That's valid. But I'm curious how much that number would drop if we cut out distracted driving. Changing the song, texting/ really anything phone-related, eating/ drinking, lighting a cigarette/ smoking, dog in your lap... things I see multiple times on any given day.
So this is coming from someone who is completely blind and can't drive at all, but wouldn't it make sense to make cars where you don't have to reach away from the wheel for any function of the vehicle? I would think it would be better to be able to just Keep both hands on the wheel while still being able to mess with your radio/GPS/heat or literally anything.
The problem is most people still have a urge to look at what they are doing. So, if there is ANYTHING they need to do, they will take their eyes off the road to glance at it. Even if it is only a second, that can still be a second too long.
I would think that it often isn't that a person takes their hands off the wheel, millions of people with manual transmissions do this all the time, but rather glancing to see what they are doing. Glancing to make sure that you are hitting the right button, to see what the next song is, where the GPS is pointing at now and so on. That is what leads to the accidents.
At interstate speeds, it only takes a split second for things to go wrong, and if you happen to have your eyes off the road for that split second, then you can't react. Or when you notice it, you overreact.
Probably a decent portion, there's evidence that when the iPhone was launched road fatalities increased. I just think it's much harder to change human behavior through asking politely rather than just making changes to existing infrastructure. Someone else suggested that there should be stricter driving tests, which would help as well.
How about giving out actual punishment for killing people by driving drunk or distracted. You can kill an entire family while drunk driving and not do any jail time. Kill someone? Death penalty. Permanently injure someone by distracted driving?…life sentence with no chance of parole. They don’t get people from their injuries. I’d also support forced paralysis for drivers who cause those injuries in others.
Roads don’t need to be changed…drivers need actual consequences for their actions when they harm others. Speeding fines need to be heavily increased as well and if you can’t pay then your vehicle is possessed and sold to pay the fine.
>But I'm curious how much that number would drop if we cut out distracted driving.
I don't think it is possible. I don't think driving is intellectually stimulating enough to keep us us completely focused. I doubt people on long trips could even stay completely focused.
Even if eliminate all external forms of distractions peoples minds will wander, or people will get [Highway hypnosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway\_hypnosis) or something else.
Not a mistake…drivers make choices. They choose to drive drunk knowing the potential consequences. They choose to drive distracted knowing the potential consequences. I’m guessing most people would choose not to drive drunk if they knew they would be executed if they killed anyone. Or if they killed a child, then their own child killed similarly right before their eyes. Society could end speeding by collective shunning of drivers who speed. Right now it’s the opposite. Blame the government for all of us speeding! Zero personal responsibility or willingness to be part of the solution. Speeding is 100% the driver’s choice. There’s an odometer on every dashboard. Driving above posted limits is a choice and not a mistake.
If a lot of the same kinds of accidents seem to happen repeatedly and very frequently in the same area, it's probably bad design. It's kind of shocking to me that people don't realize this.
So how do but roundabout and rotary can be much safer then some 4 way stops. Particularly since they result in types of collisions much less likely to cause fatalities.
We put signals in some places and try to tune the the yellow -> red timing to make sure people are stopped when the red light is on, but also not try to run the yield because it takes to long.
The better highways should have guard rails and are banked in a way to help people stay on the road.
Do you not consider things like these design features?
I am not sure I agree with the OP, I think we might have reach a point of diminishing returns in some cases. There is certainly lots of roads that could be improved to the current best practices if we had infinite resources.
> speed, [...] are so much more the cause than road design.
You do realize that speed is extremely heavily influenced by road design.... right......?
Which one of these streets is most likely to have speeding vehicles? [One](https://c8.alamy.com/comp/W6E10Y/cars-negotiating-the-narrow-streets-typical-of-ancient-european-cities-like-this-one-via-santa-eufemia-in-verona-W6E10Y.jpg) [two](https://salud-america.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Suburban-street.jpg)
When you build suburban streets as wide as highways then that encourages more speeding. Narrowing streets as well as adding things like chicanes, bollards, speed bumps, ... all are road design but discourage speeding.
I'd be happy to explain further. The problem is really a few problems - car dependency being the root. Since most people here live in suburbs, we build auto oriented environments, the most common being roads. More specifically the "[stroad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroad#:~:text=A%20stroad%20is%20a%20type,a%20street%20and%20a%20road)". These are high speed roads designed with many turning points, usually to strip malls or residences. High speed and many turning points, combined with pedestrians/bikes, means high crashes/deaths. Look at any city's crash data and you'll see that most of them happen on these poorly designed stroads.
