shocking that we pretend it's not crucial - IIHS statistics show that drivers of small cars are dying at a rate 4-5x higher than big cars, and still tests like EuroNCAP are refusing to compare different size vehicles. And while we ignore this, people keep dying, and average vehicle emissions continue to rise despite the rise of alternative fuel vehicles.
I work about 30km from where I live and I commute with public transport (which takes me about 1h20m for a one-way trip). It would be a 30-45 minute drive, but I often have trouble sleeping and I wouldn't trust myself behind the wheel in such a state. Besides, not having a car saves me a lot of money.
I would love to live closer to work, but it's hard to find an OK job here as a developer.
I love your advice. I also hate driving very much. But current city planning isn’t for pedestrians. Distance to office is 2 miles, it takes me 40 minutes to walk there, 20 minutes by car and at least 45 minutes by bus and subway. I would love to have an office, I can reach without driving in 30 minutes, but it is extremely seldom and expensive case.
Let’s talk about vacation. Going to neighbor warm country costs 200€ by car, 180€ by plane (plus rental car) or 540€ by a night train. I’ll take night train once to experience this, but other times I’ll take the car.
My factor now for choosing a new job is days I can work from home and 99% time it is zero. Companies suffer heavily from “general wants to see his army” syndrome (in Germany?). Home office could reduce driving easily by at least 20%, but companies have no benefit from it. Office rent will be paid anyway.
>Companies suffer heavily from “general wants to see his army” syndrome (in Germany?).
Can confirm this. But I've usually been able to get 1 day working from home a week. (I think home office is a Denglish word btw, not sure if others will understand)
> (I think home office is a Denglish word btw, not sure if others will understand)
Native English speaker here: Generally `home office` would refer to the actual office room rather than the concept of working from home.
That said, I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary until you pointed it out, it does feel like a natural way to say it. I think people will understand fine.
I've heard Americans say Handy for phone, public viewing for outdoor sports events and home office, if they've spent enough time in Germany. So I guess Germanisms can spread. I used home office as well and I was told "we don't say that here",that's why I pointed it out.
"Home office" is a fairly normal word in American English usage, though it's more likely to refer to a room in your house (where you work) than to the activity of working at home.
For example, there are tax advantages to having a home office (the room), versus having the entire value of your house be considered personal non-business consumption.
I literally have never driven as short a distance as 2 miles. It would never occur to me - I'd automatically walk or cycle. I think this comes from having come to car use relatively late in life. I relied on public transport or hitch hiking until my late '20s, and using my body to get around still feels much more natural to me than driving.
German here as well - the lack of employer flexibility is why in the last 15 years, I have been working exclusively for companies overseas, remotely. I found it much easier to negotiate remote work with an employer based in San Francisco than one in Berlin or Munich.
Part of it is pure luck - being at the right place at the right time. An on site internship gave me a foot in the door for my first remote job. After that, I had experience in a certain niche and a couple of open source contributions under my belt.
Another part is just having the guts to ask for a remote job straight away and accept getting turned down dozens of times.
a lot of fatalities on the road are pedestrians, though. Even if you don't drive you subject yourself to the risk of being hit by a car pretty much every single time you go out.
I dodge a lot of pedestrians who walk out in the road with their back to you, expecting you to drive into oncoming traffic to avoid you. They take no notice of you, do not attempt to move right, etc.
One was a woman pushing a baby carriage down the road. I stopped and asked her what if I hit her? She replied she'd sue me. I replied that wouldn't help her or her baby much if she was dead.
Aren't sidewalks used to park cars there? In the city i live currently I also frequently have to walk (or jogg) on the road itself rather than on the sidewalk because of this.
If some driver stops beside me to complain it's quite funny to help him notice that there are actually more cars on the sidewalk than on the road.
In every part of the US I've been, it's very rare for cars to park on the sidewalk. The only things I recall seeing parked on the sidewalk are construction vehicles.
Occasionally a car will be parked in a driveway such that it blocks the sidewalk where the sidewalk crosses the driveway. That's illegal but it happens sometimes.
