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Jalopnik has a story about how the Norwegian capital, Oslo, recorded only one death on its roads in 2019.
Speed limit laws and reducing the very presence of cars in the city center and downtown areas have resulted in a very aggressive, downward trend of traffic-related fatalities in the Nordic country's capital city. There was only one traffic-related death in Oslo in all of 2019.
No children were killed in traffic in Norway last year, Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten reported.
There was only one road-related death of a pedestrian, cyclist or child in 2019 in Oslo. No children were killed in traffic in Norway last year, either.
Norway plans to reach "Vision Zero", and eliminate road-related deaths within four years and do more to reduce, and ultimately eliminate, serious injuries.
The only person who died last year, according to Aftenposten, was a man whose car crashed into a fence in June.
This sharp decline is due to the fact that Oslo heavily regulates places where people are allowed to drive and has set strict speed limits. The city is also very friendly towards cycling and walking.
Olso's road fatality rate for 2019 was 0.1 death per 100,000 people. American States vary between 12 and 26 per 100,000 people
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @05:25AM (3 children)
Because cars ARE dangerous! How dangerous? About 35k to 40k fatalities a year in USA.
If the airline industry had these numbers NOBODY would fly, ever.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year [wikipedia.org]
To put that in perspective. When opiates kill this many people it's a huge scandal. We ban other drugs we merely perceive to be dangerous, (some with 0 body count). Maybe we should brand driving as a drug. We lost about 50k soldiers in Vietnam during the whole war.
Car centered infrastructure burdens the individual with the upkeep and maintenance of their motor vehicle, a complicated machine with many moving parts. A very expensive proposition. You many not feel that way but that's because you've accepted and come to terms with the high costs. Never mind the inefficiency of everyone driving around with their own internal combustion engine to generate power, and the consequences like global warming and the 3 wars in the middle east we are engaged in to pay for this luxury. If you build infrastructure to favor bicycles/walking/public transport you can eliminate the cost in body count as well as minimize other externalizes. Non car centric infrastructure also has the benefit of slimmer waist lines due to more physical activity.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday January 15 2020, @02:07PM (2 children)
That's a lot of people killed in/by cars. Let's check the CDC's page [cdc.gov] (2017) on other causes of death to better judge if that is disproportionate for a country the size of the US:
It looks like household accidents far, far outstrip the number of deaths caused by motor vehicles. The CDC's PDF (linked on the page given above) says that's the #3 cause of death. What are the #1 and #2 causes? Heart disease and cancer, respectively. In fact the CDC's list of the top 15 causes of death doesn't even include cars:
So if we carry your stated logic of, "If the airline industry had these numbers NOBODY would fly, ever." and apply it to those factors above, would you also say that "nobody should ever get out of bed or walk down stairs, ever?" How about, "Nobody should ever eat anything with fat or sugar again, ever?" How about, "Nobody should ever grow old again, ever?"
Well you're in luck for the relative complexity of cars; EVs require much lower maintenance than ICEs. Also, as we shift to EVs the need to fight wars for oil vanishes. EVs also don't themselves add to CO2 in the atmosphere (which gets even better as power is generated by renewable means).
As far as roads and highways go, we already lived through the utopia you imagine. That utopia is called "the past," when farmers and producers were held over the barrel by the one railroad company that ran through their area and could take their products to market. You should read about that, and get back to us on whether it's good for people to have other transportation options or not.
We could further discuss factors like snow, or -70F windchill and the 30 mile ride to town to get groceries to see if that's really a trip you want to make on a bike or on a horse, but I think we've established that on balance you really didn't think things through.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @04:14PM (1 child)
You just took a bunch of deaths with no clear cause injury/fall/poisoning, why not add old age in there. The point is cars are a clear preventable cause of death. If you incentivize other safer modes of transport car deaths go down, as in Norway.
Your food choices are just that, CHOICES. While driving in USA is an inevitability. It is forced upon you by the infrastructure. You have the freedom to drive or die.
https://www.faithpot.com/fedex-worker-car-surprise/ [faithpot.com]
EV's are not going to drastically solve any of the problems associated with car ownership, and they'll probably just create new ones. It's not an all or nothing though. Norway did not destroy all their motor vehicles/roads, as there are clear useful use cases. It just seems like forcing the whole population to use them is bad policy. Those 30 mile trips you mention would be non-existent if the infrastructure wasn't car centric.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 16 2020, @08:01PM