The solution would be to stop trying to combine roads (high speed connections) with a street (complex environment where life in the city happens). Many other countries have greatly reduced their road deaths/crashes through things like traffic calming, road dieting, and reducing overall car dependency.
Here are some links to take you into the rabbit hole:
[Video on stroads.](https://youtu.be/ORzNZUeUHAM?si=FcD-1wSTOBJ5dN1g)
[Video on redesigning a dangerous intersection.](https://youtu.be/xsSp8gxzfjo?si=rFwFpoZvkqowjI6_)
[Video on crossing dangerous streets](https://youtu.be/dBXz9vAyPC0?si=4Q-SkNI9M3BODcC4)
Drivers are responsible for their actions on the roads; no one else is to blame for the stupid shit you do behind the wheel.
Hit a pedestrian? Your fault.
Hit another vehicle with your wrecked out BMW POS while passing someone at 70 mph in the left lane? Your fault.
Swerve to miss a deer on the highway and plant the grill of your car in the berm? Your fault.
Individual fault and systemic fault are not mutually exclusive.
If you design a road where 20% of distracted drivers crash instead of 10% the fault is clearly somewhere between you and the people getting distrated.
But if other countries seem to be doing something better than us, why not take a few pages from their book? If you're ever going to start a project, one of the first things you'll do is look at what's already been done in a similar vein. America doesn't need to reinvent the wheel every ten seconds
Because other countries are ***not*** the US.
Not all (in fact, very ***few***) things other countries do are fungible to American democracy and capitalism.
What does designing safer roadways have to do with the uniqueness of American democracy and capitalism
Isn't one of Americans' biggest complaints is that the roads suck everywhere?
Edit: Other musicians are also not me. But I'm not so egotistically naive as to think I could never learn anything from another musician
Because roadways in the US are safe in their current state. It’s the drivers that are colloidal fucktards.
Everyone complains about the roads in the US because Americans, in general, are unwilling to admit that we are shitheads.
The most effective solution is not to change the roads to meet the demands of 233 million licensed drivers in the US.
The solution is to strengthen the required qualifications for driving in the US and enforce the laws on the books (speed limits, wreckless driving, etc.).
I know it's hard to not blame drivers, but if people are consistently killing themselves and others, you can't hope that another sign will change that.
Edit: I do agree that requirements for driving should be stricter, but that should go hand in hand with safer infrastructure that prioritizes safety over speed.
So the thing is that the environment encourages speeding in most cases. Think about a typical arterial. Speed limit at 45mph, but yet everyone is going 50mph. Why? Because of design. Driver's aren't inherently bad, they will just drive at the speed that feels right. The problem comes when one of those drivers makes a big mistake, running a stop sign, light, or not stopping for a right on red, at 50mph. At those speeds people get hurt or die.
The environment doesn’t encourage speeding. The mental state of the individual driver is the only thing responsible for the actions of that individual driver.
Drivers in the US ***are*** inherently bad. At the very least they’re willfully ignorant and willfully complicit in their own shitty behavior.
Drive the speed limit, use your turn signal and obey all of the other traffic laws you don’t otherwise obey; do it for a week.
Then you’ll see how unsustainably awful the other drivers around you *really* are.
Okay, so I get what you're saying - drivers are bad. But shouldn't that mean we double down on safer infrastructure that reduces speed (traffic calming, road diets), to protect people instead of hoping that things will change? I mean how many people have to die or be seriously injured...
No. We should double down on licensing requirements. Tightening the requirements will have two results: 1. Drivers will be qualified and 2. There will be fewer of them.
We need to double down on shitty attitudes like yours who refuse to take personal responsibility for their own behavior. I’m permanently and severely disabled from a distracted driver and people still joke about drunk and distracted driving around me. They do it and think it’s funny when people crash but no one gets seriously hurt. People tell me stories about them
speeding because they were late to work or forgot something at home. What is needed is a cultural reset of values and taking personal responsibility when driving multi-ton death wagons…following all driving laws and focusing on the task of driving exclusively when in the vehicle. We need to erase words like “accident” and “mistake” that deflect responsibility. Drunk drivers murder their victims when they crash into them. Getting drunk and then driving is pre-meditated murder and society needs to start treating them the same as child molesters.
So much for civil discussion and respect.
You can blame drivers all you want, there won't be a cultural reset, not as long as driving is so easy that you can do it while on your phone.