Why not stop and ask if she needed a ride somewhere? You might even have made the world a better place than stopping to hurl abuse at a mother and child.
For bonus points, try slowing down and passing pedestrians when it is safe to do so.
I hope if you have kids you tell them not to play in the road, even if it would be the car's fault if they were hit.
I recall a public service commercial from the 1960s where they suggested that all parties on the road pay attention, even when they have the right-of-way. The catchphrase was "don't be DEAD right".
Stopping to lecture an adult in public is rarely well received. Had you instead said "hey, this is a dangerous road to walk on, would you like a lift to the end?" The chances are that she would have refused but your chances that she took something away from the conversation would have been much higher.
> Stopping to lecture an adult in public is rarely well received.
Yup. On the other hand, I did some foolish things on the road myself when I was younger, and got an angry lecture from a stranger. I didn't take it well at first, but eventually realized he was right and I changed my ways.
> your chances
Maybe. Or maybe offering her a lift would have raised her suspicion that I had something other than her welfare in mind, and my point would have been lost. As it happened, when I said that suing me wouldn't have helped if she was dead, her look of surprise at that indicated I had made a point.
> Stopping to lecture an adult in public is rarely well received.
I imagine the people who need a lecture in public are the same ones who do not receive feedback/advice very well.
This is a problem on the receiving end.
> "hey, this is a dangerous road to walk on, would you like a lift to the end?"
You are advising an adult male to offer a ride to an adult female who he is a stranger to? She doesn't know him from Adam and should NOT accept that offer.
Not walking in the middle of the road and not accepting rides from strangers are things people should be taught as children.
If I felt it was so dangerous that I needed to stop and offer unsolicited advice to someone I didn't know, I would feel responsible for their safety if I didn't offer them a lift.
Besides, a world where well intentioned people self-censor themselves from being kind to strangers is a bit self-fulfilling isn't it?
Driving your 2 ton metal box in a way which doesn't endanger the lives of others, especially children, would also be a good lesson to teach to children. In fact since it is a vastly more real danger than "stranger danger" it probably do more good.
> If I felt it was so dangerous that I needed to stop and offer unsolicited advice...
The situation was not dangerous, her actions were dangerous.
> Driving your 2 ton metal box in a way which doesn't endanger the lives of others, especially children, would also be a good lesson to teach to children
Absolutely. And this is NOT the case here.
> In fact since it is a vastly more real danger than "stranger danger" it probably do more good.
> The situation was not dangerous, her actions were dangerous.
A situation cannot be simultaneously dangerous and not dangerous. Perhaps her actions caused the situation to be dangerous but surely you wouldn't hold that against her child?
I say this as someone who rides motorcycles, drives a car and even a Japanese import campervan, the driver of a vehicle is the one in charge of a potentially lethal machine. One of the first lessons you should learn as a driver is to be able to stop in the distance you can see to be clear ahead, if you do that then the chances of having to swearve to avoid people walking in the lane or having to think about the consequence of killing a mother and child are practically nil. That is what I mean by driving responsibly.
Anyway, I fear the cultural gulf here is too great.
> One of the first lessons you should learn as a driver is to be able to stop in the distance you can see to be clear ahead, if you do that then the chances of having to swearve to avoid people walking in the lane or having to think about the consequence of killing a mother and child are practically nil.
You can get a ticket for "creating a hazardous situation" and judged as partially at fault even if the accident is technically the other party's fault. For example, behaving unpredictably like arbitrarily slamming on your brakes and getting rear-ended. I know this for a fact because it happened to a friend - she slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting a dog, was rear-ended, and was shocked to be assigned 50% of the liability. The other 50% was assigned to the vehicle behind her for not keeping enough distance.
I don't think you'll find judges very sympathetic to that, nor to a person who wanders onto a freeway daring traffic to dodge him.
Besides, it simply is stupid to tempt fate, whether you're right or not. Being DEAD right is not a happy outcome.
