Fuck. I feel shocked ... sick. I don't know what to say.
I went to RIT with Mike. He was a seriously passionate developer and very clearly destined for great things. Finding out about this here makes me wish I had stayed in touch. This is unreal, and makes zero sense.
Too many emotions that I don't know what to do with, so I'll end my comment there. Just hope the rest of his family and friends are doing okay. RIP, Mike. :(
Edit:
I just want to say a little more about Mike. We were fairly close, but only my first year or two at RIT when we shared a dorm building and met through mutual friends.
Mike and I didn't stay in touch when our housing situations changed, but whenever we ran into each other on campus, we'd catch up, usually talking about what sort of stuff we'd been working on.
He was a bit like Sherlock Holmes. Socially, he seemed to be operating on another plane, and was at most in his element when talking about our craft, or really anything he was passionate about. He was keen to become a master at everything he tried his hand in, and he was deservedly proud of that.
In hindsight, Mike really was more than a peer or an acquaintance -- I looked up to him.
Another RITer- one of my friends is quoted in the article- I don't think I ever knew Mike's name but we were definitely in the same place at the same time quite frequently.
Definitely sad.
I'm in precisely the same boat; I knew the face, not the name, and friends were quoted in the article. I'm really saddened by the loss. He was far too young, and clearly on top of his game. It's a shocking reminder of our own mortality.
Not that it's any more or less tragic, but I've always been astonished that Silicon Valley is so car-dependent. We've concentrated the most brilliant minds in the world in this small area... and then force everyone to pilot two-ton bullets to pick up groceries?
Not all workers can demand decent living conditions, but you'd think the competitive draw for workers in Silicon Valley would entice company towns to, I don't know, add segregated bike lanes so programmers' kids can get to school safely. Add public parks and dense housing so you can walk down to the corner coffee store or take your dog for a walk. Ban cars from certain streets to encourage local commerce and nightlife. SOMETHING.
Google's at least trying to improve Mountain View with their new campus (and Apple is very much not trying to improve Cupertino). But what the hell. An international group of wealthy geniuses can't get it together enough to demand marginally walkable lifestyles?
And people wonder why everyone commutes from San Francisco.
Well, since software companies are so big and wealthy and seem world-dominating right now, people in this field tend to think of them as the greatest minds ever. I wonder where are all the Silicon Valley Nobel prizes, all the cure for diseases discovered there, etc.
There are some great, great minds working there, some geniuses no doubt. But their field isn't the end all for intelligence. Not even close, actually (to me), as I'd rather have advances in many other fields over IT, any day.
> Not all workers can demand decent living conditions
You're assuming that car-oriented urban planning is synonymous with poor living conditions, which isn't true. A lot of people (most?) in the U.S. actually prefer it -- for many people the perceived convenience of cars beats public transportation and biking.
I love driving, but man, it sucks to build a city around it. I'm living in SF right now, carless, and skate a lot. It's fun, but holy shit does it suck constantly having to dodge oblivious drivers, asshole taxis, and homicidal MUNI drivers.
I have a fantasy where the whole city is grass and bikepaths. All normal deliveries are by bike, & if you really need to move something big, you get a special permit to rent a truck that goes 10 MPH and beeps.
Whenever I hear the whirring of hybrid or electric car I realize that times are changing. It may be decades or more away, but I like to imagine what cities of the future will be like.
So quiet! So fresh! The rumble of a car engine and its smelly exhaust will seem quaint. Maybe like the feelings now of seeing a horse-drawn carriage, and seeing the horse shit in the street.
So much space! My street is walled in by parked cars. The driving lanes are wide to accommodate human error. Perhaps the outer parts of the road will be re-purposed as park space. Only two narrow lanes in the middle for the computer guided vehicles to travel on. Or maybe only one lane, since the cars can coordinate their directions on this rarely-trafficed street.
Of course things won't be all rosy, but it IS certain that the feeling of cities will be very different.
My fantasy is to build a city with lots of roads, but put them underground. Street level can be solely for pedestrians, bikes, and vehicles delivering things on that block (although most buildings would have underground road access).
London tried to have a form of that, where pedestrians could go on raised walkways, while the cars owned the roads underneath. Fragments remain around the Barbican in the City of London, and you can see blocked off unfinished walkways.
Underground roads are being suggested in many places as they free up land for buildings.
Dallas recently built a park[0] over a highway smack dab in the middle of the city and it has been a huge success. It would be great to do this in more places.
Don't worry, SF is terrible for drivers too. I'll just keep my truck in the south bay, where they appreciate it (kind of; why does caltrans forget how to design north of the grapevine?)
You're right. Most people in the U.S. prefer it. But that could be just from the crappy public transportation options, the crappy bike riding options, and from just growing up and living your whole life in a car oriented lifestyle. I'm with the poster below: I love to go on road trips, but man, being a pedestrian and having to deal with life-threatening drivers on a daily basis absolutely sucks. It is a poor living condition to me, no matter how much you make.
> for many people the perceived convenience of cars beats public transportation and biking.
