[HN Gopher] How do cars do in out-of-sample crash testing?
___________________________________________________________________
How do cars do in out-of-sample crash testing?
Author : surprisetalk
Score : 71 points
Date : 2024-11-17 09:38 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (danluu.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (danluu.com)
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >Checking to see if crash tests are being gamed with hyper-
| specific optimizations isn't really feasible for someone who
| isn't a billionaire.
|
| hmm, operation "Trick Elon into Wasting His Money" has published
| its latest trick!
| Etheryte wrote:
| > In a 2024 analysis of fatality rate per mile driven from
| 2018-2022, the worst car manufacturers were, starting from the
| worst, were Tesla, Kia, Buick, Dodge, and then Hyundai.
|
| I don't think this is a tree Elon wants to be barking at too
| loudly. But then again, you never know, every time I read the
| news I can't tell whether I'm reading The Onion or not.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >he worst car manufacturers were, starting from the worst,
| were Tesla, Kia, Buick, Dodge, and then Hyundai.
|
| Look at that list of brands though. You'd have to have to be
| blinded by motivated reasoning to not think that who buys
| what might have more than a little bit to do with it.
|
| Edit: Just to be clear, I say this not in defense of any
| particular brand but in offense of anyone who engages in
| naive surface level assessment.
| close04 wrote:
| I'd be very interested in a "deaths by weight class"
| comparison too. Size and weight are huge factors in an
| accident.
|
| I'm not at all surprised if a Kia Rio is a death trap in an
| accident facing most likely an SUV twice the weight. I am
| surprised to see Tesla at the top of the fatalities chart
| though, punching a few weight categories above your average
| Kia.
| nemomarx wrote:
| Maybe I'm missing something, what's the commonality? I
| thought Kia had a reputation for cheap compact cars, Dodge
| for trucks, Hyundai I hear of in the same conversation as
| Toyota, etc. They seem like they all target different
| markets?
|
| And certainly Tesla's aren't cheap right?
| potato3732842 wrote:
| It's not commonality, it's that even if like for like the
| vehicles are equivalent or even safer there's selection
| bias at play as a result of what they sell and who they
| sell it to. To use a very broad brush:
|
| People who buy Tesla sedans are basically the "german car
| weaving with no blinker" demographics of yesteryear so if
| someone's gonna hit a pole at 100 it'll be them.
|
| Buick sells pretty safe stuff to pretty conservative
| buyers buy they skew toward age where they'd keel over
| from an open hand slap so surviving more than a fender
| bender isn't likely and they're exactly the kind of
| people who are gonna get t-boned at 60 by something they
| just didn't see.
|
| Dodge basically sells Challengers and Chargers these days
| (Ram is separate brand for the timeline listed) and the
| stereotype seems to generally check out.
|
| Hyundai and Kia are kind of the odd ones out but they
| sell a lot of low end and small stuff which doesn't
| exactly attract the least risky buyer demographics and
| the cars aren't exactly loaded with safety themselves.
|
| The comparison really needs to be done on a higher
| resolution otherwise you get stuff like Volvo and Lexus
| looking artificially good because of course nobody dies
| in high end SUVs and sedans driven mostly by people of
| non-risky age and decent means and Ford and GM look good
| because they sell god knows how many fleet vehicles that
| only get driven responsibly on the clock and it's kind of
| hard to kill yourself in a 3/4 ton pickup anyway.
| coredog64 wrote:
| I'm wondering if the "Kia Boys" phenomenon moves the
| needle of fatality rates.
| Interesco wrote:
| This is what I was wondering - around me, many of these
| cars were stolen by kids under 16 with no drivers
| license. I know of a few cases where they crashed on the
| highway killing 3+.
| foooorsyth wrote:
| Driver demographics play a huge factor (young men are the
| deadliest drivers). Also, the makeup of your vehicle lineup
| skews the numbers. Small crossovers are the deadliest
| vehicles (low mass, prone to rollover). Tesla's lineup is
| small (only 5 vehicles) and the Model Y dominates sales
| numbers. That hurts their overall fatality per mile number.
|
| Looking at real world results is still important. The BMW
| F10 530i had zero worldwide fatalities over its entire
| production. Results like that should speak more than
| contrived sled tests.
| infecto wrote:
| Unfortunately I have a hard time following the data for that
| quote. I wonder if he simply averaged out numbers but he also
| does not cite sources and instead he just has a circular
| link, the html writeup links to mastodon which links to his
| article. On the model ranking the Honda CRV Hyrbid comes
| ahead of a model y.
| david-gpu wrote:
| I wish car testing was less about the safety of the people inside
| of the car and more about the safety of the people outside of it,
| like pedestrians, cyclists and other vehicles.
|
| After all, people buying a car already have a strong incentive to
| purchase something that is safe for themselves, but how many
| people put any thought into reducing the risk that the force upon
| others?
|
| For context, pedestrian and cycling deaths have increased for the
| past decade in North America [0] and it is known that tall blunt
| hoods increase fatalities [1]. Yet, nothing is being done about
| it in NA as far as I know.
|
| [0] https://www.npr.org/2023/06/26/1184034017/us-pedestrian-
| deat...
|
| [1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=YpuX-5E7xoU
| grecy wrote:
| Pedestrian safety is a very big part of European car crash
| testing - some cars even have front / hood airbags that will
| deploy for pedestrians.
| foooorsyth wrote:
| https://www.euroncap.com/en/car-safety/the-ratings-explained...
|
| NCAP has a dedicated test battery.
|
| Pedestrian figures are alarming, but I doubt vehicle mass and
| shape are the largest factor contributing to their rise. The
| numbers have increased since 2009. Smart phones and distracted
| driving are a huge factor here. That combined with NA's
| terrible pedestrian infrastructure is a terrible combination.
|
| The fastest way to curtail pedestrian deaths is to build real
| pedestrian infrastructure and get serious about anti-cell phone
| technology for the driver's seat.
|
| Edit: Oh, also several NA cities just stopped enforcing all
| traffic laws post summer 2020. Can't ignore that in the post
| pandemic spike.
| close04 wrote:
| > I doubt vehicle mass and shape are the largest factor
| contributing to their rise.
|
| Distracted driving might be the biggest factor but it's hard
| to prevent a human from being distracted. It's easy to make
| smaller cars, we used to have them.
|
| The shape most definitely has a large impact (pun intended).