> A situation cannot be simultaneously dangerous and not dangerous.
I didn't say that. I said her actions were dangerous.
It was in response to your comment:
> If I felt it was so dangerous that I needed to stop and offer unsolicited advice to someone I didn't know, I would feel responsible for their safety if I didn't offer them a lift.
If there is a sidewalk she can safely walk on, that is a not-dangerous situation, and and there is no need to offer her a lift. If she chooses to instead walk in the middle of the road, that changes the situation.
> the driver of a vehicle is the one in charge of a potentially lethal machine
Agreed. Again, there is nothing in this thread stating otherwise.
My point is that pedestrians need to walk responsibly as well.
> the chances of having to swearve to avoid people walking in the lane or having to think about the consequence of killing a mother and child are practically nil.
He didn't threaten her at all. He informed her that her previous actions could have gotten her and her child killed. Hopefully she listened and will be more careful in the future.
Being a drunk pedestrian is one of the leading causes of dying in a vehicle accident. Just because you're not in a car does not make you immune. In some ways it make you more vulnerable.
Studies have shown that pedestrians should wear helmets when walking to increase their rate of survival, but good luck getting that to happen.
To be fair wearing a bike helmet or a motorcycle helmet is "treating the symptoms" too. Most of those accidents result in injury because the bike was hit by a car.
NYC has both a lower overall traffic fatality rate and a lower pedestrian fatality rate than the country as a whole. Moving to a less car-dependent area is good for your transportation safety.
All my life since I was a wee lad I dreamed of owning a car and driving. Now that I drive a 589 HP supercharged V8 with a manual transmission, there's no way I'd move to anywhere where I couldn't drive to work! Every day is celebration day now.
Time to become a public transport advocate then, so that the roads are empty enough for you to drive your car. 600HP in a traffic jam are just as fun as 60HP.
For the record, I spent the first 19 years of my life using public transportation and walking for kilometers on end. While I still don't mind walking and do so for half an hour every day (15 minutes to the parking lot and back), I have traumas from using public transportation, being squeezed like a sardine, having my personal space invaded by smelling, sweaty people and almost getting a heat stroke in the Summer in 40 C trams and buses while being elbowed in the ribs.
But you are right, I'll gladly help advocate public transportation to everyone so I can drive in peace on the roads.
I own multiple cars, in part for exactly such a situation (N + 1 redundancy, just like I design computer systems). Luckily, taking my car to the shop is rare, as I have the requisite knowledge and wrench on my cars myself.
With 600 hp and a manual clutch your left knee will soon be significantly stronger than the right one, if there is any traffic on your commute. (Recall time in the 7-gear manual 911)
I've been driving manual transmission cars for several decades now, a lot in traffic jams (almost every time I'm on the road) and have had no issues with the clutches or my left knee or my left leg in general. I would rather drop dead than own an automatic transmission car again. That written, the TR-6060 transmission in the V8 is absolutely phenomenal, the clutch is heavy duty and grabs just right at half way point, it's the best clutch and manual transmission I ever drove, and I drove a lot of them. In spite of being system engineered for the race track, the V8 is a great daily driver; my colleagues knocked that one out of the park. In the interest of being fair, my other car has almost 206,000 km and both the transmission and the clutch are still original from the factory, and I'm the first and only owner of that vehicle.
Crazy how relevant this article is to what I have been reading this past week. I was recently doing some research into reducing my personal existential risk, and I concurred putting more energy into reducing/mitigating the baseline risk factors in automotive crashes and road safety in general is a worthwhile effort.
Also recommend reading this insightful article on LessWrong by an anonymous user [0]; has a few decent actionable steps one could take to reduce the risk on the road, aside from a nice collection of most risky habits one should AVOID doing to reduce their road death risk exponentially.
