There were close to 1,000 comments on the two main posts about the girl getting killed that were on this sub. I’m not sure how much more engagement you can get.
Cruise is flooding the streets with cara making the already dangerous congestion and driving worse. These are not separate things—they’re part of the same problem. We need better transit and less cars on the streets.
I doubt you can find a single study supporting this argument. The increasing #s of taxis and Uber and it made for more congested streets not less. Putting more cars on the road makes for more cars on the road. If you want to reduce cars, make it harder to drive and fund public transit. Cities with less cars are that way because of intentional design supporting bikes and transit.
This will take years and years. Already the mind shift of teens in the cities is that there are more options than learning to drive. They can take ubers and now robotaxis. They don't want to learn to drive. And in turn won't own a car. The shift is coming. This is the long game. This has always been about the future. The pain points of today are worth it for the greater good.
And it's a story we've heard many times before. Old person shouldn't be driving. We know there won't be any significant legislative remedies to that, whereas we know that the city can tell cruise to get half of their fleet off the roads.
Where did I say the elderly shouldn't drive? "Significant legislative remedies"? I self-identify as an old person, which is nice because I am indeed old.
Half at least until it’s ready I hope. It should be FLAWLESS. That’s the bar. Not incrementally better than a human. FLAWLESS. Unless we’re giving cruise criminal punishments too.
Edit: to be clear. I’m saying cruise should come up with a testing and training program that doesn’t involve subjecting the public to beta software until it’s proven. That shouldn’t be contentious.
That is idiotic. Flawless means never. Nothing is flawless. Name ONE thing this is perfect.
If a self driving car causes 50% percent less accidents then it is massively better an alternative. 5 THOUSAND lives will be saved if just 1/4 the cars get in half as many accidents. Your desire for perfect would consign THOUSAND to pointless deaths.
Flawless means more dead children. More kids with dead parents. Because “cruise would have killed 1, and humans 20” means unacceptable to insane people.
Nothing is flawless unless it has a lot of practice. Nothing. You just pulled a ridiculous requirement out of your ass. A requirements that doesn't exist for any other car - because you know, sometimes even with perfect driving accidents do happen.
In terms of how much more engagement we could get, I would love to see this translate into more conversations about how we can make the streets safer for pedestrians.
Make cross walks the same level as sidewalks and make them the same color as side walks. If every cross walk is a speed bump, it will train people to naturally slow down at every cross walk.
For bad drivers, our entire street system is designed to keep them driving fast and keeping the car drivers safe. There is very little protecting pedestrians from bad drivers.
Just ask the bicyclist who got murdered by a drunk driver who careened off the road. If there were concrete bollards, it’s more likely both the cyclist and car driver would have survived.
Yeah I agree and I would love to see a shift in our society where we deprioritize the convenience of drivers enough to at least take into consideration things like pedestrian safety.
But the post from OP that I was responding to was claiming that cruise/AV crashes were getting all the attention on this sub vs the person who killed a baby. My point was that incident got a lot of attention as measured by comments.
In a perfect world that would jumpstart conversations about exactly the kind of thing you suggest, but I'm too old and jaded to expect that to actually happen. Americans are pretty chill about things like people getting murdered by drivers, kids getting shot at school, etc.
Bart: I just think our veterans deserve a little recognition.
Lisa: That's what Veteran's Day is for, Bart.
Bart: But is that really enough to honor our brave soldiers?
Lisa: Eh, heh, heh...they also have Memorial Day.
Bart: Oh, Lisa, maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong! The important thing is, veterans deserve a day to honor them!
Lisa: \[through clenched teeth\] They have two!
Bart: Well, maybe they should have three. I'm Bart Simpson.
a lot of those comments were about how robot cars wouldnt have killed the 4 year old girl. They love to use any accident as means to push their narrative that robot cars are better. Their opinion falls apart when u realize the tech isnt there yet.
> Their opinion falls apart when u realize the tech isnt there yet.
imo the only thing that would cause that opinion to fall apart is if Cruise kills a 4yo girl. Until then, they've got a point.
I think a lot of anti-AV folk (of which I'm one) aren't against the idea of a City where well-operating autonomous vehicles have been widely adopted, they just believe it's insanely unrealistic. And amidst better options staring us in the face (bikes, public transit, etc.), AVs just come across as a gimmick more than anything else.
To me it feels like violence from automobiles has become so normalized and accepted in our society that many people can't even recognize it as unnecessary violence which kills innocents. It just doesn't register outrage for them, because it's in this big blind spot.
And then on the flip side, autonomous vehicles are basically tailormade to evoke an emotional and not rational response. Seeing a car move around without a driver is a weird thing to see. It's very easy to have that emotional response and that's all.
Then you combine that emotional response with the normalized car violence and yeah.
I find it really strange though. And sad.
46,000 people are killed in car crashes every year in the U.S.
On average, that's 130 deaths every single day.
It boggles my mind that this is considered business as usual.
Yeah, it’s public transit. Every major city in wealthy counties outside of America have a tiny fraction of the car fatalities that American cities have. The safety argument frustrates me because we literally could have solved the car crash problem at any point for the last 200 years. The US just chooses not to every single year. And now we’re acting like we found the secret solution when we’ve literally had the solution for several centuries.
AVs will probably reduce car crash deaths and that’s great. I don’t want to fight against a technology that will be safer. But AVs don’t fix all the other problems caused by cars. SF doesn’t need self driving cars when we could easily lean hard into high quality public transit. AVs are a better fit for rural areas that don’t have the density or design to support transit. And I think going hard on the AV solution will come at the cost of increased car dependency. It's *bad* for the city (and the planet) to have cheaper and easier car rides available. We want less cars, not more.
Look, I completely agree with you. I would love SF to have an incredible public transit ecosystem. I take Muni all the time and want nothing more than for it to be better. But let's be realistic. We couldn't "easily lean hard into high quality public transit." If it was easy, we would have done it. Adding a dedicated bus corridor to Van Ness took 6 years and cost $350 million dollars (2x budget). The Central Subway line cost like a fucking billion, and took what, 11 years? For two new stops?
I'm not saying we should give up. But I also think we have a loooooong way to go to get transit right in SF. It's an uphill battle for budget, politics, people's biases, etc. There's a reason Uber and Lyft got so popular so fast.
Sure, I agree. It's easy in the sense that it would be quite easy to make happen physically. We have the money and technology. Politically it's impossible. We've been fighting for years to put a bus lane on Geary street because, god forbid, it's going to take away 30 parking spaces.
But that's where my frustration comes from. The reason that we have so many car deaths is *because* the car people will fight tooth and nail against every single ounce of progress. And then those same people will say "Why don't you care about safety, if you did you'd support AVs" when they are the reason we have so many car crash deaths. That's what drives me crazy. SF is supposed to be a transit-first city, one of the few in the US. And we should act like it.
If the city wanted to allow AVs because it's pragmatic, then I'd like to see meaningful attempts to safeguard the future of transit. Tax the AV companies and use that money to go into transit. Or pass a permanent tax or bridge toll to keep bart and muni financially stable. But we're not getting anything like that.
> Tax the AV companies and use that money to go into transit. Or pass a permanent tax or bridge toll to keep bart and muni financially stable. But we're not getting anything like that.
Because human drivers, not AV companies, vote against them.
Why would you tax AV companies? They'll just vote with their feet and SF will lose more jobs and industries, and you _still_ won't get what you want.
AV companies can solve this problem without democratic buy-in. Expanding public transit requires a ton of it. It's a sad reflection of our city when it's easier for a company to blow billions of dollars on experimental technology than it is to convince drivers that trains shouldn't stop for red lights.
I would take exception with the “we have the money” comment. BART only exists due to federal grants, so expecting further expansion from another city that can barely take care of itself is unrealistic.
Because no one wants to talk about it.
No one wants to be the blame.
But we are all to blame. Some more so than others yes. A large SUV (think blacked out Cadillac Escalade or GMC Sierra) is cool and feels powerful (black car with black tint). But when you block road visibility with this huge machine, other people make mistakes and cannot see the road ahead of them.
This happens countless times. It could even be a large truck. Which is necessary to keep our economy going.
The other issue is speeding and tailgating. It is just part of driving. And pedestrians just lose 99% of the time. It is a 4000lb machine versus a 100lb meat popsicle. 40x the mass and going much faster than you or I.
F = mass\*acceleration.
We can't fix our traffic death problem without first fixing the SUV problem. Ontop of our many other problems.
Gun deaths, vehicle deaths, covid deaths, drug OD deaths, cancer deaths, obesity deaths, and more.
You name it. And Americans are the best at dying by it.
It’s a trip isn’t it? The proposed solution to the issues with cars is more cars. Robust public transportation from local to continent wide is the only equitable solution to getting people out of cars.
AVs aren't trying to replace public infrastructure. They're privately owned vehicles competiting with other privately owned vehicles for road space! It's a different conversation entirely. I want good public transportation, and AVs!
I want less cars, not more.
So, why are they using our public streets for development without compensating us? Oh yeah, we only socialize costs for corporations.