| The visibility from recent SUVs and trucks is abysmal without
| extensive assistance, like sensors and cameras. [0] Sometimes
| those cameras and sensors are another source of distraction
| and increase the cognitive load for what used to be "just
| look ahead", leading to the distracted driving.
|
| > examined that front visibility with a group of elementary
| school children, ages 6 to 10, and several adults of
| different heights in the driver's seat of four tall, square-
| hooded vehicles: Ford F-150 and Toyota Tundra pickup trucks
| and Cadillac Escalade and Jeep Wagoneer SUVs. With the kids
| seated in a line stretching forward from the vehicle's front
| bumper, it took nine to 11 of them before a 5-foot-2 driver
| could see a child's head
|
| [0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/americas-cars-
| trucks-ar...
| infecto wrote:
| Speaking from a US perspective. I don't believe its hard to
| prevent a human from being distracted. The problem is these
| days there is zero enforcement of traffic laws in most
| parts of the US. Making cars smaller would require new laws
| that are most certainly impossible to get made at this
| point. Definitely would be great if cars were smaller but
| people need to get off their darn phone.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Citing blind spots fullsize SUVs seems misleading at best
| when their proliferation peaked in the mid 00s and have
| been waning since while small SUVs have become dominant.
|
| Straight ahead drive overs of unseen pedestrians are
| vanishingly rare compared to people cornering into
| pedestrians that are hidden behind pillars. From there the
| lethality of the vehicle takes over.
|
| The largest of SUVs that you complain about are not
| increasing in frequency. What is happening is that sedans
| re being traded in for taller SUVs of comparable footprint
| and that's where the changes in statistics are coming from.
| close04 wrote:
| > Citing blind spots fullsize SUVs seems misleading at
| best when they peaked in the 00s and have been waning
|
| I'm not sure what's misleading, it's based on data which
| contradicts your opinion. Every link I can find on this
| points in the same direction.
|
| As as summary: cars have increase continuously over the
| past decades and so have their blind spots, between 2012
| and 2021 the total number of large cars has increased by
| 50% and each segment of large cars has seen 25-100%
| increase, the design can make even smaller cars more
| deadly, and the number of pedestrian deaths increased by
| 80% since 2009. [0][1]
|
| > America's cars and trucks are getting bigger, and so
| are their front blind zones [0] [look for "Getting
| Bigger"]
|
| > Over the past 30 years, the average U.S. passenger
| vehicle has gotten about 4 inches wider, 10 inches
| longer, 8 inches taller and 1,000 pounds heavier [1]
|
| > a blunt profile makes medium-height vehicles deadly too
| [1]
|
| > Pedestrian crash deaths have risen 80 percent since
| hitting their low in 2009 [1]
|
| > many safety advocates have also drawn a connection to
| the growing portion of the U.S. vehicle fleet made up of
| pickups and SUVs [1]
|
| You call it misleading, I call it supported by data.
|
| [0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/americas-cars-
| trucks-ar...
|
| [1] https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/vehicles-with-
| higher-more-v...
| hibikir wrote:
| The small SUVs tend to have smaller side blind spots, but
| for killing pedestrians, the important one is the front
| blind spot, and that is about hood height, which just
| keeps going up because it looks "manlier"
|
| Deaths are also about what happens when there is contact:
| High hoods lead to the unfortunate pedestrian hitting
| their head against the pavement, followed by the car
| trying to go over it with all its weight. Do the same
| with the very heavy, but low Tesla Model 3, and the
| pedestrian goes over the car, which happens to be much
| safer. The contact with the sedan is at around knee size,
| many a modern American truck will hit your ribcage, which
| is a bit more threatening.
|
| A car can be tall and designed to be relatively safe on
| impact, but it'd look like a minivan. We all know that
| those kept losing in the marketplace because they didn't
| look aggressive enough.
|
| So the switch from sedans to small SUVs was a disaster.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > Distracted driving might be the biggest factor but it's
| hard to prevent a human from being distracted.
|
| To prevent it entirely, perhaps. But there's quite a few
| things we could do to reduce the incidence of distracted
| driving:
|
| * More thoroughly educate drivers on just how _bad_ they
| are at distracted driving. I know that when I ran the red
| light while talking on the phone, I forswore any future use
| of the phone while driving, because I clearly couldn 't be
| trusted to drive safely while doing so.
|
| * Rip out the touchscreens of modern cars, and stop
| providing stuff in ways that requires distracted driving to
| operate.
|
| * Laws against distracted driving can be more rigorously
| enforced by the police.
|
| * Penalties could also be harsher. Drunk driving? You can
| lose your license. Distracted driving? Here's a $500 fine.
| Very light penalty for the crime that kills more people.
| nogridbag wrote:
| I'm sure front visibility plays some role, but just as a
| counter example, squirrels are much smaller and can dart in
| front of my vehicle faster than any child, yet I have no
| problem spotting them while driving a large SUV (Kia
| Telluride).
|
| Places like school parking lots are probably where front
| and rear visibility are of upmost importance, and that's
| where I think all of the sensors and cameras are critical
| and should be mandatory. For example, while backing up out
| of a parking space a rear sensor can detect cross traffic
| (people or cars) way before you can see it regardless of
| the vehicle size. My old Mazda Miata would probably fair
| far worse than my Telluride as rear visibility was poor and
| the car was so small and low to the ground it was hard to
| see over other cars.
| david-gpu wrote:
| _> I have no problem spotting them while driving a large
| SUV_
|
| How do you know? You can't know what you didn't see, and
| when you run over a squirrel there's no mother squirrel
| screaming her lungs out to stop your car.
| buran77 wrote:
| > I have no problem spotting them while driving a large
| SUV
|
| That's the bias. It could very well mean "no problem
| spotting the ones I had no problems spotting". By
| definition you can't know how many you never spotted and
| maybe even ended up under your wheels.
|
| Most drivers only kill a pedestrian once in their life,
| and relatively few actually are that unfortunate, so it's
| not something you can easily calibrate for from personal
| experience (with any luck you never will). They all saw
| and avoided all the pedestrians that jumped in front of
| them until they didn't.
|
| Many of these accidents happen at low speed when
| pedestrians thinking they have time meet a driver with a
| giant blindspot right in front of them and doesn't even
| try to brake.
|
| Search for "frontover" pictures and you'll realize how
| ridiculously large that blindspot is.
| 15155 wrote:
| > get serious about anti-cell phone technology for the
| driver's seat.
|
| How does this work?