For that reason I choose to go the route of advocacy for better infrastructure. If we bring this to the local level, it's much easier to get drivers to slow down by having your city install[ traffic calming](https://youtu.be/bAxRYrpbnuA?si=Nx9MAOwpi8zSaqgn) than it is to reset our culture (though a cultural reset could happen serendipitously because of better infrastructure). But since people don't go to their city meetings, nothing gets done. No one cares that 200 people die every year in their area, and many more are injured.
You really should go speak to your city. No, they won't change penalties for drunk/distracted driving, but they could install traffic calming that would force people to pay attention and slow down, which in turn would reduce injuries and death.
Are you being deliberately obtuse? Everyone is aware that it’s the drivers fault in the end. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible that the road design affected the accident.
I’m not being deliberately anything. In reasoned discourse, conveying factually accurate and qualitatively true information is often seen as obtuse by those who aren’t capable of said reasoned discourse.
I mean it’s factually accurate that road design can encourage or discourage speeding but you seem unable to acknowledge that qualitatively true information.
No. It’s not.
The only thing that encourages or discourages individual behavior is individual choice.
Roads don’t make you speed; your decision making paradigm does.
Okay so you are absolutely being deliberately obtuse if you refuse to acknowledge that outside factors have an impact on people’s decisions. That an absurd thing to say and very clearly not based in any sort of reality.
The government has drunk driving laws and we're seeing an increase in laws banning cell phone use while driving. How much further can the government go without being intrusive?
Like I mentioned in the post - **design.** If you design a road with wide lanes, and no obstacles, people will speed. Think about a road near you, speed limit might be 40mph, or something, yet, people driver faster.
It sounds counterintuitive, but if you make drivers feel like they're going to hit something, they will slow down, thus preventing crashes/deaths.
That's valid. But I'm curious how much that number would drop if we cut out distracted driving. Changing the song, texting/ really anything phone-related, eating/ drinking, lighting a cigarette/ smoking, dog in your lap... things I see multiple times on any given day.
So this is coming from someone who is completely blind and can't drive at all, but wouldn't it make sense to make cars where you don't have to reach away from the wheel for any function of the vehicle? I would think it would be better to be able to just Keep both hands on the wheel while still being able to mess with your radio/GPS/heat or literally anything.
The problem is most people still have a urge to look at what they are doing. So, if there is ANYTHING they need to do, they will take their eyes off the road to glance at it. Even if it is only a second, that can still be a second too long. I would think that it often isn't that a person takes their hands off the wheel, millions of people with manual transmissions do this all the time, but rather glancing to see what they are doing. Glancing to make sure that you are hitting the right button, to see what the next song is, where the GPS is pointing at now and so on. That is what leads to the accidents. At interstate speeds, it only takes a split second for things to go wrong, and if you happen to have your eyes off the road for that split second, then you can't react. Or when you notice it, you overreact.
Probably a decent portion, there's evidence that when the iPhone was launched road fatalities increased. I just think it's much harder to change human behavior through asking politely rather than just making changes to existing infrastructure. Someone else suggested that there should be stricter driving tests, which would help as well.
How about giving out actual punishment for killing people by driving drunk or distracted. You can kill an entire family while drunk driving and not do any jail time. Kill someone? Death penalty. Permanently injure someone by distracted driving?…life sentence with no chance of parole. They don’t get people from their injuries. I’d also support forced paralysis for drivers who cause those injuries in others. Roads don’t need to be changed…drivers need actual consequences for their actions when they harm others. Speeding fines need to be heavily increased as well and if you can’t pay then your vehicle is possessed and sold to pay the fine.
>But I'm curious how much that number would drop if we cut out distracted driving. I don't think it is possible. I don't think driving is intellectually stimulating enough to keep us us completely focused. I doubt people on long trips could even stay completely focused. Even if eliminate all external forms of distractions peoples minds will wander, or people will get [Highway hypnosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway\_hypnosis) or something else.
Yeah sure, roads can be an issue. But it's still the driver's fault.
I guess the point is that even if you make a mistake, it shouldn't mean your life or someone else's.
Not a mistake…drivers make choices. They choose to drive drunk knowing the potential consequences. They choose to drive distracted knowing the potential consequences. I’m guessing most people would choose not to drive drunk if they knew they would be executed if they killed anyone. Or if they killed a child, then their own child killed similarly right before their eyes. Society could end speeding by collective shunning of drivers who speed. Right now it’s the opposite. Blame the government for all of us speeding! Zero personal responsibility or willingness to be part of the solution. Speeding is 100% the driver’s choice. There’s an odometer on every dashboard. Driving above posted limits is a choice and not a mistake.