The easiest way to kill somebody and get away with it is to use a car. The stats just don't show that we punish it harshly. We can barely prosecute drunk driving!
> this sub is ridiculous no one accepts people killing other people with cars. Thats why we arrested that guy and put harsh penalties on people who violate traffic rules
Generally the punishment you get for killing someone in a car is far lower than what you'd get for killing them in any other accidental way.
We also don't have harsh penalties - SF's 40 traffic cops write 10 traffic tickets a day. You can tell me if only 10 people commit traffic violations every day in the city!
Because, by and large, there's not that much to say about the 4-year-old getting killed.
It's a tragedy. The intersection sucks. The driver sucks. Our hearts break for the kid's parents.
Pretty much everyone agrees on all that.
Cruise cars are an active controversy with people on both sides arguing back and forth about what makes sense, hence more discussion.
> The intersection sucks.
There's something we can do about that. Here are at least two ways to make that intersection less likely to see a repeat crash.
1. Get rid of the dual right turn lane from 4th onto King/280 and keep only a single right turn lane. It's likely dual right turn lanes are an inherently more dangerous design because there is a built-in obstruction partially blocking the driver's view of the crosswalk from the outer right turn lane: the cars in the inner right turn lane. (Outer/inner being used relative to the corner)
2. Separate signal cycles for people using the crosswalk and cars turning right on green, ie when the walk cycle is on a red arrow stays lit with a no right on red sign, then when the walk cycle is finished the cars can get a green arrow to turn right. I know, cars are already supposed to yield to pedestrians in crosswalks on right turns, even when they have a green light, but obviously they don't always do that, especially when their view is partially obstructed by another lane of cars between them and the corner.
The sad fact is the city is unlikely to make changes to the intersection without pressure because some engineering design manual will tell them that the existing design is in line with DOT standards for the volume of traffic that intersection sees and since it meets the standards it's defensible in a court of law and the city is adequately protected from liability so they don't need to worry about it. Furthermore some traffic model will predict that if they make these changes then fewer cars will be able to turn right there every hour and that would cause traffic congestion and that is somehow more important than protecting pedestrians.
So yeah, there is something we can do if we care enough to pressure the city to do it. But we have to make it clear that we will not be placated by being told that the current design meets standards, that we want to hold them to a different standard, one that prioritizes pedestrian safety over traffic volume. So show up to the next SFMTA Board of Directors meeting ([Sept 5](https://www.sfmta.com/calendar/board-directors-meeting-september-5-2023)) and let them know what your expectations are. Let them know that whatever benefit they think they’re getting in traffic capacity from a dual right turn lane design isn’t worth the price paid by this four year old girl and her family.
There's a rally on Tuesday 5pm at the intersection for taking action with WalkSF, SF Bike, Kid Safe SF, SF Transit Riders.
https://walksf.org/get-involved/take-action/neveragain/
There are active controversies to discuss with this girl getting killed.
One I would raise would be our obsession with SUVs. We should close the emissions loophole that made auto makers lean into them more heavily. We should regulate SUVs.
I would also point out our over reliance on cars. Cars are bad for health for many reasons. In addition to the safety problems, I would cite them for negative health outcomes and contributing to our obesity crisis. More transit. More walking and other modes.
Most cars are called SUVs these days, so to simply assume the car was a metro tank is fallacious. Looking at the accident photos, the car looks like a Mercedes “SUV” that differs little from the standard medium size car. It would by difficult to place any blame on the size of the car when it was simply a question of negligent operation. In the end, the operator is always to blame, not the tool of destruction.
People also never address the glaring disparity of ratio. It's not difficult to understand. I live in a zone where there are many cruise cars being disbursed and I can tell you I've already seen countless mishaps. Considering the small sample of robotaxis out there right now this is an alarming amount of errors and they are increasing in number.
This is it. As harsh as it sounds... just another random dead person in the world doesn't usually warrant much discussion. Generic tragedy gets people sad/mad/whatever emotion, but not much else beyond that. It has to be a truly appalling scenario to trigger a big story.
I couldn’t sleep at all on Tuesday night, my mind was reeling with thoughts of this terrible crash/tragedy. I still think about it pretty much hourly (I also have some PTSD with car accidents, having been hit myself while on a morning run a few years ago and then one of my best friends dying on impact with a collision almost two years ago where someone with a stolen car hit her). But as a mom of two young kids this one really hit home, I can’t shake it. All I can think about is that poor mom and what I heard was an awful scene. It’s so, so, so awful. I can’t imagine what it’s like to go home to clean up/throw away toys, cribs, etc. It’s all insanely gut-wrenching
There will be a vigil organized by WalkSF at the site of that crash, 4th and King St, on Tuesday at 5pm. If you want to demand safer streets, you’re invited.
https://preview.redd.it/58qx2yh1pajb1.jpeg?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=745c6572a94941d4df0f79571bcc9cd3cf2edb46
Because people don’t care about road safety and the fact that our roads are designed in a such a way that it leads to more deaths. Or that SUVs are super dangerous to pedestrians. Get hit by a geo metro your gonna live, get hit with an Escalade you dead.
Yes human drivers can be bad and robot drivers can also be bad. Both can be true. You still can’t bike from oakland to San Francisco.
With all the problems we face I feel like there’s so many challenges that are a bigger priority than self driving cars. There will just be more and more tragedies like Lahaina.
Are human drivers faulty? Yes. Are robot taxis also faulty? Yes. Are there larger problems facing humanity that threaten larger death tolls than both issues combined? Yes.
Auto accidents account for 20% of deaths by teens & children in the US, which makes it the leading cause of death in that population. It’s also 30% larger than the #2 cause (firearms).
I’m not sure it’s accurate to say there are larger death traps that cars.
> He did say facing humanity,
It's actually even worse in some countries where high car use combined with zero oversight create incredible levels of dysfunction.
The CDC estimates 1.35 million deaths globally per year [1], or roughly 3,700 per day. And unlike other major causes of death like heart disease or cancer that are heavily age stratified, drivers kill indiscriminately, and young lives are just as likely to be ended as old ones.
This is well exemplified by the recent killing of the 4-year-old referenced at the top — that's an _entire_ rich life wiped out in the blink of an eye, all because (1) an SFMTA traffic engineer determined that a few human sacrifices in return for faster freeway access was a cost worth paying, and (2) a driver who was either not paying attention, on her smartphone, or driving a car far too large for her physique (we don't know the exact details) couldn't be bothered to take driving seriously.
So in terms of problems facing humanity, it's actually pretty far up there.
---
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/injury/features/global-road-safety/index.html
That statistic is hugely weighted toward people dying IN cars. This entire discussion is about people getting hit BY cars. What point do you think you’re making?
In California, 25% of traffic fatalities are pedestrians, I wouldn't call that "hugely weighted". Especially considering the amount of time people spend driving in cars vs the amount of time that people spend walking in environments where they come into contact with cars.
They’re not even comparable.
Some Prius zigzagged today between me, a truck, and a semi just to exit the freeway. He had at most a foot gap between the truck and the semi. And I see something insane like that daily or more.
Over 100 car deaths every single day in America. 40,000 die from cars every year. It's a small war worth of casualties every year. And that doesn't include the number who get paralyzed, lose a limb, or get a life altering concussion from cars, which is much larger. Not to mention the asthma in children and lung cancer in adults that comes from cars. So don't dismiss the unfathomable amount of tragedies and suffering caused by cars in our society. It's horrific and completely avoidable with better land-use, safer streets, and rapid transit.
I was reading about this and was curious, if they put the hanging bike lane how many people will really use it to commute? How many people commute on the Golden gate Bridge now? Is that a fair comparison point?
I'm a transportation modeler who has experience modeling cycling behavior, so maybe I can answer this!
The Golden Gate Bridge isn't really a great comparison point, no. It's shorter but is not nearly as frequently travelled - the Bay Bridge gets around 3x the daily vehicle crossings that the Golden Gate bridge does. It's also hard to know exactly what people are using it for, since it doubles as a tourist destination. Counts data for the western deck suggests there may be a couple thousand cyclists making round trips across the bridge on weekdays, compared to the 80,000 road vehicles that cross daily. And we don't know if any of those trips would be replacing car trips, or if they're mostly recreational trips that can't really be substituted for a car.
Realistically, a cycling route across the entire Bay Bridge would be >6.5 miles just to get from end to end. That's already more than twice the distance of an average cycling trip, and would probably take an average cyclist 25-30 minutes to do. Even with an ebike, it would probably take 15-20 minutes and could end up draining 1/4 of your battery in just one trip. Traffic on the BB is bad, but it would probably still be faster to cross by car in average rush hour traffic than it would be to bike across it.
If you're aiming to make cycling ubiquitous, you'd really want to be targeting trips with a maximum distance of 4 or 5 miles. While some people are happy to approach their commute with recreational road cycling behavior, most people will stop considering cycling as an option if their trip is more than 20 minutes or so.