| foooorsyth wrote:
| It remains to be defined, but some of the technology is
| already there. We have driver monitoring systems. We know
| which device is paired to the infotainment system. That
| device could be physically sequestered from driver access
| while the vehicle is in gear (via NFC, for example).
|
| I don't want my car to be an arm of the nanny state. I
| don't want insurance companies spying on my drives or
| owning my driver monitoring data. But, there could be a
| simple "place the connected device on this pad and strap it
| in while you drive" type system, that actually attempts to
| enforce the policy. Does it get hard once multiple
| people/devices get in the car? Sure. Could individual
| drivers just bring a second device along to defeat it? Yes.
| But for the average solo driver that doesn't pre mediate
| their own misbehavior, it could reduce distraction without
| trampling on privacy or significantly added nuisance.
| 15155 wrote:
| > But, there could be a simple "place the connected
| device on this pad and strap it in while you drive" type
| system
|
| Why do I have to comply? Is my phone not allowed to be
| used while in motion or something? Or is this required
| just to access the infotainment system (hello, car-only
| phone!)?
|
| If you're putting some kind of radio in my vehicle that
| tells my (and every passenger's phone) to shut off, I'm
| going to abuse this signal and broadcast it far more
| widely than any car would. And then just remove, disable,
| or block the radio.
|
| > Does it get hard once multiple people/devices get in
| the car?
|
| It doesn't just become difficult, it becomes logically
| impossible. Current, common radio technology isn't good
| enough to isolate the driver's seat.
|
| ---
|
| Also: good luck getting any technical chain of trust to
| work and stay safe/secret between numerous phone and
| automobile manufacturers. Nobody has been able to achieve
| this with multi-manufacturer DRM so far - DVD, Bluray,
| etc. Apple is the exception with regards to key material
| security: auto manufacturers stand no chance, Xiaomi
| doesn't care, and my Google Pixel is rooted.
|
| Before phones there were DVD playing head units in cars:
| parking and GPS bypasses have existed for these for at
| least 20 years.
| foooorsyth wrote:
| >common radio technology isn't good enough to isolate the
| driver's seat
|
| Look man, you don't know what you're talking about. UWB
| can easily position a device in a vehicle. BT direction
| finding is also quite promising.
|
| But I'm not suggesting any advanced locating, let alone a
| jammer (lol). I'm literally just suggesting an NFC pad
| with a phone "seat belt" for the primary device connected
| to the infotainment. Car makes a beeping noise until you
| rest the phone in the safe spot. That's it. Nothing any
| more extreme than existing seat belt and speed limit
| warnings (which save lives despite their nuisance).
|
| t. Actual automotive engineer for a major OEM that works
| on infotainment & mobile software, Bluetooth, UWB, &
| future RF
| 15155 wrote:
| > for the primary device connected to the infotainment
|
| Why would I pair it?
| foooorsyth wrote:
| Because on solo drives, your user experience would be
| severely diminished. People like CarPlay, Android Auto,
| and BT BR/EDR profiles. Want to guess the percentage of
| owners that NEVER pair a primary device in modern cars?
| It's almost zero.
|
| Do you want a pat on the back for defeating the imagined
| safety mechanism? You can also buy seat belt plugs to
| turn the seat belt chime off. Very few people end up
| doing this in practice (because it's stupid).
|
| What is your specific aversion to your car expecting you
| to separate control of your phone while driving alone?
| Assume you have HFP, A2DP, and/or CarPlay/Android Auto
| with voice control. Why do you need physical control of
| your phone while your car is in gear/moving? You don't.
| fragmede wrote:
| to get it to use the car stereo (and screen) instead of
| the shitty little ones on your phone.
| avidiax wrote:
| Easy, don't focus on the cell phone, focus on the driver's
| focus.
|
| Mandate driver attention monitoring, and require that
| prolonged inattention (i.e. N seconds continuous, or N
| seconds of the past 3 minutes) results in escalating
| consequences, e.g. a warning chime, followed by activation
| of the hazard lights, followed by cutting the throttle and
| engaging lane keeping assist if available, and with several
| minutes continuous inattention, automatically call
| emergency services if possible.
|
| Ideally, phone manufacturers and car makers could work
| together so that the driver inattention chime automatically
| locks the phone and tells the driver to pay attention (or
| tells the passenger to tell the driver to pay attention).
| 15155 wrote:
| Hello, Big Brother.
|
| Why not ban all old phones and cars too, to really ensure
| enforcement of this scheme?
| avidiax wrote:
| Hardly big brother to say that you should be required to
| pay attention when driving, and this all stays on-vehicle
| until you've been gone so long that it must be a medical
| emergency.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| My car won't let me lock the keys in the trunk; it'll pop
| back open. It seems to be quite precise - leaving them on
| _top_ of the trunk doesn 't trigger it, nor does having
| them in the back seat (right next to it).
|
| (Very confusing the first time, when you don't realize
| that's what the issue is.)
|
| I'd imagine something similar is at least _possible_.
| 15155 wrote:
| The issue is that this technology isn't that specific.
| Your passengers will not be able to use their devices.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I'm trying to _address_ that aspect by noting the fairly
| high specificity of the "you're locking your keys in the
| trunk" sensors.
|
| If you've ever used an Apple AirTag, they're even better
| for this; my phone could easily tell me which seat an
| AirTag is sitting in.
| bluGill wrote:
| Why not? My 2012 minivan has wireless headphones that
| don't work in the front two seats (annoying when you are
| in the navigator seat trying to get them setup for a
| young kid in the back who can't do it themself). I get it
| is a tricky problem, but it is one we can solve.
| avalys wrote:
| [0] is kind of a useless article because it doesn't provide a
| graph and it doesn't provide per-capita statistics.
|
| If the US population has doubled since 1980, then it wouldn't
| be surprising that some population-level statistic (total
| pedestrian deaths) is at an all-time high! And it could still
| be at an all-time high while reflecting a substantial increase
| in safety - if the population doubled (increased 100%) but
| deaths only rose 25%, for instance.
|
| Similarly, I anecdotally observe that cycling is more popular
| than it was 20 years ago. So it would not be surprising (to me)
| to observe that cycling deaths are higher as well.
|
| But without quantifying any of these factors, the significance
| of these statistics is difficult to evaluate.
| david-gpu wrote:
| _> If the US population has doubled since 1980, then it
| wouldn 't be surprising that some population-level statistic
| (total pedestrian deaths) is at an all-time high!_
|
| Indeed, it is per capita deaths that have increased since
| 2013 or so [0].