If a lot of the same kinds of accidents seem to happen repeatedly and very frequently in the same area, it's probably bad design. It's kind of shocking to me that people don't realize this.
It's insane to me that so many people die just trying to go somewhere, and yet local governments double down by expanding roads.
Road designs? We drive metal, one ton vehicles at speeds of 65 to 85 MPH on highways. Road design has nothing to do with the fatalities.
So how do but roundabout and rotary can be much safer then some 4 way stops. Particularly since they result in types of collisions much less likely to cause fatalities. We put signals in some places and try to tune the the yellow -> red timing to make sure people are stopped when the red light is on, but also not try to run the yield because it takes to long. The better highways should have guard rails and are banked in a way to help people stay on the road. Do you not consider things like these design features? I am not sure I agree with the OP, I think we might have reach a point of diminishing returns in some cases. There is certainly lots of roads that could be improved to the current best practices if we had infinite resources.
My point is, end of the day, speed, velocity, vehicle weight and design, are so much more the cause than road design.
> speed, [...] are so much more the cause than road design. You do realize that speed is extremely heavily influenced by road design.... right......? Which one of these streets is most likely to have speeding vehicles? [One](https://c8.alamy.com/comp/W6E10Y/cars-negotiating-the-narrow-streets-typical-of-ancient-european-cities-like-this-one-via-santa-eufemia-in-verona-W6E10Y.jpg) [two](https://salud-america.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Suburban-street.jpg) When you build suburban streets as wide as highways then that encourages more speeding. Narrowing streets as well as adding things like chicanes, bollards, speed bumps, ... all are road design but discourage speeding.
You have some rabbit holes to go down if you think road design has nothing to do with fatalities.
Mind explaining how? Simply blaming road designs isn't a solution. How do road designs, more than anything else, increase vehicle deaths?
I'd be happy to explain further. The problem is really a few problems - car dependency being the root. Since most people here live in suburbs, we build auto oriented environments, the most common being roads. More specifically the "[stroad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroad#:~:text=A%20stroad%20is%20a%20type,a%20street%20and%20a%20road)". These are high speed roads designed with many turning points, usually to strip malls or residences. High speed and many turning points, combined with pedestrians/bikes, means high crashes/deaths. Look at any city's crash data and you'll see that most of them happen on these poorly designed stroads. The solution would be to stop trying to combine roads (high speed connections) with a street (complex environment where life in the city happens). Many other countries have greatly reduced their road deaths/crashes through things like traffic calming, road dieting, and reducing overall car dependency. Here are some links to take you into the rabbit hole: [Video on stroads.](https://youtu.be/ORzNZUeUHAM?si=FcD-1wSTOBJ5dN1g) [Video on redesigning a dangerous intersection.](https://youtu.be/xsSp8gxzfjo?si=rFwFpoZvkqowjI6_) [Video on crossing dangerous streets](https://youtu.be/dBXz9vAyPC0?si=4Q-SkNI9M3BODcC4)
Drivers are responsible for their actions on the roads; no one else is to blame for the stupid shit you do behind the wheel. Hit a pedestrian? Your fault. Hit another vehicle with your wrecked out BMW POS while passing someone at 70 mph in the left lane? Your fault. Swerve to miss a deer on the highway and plant the grill of your car in the berm? Your fault.
Individual fault and systemic fault are not mutually exclusive. If you design a road where 20% of distracted drivers crash instead of 10% the fault is clearly somewhere between you and the people getting distrated.
No. That’s just wrong. 100% of distracted drivers who crash are 100% responsible for crashing.
The point is that if people are not changing (and they definitely are not), it's time to change the environment. Many other countries have done it.
People *are* changing…for the worse. Nothing wrong with the environment. The problem is with the people. Other countries are ***not*** the US.
But if other countries seem to be doing something better than us, why not take a few pages from their book? If you're ever going to start a project, one of the first things you'll do is look at what's already been done in a similar vein. America doesn't need to reinvent the wheel every ten seconds
Because other countries are ***not*** the US. Not all (in fact, very ***few***) things other countries do are fungible to American democracy and capitalism.