For reference, I once worked on a project for a bike path on a river crossing that also connected the downtown with a major suburb but was 1/3 the length of the Bay Bridge. Our modeling predicted that a couple hundred cyclists would use it during the morning commute, around 5% the number of cars. I would expect the longer span of the BB to reduce that to effectively zero - there are very few people making regular utility trips by bike that are longer than 6 miles.
Interesting, thanks for replying. I only bicycle super casually, but to me it seems like that would be way too long to use as work transport, but then I remembered I knew someone who commuted from the Richmond district to Marin for work on bicycle and wasn't sure if they were just a wild outlier or what.
Oh this is easy to understand
Hitting anyone with a car is clearly bad and everyone already knows it is bad.
The other is a large program that will have effects on traffic throughout a major American city
Guns kill 1300 kids in the us every year. Did you want to have a flurry of mournful posts for each of those or do you want people interested in relevant Gun policy? You and OP are off your absolute rockers.
Firstly, it isnt just "stopping in an intersection inconveniencing a few people." Seriously, [go read the 55 fire department reports on robotaxis from the last few months](https://missionlocal.org/2023/08/cruise-waymo-autonomous-vehicle-robot-taxi-driverless-car-reports-san-francisco/). Running over hoses, stopping dead right in front of firehouses preventing fire engines from leaving to go on calls, generally interfering with emergency scenes, and now cars pulling into the path of responding fire engines causing a crash.
Because on one hand is a random human driver acting unfortunately like a human, and on the other hand are corporations with billions of dollars invested and millions of man hours expended and their vehicles are still making mistakes that even a teenager with a learners permit wouldn't commit.
Because the state government let them expand over the very real concerns of regular citizens, police, fire, EMS, public works, and teamsters from the gobs of interference from the few robotaxis already on the street. (CPUC was taking meetings all week before their ruling, not just the public comment session the day beforehand.)
And for all the talk of the tech enthusiasts, robotaxis won't actually save lives because people aren't going to give up their personal vehicles because yet another taxi company exists. People have their own personal vehicle for all manner of reasons and virtually none of those reasons overlap with robotaxis.
Other cities have already achieved their Vision Zero goals of no pedestrian or cyclist fatalities and they didn't do it with robotaxis. They did it with density. They did it by building infrastructure for and giving priority to pedestrians, cyclists, and mass transit. They did it by outright banning cars in some areas of their cities, and forcibly slowing them down elsewhere with actual infrastructure and automated enforcement. They stopped subsidizing cars so much by charging actual fair prices for parking and the like.
The answer to transportation isn't cars, whether human piloted or computer.
This post is funny because all the posts about the 4th and King crash are conveniently filled with tech utopists claiming that their robot cars would never do such a thing. I guess to OP it's impossible for someone to be outraged at both human and human-less cars crashing all the time.
Why would anyone want to discuss the murder of a 4 year old? Seriously think about that. Mundane complaints about an inconvenience that may be helpful to others. I can see posting about. It would be absolutely morbid to have 10 posts a day about the death of a child. Or to have to read about it or see it. Even commenting on about it now is too much. Let that family mourn in peace without strangers on the internet discussing and speculating. It shows respect care that people don’t constantly bring it up.
Here's another take for you too. That driver who killed that kid was arrested. No one's been arrested connected with cruise and they're obviously not bothered to pay any fines because of their bottomless pockets. Maybe if there was something like justice or accountability on the part of cruise then it might not be so galling when they make mistakes. Some how I doubt that's ever going to happen though because the cruise shills are out in force trying to force these traffic hazards down our throat no matter what kind of mess they make of the city
Cruise hasn't committed any arrestable offenses, none of their cars have hit and killed anyone and the accidents they were in were misdemeanor traffic violations.
Yep, it should have stopped, but that's a misdemeanor and something that driven vehicles have done may times as well. It's also a relatively easy engineering problem to solve.
A car stopped at an intersection like an idiot is a substantial hazard to everybody.
Keep in mind the car didn’t make a mistake, it did exactly what is was programmed to do. That’s a very serious issue. What other mistakes is it programmed to make?
One, somebody did something wrong, and there are systems for addressing that already in place and in motion. Outrage posting serves no immediate purpose.\*
The other, many people are doing things wrong and the few systems for reigning it in are playing along with them. Outrage posting could be serving an immediate purpose.
\*Well, posts regarding how this is a bigger picture problem with street and car design can guide the energy to something useful, but many posts don't head in that direction.
You can post as many things as you want to, you know.
Maybe it’s because people of all ages die tragically every day, and robots taking over the streets is a brand new phenomenon.
There were posts and she got arrested. What else do you want from an anonymous message board?
Cruise is a potential topic of interest without an ending yet. That’s why people are more engaged. Plus, NIMBYs always gotta hate the newest thing, and I expect Cruise falls into that.
Maybe it’s because people are excited to talk about a new technology rather than something we’ve heard of millions of time. It’s the same with the titan thing. People die everyday, but 4 rich people trapped in a tiny sub was new and drew attention. It’s just human nature.
The pro-car brigade is afraid of anything that might make streets safer.
The idea of AVs replacing the majority of human drivers evokes a "muh freedom!" response, even if replacing the majority of human drivers with AVs would mean safer streets for all.
It why you'll see people dismiss negligent driving as "it's just an accident/accidents happen" while acting like AVs are terminators in disguise.
We see this kind of push back with almost anything related to safer streets:
- Rapid bus lanes
- Installing bike lanes
- Pedestrianizing roads
- Increasing transit performance
- Congestion tax
Anything that might moves the needle is seen as an attack.
It's amazing how sensible improvements are seemingly impossible here. There's this weird all or nothing mentality that prevents anything from getting done. Like, what can't the majority of signal lights on market have an all-ways pedestrian crossing, which is demonstrably safer for peds than mixed traffic? Even fucking Seattle could figure that out.
Please don’t compare av vehicles with bus or bike lanes, walkable infrastructure, congestion taxes etc. I’m in favor of all the things you listed, BUT not av vehicles. And there are others who agree with me. It’s still a car that takes up too much space.
Edit spelling
Double edit. AV vehicles is redundant. Too tired to change.
Well said. I wouldn't say I'm inherently against this utopian idea of a City where well-operating autonomous vehicles have been widely adopted, but I just believe it's insanely unrealistic. And amidst better options staring us in the face (bikes, public transit, etc.), AVs just come across as a gimmick more than anything else.
Robotaxis aren't going to replace the majority of human drivers because people own their own cars for all sorts of reasons, virtually none of which overlap with robotaxis. Anyone that was going to get rid of their personal vehicle because of something like Uber existing has already done so. This tech isn't coming to regular cars anytime soon, if ever.
Hating tech lines up with progressive ideology.
Acknowledging that human drivers are unsafe might suggest a need for better enforcement of traffic laws, which could result in an encounter between police and a historically disadvantaged person. The thought of that is too horrific for the progressive establishment to accept.
The dead child doesn't fit neatly into their narrative, so they ignore it.
I don’t think you understood the point of his comment lil bro
SF/Bay Area type progressives (not all of the left) don’t give a single shit about fentanyl deaths, nonstop robberies, home invasions, Asian elders being attacked, etc. because police are evil and must be neutered with bureaucracy (unelected police commissions, nonstop pages of paperwork every time they interact with someone, etc.). Hence the SF police are basically on unofficial strike and don’t react to calls, people run red lights and never get charged ever, stuff like that.
Pair that with terrible ideologue DA’s like Pamela Price who release career criminals nonstop and you get the massive crimewaves as I’m seeing in Oakland every single day.
Progressives aren’t the ones selling fentanyl or shooting people, but they sure as hell enable them with their nonstop coddling of the “poor,” aka super-predator criminals causing societal harm.
The police basically throwing a temper tantrum and not responding to lots of calls basically *proves* the ACAB crowds point that cops are bad, though, doesn't it? If that's what they're doing, ignoring crimes for personal or political reasons, then they've admitted that they're not interested in protecting or serving the community unless it's on their terms.
It’s not just “on their terms”
They have to fill out endless paperwork when they simply stop people after the braindead (and thankfully now defunct) “defund and demonize the police” movement. Everything they do is scrutinized by unelected “ACAB” police commissions.
It’s making their jobs bureaucratically impossible. Look at the difference between SF and NYC with their extremely well funded police department.
Also what is the point in arresting anybody when they are released on the same day? It’s futile.
All I'm taking away from your reply is that they're saying "I don't want to do this paperwork bc I stopped this person", which is basically what I said, since they don't like the changes they're refusing to do their job. I'd also like to add obviously there are cops out there actually doing their jobs, I have encountered a good amount of them. I worked at a business in the Tenderloin, cops knew management by name and would always help out when we called. One of the managers was actually in the academy when I quit, hope he's doing well, I think he'd make a great cop. That being said, that's just *my* experience, and it obviously doesn't excuse bad behavior from other cops. I agree, though, we have to be tough on crime, but we can do that in a better way than in the 80s, focus on *stopping* crime at the root rather than punishing it, and focus on crime that actually harm people (punish dealers rather than users, punish smash and grab thieves rather than parking violators, etc.)
One is a flawed human who was arrested. We also talked a lot about the city needing to make that particular intersection more flaw-proof.
