Comment on Front Brake Lights Could Drastically Diminish Road Accident Rates
echodot@feddit.uk 3 weeks agoSometimes you see those videos from a dash cam of a truck that hits a bridge, obviously the truck driver was been being attentive but often so was the recording car as driver. All I can ever think is, “why were you so close behind, it was blindingly obvious that was about to happen”, yet to them apparently it wasn’t, and now they’ve got bits of truck roof in their windscreen.
There was an astounding number of people who really cannot drive, and yet they think they’re driving safely. They just haven’t gotten a crash yet.
If we limited drivers permits to the 8% or so of drivers who are actually competent we’d solve a lot of problems in several domains.
I self-selected as ineligible to drive years ago, and I’ve never regretted it. Of course I had to move away from my home country and learn a new language, but those are the shakes.
Reading all such things I’m starting to think “what if I can drive?” I’ve always thought I can’t, but since everyone around who thinks they can drive like suicide bombers, maybe I should find those driving lessons.
Define safe? If everyone drives safely enough that you are more likely to die of suicide than an automobile accident, is that safe enough?
That is a weird question.
How do you calculate odds of dying by suicide wouldn’t they be personal?
The U.S. death rate is about 750 / 100,000 overall, with about 14.1 of those 750 declared suicide (you can never really know, but the suspected actual suicide rate is a bit higher, to preserve insurance benefits…)
The current US death rate by automobile accident is around 13.4 per 100,000 - so, by those statistics, people are already slightly more likely to take their own lives by choice than they are to die in an auto accident.
Of course if you choose to walk, you’re not entirely safe, the US pedestrian death rate is around 2 per 100,000, and that’s with most people driving everywhere most of the time.
Another fun way to look at the end is lifetime odds:
Death by suicide: 1/87 Death by automobile accident: 1/93 (which seems to indicate in itself that deaths by auto accident are expected to decline slightly?) Death by firearm: 1/91 Suicide by firearm: 1/156
Next time you’re driving on a 2 lane highway at speed, oncoming cars approaching at a relative velocity of 100mph and more (50 in your direction 50 in theirs…) count oncoming cars. When you get to 87, odds are that one of those drivers will ultimately die by suicide… there’s a little solace in the fact that most of them won’t be doing it by swerving into oncoming traffic, and the bigger relief is that most of those that do, won’t be doing it at that particular moment just before you pass.
As for guns - that’s a whole different mess, but interesting that the numbers are so close.
Fatal motor vehicle accidents are just over 865000 times more common than commercial air travel accidents, but until dash cams we never got to see them, so people think it can’t happen to them, when it’s slightly worse than even odds.
catloaf@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Because it wasn’t blindingly obvious? I don’t know how tall the truck in front of me is, and since I don’t drive tall vehicles I know even less about the heights of bridges. Usually commercial drivers are the better ones.
Red_October@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Well the thing that made it blindingly obvious was that it was a 30 second video of a tall truck driving full tilt toward a low bridge, so obviously something was about to happen!