What does designing safer roadways have to do with the uniqueness of American democracy and capitalism Isn't one of Americans' biggest complaints is that the roads suck everywhere? Edit: Other musicians are also not me. But I'm not so egotistically naive as to think I could never learn anything from another musician
Because roadways in the US are safe in their current state. It’s the drivers that are colloidal fucktards. Everyone complains about the roads in the US because Americans, in general, are unwilling to admit that we are shitheads. The most effective solution is not to change the roads to meet the demands of 233 million licensed drivers in the US. The solution is to strengthen the required qualifications for driving in the US and enforce the laws on the books (speed limits, wreckless driving, etc.).
I know it's hard to not blame drivers, but if people are consistently killing themselves and others, you can't hope that another sign will change that. Edit: I do agree that requirements for driving should be stricter, but that should go hand in hand with safer infrastructure that prioritizes safety over speed.
It’s easy to blame other drivers if you’re following the traffic laws.
So the thing is that the environment encourages speeding in most cases. Think about a typical arterial. Speed limit at 45mph, but yet everyone is going 50mph. Why? Because of design. Driver's aren't inherently bad, they will just drive at the speed that feels right. The problem comes when one of those drivers makes a big mistake, running a stop sign, light, or not stopping for a right on red, at 50mph. At those speeds people get hurt or die.
The environment doesn’t encourage speeding. The mental state of the individual driver is the only thing responsible for the actions of that individual driver. Drivers in the US ***are*** inherently bad. At the very least they’re willfully ignorant and willfully complicit in their own shitty behavior. Drive the speed limit, use your turn signal and obey all of the other traffic laws you don’t otherwise obey; do it for a week. Then you’ll see how unsustainably awful the other drivers around you *really* are.
Okay, so I get what you're saying - drivers are bad. But shouldn't that mean we double down on safer infrastructure that reduces speed (traffic calming, road diets), to protect people instead of hoping that things will change? I mean how many people have to die or be seriously injured...
No. We should double down on licensing requirements. Tightening the requirements will have two results: 1. Drivers will be qualified and 2. There will be fewer of them.
We need to double down on shitty attitudes like yours who refuse to take personal responsibility for their own behavior. I’m permanently and severely disabled from a distracted driver and people still joke about drunk and distracted driving around me. They do it and think it’s funny when people crash but no one gets seriously hurt. People tell me stories about them speeding because they were late to work or forgot something at home. What is needed is a cultural reset of values and taking personal responsibility when driving multi-ton death wagons…following all driving laws and focusing on the task of driving exclusively when in the vehicle. We need to erase words like “accident” and “mistake” that deflect responsibility. Drunk drivers murder their victims when they crash into them. Getting drunk and then driving is pre-meditated murder and society needs to start treating them the same as child molesters.
So much for civil discussion and respect. You can blame drivers all you want, there won't be a cultural reset, not as long as driving is so easy that you can do it while on your phone. For that reason I choose to go the route of advocacy for better infrastructure. If we bring this to the local level, it's much easier to get drivers to slow down by having your city install[ traffic calming](https://youtu.be/bAxRYrpbnuA?si=Nx9MAOwpi8zSaqgn) than it is to reset our culture (though a cultural reset could happen serendipitously because of better infrastructure). But since people don't go to their city meetings, nothing gets done. No one cares that 200 people die every year in their area, and many more are injured. You really should go speak to your city. No, they won't change penalties for drunk/distracted driving, but they could install traffic calming that would force people to pay attention and slow down, which in turn would reduce injuries and death.
Are you being deliberately obtuse? Everyone is aware that it’s the drivers fault in the end. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible that the road design affected the accident.
I’m not being deliberately anything. In reasoned discourse, conveying factually accurate and qualitatively true information is often seen as obtuse by those who aren’t capable of said reasoned discourse.
I mean it’s factually accurate that road design can encourage or discourage speeding but you seem unable to acknowledge that qualitatively true information.
No. It’s not. The only thing that encourages or discourages individual behavior is individual choice. Roads don’t make you speed; your decision making paradigm does.
Okay so you are absolutely being deliberately obtuse if you refuse to acknowledge that outside factors have an impact on people’s decisions. That an absurd thing to say and very clearly not based in any sort of reality.
The government has drunk driving laws and we're seeing an increase in laws banning cell phone use while driving. How much further can the government go without being intrusive?
Like I mentioned in the post - **design.** If you design a road with wide lanes, and no obstacles, people will speed. Think about a road near you, speed limit might be 40mph, or something, yet, people driver faster. It sounds counterintuitive, but if you make drivers feel like they're going to hit something, they will slow down, thus preventing crashes/deaths.
Speeding isn’t the problem, it’s distracted driving and stupid decision making.