Additionally, I'm considering using local public transport more, and even thinking of moving to cities with better, safer public transportation as there's a MASSIVE difference in fatality rates of folks using private vehicles v/s folks using public transportation. [1]
And, QUIT using motorbikes. Exponentially higher chances of a fatality on a two-wheeler than on four wheels. [2]
A good piece of advice I read or heard when I first started driving was, “never trust a turn signal”. This has saved me a few times when someone had their right turn signal on but kept moving forward rather than turning right at an intersection where I was about to pull out and turn left.
If only it were that simple. I'd argue that on U.S. roads, there's definitely a culture of speeding, and in many circumstances drivers who fail to speed end up slowing traffic, often provoking the ire of other drivers, who in turn reduce safety even further via way of tailgating, unsafe passing, road games/road rage—all of which is a huge distraction unto itself for everyone involved.
On most roadways I find other drivers will expect you to go 5mph over the posted limit. On expressways, this is usually as high as 10-15mph for all but the right-most lane.
I feel like driver education here tends to emphasize not speeding over maintaining traffic flow and respecting the passing lane. Combine that with a bunch of aggro pricks behind the wheel, and it's a recipe for disaster.
If you teach people to "maintain traffic flow", the aggro drivers will be dictating all driving.
The solution is greater detection and neutralization (fines, suspension & jail) of aggro drivers, not ramping up the speed to the point where they are no longer aggressive.
As much as I'd love living in a world where tailgaters had the book thrown at them, a more realistic solution is just getting out of their way.
If it's a single-lane road and that isn't possible, then likewise going slightly over the limit if it appeases them and defuses an otherwise unsafe situation (assuming conditions warrant).
Fascinating, and well studied, but I don't buy the '1 in 10 distracted'. As someone who has done tons of driving, I'd honestly put the number of distracted drivers, specifically dicking with their cell phone, somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of all drivers. And that's just my corner of the nation, I'm sure it's more in others.
I commute about 35-40 minutes both ways and it’s crazy to me how many people I see messing with their phones while driving at freeway speeds. It just makes me wonder: Do people not realize how dangerous it is? Or do they just not care?
I honestly think it should be treated the same as driving while intoxicated (in my state it’s just a fine which I believe does nothing to deter people).
Probably it is the regular long commute and that most of time nothing happens. It is long, people are bored daily and impatient. Some won't get free time after they come home.
So they push boundaries progressively getting comfortable with more and more risk. Because there is no negative feedback and nothing happens. (Until it does).
Absolutely. To answer your question, both. I think people realize there is some inherent danger, but don't care. Partly because of the 'itll never happen to me' thought, and partly because humans have been driven to isolation so much as to see other drivers as not human, but merely obstacles. Depressing truth.
The state of Queensland just introduced Australia's toughest penalties: AUD$1000 fine and four demerit points for touching your phone when behind the wheel (even when stopped at lights).
Cyclists in Amsterdam don't wear helmets as a rule -- YouTube is chock full of videos of Amsterdam bicycle traffic, so you can see for yourself. Therefore, it's not surprising that a texting cyclist wouldn't wear a helmet.
To be clear, texting on a bicycle is not a good idea, helmet or no helmet.
That's an impossible number to calculate. Just today, in fair but flowing traffic, I noticed a vehicle braking constantly and erratically. The person behind them apparently had enough and swerved to my lane to pass them, nearly causing an accident that wouldn't have involved the other driver. Sure enough, it was a middle aged lady staring at her phone.
I have to wonder how much legal alcohol limits reduce/increase death rates.
Go to any sufficiently large party and there'll be some guy who's drunk after an all nighter and ready to hop in his car, asserting that it's okay because he's not drunk anymore. The dude's still drunk, but once you get worn out and start coming down, you just kind of feel done. It seems to me (in my uninformed view) that legal limits let these guys feel like they have some leeway and they're probably legally safe to drive (which, honestly, they might even be). It plants an idea that there's a reasonable threshold of drunkenness in which driving is still okay, which I don't think is a good idea.
I'm not generally a supporter of zero tolerance policies, but I think leaning that way is possibly better.