|
| Why speculate when you can Google?
|
| [0] https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-
| statistics/detail/pedes...
| telgareith wrote:
| Because its not the readers job to support a writers
| position.
| david-gpu wrote:
| Criticizing that the article I posted doesn't contain
| rates is understandable.
|
| Nevertheless, in the same amount of time that it took
| them to write a shallow dismissal they could have googled
| the raw data and shared a link. They didn't provide any
| sources whatsoever for their own claims.
| webstrand wrote:
| Jumping down the rabbit hole of "find a statistic X via
| google" takes a lot of motivation, and that's also a
| limited resource.
|
| Just because that information was easy to find this time,
| doesn't mean it is every time. Often when I go looking
| for statistics on various population level things, I have
| to do a lot of work to find and massage it into the form
| I was looking for.
| kriops wrote:
| What part of their claim specifically requires (or would
| even benefit from) a source?
|
| As far as I am concerned you are conceding the argument
| by doubling down here. And in spite of potentially being
| right.
| itishappy wrote:
| For starters, the question they posed and GP posted a
| source for benefits from having a concrete answer.
| avalys wrote:
| For what it's worth - my comment was more about my
| frustration over what a useless article it was and how
| low our journalistic standards and expectations are that
| no one involved in writing or editing it bothered to ask
| the very obvious questions I posed - rather than about
| the actual topic of pedestrian deaths and crash testing.
| illwrks wrote:
| Pedestrian safety is already accounted for in a cars exterior
| design (American cars and 'trucks' being the exception). Most
| of pedestrian safety is about pedestrian awareness.
|
| I can only speak for myself but when I'm driving, cycling or
| walking I'm always on the alert for idiots, there are plenty
| around. In almost all contexts it is people distracted by music
| and phones and are not paying attention to their surroundings.
|
| And I think cyclists who don't already have a driving license
| should have to do a basic provisional theory test. It's for
| their own safety to understand the rules of the road.
| tom_vidal wrote:
| The "rules of the road" argument here assumes that giving up
| huge amounts of public space for car infrastructure is
| inevitable and right, and that it's the fault of people
| walking or riding bikes if they get injured or killed since
| the system is not built for them.
|
| Roads in the US are designed almost entirely around the speed
| and convenience of cars, and don't account for the
| externalities they impose on everyone else. As cars get
| larger and more dangerous, and as drivers get more careless,
| the cost borne by society is only going up. Asking people
| walking and riding bikes to be even more extra careful not to
| get killed is not the right solution. Changing the design of
| our roads and public spaces to make them safer for everyone
| is.
| illwrks wrote:
| Sorry, I'm speaking from a European perspective
| (UK/London).
|
| When driving I've had idiots on e-scooters dressed in black
| with no lights zooming towards me on a one way street at
| night, I've had people walk out in front of me when
| distracted by their phones. When cycling I've often seen
| other casual cyclists with headphones on, in their own
| dreamland, no helmet either, and I've seen the same when
| walking about. People are too careless and distracted
| thinking others are going to look out for them, everyone
| needs to pay more attention.
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| A simple "what color is this traffic light?" test would go a
| long way towards saving cyclist lives thats for sure, but
| when you're that exposed to 4,000lbs vehicles moving at ~50+
| MPH operated by people who took at best, 8 hours of
| instruction from their health class teacher, well, a lot of
| the issues you run into are not going to be your fault.
| angst_ridden wrote:
| I just walked a mile in Los Angeles for lunch.
|
| I had the following near misses where I would have died or
| been severely injured if I hadn't been alert: a Tesla coming
| out of an alley (driver was on his phone, never saw me), old
| diesel Mercedes running a stop sign (couldn't see the
| driver), a Ford F150 in a parking lot (guy was fixated on a
| spot that just opened up).
|
| This does not include the woman in the Lexus who
| intentionally crawled up on me because I had the temerity to
| be in the crosswalk when _she_ wanted to _be_ someplace.
| r_hanz wrote:
| How much of that increase can also be attributed to distracted
| driving (ie driving under the influence of mobile phones)?
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| As a motorcycle commuter, who sits about 3 feet higher than
| most sedans in my area and can see into all the cars around
| me as I drive, I can confirm that at least half of the ones I
| see every morning on the road have the driver either staring
| at their lap using their phone, or rolling giant vape clouds
| out their window, and are probably high. Often, I see someone
| doing both.
|
| We need to nurture a culture of competency on the roads and
| excellence in automobile operations. My personal fav idea to
| help with that is build more race tracks :)
| Velofellow wrote:
| Another moto / cycle rider here. Recent phenomenon that
| makes me weep for road going competency: Phone or tablet on
| a suction cup mount playing YouTube, Netflix, whatever.
| Preferably at night with the screen 4" from your face to
| really make visual acuity dicey.
|
| I thought this was a one-off, but I see probably 5-10 of
| these idiots a week.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| The joke in flyover provinces/states, is it's difficult to
| cause an accident, because it's flat and there are few trees,
| people, boulders or buildings to crash into.
|
| If you fall asleep while driving, you'll just ruin some
| corn/wheat crops until you get stuck in a rut or get yourself
| back on the road.
|
| Tried to google for the longest distance anyone drove asleep at
| the wheel but only getting results about semi-conscious
| sleepdriving, but I bet it's quite a distance.
| joshlemer wrote:
| I would also like to understand why the most basic regulations
| aren't in place on cars to limit their maximum speed, and
| maximum acceleration and/or power?
|
| It seems like the general public all agrees that it would be
| insane to allow arbitrarily powerful e-bikes, and so they are
| limited to (depending on your jurisdiction) 500 watts and
| 32km/h. This, despite that there are nearly 0 deaths from
| e-bikes per year. Cars and motorcycles on the other hand, are
| orders of magnitude more dangerous and we have no restrictions
| whatsoever. There are street-legal cars with 1000 horsepower
| and top speeds of over 400km/h.
| cenamus wrote:
| In most jurisdictions they're limited to that power because
| they're ebikes. Above that you just have an electric
| motorcycle, which mandates different brakes and so on, but
| you can still do that. Just need a another license, more
| taxes, etc.
| BytesAndGears wrote:
| Couldn't you also require a higher tier license for large
| and dangerous cars, just like motorcycles require extra
| privileges?