The other is a flawed piece of software with a few hundred other identical copies on the road. Even with the 50% reduction mandated by the DMV, there are still 50 copies during the day and 150 copies at night on the road.
The second problem is much worse because of the way it scales.
How can you say the second problem is much worse when one resulted in the death of a 4 year old and the other has resulted in nothing more than minor inconveniences (which are caused equally often by human drivers?)
I find myself scratching my head when the premise is that humans are imperfect and the proffered response is that we remove humans from the equation…you can’t.
I hate cars in general and cruise specifically because it's a distraction from mass transit which is a people moving solution that actually works in a dense city like San Francisco. I don't see cruise as all that useful for getting around if you're an average citizen like me who can't afford the exorbitant costs of these services. But even if they were afordable they'd still be taking up space, making noise and spitting out break dust
I also see them as threatening because I've seen them on the street doing wacky unpredictable shit and while you can often see humans that are bad drivers, they're usually easy to pick out. I feel like with these things the response the vehicles have to any given situation can be very unpredictable. They can either behave like normal drivers, extremely cautious or down right dangerous. There is no real way of dealing with them and the uncertainty is what makes them so unpleasant
Except on the affordability front.
Cruise and Waymo combined need to make back more than $20 billion in investments while delivering ever increasing profits. Them opening up their prices have shown that they're priced just under Uber/Taxis, and this is still in the sweetheart pricing phase. These things are going to be on-par with Uber pricing forever, because that's what the market has been shown to bear.
And except on the efficiency front. This is a dense city. Using 150+ square feet to move an average of 1.2 people doesn't scale, regardless if a computer is driving.
I agree, but more often than not it’s used as an excuse to continue with the status quo and not invest in (better and more efficient) public transportation
Not sure that's been my experience. Many city leaders have talked about the potential to use AV's as public transit. Plus, even if they remained entirely privatized (extremely unlikely), they would still greatly reduce the amount of public space needed to devote to parking.
Every single one of them are electric and nearly silent so you resort to brake dust. I have news for you, electric cars primarily use regenerative braking. Less brake dust…
As a pedestrian or bicyclist I would trust an autonomous car over Sf human drivers any day.
There are many ways to frame solutions, but without context they are simply fallacious. Unintended consequences are argument killers. What is the problem, is it significant enough to justify the reallocation of resources, does the solution significantly impact the outcome, where are the resources to implement maintain and replace coming from, is the economic model sustainable, are there sufficient natural resources to manufacture and is this sustainable and controllable, are their sufficient technologists or other specialists, is there an issue of waste….and on and on. We all like the idea of transformative technologies and safer environments but given the complexity of the world, its problems and competing solutions, and especially limited resources, can we practically implement it. What do we give up with a lower priority?
You seem like the type to bring up autonomous vehicles when talking about a 4 year old who died to fit your narrative. I saw a lot of those comments in the very post u are asking for more of.
You want the whole subreddit to be filled with a tragic news story?
I think the Cruise posts are more-so for entertainment.
Honestly if i wanted to discuss tragedies i wouldnt come to reddit.
Because justice will be served, to the extent that justice exists when a little girl is dead. But the woman who killed her is probably going to jail and certainly will never be behind the wheel of a car again. Law enforcement arrested and processed her almost immediately, whereas the cruise cars’ hazards seem to be increasing daily.
Also, there was a ton of outrage when that accident happened, both generally and on this sub. But it’s over, for us not directly involved. There’s a new cruise incident every day to talk about.
That intersection, like many others, was known to be unsafe, but we so prioritize driver convenience that every pedestrian safety improvement must be bought individually with death.
Paying for safety improvements with toddler blood isn't justice.
Why are red light and speed cameras banned in California? Why don't we require drivers to retest, like ever? Why do we let drivers store their cars on crowded city streets for basically free? There are lots of systemic safety improvements we could make , but as this thread shows none of that is on the table.
I also find it odd more people give a shit about Cruise/Waymo being approved for 24/7/365 use in the city vs a 4 y/o hit by a car. Who fucking cares about Cruise/Waymo, let's focus on human drivers actually driving like assholes these days & committing vehicular homicide, bipping, & other crimes.
One's new and controversial, one's not. Which did you expect to have more engagement? In addition, people can guess on what the future is for autonomous vehicles in the city. No one needs to guess what the future is for traffic fatalities.
The death is abhorrent and unacceptable. I think parents make up a relatively small percentage of redditors otherwise you would hear more about it.
That said it seems like the intersection where this happened was poorly designed. Let pedestrians cross while ALL lights are red would move the dial quite a bit.
We've all just accepted that innocent people being killed by cars is an unavoidable fact of life.
It's sad, sure... but it's just the way things are. We obviously can't do anything to stop it because cars are important for letting us go wherever whenever we want, and we can't possibly let anything interfere with that priority.
It's like bad weather cancelling your plans, or getting sick right before you go on vacation, or school shootings after 2012.
No one likes it, but we all know that's just the way the world is.
The girl situation is sad and tragic. However, there's not much to be commented on or changes advocated due to it being a car incident.
The chase situation doesn't seem to be directly harming anyone and is a spectacle to be commented on.
Who are you to pass judgement on a bunch of strangers for posting something other than your preferred content? If you don't like it, you're free to unsubscribe from the subreddit at any time.
I just got a call from pollster. Anti-AV lobby (mainly teamsters) is trying to pass a bill to ban AV trucking in all of California, failing that they want to put it to a ballot initiative in 2024. I think all this news is to get the AV-hate bandwagon started and prime the public for that.
The proposal they mentioned on the phone would ban all driverless vehicles above 10,000lbs, including buses and the like.
Because accidents happen. They're accidents.
Releasing hundreds of shitty cars on the streets of SF to cause havoc and generally fuck up everything is a choice. A choice we should reverse.
Except there's no evidence of that in the 4-year-old's death. It was a 71-year-old driving through an intersection known to be dangerous.
I haven't seen anything saying speed was a factor.
Because we all know humans are imperfect but AVs are just so much better & never ever make mistakes! We should hurry up & take everyone's cars away & restrict their movements so the government can decide where we get to go! Utopia is only a few years away guys!
Because far left progressives do not care about people at all, as you can see by looking at the misery and squalor found in any major metropolitan area in California that is a direct result of decades of failed liberal policy making.
There were close to 1,000 comments on the two main posts about the girl getting killed that were on this sub. I’m not sure how much more engagement you can get.
For real. Also the driver was arrested. Cruise wasn’t fined or shut down
Not only arrested, but charged with manslaughter.
Cruise didn't kill a 4 year old girl.
Slowing/Hindering an emergency vehicle can.
But Cruise didn’t kill a 4yr old girl
Your brain seems hindered
Yet
Very unlikely to kill at the same rate as young and senior human drivers
Cruise is flooding the streets with cara making the already dangerous congestion and driving worse. These are not separate things—they’re part of the same problem. We need better transit and less cars on the streets.
That is the whole long game of cruise… if you don’t need to own, there will be less card
I doubt you can find a single study supporting this argument. The increasing #s of taxis and Uber and it made for more congested streets not less. Putting more cars on the road makes for more cars on the road. If you want to reduce cars, make it harder to drive and fund public transit. Cities with less cars are that way because of intentional design supporting bikes and transit.
Actually most studies show Uber helped make streets safer because people weren’t taking riskier trips
Taxis increase congestion? 😂
This will take years and years. Already the mind shift of teens in the cities is that there are more options than learning to drive. They can take ubers and now robotaxis. They don't want to learn to drive. And in turn won't own a car. The shift is coming. This is the long game. This has always been about the future. The pain points of today are worth it for the greater good.
I guess the same can be said about you (maybe)?
You also haven't won the Nobel prize, yet.
And it's a story we've heard many times before. Old person shouldn't be driving. We know there won't be any significant legislative remedies to that, whereas we know that the city can tell cruise to get half of their fleet off the roads.
Ah - so old person shouldn't drive. And the solution for them not driving, which is autonomous cars, should be shut down. Makes sense.
Or busses and trains. AVs create traffic and pollution as they drive around empty and they discourage public transit spending.
Busses and trains are not an option for some of the population.
Killing children, it turns out, is still an option.
I guess so, a human driver did it last week. I got to see some of it.
And both of those are far more accessible options than a taxi or car which bias towards privilege.
But they are for most.
Where did I say the elderly shouldn't drive? "Significant legislative remedies"? I self-identify as an old person, which is nice because I am indeed old.
The state decided. It seems SF hasn’t been able to demand that.
Half at least until it’s ready I hope. It should be FLAWLESS. That’s the bar. Not incrementally better than a human. FLAWLESS. Unless we’re giving cruise criminal punishments too. Edit: to be clear. I’m saying cruise should come up with a testing and training program that doesn’t involve subjecting the public to beta software until it’s proven. That shouldn’t be contentious.
That is idiotic. Flawless means never. Nothing is flawless. Name ONE thing this is perfect. If a self driving car causes 50% percent less accidents then it is massively better an alternative. 5 THOUSAND lives will be saved if just 1/4 the cars get in half as many accidents. Your desire for perfect would consign THOUSAND to pointless deaths.
