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We’ve never had better technology to build safer cars and streets, and yet here we are. Pedestrian detection and all, installed on a vehicle that’s got a front grille as tall as a person.
I saw someone watching a movie on their phone as they drove the other day, also a probable factor.
Investment in better infrastructure with no profit is a crime against capitalism.
I met a woman who told me that during the pandemic lock downs she made money driving to legal weed states to spend tens of thousands of dollars on weed and flip it back in her state. She also told me that it was really boring so she'd frequently get above 100 while watching a movie on her phone on her dashboard. So that's who's out on the road with you
Fucking.
Wild.
That kind of behaviour should just be an immediate and permanent revocation of the license, car towed on the spot. Fiddling with phone to get directions or dismiss a notification is one thing but actively watching entertainment?
I have ADHD. It’s not super severe but it’s not great. I can drive 16 hrs (with appropriate breaks) without the radio. I will admit, I tend not to be super respectful of speed limits. But driving is enough stimulation for my scatterbrained self. Brain rot is a hell of a drug.
Punishment for bad driving iof any kind is nearly completely unenforced.
I also have ADHD, and have also done a 16 hour drive straight through. Audiobooks or podcasts help. Music gets boring after a few hours. Audiobooks or podcasts are constantly changing, so it’s enough mental stimulation to stay engaged, while also not being too distracting.
People like this are why safe drivers’ insurance premiums are still so high. The safe drivers are subsidizing the dangerous ones. We’re being forced to pay more because the risk of being hit by a braindead watches-movies-while-doing-100 driver has increased.
That's the end result of car centric infrastructure. The bad drivers couldn't afford to pay the full rates they would be charged. If you kick 10-20% of the population off the road, that is a whole lot of people siddenly unable to work
That many people suddenly stopping working would destroy the only thing Americans truly value - shareholder profits
We have no alternatives to driving. As such the worst drivers you've ever seen will continue to drive by necessity
Yup. When you look around, everybody is on their fucking phone these days. No wonder they are killing people.
Vehicles are getting way too big on average, I mean the F150 is North America's best selling vehicle (*edit: I have since learned as of 2024 that spot actually belongs to the RAV4) since forever. It's a problem of misaligned incentives.
There's an exception carved out for large vehicles in the EPA guidelines that hold them to less stringent emissions standards which incentivizes building larger vehicles 1
Large cars are also incentivized by our crash safety rating system which only takes into account the mortality rate of those inside the car as apposed to average related fatalities. This means it will prioritize safety of those in the vehicle, which has led to our average fatalities increasing. 2
As an unintended side effect this also damages roads much faster because vehicle weight per axle determines the magnitude of the damage a vehicle does to the road. 3 anecdotally this makes me concerned for the additional weight that electric cars add.
Also as vehicles increase in weight the amount of microplastics put into the air as a by product of tire wear increase. 4
As cars increase in size (and therefore weight) the downsides are exponential.
All that plus everyone is going 10 over on their phones. If operating a motor vehicle is so disinteresting to you, that you need to look at your phone every 10 seconds, DON'T DRIVE.
Driving is simultaneously the most boring and most dangerous thing people do day-to-day. They want the driving to stop as soon as possible, so they speed. They don't want to be stuck with their own thoughts for even a single second, so they text.
And there's no choice. It's not like they can get anywhere without a car in this shithole country.
I didn't drive for many years because I always lived in cities with good public transport. When I drove again for the first time in 2021 I was shocked by how basically everyone went 10 over. I really feel this has gotten way worse in the last 20 years. Going 60 where the speedlimit is 50 seems to be the rule, not the exception nowadays.
huh? i've been driving since the 90s and it's always been that way. speed limits are not typically enforced until you are going 20+ over the limit.
Thank you for putting these links together! I'm about to be in the market for a truck and have been researching current models, and noticed the trend of larger and larger vehicles for a few years now, and wondered why. It couldn't just be because of lifted truck culture. I'm about to just go to a junk yard and try to restore an old one.
It sucks too because the old trucks with a low bed were so much better for actualy doing work if you care about your back at all.
We should try to use AI to manipulate culture into making low trucks popular again.
/not sure if serious
Honestly, I would love a lil Japanese kei truck in addition to my daily driver vehicle. They seem like the perfect lil truck for dump runs and transporting materials from Home Depot or what have you.
I got curious.. In Norway pedestrian fatalities fell by ~73% (from 22 to 6) from 2010 to 2024.
Ah! So Norwegians immigrating to the US are to blame! /s
And it's all the bad drivers and reckless pedestrians too!
I wonder if it's all of the touch screens? I got in a rideshare vehicle the other day and the driver had fucking youtube on
Trucks and SUVs have also gotten bigger with flatter fronts. People used to go onto the hood in a collision, now they go under the vehicle
And now the States has forced the EU to allow shit cars like that.
Nobody forced them, EU politicians are Trump bootlickers, cowards afraid to stand up to a bully.
and its 100% from unnecessarily large cars
You don't like the 'pedestrian mower' trucks, where the driver can't see anything that's less than 30 feet in front of them? Weird. /s
bah. children are not the future. Ever talk to one? pretty ignorant.
Average car size probably rose approximately 70% as well. I remember when Hummers were considered absurdly large, now they're not even the largest things on the road.
The share of pedestrians increased over that period, which may have had something to do with it. I suspect cell phone use while driving makes up a large part as well.
I agree with you on cell phone use being a contributor. I'm not convinced that pedestrian numbers contribute at all to the increase. I'm not really even convinced that pedestrian numbers have increased at all. Population, yes, has increased but given how growingly hostile most of the US is to pedestrian traffic, I wouldn't be surprised to hear that real pedestrian numbers have decreased.
I live in a small town and when I'm walking around it seems as though half of the vehicles that drive by are in their phones
Yes. And while walking.
Lack of focus all around.
Damn, 23 posts in 4 hours. You sure are posting fast.
They have to. They're driving.
That number is sure to drop soon, as clankers run everyone over instead.
Who would've thought that market incentives and regulatory capture would lead to this?
/s