|
| Allow anyone to own a sedan or compact SUV with up to
| 200hp. If you want to own something larger, you need an
| "oversized vehicle" endorsement. And if you want to own
| something more powerful, you need a power-level
| endorsement. And maybe you need to pay extra to have those
| endorsements, and they can be taken away if you are
| reckless.
|
| It could be a grandfathering system too, so not to disrupt
| the entire market. Automatically grant partial endorsements
| to people who already have those vehicles when the law goes
| into effect, but require testing within 5 years or when
| registering any new vehicle that meets those criteria.
|
| But cars and trucks are incredibly dangerous and it's
| ridiculous society has basically zero restrictions. (I own
| a "small" truck and would be happy to have it restricted if
| it means the roads start to become safer for cycling and
| walking)
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| What evidence do you have that vehicles over a certain
| size and power are inherently more dangerous? And what
| about the problem would an endorsement solve?
| david-gpu wrote:
| _> What evidence do you have that vehicles over a certain
| size and power are inherently more dangerous?_
|
| Basic physics and historical collision data collected
| over decades.
|
| But don't take my word for it! Look up your local
| official collision data -- how many pedestrians have
| killed people inside a four-wheel vehicle? What about the
| other way around? Now repeat for cyclists,
| mopeds/motorcycles, and other four-wheeled vehicles.
|
| The heavier vehicle kills the lighter vehicle, primarily
| because of momentum.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > What evidence do you have that vehicles over a certain
| size and power are inherently more dangerous?
|
| It's not the vehicle but the entitled douche bag who
| thinks they own the road while wildly speeding around,
| cutting people off and weaving around traffic like a
| drunkard. No one needs that power save for insecure men.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Sounds like the driver is the problem. A rampaging driver
| can do pretty much the same damage regardless of the
| exact car. Police should focus on driver behaviour with
| stricter enforcement of "road manners" type rules. Broken
| window theory.
| MisterTea wrote:
| Of course the driver is the problem but you can't fix
| stupid with police. Also realize that in the USA there
| has been a reduction in the amount of policing done on
| the roads for various reasons so don't expect much from
| the cops.
| HPsquared wrote:
| With less policing the problems will just get worse. The
| only alternative is some kind of intrusive digital
| nannying which is what we're starting to see.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| My evidence is that you need a special endorsement
| already to drive things that are more powerful or complex
| than a car (e.g., taxi, semi truck, ferry, formula one
| car). This seems obvious.
| david-gpu wrote:
| _> My evidence is that you need a special endorsement
| already to drive things that are more powerful or complex
| than a car_
|
| In Canada, a standard car license allows driving vehicles
| up to 11,000 kg (24,250 lbs) [0], including pickup trucks
| and SUVs that are larger than a WWII Sherman tank [1],
| such as the Ford F-350 or the Cadillac Escalade [2].
|
| Thus, we are allowing people to drive things that are far
| more powerful than a car without special licensing
| requirements -- and without a speed governor.
|
| So it is already pretty lax in terms of licensing
| requirements for vehicles that kill and maim our
| neighbors every year. We should be even stricter than we
| are.
|
| [0] https://drivetest.ca/licences/licences-overview/
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4_Sherman
|
| [2] https://www.carsized.com/en/cars/compare/cadillac-
| escalade-2...
| nradov wrote:
| The actual data shows that some of the largest and most
| powerful vehicle models have quite low insurance claims
| for injuries to others.
|
| https://www.iihs.org/topics/auto-insurance/insurance-
| losses-...
| david-gpu wrote:
| Can you provide some examples?
|
| Because when I compare between classes, there is a clear
| trend in the data you provided where large four-door cars
| have higher rates of bodily injury than midsize cars, and
| it goes down again for small and mini.
|
| And it makes sense: in a collision, the heavier vehicle
| crushes the lighter one.
|
| Am I misreading the data?
| samatman wrote:
| Did you look at the data for pickups?
| HPsquared wrote:
| This really just looks like a proxy for social class.
|
| Edit: though interestingly there's an uptick when you get
| to the ultra-ostentatious vehicles like Bentley and
| Lamborghini.
| bluGill wrote:
| We already have higher tier licenses for large vehicles.
| However they are set such that only heavy duty trucks
| qualify - dump trucks, semis, and other such things. That
| is the types of things you drive as part of a job, as
| opposed to personal vehicles.
| karlgkk wrote:
| > I would also like to understand why the most basic
| regulations aren't in place on cars to limit their maximum
| speed, and maximum acceleration and/or power?
|
| If you bring this up, the amount of visceral reactions, you
| get from people who demand that you stop talking about the
| subject is incredible.
|
| They come up with all sorts of crazy hypotheticals (what if I
| need to rush to the hospital at 105 miles an hour).
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Point taken. But I do think it's wrong to put no value on
| the reason behind the popularity of that visceral reaction.
| Unless safety and efficiency are the only things we are
| optimizing for.
|
| Being able to drive what you want, where you want, when you
| want, and how you want, within reason, is one of the
| emergent freedoms ever granted by the progress of
| civilization.
| joshlemer wrote:
| I think it's a bit hyperbolic to characterize limiting
| car speeds to, say, 150 or 170 km/h, as a serious
| curtailment of our civilization's fundamental freedoms.
| simondotau wrote:
| How many people are dying because cars are exceeding 150
| km/h?
| joshlemer wrote:
| I don't know, but many people are caught driving in
| excess of 200km/h where I live in BC, when the maximum
| speed limit anywhere is 110km/h. There's literally never
| ever one single reason to drive over 150km/h, so any case
| of anyone ever doing it is already one too many. Even if
| there is just one death, that's too many, according to
| me. How many would it take to convince you?
| david-gpu wrote:
| Why would that matter?
|
| How many people are exceeding posted speed limits in
| highly populated areas? That is what increases collisions
| with pedestrians and cyclists, and for that reason I
| would love to see speed governors installed in all motor
| vehicles, and not only e-bikes, which ironically are the
| ones that are the least likely to cause serious injury to
| others.
| david-gpu wrote:
| _> But I do think it's wrong to put no value on the
| reason behind the popularity of that visceral reaction._
|
| _Not being killed_ is also a very popular visceral
| reason for pedestrians and cyclists to want cars to slow
| down in our cities, and for motor vehicle regulations to
| address the yearly carnage they cause every year.
|
| What value should we give to their desire of _not being
| killed_ , and how should it be weighted against drivers'
| desire to _drive what they want, where they want, when
| they want, and how they want_?