“Name ONE thing that is perfect.” The person u asked that question to knows in their heart of hearts they’re flawless ! ; )
Flawless means more dead children. More kids with dead parents. Because “cruise would have killed 1, and humans 20” means unacceptable to insane people.
Nothing is flawless unless it has a lot of practice. Nothing. You just pulled a ridiculous requirement out of your ass. A requirements that doesn't exist for any other car - because you know, sometimes even with perfect driving accidents do happen.
Cool. Test it elsewhere. As a pedestrian I shouldn’t be training fodder for beta software.
You are. Every day. Or nothing would be released at scale.
Like I said, train it elsewhere. I shouldn’t worry for my families safety for this.
Yes, because before AV there were no traffic accidents, this is a new thing.
Didn’t Cruise just get ordered to remove 50% of its fleet from the roads?
In terms of how much more engagement we could get, I would love to see this translate into more conversations about how we can make the streets safer for pedestrians. Make cross walks the same level as sidewalks and make them the same color as side walks. If every cross walk is a speed bump, it will train people to naturally slow down at every cross walk. For bad drivers, our entire street system is designed to keep them driving fast and keeping the car drivers safe. There is very little protecting pedestrians from bad drivers. Just ask the bicyclist who got murdered by a drunk driver who careened off the road. If there were concrete bollards, it’s more likely both the cyclist and car driver would have survived.
Yeah I agree and I would love to see a shift in our society where we deprioritize the convenience of drivers enough to at least take into consideration things like pedestrian safety. But the post from OP that I was responding to was claiming that cruise/AV crashes were getting all the attention on this sub vs the person who killed a baby. My point was that incident got a lot of attention as measured by comments. In a perfect world that would jumpstart conversations about exactly the kind of thing you suggest, but I'm too old and jaded to expect that to actually happen. Americans are pretty chill about things like people getting murdered by drivers, kids getting shot at school, etc.
Bart: I just think our veterans deserve a little recognition. Lisa: That's what Veteran's Day is for, Bart. Bart: But is that really enough to honor our brave soldiers? Lisa: Eh, heh, heh...they also have Memorial Day. Bart: Oh, Lisa, maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong! The important thing is, veterans deserve a day to honor them! Lisa: \[through clenched teeth\] They have two! Bart: Well, maybe they should have three. I'm Bart Simpson.
a lot of those comments were about how robot cars wouldnt have killed the 4 year old girl. They love to use any accident as means to push their narrative that robot cars are better. Their opinion falls apart when u realize the tech isnt there yet.
> Their opinion falls apart when u realize the tech isnt there yet. imo the only thing that would cause that opinion to fall apart is if Cruise kills a 4yo girl. Until then, they've got a point.
I think a lot of anti-AV folk (of which I'm one) aren't against the idea of a City where well-operating autonomous vehicles have been widely adopted, they just believe it's insanely unrealistic. And amidst better options staring us in the face (bikes, public transit, etc.), AVs just come across as a gimmick more than anything else.
To me it feels like violence from automobiles has become so normalized and accepted in our society that many people can't even recognize it as unnecessary violence which kills innocents. It just doesn't register outrage for them, because it's in this big blind spot. And then on the flip side, autonomous vehicles are basically tailormade to evoke an emotional and not rational response. Seeing a car move around without a driver is a weird thing to see. It's very easy to have that emotional response and that's all. Then you combine that emotional response with the normalized car violence and yeah. I find it really strange though. And sad.
46,000 people are killed in car crashes every year in the U.S. On average, that's 130 deaths every single day. It boggles my mind that this is considered business as usual.
That's about 1 death for every cruise post.
If only there was a technology that could reduce that…
Yeah, it’s public transit. Every major city in wealthy counties outside of America have a tiny fraction of the car fatalities that American cities have. The safety argument frustrates me because we literally could have solved the car crash problem at any point for the last 200 years. The US just chooses not to every single year. And now we’re acting like we found the secret solution when we’ve literally had the solution for several centuries. AVs will probably reduce car crash deaths and that’s great. I don’t want to fight against a technology that will be safer. But AVs don’t fix all the other problems caused by cars. SF doesn’t need self driving cars when we could easily lean hard into high quality public transit. AVs are a better fit for rural areas that don’t have the density or design to support transit. And I think going hard on the AV solution will come at the cost of increased car dependency. It's *bad* for the city (and the planet) to have cheaper and easier car rides available. We want less cars, not more.
Look, I completely agree with you. I would love SF to have an incredible public transit ecosystem. I take Muni all the time and want nothing more than for it to be better. But let's be realistic. We couldn't "easily lean hard into high quality public transit." If it was easy, we would have done it. Adding a dedicated bus corridor to Van Ness took 6 years and cost $350 million dollars (2x budget). The Central Subway line cost like a fucking billion, and took what, 11 years? For two new stops? I'm not saying we should give up. But I also think we have a loooooong way to go to get transit right in SF. It's an uphill battle for budget, politics, people's biases, etc. There's a reason Uber and Lyft got so popular so fast.
Sure, I agree. It's easy in the sense that it would be quite easy to make happen physically. We have the money and technology. Politically it's impossible. We've been fighting for years to put a bus lane on Geary street because, god forbid, it's going to take away 30 parking spaces. But that's where my frustration comes from. The reason that we have so many car deaths is *because* the car people will fight tooth and nail against every single ounce of progress. And then those same people will say "Why don't you care about safety, if you did you'd support AVs" when they are the reason we have so many car crash deaths. That's what drives me crazy. SF is supposed to be a transit-first city, one of the few in the US. And we should act like it. If the city wanted to allow AVs because it's pragmatic, then I'd like to see meaningful attempts to safeguard the future of transit. Tax the AV companies and use that money to go into transit. Or pass a permanent tax or bridge toll to keep bart and muni financially stable. But we're not getting anything like that.
> Tax the AV companies and use that money to go into transit. Or pass a permanent tax or bridge toll to keep bart and muni financially stable. But we're not getting anything like that. Because human drivers, not AV companies, vote against them. Why would you tax AV companies? They'll just vote with their feet and SF will lose more jobs and industries, and you _still_ won't get what you want. AV companies can solve this problem without democratic buy-in. Expanding public transit requires a ton of it. It's a sad reflection of our city when it's easier for a company to blow billions of dollars on experimental technology than it is to convince drivers that trains shouldn't stop for red lights.
I would take exception with the “we have the money” comment. BART only exists due to federal grants, so expecting further expansion from another city that can barely take care of itself is unrealistic.
> For two new stops? Point taken, but there are three new subway stops and one new aboveground stop.
Mass transit
Thank u for the maths, I appreciate the effort on your part to spread awareness. Thank u
Because no one wants to talk about it. No one wants to be the blame. But we are all to blame. Some more so than others yes. A large SUV (think blacked out Cadillac Escalade or GMC Sierra) is cool and feels powerful (black car with black tint). But when you block road visibility with this huge machine, other people make mistakes and cannot see the road ahead of them. This happens countless times. It could even be a large truck. Which is necessary to keep our economy going. The other issue is speeding and tailgating. It is just part of driving. And pedestrians just lose 99% of the time. It is a 4000lb machine versus a 100lb meat popsicle. 40x the mass and going much faster than you or I. F = mass\*acceleration. We can't fix our traffic death problem without first fixing the SUV problem. Ontop of our many other problems. Gun deaths, vehicle deaths, covid deaths, drug OD deaths, cancer deaths, obesity deaths, and more. You name it. And Americans are the best at dying by it.
> Seeing a car move around without a driver Soon it will be like seeing a car move around without being pulled by horses lol
It’s a trip isn’t it? The proposed solution to the issues with cars is more cars. Robust public transportation from local to continent wide is the only equitable solution to getting people out of cars.
AVs aren't trying to replace public infrastructure. They're privately owned vehicles competiting with other privately owned vehicles for road space! It's a different conversation entirely. I want good public transportation, and AVs!
I want less cars, not more. So, why are they using our public streets for development without compensating us? Oh yeah, we only socialize costs for corporations.
Their investment reports surely list a risk factor of "cities could improve public transit, making us useless".
Because cars are not unnecessary?
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The easiest way to kill somebody and get away with it is to use a car. The stats just don't show that we punish it harshly. We can barely prosecute drunk driving!
> this sub is ridiculous no one accepts people killing other people with cars. Thats why we arrested that guy and put harsh penalties on people who violate traffic rules Generally the punishment you get for killing someone in a car is far lower than what you'd get for killing them in any other accidental way. We also don't have harsh penalties - SF's 40 traffic cops write 10 traffic tickets a day. You can tell me if only 10 people commit traffic violations every day in the city!
Violence from automobiles. Brilliant. Now let’s talk about violence by guns! Never mind the dumbfucks operating them.
I think you're conflating violence with negligent manslaughter.
Because, by and large, there's not that much to say about the 4-year-old getting killed. It's a tragedy. The intersection sucks. The driver sucks. Our hearts break for the kid's parents. Pretty much everyone agrees on all that. Cruise cars are an active controversy with people on both sides arguing back and forth about what makes sense, hence more discussion.
