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from the what-about-the-road-less-traveled? dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
We all became familiar with the idea of "bending a curve" thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now it seems another US curve needs bending: that of US traffic fatalities, which have been up strongly and abnormally over the last couple of years. The low-hanging fruit when it comes to changing that might not be in the car as much as around it.
[...] Thanks in large part to in-car safety tech like airbags, antilock brakes, stability control and, more recently, automatic emergency braking, US traffic fatalities have generally been on a long decline since 1970. The 52,000 such deaths recorded 52 years ago shrank to 36,000 in 2019 even as the US population and vehicle miles driven both increased dramatically. But 2020 and 2021 saw the biggest spike in over 50 years to a total of almost 43,000 per year, turning the roadway fatality clock back to 2002. In short, something's not working as well as it did.
"We need regulations related to vehicle design and street design," says Yonah Freemark, senior research associate at the Urban Institute, a nonprofit think tank focused on urban mobility and equity. "Those two play a really important role in how likely people are to get killed in streets, especially pedestrians (and cyclists) that are struck by cars."
Speed cameras are common in several countries outside the US, often using technology that calculates average speed of a given vehicle based on the time stamps when it passes two or more places on the roadway.
In-vehicle safety technologies that protect occupants have only become more prevalent over the last couple of years, so Freemark looks at pedestrian and cyclist fatalities in collisions with cars as the next key area for improvement. Three-quarters of US auto buyers select a light truck that is typically heavier and larger than the sedan or coupe they may have chosen as their previous purchase, a formula for a more brutal impact with someone outside of the vehicle. In the future, many more electric cars will be sold and their well-known weight problem could exacerbate the seriousness of collisions.
[...] That difference plays out when you compare roadway fatality stats outside the US. "Over the last 20 years or so we've seen quite a divergence between other developed countries, like France," Freemark said of a comparison he's focused on. He noted other countries' taxation schemes that disincentivize the purchase of large, heavy vehicles as well as automatic speeding cameras and the presence of far more traffic circles that still befuddle most US drivers.
(Score: 3, Touché) by khallow on Monday July 25 2022, @09:36PM (6 children)
Timely point to point travel with a continental range with the capability to carry several hundred pounds of cargo. Cars are inefficient, until you realize that the alternatives are routinely worse for typical car scenarios.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2022, @02:01AM (5 children)
If I'm going down to the shop for a pint of milk and a loaf of bread, it's pretty fucking inefficient to use a continental range transport with a carrying capacity approaching a ton.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 26 2022, @01:20PM (4 children)
"IF". Last time I used a car, I drove 80 miles, did some shopping including filling up a large cooler I had brought along, and a hair cut. All in five hours. It keeps getting missed here that a lot of people in the US use cars in situations that other transportation from bikes to buses just don't make sense.
(Score: 2) by tekk on Tuesday July 26 2022, @02:04PM (3 children)
How often do you do that, though? There are situations where renting a car or truck can make sense, it just isn't an every day (or even necessarily every month.)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 26 2022, @06:00PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2022, @06:08PM (1 child)
> renting a car or truck can make sense
Logic fail!!!
If he's 80 miles from civilization (defined as stores and at least one barber shop--in this case), there is a snowball's chance in hell that there is a car rental agency any where near his starting point.
He needs his own car, a neighbor to car pool with, or possibly a taxi/uber (at high cost, if they exist out there). Or two days in his schedule to bicycle (if he's very fit).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday July 27 2022, @01:15AM
I'd totally do that, if I could spare time from my busy bear wrestling schedule.