As a person who almost never drinks, I feel pretty off and goofy halfway through one beer. I'd probably be under the BAC limit but there's no way I'm fit to drive. I don't have confidence in my drunk driving abilities, but plenty of people do and they think they have a legal basis for it.
Legal alcohol limits are a guideline and not a solid rule. Ideally, they were designed with the idea that personal responsibility would play a role in your decision to drive after having a beer.
After all, you can have zero alcohol in your system and still be impaired in some way like other drugs, sickness, donating blood, lack of sleep, etc. This is why DUI arrests usually involve some judgement on the side of the police officer, and they can make the decision that you're driving impaired even if you are under the legal limit.
I am ambivalent on the idea of reducing legal limits. For one, it's never been easier to avoid driving drunk, with Uber and the like, and anecdotally it seems that the propaganda against drunk driving is working, with it becoming largely unacceptable among younger people these days (although this would be purely anecdotal, I have no evidence either way). Additionally, seeing how I don't drink, any reduction to the legal limit wouldn't really affect me much. On the other hand, I don't like the idea of zero tolerance laws and I think they always do more hard than good, and additionally I don't believe that farther reducing the limit will have any effect on drunk driving. I also don't much like the idea of farther restricting the decision making power of police officers, there needs to be a balance here: enough restrictions to prevent abuse but also enough freedom to allow officers to account for circumstances and not turn them into law-enforcing robots.
Increasing police budget to get better enforcement of existing laws would be another approach but doesn't seem like a good use of money. I think the most cost effective way of reducing impaired driving related fatalities has been, and will continue being, education and public transport when it comes to urban areas. Ride hailing apps and self-driving vehicles will eventually do the rest.
One kind of legislative change I'd consider taking a look at is reducing or removing penalties for sleeping in your car, particularly in rural and suburban areas. Letting someone sleep it off in their car is far better than them driving drunk, and I think any fears of homeless people setting up camp in their cars, which is the origin of many such laws, is vastly exaggerated.
What about reducing your chances of killing other people?
As a somewhat jaded motorcyclist (though not in the US) I'm unsurprised to see no mention of us in the article. Not sure of the US stats, but in Aus the biggest dangers to motorcyclists are (a) other drivers not seeing us [1] then (b) our own stupidity.
Not much for anyone but motorcyclists to do about (b), but I would make some appeals to car drivers:
Think about motorcyclists at junctions - we're not actually invisible, and what you miss seeing is primarily a function of your own inculcated habits of observation.
Don't tailgate motorcycles. It's frightening and forces us to deploy more attention behind us than is safe.
On undivided roads, stay to your side of the road on bends, even if there are puddles or potholes.
Thanks.
[1. known here in Australia as a SMIDSY - 'sorry mate I didn't see you']
Take the received wisdom that car drivers cause the majority of motorcycle accidents. No they dont. It turns out, motorcyclists are solely or primarily responsible for the crashes theyre involved in 56% of the time. Though, if the crash involves another vehicle, its more likely the other road user was at fault.
Taking a look at that report, it seems to be missing an important statistic when it comes to motorcycle crashes.
What is the fatality and serious injury rate when comparing when the motorcyclist is at fault vs when the other vehicle is at fault.
An accident involving just a motorcycle, intuitively, seems a lot less likely to be fatal to a properly geared person. Often times such an accident will be because of operator error and result in a low-side crash. Crashing into something on the road could result in serious damage, but that's a lot less likely than losing traction and falling off. If I recall correctly, the Hurt report supports this.
Similarly, in a two-vehicle accident where the motorcyclist is at fault, the motorcyclist is likely to see it coming and attempt to prevent it in some way. Additionally such a statistic will also include motorcyclists low-siding and then their motorcycle (or them) sliding into a vehicle.
Overall, it seems believable to me that while a in majority (56% isn't even that much more) of motorcycle crashes the rider is at fault, if we take a look at only fatal crashes and crashes resulting in serious injury, cars will bear the majority of the responsibility.
All that said, I also find that report to be a bit alarmist and disingenuous with statistics, particularly when compared to the Hurt and the MAIDS reports. I would assume this was done in the interest of "scaring" riders into safer behaviors and not with any malicious intent.