|
| Just a fun experiment: try replacing _" driving a car"_
| with _" stabbing random people on the street"_ or any
| other activity that involves people killing around three
| people per 100,000 population every year in your country.
| It's interesting how our perception changes when we get
| out of the context of motonormativity.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| It's a terrible metaphor but if everyone had to stab
| someone in the morning and the evening in order for the
| economy to even begin to function, we would pretty soon
| get over it. Upton Sinclair and all that.
| immibis wrote:
| What if the economy was built that way by stabbing
| industry lobbyists?
| actionablefiber wrote:
| We had a perfectly functioning economy prior to car
| domination and all the alternatives have progressed by
| incredible leaps and bounds in the time since as well.
| joshlemer wrote:
| This analogy fails because there's nothing about our
| economy that specifically demands that people drive cars
| that can drive over 150km/h. They would be able to
| commute exactly the same as they do today, if their cars
| had speed governors.
| actionablefiber wrote:
| I've been to two funerals in as many years for personal
| friends who died when drivers killed them with their
| cars. I'll make sure to throw in a good word for
| "emergent freedoms" and "the progress of civilization" at
| the next funeral I end up at.
| maxwellg wrote:
| Does any country or government enshrine "Right to Drive"
| in their constitution?
| kart23 wrote:
| Is there any evidence showing that cars with 1000 horsepower
| and top speeds of over 400km/h have higher fatality rates
| than lower powered cars?
| typewithrhythm wrote:
| Pedestrian safety, because it's a benefit to society and not
| the specific owner of the car, should be handled by regulations
| and government tests.
|
| I don't want the independent kinds of safety rating, like
| what's included in the article to include anything other than
| what benefits the purchaser of the car.
|
| I am in an adjacent industry where it's getting increasingly
| common to hear that these ratings are becoming less
| trustworthy, and part of it is they include points for gadgets
| and things seen as irrelevant to the end user.
| wtallis wrote:
| > I don't want the independent kinds of safety rating, like
| what's included in the article to include anything other than
| what benefits the purchaser of the car.
|
| _You_ may not want independent safety ratings to take
| pedestrians into account, but your insurance company may have
| other ideas, since pedestrian safety matters to their bottom
| line. Whose interests do you think matter more to an entity
| like IIHS?
| taeric wrote:
| Spending a little time in Japan, it is hard not to see the
| general difference in size of vehicle compared to what I'm used
| to seeing in the US. I'm incredibly curious to know if other
| nations have similarly small cars compared to the states?
|
| I'm also very curious on other impacts the vehicle sizes have on
| things. Easy to think it contributes to so many cyclist with
| basically no helmets. Curious if data backs that.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| (Brit here) Europe in general has smaller cars than the US -
| here's an Economist article [0] that claims ours are 20%
| smaller. I personally find it interesting that to many Brits,
| 'truck' means something like a semi, not a F-150.
|
| One factor here in the UK is that many of our cities and towns
| predate cars (sometimes by centuries) and consequently the
| roads and streets are much smaller. Such that giant cars are a
| real nuisance for both the driver and everyone else. But there
| is a definite trend toward larger vehicles, as can be seen by
| how difficult it is to get them into older parking
| infrastructure.
|
| [0] https://archive.vn/wusnE
| arethuza wrote:
| It's not just cities and towns, a lot of rural areas
| (particularly in Scotland) have single track roads with
| passing spaces i.e. a single lane, not a single lane in both
| directions.
| YokoZar wrote:
| Japan has vehicle weight taxes, which directly incentivizes
| what you observed there.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| These comparisons are always interesting because there are
| malevolent assumptions one can make about US car size, but
| there are also Occam's razor convenience aspects / differences
| in demographics.
|
| Compare to Europe and Japan, US has - MUCH lower energy costs,
| larger family sizes, much further travel distances, and smaller
| % of population in pre-modern urban areas with pre-automobile
| sized roads.
|
| Add to that a less top-down centralized government in the US
| and the resulting lack of mass transit, particularly inter-
| city, and you end up with more people, driving bigger cars,
| further.
| happosai wrote:
| Yet most of American traffic is single-occupant commuting.
| There is no reason why they need big-ass SUV or truck for
| that. Burn the planet while making fun on of Prius drivers.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| I drive an EV, I don't make fun of Prius drivers.
|
| Unfortunately due to duration / cost of ownership, families
| over-purchase in terms of vehicle capacity.
|
| Yes, dad maybe does most of his driving to work alone in
| the car. But on weekends he needs to be able to lug the
| kids around in their giant baby seats, strollers, etc.
|
| So most parents I know end up owning 2 vehicles of
| sufficient size for their overall needs.
|
| I know some families that have an extra car for commuting
| on top of the 2 family sized cars but this itself is
| something of a luxury.
| vel0city wrote:
| > But on weekends he needs to be able to lug the kids
| around in their giant baby seats, strollers, etc.
|
| Sure, but Dad doesn't need 3,000lbs of payload capacity
| and a 6ft+ bed and wheel spacers and an extra lift kit to
| carry a stroller.
|
| I've got two kids and a two-child stroller. There's more
| than enough space in something the size of a Mach E or a
| Model 3/Y to have multiple kids in car seats and all
| their stuff.
|
| In the end pretty much all of that could have fit in my
| old Accord as well.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Kind of a straw man.. yes plenty of people have cars that
| are too big.
|
| But a TON of people have vehicles in the MachE/ModelY
| crossover footprint. Look at how every brand has 3 cars
| that size and they all look the same.
|
| All of these, including your old accord are bigger than a
| Prius.
| bluGill wrote:
| Dad doesn't need that every time, but he has some other
| time when he needs it. A truck can do just about anything
| you might want of a car, while a car cannot do everything
| a truck can. Cars are expensive, and you pay for them
| even if don't use them - car payment, taxes, insurance
| are all prices you pay even if the car isn't moved. If
| you have a car for each need the cost goes up fast. If
| the car isn't used much your maintenance costs are more
| than expected again because things like sun and ozone
| wear parts out not just use.
|
| People tell me to just rent a truck when you need one.
| However that is hard and expensive. Most places won't
| rent you a truck, they will rent you a truck shaped
| vehicle with restrictions meaning you can't use it like a
| truck. When you find an exception the costs it very high
| and they charge per mile rates - it doesn't take many
| uses to be worth the extra costs of having a truck that
| does everything instead even before you account for the
| hassle of going to get the rental truck.