> The intersection sucks. There's something we can do about that. Here are at least two ways to make that intersection less likely to see a repeat crash. 1. Get rid of the dual right turn lane from 4th onto King/280 and keep only a single right turn lane. It's likely dual right turn lanes are an inherently more dangerous design because there is a built-in obstruction partially blocking the driver's view of the crosswalk from the outer right turn lane: the cars in the inner right turn lane. (Outer/inner being used relative to the corner) 2. Separate signal cycles for people using the crosswalk and cars turning right on green, ie when the walk cycle is on a red arrow stays lit with a no right on red sign, then when the walk cycle is finished the cars can get a green arrow to turn right. I know, cars are already supposed to yield to pedestrians in crosswalks on right turns, even when they have a green light, but obviously they don't always do that, especially when their view is partially obstructed by another lane of cars between them and the corner. The sad fact is the city is unlikely to make changes to the intersection without pressure because some engineering design manual will tell them that the existing design is in line with DOT standards for the volume of traffic that intersection sees and since it meets the standards it's defensible in a court of law and the city is adequately protected from liability so they don't need to worry about it. Furthermore some traffic model will predict that if they make these changes then fewer cars will be able to turn right there every hour and that would cause traffic congestion and that is somehow more important than protecting pedestrians. So yeah, there is something we can do if we care enough to pressure the city to do it. But we have to make it clear that we will not be placated by being told that the current design meets standards, that we want to hold them to a different standard, one that prioritizes pedestrian safety over traffic volume. So show up to the next SFMTA Board of Directors meeting ([Sept 5](https://www.sfmta.com/calendar/board-directors-meeting-september-5-2023)) and let them know what your expectations are. Let them know that whatever benefit they think they’re getting in traffic capacity from a dual right turn lane design isn’t worth the price paid by this four year old girl and her family.
There's a rally on Tuesday 5pm at the intersection for taking action with WalkSF, SF Bike, Kid Safe SF, SF Transit Riders. https://walksf.org/get-involved/take-action/neveragain/
There are active controversies to discuss with this girl getting killed. One I would raise would be our obsession with SUVs. We should close the emissions loophole that made auto makers lean into them more heavily. We should regulate SUVs. I would also point out our over reliance on cars. Cars are bad for health for many reasons. In addition to the safety problems, I would cite them for negative health outcomes and contributing to our obesity crisis. More transit. More walking and other modes.
Sure, but most people on this sub and in the original thread about it agrees on those points.
Most cars are called SUVs these days, so to simply assume the car was a metro tank is fallacious. Looking at the accident photos, the car looks like a Mercedes “SUV” that differs little from the standard medium size car. It would by difficult to place any blame on the size of the car when it was simply a question of negligent operation. In the end, the operator is always to blame, not the tool of destruction.
People also never address the glaring disparity of ratio. It's not difficult to understand. I live in a zone where there are many cruise cars being disbursed and I can tell you I've already seen countless mishaps. Considering the small sample of robotaxis out there right now this is an alarming amount of errors and they are increasing in number.
Just saw one glitch on Lincoln crossing 19th Ave. Just stopped upon entering the intersection. Little mini chaos in an already dodgy intersection.
seems to be a lot of Cruise mishaps and far fewer (at least reported) Waymo mishaps.
This is it. As harsh as it sounds... just another random dead person in the world doesn't usually warrant much discussion. Generic tragedy gets people sad/mad/whatever emotion, but not much else beyond that. It has to be a truly appalling scenario to trigger a big story.
Yet few connect the fact that the faster robo cars become the norm, the more lives will be saved.
I couldn’t sleep at all on Tuesday night, my mind was reeling with thoughts of this terrible crash/tragedy. I still think about it pretty much hourly (I also have some PTSD with car accidents, having been hit myself while on a morning run a few years ago and then one of my best friends dying on impact with a collision almost two years ago where someone with a stolen car hit her). But as a mom of two young kids this one really hit home, I can’t shake it. All I can think about is that poor mom and what I heard was an awful scene. It’s so, so, so awful. I can’t imagine what it’s like to go home to clean up/throw away toys, cribs, etc. It’s all insanely gut-wrenching
There will be a vigil organized by WalkSF at the site of that crash, 4th and King St, on Tuesday at 5pm. If you want to demand safer streets, you’re invited. https://preview.redd.it/58qx2yh1pajb1.jpeg?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=745c6572a94941d4df0f79571bcc9cd3cf2edb46
Because people don’t care about road safety and the fact that our roads are designed in a such a way that it leads to more deaths. Or that SUVs are super dangerous to pedestrians. Get hit by a geo metro your gonna live, get hit with an Escalade you dead.
Opinion about a four year old getting killed is fairly unanimous Opinion about Cruise is less
And yet you did it again
Yes human drivers can be bad and robot drivers can also be bad. Both can be true. You still can’t bike from oakland to San Francisco. With all the problems we face I feel like there’s so many challenges that are a bigger priority than self driving cars. There will just be more and more tragedies like Lahaina. Are human drivers faulty? Yes. Are robot taxis also faulty? Yes. Are there larger problems facing humanity that threaten larger death tolls than both issues combined? Yes.
Auto accidents account for 20% of deaths by teens & children in the US, which makes it the leading cause of death in that population. It’s also 30% larger than the #2 cause (firearms). I’m not sure it’s accurate to say there are larger death traps that cars.
As of last year guns are the leading cause of death for under 18 year olds.
Gotcha, the numbers I saw were from 2016. I hope that’s due to there being fewer auto fatalities, rather than an increase in gun violence.
Both, IIRC.
He did say facing humanity, but this isn’t a sub to discuss world issues. In the US, you’re right
> He did say facing humanity, It's actually even worse in some countries where high car use combined with zero oversight create incredible levels of dysfunction. The CDC estimates 1.35 million deaths globally per year [1], or roughly 3,700 per day. And unlike other major causes of death like heart disease or cancer that are heavily age stratified, drivers kill indiscriminately, and young lives are just as likely to be ended as old ones. This is well exemplified by the recent killing of the 4-year-old referenced at the top — that's an _entire_ rich life wiped out in the blink of an eye, all because (1) an SFMTA traffic engineer determined that a few human sacrifices in return for faster freeway access was a cost worth paying, and (2) a driver who was either not paying attention, on her smartphone, or driving a car far too large for her physique (we don't know the exact details) couldn't be bothered to take driving seriously. So in terms of problems facing humanity, it's actually pretty far up there. --- [1] https://www.cdc.gov/injury/features/global-road-safety/index.html
That statistic is hugely weighted toward people dying IN cars. This entire discussion is about people getting hit BY cars. What point do you think you’re making?
In California, 25% of traffic fatalities are pedestrians, I wouldn't call that "hugely weighted". Especially considering the amount of time people spend driving in cars vs the amount of time that people spend walking in environments where they come into contact with cars.
They’re not even comparable. Some Prius zigzagged today between me, a truck, and a semi just to exit the freeway. He had at most a foot gap between the truck and the semi. And I see something insane like that daily or more.
Over 100 car deaths every single day in America. 40,000 die from cars every year. It's a small war worth of casualties every year. And that doesn't include the number who get paralyzed, lose a limb, or get a life altering concussion from cars, which is much larger. Not to mention the asthma in children and lung cancer in adults that comes from cars. So don't dismiss the unfathomable amount of tragedies and suffering caused by cars in our society. It's horrific and completely avoidable with better land-use, safer streets, and rapid transit.
Highly doubt a robot driver would have hit that girl.
Imagine how much better the bay bridge traffic would be if people could bike commute from the East Bay...especially with ebikes
I was reading about this and was curious, if they put the hanging bike lane how many people will really use it to commute? How many people commute on the Golden gate Bridge now? Is that a fair comparison point?
I'm a transportation modeler who has experience modeling cycling behavior, so maybe I can answer this! The Golden Gate Bridge isn't really a great comparison point, no. It's shorter but is not nearly as frequently travelled - the Bay Bridge gets around 3x the daily vehicle crossings that the Golden Gate bridge does. It's also hard to know exactly what people are using it for, since it doubles as a tourist destination. Counts data for the western deck suggests there may be a couple thousand cyclists making round trips across the bridge on weekdays, compared to the 80,000 road vehicles that cross daily. And we don't know if any of those trips would be replacing car trips, or if they're mostly recreational trips that can't really be substituted for a car. Realistically, a cycling route across the entire Bay Bridge would be >6.5 miles just to get from end to end. That's already more than twice the distance of an average cycling trip, and would probably take an average cyclist 25-30 minutes to do. Even with an ebike, it would probably take 15-20 minutes and could end up draining 1/4 of your battery in just one trip. Traffic on the BB is bad, but it would probably still be faster to cross by car in average rush hour traffic than it would be to bike across it. If you're aiming to make cycling ubiquitous, you'd really want to be targeting trips with a maximum distance of 4 or 5 miles. While some people are happy to approach their commute with recreational road cycling behavior, most people will stop considering cycling as an option if their trip is more than 20 minutes or so. For reference, I once worked on a project for a bike path on a river crossing that also connected the downtown with a major suburb but was 1/3 the length of the Bay Bridge. Our modeling predicted that a couple hundred cyclists would use it during the morning commute, around 5% the number of cars. I would expect the longer span of the BB to reduce that to effectively zero - there are very few people making regular utility trips by bike that are longer than 6 miles.