My a & b weren't intended to be ranked though clumsy phrasing did suggest it.
The situation is contested & difficult in Australia, because so much of the data comes from our traffic cops, who are poorly trained in crash investigation by international standards. I don't have refs handy, but I've seen widely disparate stats here - official (police-derived) ones generally put more of the 'blame' on motorcyclists than do university studies. I actually did a course at Queensland uni on traffic accidents many years ago, and it was a minefield of unreliable data and motivated interpretation. I've no idea whether NZ is better or worse in that respect.
In any case, whether car drivers are the cause of the majority or minority of cases, shouldn't they wish to make efforts to avoid killing other road users?
It seems to me that you can’t conclude that speeding causes accidents from these statistics. If people speed 30% of the time, then accidents will involve speeding 30% of the time if speeding doesn’t influence the risk at all. I would also expect the amount of speeding to matter a lot.
I’ve always had this issue with speeding statistics: the assertion that “speeding causes accidents” usually sounds like a textbook case of base rate neglect. Especially considering that nearly everyone in the US drives 5-15 mph above the posted speed limit.
You can't out statistic physics. Energy goes up with velocity squared. A small reduction in velocity means a lot less energy involved which delivers better outcomes for all involved.
But on a freeway accidents generally happen between cars traveling in the same direction, so the effective velocity is much lower than the velocity of travel.
You read my mind! This must be some sort of SEO optimized writing. The ‘meat’ of the article is at the bottom. All the rest is explaining how a certain situation came about, how it was measured and whatever else the author can dig up...
Not in the article scope but something worth considering if automotive safety is truly a top concern... I'm under the impression that placing all occupants in rear-facing seats reduces fatalities. This extended claim is often made when reading about infant and child automotive safety. If true, all passenger vehicles going forward could be built this way. (And when Level 5 automated driving is available, drivers become rear-facing passengers.) Cars, vans, buses, ... starting now.
OTOH, "the view is worse" sentiment may be culturally strong enough to cast a blind spot, so to speak, over such evidence.
Three things I do:
- avoid left turns like the plague
- always have a good grip on the wheel, mostly 2 hands (easier when I had a less comfortable car)
- when stopping at a turn, put your steering wheel in an angle that will cause you not to full on drive into opposite traffic if someone happens to rear end you (fun experience to be pushed through the corner with 80 km/h, narrowly missing oncoming car also going 80 km/h)
Using percent values <1% can be a bit confusing for some people I think. I've definitely seen people see "0.01%" and interpret it as "one percent," so writing it out in words is a decent way to do it.
It's not uncommon, especially when you include the "about" that was missing from your quote. Even more common is to say "about half a percent".
Try them both out loud: "about zero point five percent" vs. "about half a percent". One rolls off the tongue much better than the other, is easier to understand, and doesn't introduce false precision.
Understood. What "confuses" me is that it doesn't say "about half a percent", it says "about half of 1 percent" which I find is a bit like saying "about half of 50" instead of "about 25".
All States need to pass laws that when walking along roads without sidewalks pedestrians must wear full bright reflective safety vests.
I'm amazed at the people I see dressed in all black, schlepping down a two lane road with their back to traffic for they side the are walking on while wearing ear buds or headphones.
I have outstanding night vision, but in the last 6 months I've narrowly missed clipping 3 different people. Even with high beams on it's amazing how easy it is for pedestrians to get lost in the background.
Another thing that you can do is drive a late model SUV. The late model can proved things like lane keeping assistance, automatic emergency braking as well as thinks like automatic traction control and curtain air bags. The SUV’s large size means that the vehicle’s body can absorb more of the energy of an impact.
Personally I would say if you need any of those features regularly you should not be driving a vehicle. Or at the very least stop using the atrocity which is the touch based navigation/in-car entertainment.
(Had a rental Ford with a touch based radio/sat-nav. One could not manipulate the radio without the lane control having to act.)