|
| Of course small cars can do more than most people give
| them credit for but they are still compromise and there
| are a lot of things that they can't do.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >Burn the planet while making fun on of Prius drivers
|
| Not defending status symbol trucks but he rear seats of
| compact cars aren't known for getting a lot of ass.
| closeparen wrote:
| It's rational to choose your vehicle based on worst-case
| rather than average-case needs. Buying, insuring, and
| garaging multiple vehicles for multiple purposes is
| ludicrously expensive. Renting only a little less so.
| codexb wrote:
| A large reason for the continued growth in size of US cars is
| EPA gas mileage requirements. Vehicles with larger footprints
| have less restrictive MPG requirements, and so manufacturers
| target larger footprints while trying to reduce weight. MPG
| stays roughly the same year after year, but cars get
| consistently larger.
| cmiller1 wrote:
| I'm surprised the "Actual vehicle tested may be different"
| section didn't mention the alleged fraud Ford engaged in with the
| 2015 F150 where they welded in extra crash safety bars only on
| specific configurations out of the factory... that just happened
| to be the exact configurations that were being sent to the IIHS
| for crash testing.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Did they add extra bars for the purpose of gaming the tests or
| did they add extra bars and then whoever chose what to send for
| the tests picked the obvious best choice?
| cmiller1 wrote:
| They knew which configuration would be sent for the tests
| because IIHS required it be the most "commonly sold" config,
| so they picked a specific supercrew model that made up about
| 70% of their sales to bump up the safety on.
| ndileas wrote:
| That's not ideal, but.... If you want more safety, you
| should want ford to do stuff like this. From the way it was
| phrased, I was imagining they added extra bars only to the
| actual cars sent for testing. This is them following the
| incentives and making their customers safer as a result; a
| win for safety testing.
|
| Obviously it would be better if they had a deep commitment
| to safety and made every variation of every model maximally
| safe. But I'll take it. No such thing as absolute safety,
| so moves in a better direction are good.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I can offer two takes on the IIHS:
|
| (1) A remarkable example of a private agency that has pushed
| safety standards beyond what the government would do own its own,
| and
|
| (2) An organization that has persuaded Americans to buy larger
| vehicles than they would have otherwise with all the associated
| costs (e.g. the "affordable car" crisis) and risks (to
| pedestrians.)
|
| The IIHS is an organization of insurers so they are particularly
| concerned about quantifiable monetary costs. And when it comes to
| that much more of the benefit of larger vehicles is in avoided
| minor injuries such as broken bones which are more common than
| death and life changing injuries. The public focuses on the
| latter and the psychology is such that some people will spend
| another $50k on some German vehicle and spend the rest of their
| days at the dealer getting it fixed or subject their children to
| the trauma of riding in a minivan. (To generation X the minivan
| is like the toxic PFAS GenX)
|
| IIHS claims that compatibility has improved between large and
| small vehicles but that large vehicles are still a menace to
| other road users
|
| https://www.iihs.org/topics/vehicle-size-and-weight
| xpe wrote:
| From the "Bonus: reputation" section:
|
| > As we've seen over the past few years, loudly proclaiming
| something, regardless of whether or not it's true, even when
| there's incontrovertible evidence that it's untrue, seems to not
| only work, that kind of bombastic rhetoric appears to attract
| superfans who will aggressively defend the brand.
|
| What does by Dann Luu mean by "loudly proclaiming something,
| regardless of truth, [seems to work]"? Let's try to make the
| claim more precise and testable.
|
| Since I'm interested in the broader claim, let me "carve out"
| (put aside) Dan's specific point about attracting superfans,
| which I find persuasive. With that said, here are some attempts
| to reframe the broad claim:
|
| Reframing #1: "Some people are persuaded of false things when a
| company loudly proclaims them." Yes, this seems obvious. But it
| isn't particularly useful in guiding action. The claim doesn't
| say anything quantitative.
|
| Reframing #2: "On net, the accuracy of a population's belief goes
| down when a company loudly proclaims a false belief." Maybe,
| maybe not. I would expect it largely depends on what happens
| next; i.e. whether there is some kind of response. Here are two
| kinds of reactions that favor not lying. First, getting caught in
| a lie can damage brand reputation. Second, lying calls more
| attention to an issue which would have otherwise drifted out of
| public awareness as the news cycle churns. These depend on how
| much credibility people assign to the organization and their
| claims.
|
| Reframing #3: "On net, it is in an organization's self-interest
| to loudly proclaim a falsehood about its quality." Maybe. It
| depends on many factors. This is the most interesting public
| policy question! If such a tactic _works_ (see reframing #2
| above), it is clearly a negative externality (a downstream effect
| than an actor does not feel directly).
|
| How does wise public policy address externalities? One classic
| way is to _internalize_ the cost -- by making the actor feel the
| pain themself. In #3 above, one way to internalize the
| externality would be to impose some penalty or cost for lying.
| How to do this in a targeted, effective, non-delayed, and legal
| way is non-obvious to me.
|
| By _non-delayed_ I mean temporally-immediate consequences provide
| better signal to correct a decision. This isn 't just human
| nature; it is fundamental to the _credit-assignment problem_ in
| reinforcement learning.
|
| The problem of delayed feedback goes deeper than just credit-
| assignment; it has to do with fairness too. Often, the decision-
| maker isn't a monolith: the leadership composition changes over
| time. It may be impractical to punish one cog in the system
| without imposing a cost on the rest of the system, many of whom
| had nothing to do with the decision.
| porphyra wrote:
| Tesla aced another independent out-of-sample crash test [1].
|
| The danluu article also mentions an iSeeCars report at the bottom
| that says that Teslas have a high amount of fatalities per mile
| driven [2]. However, while they claim to be using official US
| estimates of fatalities data, they normalized it with estimated
| mileage using unknown proprietary iSeeCars data:
|
| > iSeeCars analyzed fatality data from the U.S. Fatality Analysis
| Reporting System (FARS). Only cars from model years 2018-2022 in
| crashes that resulted in occupant fatalities between 2017 and
| 2022 (the latest year data was available) were included in the
| analysis. To adjust for exposure, the number of cars involved in
| a fatal crash were normalized by the total number of vehicle
| miles driven, which was estimated from iSeeCars' data of over 8
| million vehicles on the road in 2022 from model years 2018-2022.