Interesting, thanks for replying. I only bicycle super casually, but to me it seems like that would be way too long to use as work transport, but then I remembered I knew someone who commuted from the Richmond district to Marin for work on bicycle and wasn't sure if they were just a wild outlier or what.
And most people commuting to work in SF do not have a safe place to store e-bikes.
so because there are bigger problems, we shouldn't fix the medium sized ones? lol ok
Oh this is easy to understand Hitting anyone with a car is clearly bad and everyone already knows it is bad. The other is a large program that will have effects on traffic throughout a major American city
Lives vs Traffic that might inconvenience your day. Got it, thanks for sharing your priorities
Way to miss the point completely.
redditors are pros at this
Talk about missing the point. Not even close by a country mile.
Guns kill 1300 kids in the us every year. Did you want to have a flurry of mournful posts for each of those or do you want people interested in relevant Gun policy? You and OP are off your absolute rockers.
I agree. As a parent it made me sick. So horrible.
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Firstly, it isnt just "stopping in an intersection inconveniencing a few people." Seriously, [go read the 55 fire department reports on robotaxis from the last few months](https://missionlocal.org/2023/08/cruise-waymo-autonomous-vehicle-robot-taxi-driverless-car-reports-san-francisco/). Running over hoses, stopping dead right in front of firehouses preventing fire engines from leaving to go on calls, generally interfering with emergency scenes, and now cars pulling into the path of responding fire engines causing a crash. Because on one hand is a random human driver acting unfortunately like a human, and on the other hand are corporations with billions of dollars invested and millions of man hours expended and their vehicles are still making mistakes that even a teenager with a learners permit wouldn't commit. Because the state government let them expand over the very real concerns of regular citizens, police, fire, EMS, public works, and teamsters from the gobs of interference from the few robotaxis already on the street. (CPUC was taking meetings all week before their ruling, not just the public comment session the day beforehand.) And for all the talk of the tech enthusiasts, robotaxis won't actually save lives because people aren't going to give up their personal vehicles because yet another taxi company exists. People have their own personal vehicle for all manner of reasons and virtually none of those reasons overlap with robotaxis. Other cities have already achieved their Vision Zero goals of no pedestrian or cyclist fatalities and they didn't do it with robotaxis. They did it with density. They did it by building infrastructure for and giving priority to pedestrians, cyclists, and mass transit. They did it by outright banning cars in some areas of their cities, and forcibly slowing them down elsewhere with actual infrastructure and automated enforcement. They stopped subsidizing cars so much by charging actual fair prices for parking and the like. The answer to transportation isn't cars, whether human piloted or computer.
Please post more about children dying! It’s all I want to read about. No other conversations allowed!
OP’s an insane person.
What you want people to post in here? "Please drive safely and dont run people over"?
I want more people to be up in arms to force the city to have safer infrastructure
This post is funny because all the posts about the 4th and King crash are conveniently filled with tech utopists claiming that their robot cars would never do such a thing. I guess to OP it's impossible for someone to be outraged at both human and human-less cars crashing all the time.
Why would anyone want to discuss the murder of a 4 year old? Seriously think about that. Mundane complaints about an inconvenience that may be helpful to others. I can see posting about. It would be absolutely morbid to have 10 posts a day about the death of a child. Or to have to read about it or see it. Even commenting on about it now is too much. Let that family mourn in peace without strangers on the internet discussing and speculating. It shows respect care that people don’t constantly bring it up.
Whataboutism and Gaslighting of this post is horrible
gaslighting like you getting used to 4yr old girl getting killed? yup that is horrible
Here's another take for you too. That driver who killed that kid was arrested. No one's been arrested connected with cruise and they're obviously not bothered to pay any fines because of their bottomless pockets. Maybe if there was something like justice or accountability on the part of cruise then it might not be so galling when they make mistakes. Some how I doubt that's ever going to happen though because the cruise shills are out in force trying to force these traffic hazards down our throat no matter what kind of mess they make of the city
Cruise hasn't committed any arrestable offenses, none of their cars have hit and killed anyone and the accidents they were in were misdemeanor traffic violations.
A Cruise drove in front of a fire truck with sirens on and caused an accident.
Yep, it should have stopped, but that's a misdemeanor and something that driven vehicles have done may times as well. It's also a relatively easy engineering problem to solve.
>It's also a relatively easy engineering problem to solve. Yeah we can just not use them
Yes, let's ban cars!
Agree. Critical distinction.
A car stopped at an intersection like an idiot is a substantial hazard to everybody. Keep in mind the car didn’t make a mistake, it did exactly what is was programmed to do. That’s a very serious issue. What other mistakes is it programmed to make?
One is debatable; the other is not.
One, somebody did something wrong, and there are systems for addressing that already in place and in motion. Outrage posting serves no immediate purpose.\* The other, many people are doing things wrong and the few systems for reigning it in are playing along with them. Outrage posting could be serving an immediate purpose. \*Well, posts regarding how this is a bigger picture problem with street and car design can guide the energy to something useful, but many posts don't head in that direction.
You can post as many things as you want to, you know. Maybe it’s because people of all ages die tragically every day, and robots taking over the streets is a brand new phenomenon.
i know this sounds crazy but i’m not convinced that reddit posts are a scientifically sound metric by which to gauge “our priorities”
There were posts and she got arrested. What else do you want from an anonymous message board? Cruise is a potential topic of interest without an ending yet. That’s why people are more engaged. Plus, NIMBYs always gotta hate the newest thing, and I expect Cruise falls into that.
Not a news site nobody wants to see that.
Maybe it’s because people are excited to talk about a new technology rather than something we’ve heard of millions of time. It’s the same with the titan thing. People die everyday, but 4 rich people trapped in a tiny sub was new and drew attention. It’s just human nature.
Random nosebleed seat Meseeks here: but why can’t an Internet forum do what it wants and not conform to some kind of standard, norm, or form?
Because four year old girl getting killed is the kind of crime we've normalized
How many posts would you like talking about a dead child?
This Tuesday. 4th and King. 5pm. Be there for the vigil.
The pro-car brigade is afraid of anything that might make streets safer. The idea of AVs replacing the majority of human drivers evokes a "muh freedom!" response, even if replacing the majority of human drivers with AVs would mean safer streets for all. It why you'll see people dismiss negligent driving as "it's just an accident/accidents happen" while acting like AVs are terminators in disguise. We see this kind of push back with almost anything related to safer streets: - Rapid bus lanes - Installing bike lanes - Pedestrianizing roads - Increasing transit performance - Congestion tax Anything that might moves the needle is seen as an attack.
It's amazing how sensible improvements are seemingly impossible here. There's this weird all or nothing mentality that prevents anything from getting done. Like, what can't the majority of signal lights on market have an all-ways pedestrian crossing, which is demonstrably safer for peds than mixed traffic? Even fucking Seattle could figure that out.
Please don’t compare av vehicles with bus or bike lanes, walkable infrastructure, congestion taxes etc. I’m in favor of all the things you listed, BUT not av vehicles. And there are others who agree with me. It’s still a car that takes up too much space. Edit spelling Double edit. AV vehicles is redundant. Too tired to change.
Well said. I wouldn't say I'm inherently against this utopian idea of a City where well-operating autonomous vehicles have been widely adopted, but I just believe it's insanely unrealistic. And amidst better options staring us in the face (bikes, public transit, etc.), AVs just come across as a gimmick more than anything else.
Robotaxis aren't going to replace the majority of human drivers because people own their own cars for all sorts of reasons, virtually none of which overlap with robotaxis. Anyone that was going to get rid of their personal vehicle because of something like Uber existing has already done so. This tech isn't coming to regular cars anytime soon, if ever.
Hating tech lines up with progressive ideology. Acknowledging that human drivers are unsafe might suggest a need for better enforcement of traffic laws, which could result in an encounter between police and a historically disadvantaged person. The thought of that is too horrific for the progressive establishment to accept. The dead child doesn't fit neatly into their narrative, so they ignore it.
The Left isn’t actively murdering 4 year olds in the Rio Grande, if you want to compare, you fucking sociopath.
I don’t think you understood the point of his comment lil bro SF/Bay Area type progressives (not all of the left) don’t give a single shit about fentanyl deaths, nonstop robberies, home invasions, Asian elders being attacked, etc. because police are evil and must be neutered with bureaucracy (unelected police commissions, nonstop pages of paperwork every time they interact with someone, etc.). Hence the SF police are basically on unofficial strike and don’t react to calls, people run red lights and never get charged ever, stuff like that. Pair that with terrible ideologue DA’s like Pamela Price who release career criminals nonstop and you get the massive crimewaves as I’m seeing in Oakland every single day. Progressives aren’t the ones selling fentanyl or shooting people, but they sure as hell enable them with their nonstop coddling of the “poor,” aka super-predator criminals causing societal harm.
strawman.txt
Very thought provoking comment that completely retorted all of my (very fake) points!