| Heavy-duty trucks and vans, models not in production as of the
| 2024 model year, and low-volume models were removed from further
| analysis.
|
| Some numbers are also surprising, such as the Model Y having
| almost twice the fatality rate (10.6 per billion miles) as the
| Tesla average (5.6) --- suggesting that there's a wide gulf
| between it and the Model 3 in terms of fatality rates, which
| seems difficult to explain. Ultimately, iSeeCars is a small VC-
| funded startup with very few people and so it is unclear if their
| methodology is actually good or not.
|
| For a better blog post about whether Teslas are safe, here's a
| post from Brandon Paddock [3] from a year ago, which seems more
| or less objective and unsurprising. Here is the conclusion that
| he drew upon analyzing the FARS data:
|
| > Tesla's fatal accident rate is nearly identical to that of the
| Audi A4 series, and far lower than a standard Ford mid-size
| sedan. In this case, the Ford's accident rate is more than 4
| times higher than the Tesla Model 3.
|
| [1] https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-3-aces-safety-tests-
| ch...
|
| [2] https://www.iseecars.com/most-dangerous-cars-study
|
| [3] https://brandonpaddock.substack.com/p/are-teslas-the-most-
| or...
| ggreer wrote:
| The 2024 update in this post (which claims the worst brands are
| Tesla, Kia, Buick, Dodge, and then Hyundai, in that order) uses
| data from an iSeeCars blog post[1], which claims to have gotten
| their data from the U.S. Fatality Analysis Reporting System[2].
| There's one important detail they mention in the blog post:
|
| > To adjust for exposure, the number of cars involved in a fatal
| crash were normalized by the total number of vehicle miles
| driven, which was estimated from iSeeCars' data of over 8 million
| vehicles on the road in 2022 from model years 2018-2022.
|
| Note that the mileage data for each model comes from iSeeCars,
| not FARS. We don't know how accurate it is. There could be
| selection effects because iSeeCars only gets odometer data for
| cars that are for sale or have been sold, not vehicles that
| people keep. If for example, someone reserved a Model Y and sold
| it above the original price as soon as they got it (a common
| practice for new Tesla models), and the second owner kept the car
| indefinitely, iSeeCars would only see the odometer reading at the
| early sale. Tesla mileage would also skew low in sales data for
| anyone who bought an electric car, then regretted it for one
| reason or another, and exchanged it for a gas car. And since the
| rate they are measuring is fatalities per vehicle mile traveled,
| not per passenger mile traveled, any model that tends to contain
| more people will skew higher in the stats.
|
| If you query FARS data to get all Teslas involved in occupant
| fatalities from 2018-2022, there are 141.[3] If you split out the
| data by model, there were a total of 22 Model Ys involved in
| occupant fatalities from 2018-2022 (actually 2020-2022, as the
| Model Y was released in 2020). If there were 10.6 Model Ys
| involved per billion miles, then (according to iSeeCars) the
| total number of miles traveled by Model Ys was 2.07 billion. By
| the end of 2022, the US had approximately 484,100 Model Ys on the
| road.[4] If you divide the total vehicle miles traveled by the
| number of vehicles, then the average Model Y had less than 4,300
| miles on its odometer. That seems suspiciously low, as Tesla's
| 2021 report put the average Model Y at 13,000-14,000 miles per
| year.[5]
|
| This artifact in mis-measuring mileage would also explain why
| other recently released models seem to have high fatality rates.
| The Honda CRV Hybrid was released in 2020. The Buick Encore GX
| was released in 2020. US production of the Hyundai Venue didn't
| ramp up until 2020. The Toyota Corolla Hybrid was released in
| 2019. Most people who buy a new car either sell it quickly
| (because they dislike it and want something else), or they keep
| it until it gets old. So anyone collecting milage data from car
| sales will have data that is skewed low for new models because
| the higher mileage sales haven't happened yet.
|
| It may be the case that I'm using different reports than iSeeCars
| did. It's hard to know whether they're looking at vehicles
| involved in fatal crashes, drivers involved in fatal crashes,
| drivers killed in fatal crashes, occupants involved in fatal
| crashes, or occupants killed in fatal crashes. FARS lets you
| query all of these, and the iSeeCars post doesn't make it clear
| which data they used.
|
| Another odd thing about the iSeeCars data is that they claim an
| average of 2.8 vehicles involved in a fatal accident for every
| billion miles traveled. But in 2022, the US had 13.3 deaths per
| billion miles traveled by car. Unless the average accident
| involves 5 fatalities, it seems to me that the iSeeCars data has
| some significant issues.
|
| 1. https://www.iseecars.com/most-dangerous-cars-study#v=2024
|
| 2. https://www.nhtsa.gov/research-data/fatality-analysis-
| report...
|
| 3. https://cdan.dot.gov/query I don't know how long they retain
| generated reports for, but mine was available at
| https://cdan.dot.gov/files/files/b14dcfb4-1f45-4eeb-abda-744...
| when I made this comment.
|
| 4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_Y#Sales states
| 172,700 sold in 2021 and 231,400 in 2022. Other estimates put
| around 80,000 sold in 2020, for a total of 484,100.
|
| 5. See page 79 of https://www.tesla.com/ns_videos/2021-tesla-
| impact-report.pdf
| chiph wrote:
| I haven't seen anyone talk about how the fleet of cars on US
| roads is now older than ever. Approximately 12 years now. That's
| 12 years of safety engineering improvements that aren't there. I
| am not advocating for government handouts or another "cash for
| clunkers" program to get them off the roads. But I think it's
| something that people should consider when shopping for a used
| vehicle.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > That's 12 years of safety engineering improvements that
| aren't there.
|
| The last 12 years mostly replaced attention-preserving tactile
| controls with attention-demanding screens.
|
| Coexisting with that decreased ability is a race-to-the bottom
| where new vehicles kill visibility for everyone else
| (headlights blind ahead; oversizing erases visibility of every
| car around).
|
| I have never felt less safe on the road.
|
| And for the privilege, everyone's insurance rates climb and
| climb and climb - unreasonably punishing people who don't drive
| super-expensive-to-repair vehicles.
| chiph wrote:
| You'll get no argument from me how automobile control system
| ergonomics have gone to shit.
|
| But I was thinking more about passive safety improvements
| from body structure engineering and auto-braking systems.
| MikeKusold wrote:
| That's because all of those safety engineering improvements
| have caused the average cost of a vehicle to skyrocket.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-11-21 23:01 UTC)