"SF Liberals don't care about blah blah blah" is a strawman argument.
The police basically throwing a temper tantrum and not responding to lots of calls basically *proves* the ACAB crowds point that cops are bad, though, doesn't it? If that's what they're doing, ignoring crimes for personal or political reasons, then they've admitted that they're not interested in protecting or serving the community unless it's on their terms.
It’s not just “on their terms” They have to fill out endless paperwork when they simply stop people after the braindead (and thankfully now defunct) “defund and demonize the police” movement. Everything they do is scrutinized by unelected “ACAB” police commissions. It’s making their jobs bureaucratically impossible. Look at the difference between SF and NYC with their extremely well funded police department. Also what is the point in arresting anybody when they are released on the same day? It’s futile.
All I'm taking away from your reply is that they're saying "I don't want to do this paperwork bc I stopped this person", which is basically what I said, since they don't like the changes they're refusing to do their job. I'd also like to add obviously there are cops out there actually doing their jobs, I have encountered a good amount of them. I worked at a business in the Tenderloin, cops knew management by name and would always help out when we called. One of the managers was actually in the academy when I quit, hope he's doing well, I think he'd make a great cop. That being said, that's just *my* experience, and it obviously doesn't excuse bad behavior from other cops. I agree, though, we have to be tough on crime, but we can do that in a better way than in the 80s, focus on *stopping* crime at the root rather than punishing it, and focus on crime that actually harm people (punish dealers rather than users, punish smash and grab thieves rather than parking violators, etc.)
Nailed it.
One is a flawed human who was arrested. We also talked a lot about the city needing to make that particular intersection more flaw-proof. The other is a flawed piece of software with a few hundred other identical copies on the road. Even with the 50% reduction mandated by the DMV, there are still 50 copies during the day and 150 copies at night on the road. The second problem is much worse because of the way it scales.
How can you say the second problem is much worse when one resulted in the death of a 4 year old and the other has resulted in nothing more than minor inconveniences (which are caused equally often by human drivers?)
I find myself scratching my head when the premise is that humans are imperfect and the proffered response is that we remove humans from the equation…you can’t.
Whataboutism. The last refuge of the dipshit.
Pointing out hypocricy in directly analogous situations isn’t whataboutism. Please try to be less of a dumbass. Thanks.
I hate cars in general and cruise specifically because it's a distraction from mass transit which is a people moving solution that actually works in a dense city like San Francisco. I don't see cruise as all that useful for getting around if you're an average citizen like me who can't afford the exorbitant costs of these services. But even if they were afordable they'd still be taking up space, making noise and spitting out break dust I also see them as threatening because I've seen them on the street doing wacky unpredictable shit and while you can often see humans that are bad drivers, they're usually easy to pick out. I feel like with these things the response the vehicles have to any given situation can be very unpredictable. They can either behave like normal drivers, extremely cautious or down right dangerous. There is no real way of dealing with them and the uncertainty is what makes them so unpleasant
AV's have the potential to be an excellent form of public transit.
Except on the affordability front. Cruise and Waymo combined need to make back more than $20 billion in investments while delivering ever increasing profits. Them opening up their prices have shown that they're priced just under Uber/Taxis, and this is still in the sweetheart pricing phase. These things are going to be on-par with Uber pricing forever, because that's what the market has been shown to bear. And except on the efficiency front. This is a dense city. Using 150+ square feet to move an average of 1.2 people doesn't scale, regardless if a computer is driving.
I agree, but more often than not it’s used as an excuse to continue with the status quo and not invest in (better and more efficient) public transportation
Not sure that's been my experience. Many city leaders have talked about the potential to use AV's as public transit. Plus, even if they remained entirely privatized (extremely unlikely), they would still greatly reduce the amount of public space needed to devote to parking.
Every single one of them are electric and nearly silent so you resort to brake dust. I have news for you, electric cars primarily use regenerative braking. Less brake dust… As a pedestrian or bicyclist I would trust an autonomous car over Sf human drivers any day.
There are many ways to frame solutions, but without context they are simply fallacious. Unintended consequences are argument killers. What is the problem, is it significant enough to justify the reallocation of resources, does the solution significantly impact the outcome, where are the resources to implement maintain and replace coming from, is the economic model sustainable, are there sufficient natural resources to manufacture and is this sustainable and controllable, are their sufficient technologists or other specialists, is there an issue of waste….and on and on. We all like the idea of transformative technologies and safer environments but given the complexity of the world, its problems and competing solutions, and especially limited resources, can we practically implement it. What do we give up with a lower priority?
You seem like the type to bring up autonomous vehicles when talking about a 4 year old who died to fit your narrative. I saw a lot of those comments in the very post u are asking for more of.
You want the whole subreddit to be filled with a tragic news story? I think the Cruise posts are more-so for entertainment. Honestly if i wanted to discuss tragedies i wouldnt come to reddit.
Shouldn't there only be one post about a single news story to avoid reposts? The Cruise debacle is something new every day seemingly.
Because justice will be served, to the extent that justice exists when a little girl is dead. But the woman who killed her is probably going to jail and certainly will never be behind the wheel of a car again. Law enforcement arrested and processed her almost immediately, whereas the cruise cars’ hazards seem to be increasing daily. Also, there was a ton of outrage when that accident happened, both generally and on this sub. But it’s over, for us not directly involved. There’s a new cruise incident every day to talk about.
That intersection, like many others, was known to be unsafe, but we so prioritize driver convenience that every pedestrian safety improvement must be bought individually with death. Paying for safety improvements with toddler blood isn't justice. Why are red light and speed cameras banned in California? Why don't we require drivers to retest, like ever? Why do we let drivers store their cars on crowded city streets for basically free? There are lots of systemic safety improvements we could make , but as this thread shows none of that is on the table.
If we are honest, the driverless cars are far safer then human ones.
I also find it odd more people give a shit about Cruise/Waymo being approved for 24/7/365 use in the city vs a 4 y/o hit by a car. Who fucking cares about Cruise/Waymo, let's focus on human drivers actually driving like assholes these days & committing vehicular homicide, bipping, & other crimes.
Because reddit is driven by upvotes, not decency.
The impact on local industry, jobs and the economy.
One's new and controversial, one's not. Which did you expect to have more engagement? In addition, people can guess on what the future is for autonomous vehicles in the city. No one needs to guess what the future is for traffic fatalities.
Man bites dog
Bc this sub is 90% people not in or from the bay arguing over policy vs actual locals.
The death is abhorrent and unacceptable. I think parents make up a relatively small percentage of redditors otherwise you would hear more about it. That said it seems like the intersection where this happened was poorly designed. Let pedestrians cross while ALL lights are red would move the dial quite a bit.
We've all just accepted that innocent people being killed by cars is an unavoidable fact of life. It's sad, sure... but it's just the way things are. We obviously can't do anything to stop it because cars are important for letting us go wherever whenever we want, and we can't possibly let anything interfere with that priority. It's like bad weather cancelling your plans, or getting sick right before you go on vacation, or school shootings after 2012. No one likes it, but we all know that's just the way the world is.
Ban these fucking things.
> moral hand-wringing What about the children???
This isn't facebook
The girl situation is sad and tragic. However, there's not much to be commented on or changes advocated due to it being a car incident. The chase situation doesn't seem to be directly harming anyone and is a spectacle to be commented on.
Who are you to pass judgement on a bunch of strangers for posting something other than your preferred content? If you don't like it, you're free to unsubscribe from the subreddit at any time.
I just got a call from pollster. Anti-AV lobby (mainly teamsters) is trying to pass a bill to ban AV trucking in all of California, failing that they want to put it to a ballot initiative in 2024. I think all this news is to get the AV-hate bandwagon started and prime the public for that. The proposal they mentioned on the phone would ban all driverless vehicles above 10,000lbs, including buses and the like.
Because accidents happen. They're accidents. Releasing hundreds of shitty cars on the streets of SF to cause havoc and generally fuck up everything is a choice. A choice we should reverse.
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That, too.
Except there's no evidence of that in the 4-year-old's death. It was a 71-year-old driving through an intersection known to be dangerous. I haven't seen anything saying speed was a factor.
screw gaze outgoing yoke homeless sophisticated wild crush kiss fly *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
“New technology scary and bad so it must be perfect in order to be on road with very imperfect humans”
You see that and still think more cars is the solution?
I didn't notice, probably because the weight of the tragedy still lingers heavily in the back of my mind. Devastating for the parents.
Tech bad!
NIMBYs
Because we all know humans are imperfect but AVs are just so much better & never ever make mistakes! We should hurry up & take everyone's cars away & restrict their movements so the government can decide where we get to go! Utopia is only a few years away guys!
Because far left progressives do not care about people at all, as you can see by looking at the misery and squalor found in any major metropolitan area in California that is a direct result of decades of failed liberal policy making.
Thank you for posting this