That clearly proves the the public transporation is pretty bad, which is indicates that living conditions can improve.
The need for a car is also an indicator that living conditions can improve. I don't live in a very well-designed city (far from it!), but I seldom have to go far enough to require a bus or subway, walking being usually enough (plenty of restaurants and cafes in a 600 metre radius, for example).
I'm using SV as shorthand for the tech industry generally -- and Redmond is very much to Seattle what Silicon Valley is to San Francisco. Car-dependent suburbia that threatens the health, safety, and quality-of-life of everyone forced to be there. San Francisco is as walkable as the West Coast gets, which alone testifies to the disgrace of American urban planning.
Ey would have been killed long ago if he dared to ride a bike to work. If Redmond had been planned after Copenhagen's model, he would still be alive to make the world a better place.
I actually agree with this response. Because of Microsoft, Seattle has become Silicon Valley North, just the same as NYC has become the Silicon Alley and Chicago is... whatever they're calling Chicago now.
All of them are similar, heavy car usage, not enough walking, and no safety for humans.
Google is trying to solve it by making smarter cars. How about we solve it by making our communities smarter instead?
After decades living in real car-only cities (Atlanta, Miami, Sao Paulo), I'm glad to live car-free in NYC. And considering family and small child.
While gentrification continues to push people away from Manhattan, you still have decent options of public transportation to everywhere around here.
We can criticize NY for many things, but being a 'car city' is not one of them.
Anyway, I really wish more cities in the world could offer similar life style, allowing people to leave their cars behind and use public transportation. It would save lives, the environment, and increase everyone's happiness.
It would be nice if NYC laws were as friendly to pedestrians as public transport is. Most pedestrian deaths in NYC occur in cross walks where we have the right of way. The charges for a car running a person over in a cross walk can be as little as a $300 fine and are often not much more than that.
Underneath the sea of yellow cabs you have a very efficient subway system, connecting the entire city to its 5 boroughs. And you also have a decent railroad system, connecting Manhattan to nearby cities.
It's true that some areas are not properly served through subway, and you have to rely on bus. But it is still an order of magnitude better than some of the cities mentioned above.
Actually, self-driving cars are the only proposed solution to automobile accidents and related deaths that seems like it might work. Laws don't work, education doesn't work, and even the safest, most careful drivers can and do have accidents. Let's be clear. In the US, at least, cars are not going anywhere unless costs become as prohibitive everywhere as they are in NYC. Even then, they're still not going anywhere (NYC still has a ton of cars obviously). I have no idea what making communities smarter means. What exactly are you proposing?
Generally he means addressing the problems "heavy car usage, not enough walking, and no safety for humans". Optimizing city design for people, and not for vehicles. This is generally done by increasing density, and requiring mixed-use buildings with commerce on ground level, and more public spaces and wider side walks, and dedicated lanes for bikes and public transportation.
Cars aren't going anywhere anytime soon in the US because sadly you can't function without one in the vast majority of places. It's far easier to implement this design philosophy for a growing city[1], but really hard to change the layout of a mature one, though it can be done thoughtfully [2].
We call it the "Silicon Forest." I remember Redmond when it was still just a small town whose claim to fame was a TV production lot for Northern Exposure (I grew up in Bothell just north on 405).
That Boston managed to avoid this is a very big reason why I don't have much interest in living anywhere else. In Somerville and Cambridge, I feel exceptionally safe, even around cars.
Chicago here... it's anything than "car city". I haven't had a car in a decade. I'm not sure you've actually lived in any of these areas. It's possible to live without a car in only a few cities, and Chicago and NYC are two of them.
I live in Seattle and work in Redmond and do both solely via public transit and walking. Redmond has a large number of bike lane miles (as does Seattle, and many of Seattle's are protected, separated bike lanes) along with fast, frequent, and long span-of-service transit to places like Seattle and Kirkland and Bellevue. Microsoft has even helped with that by funding things like Overlake Transit Center, a street and pedestrian bridge over highway 520, an upcoming pedestrian-only bridge over 520, pushing for light rail to Redmond, and even both providing tap-to-use transit cards to everyone who holds a badge and partially funding the switch to that system (the ORCA card ). Yes, the property improvements benefit Microsoft in addition to the public but Microsoft was under no requirement to help pay for them.
People take transit a lot in the Puget Sound region but it, like many places, still has a stigma associated with it. Seattleites voted last year to tax ourselves more to provide over 200,000 hours per year of more transit service; the rest of the county had its chance before that and voted no. It's not that transit doesn't exist, it's that getting people to use it and agree to make the investment in it (beyond billion dollar light rail lines, because buses are apparently "icky") is difficult even if the system does work well for the commuter crowd. I don't even commute regular hours and I can get everywhere I want to go via our transit system.
Cycling on roads is extremely dangerous. Every single person I know who commutes by bicycle has been hit by a car at least once. One of my colleagues was killed cycling to work when he was hit by a semi truck. Another woman was recently killed by a box truck cycling to work a block from my office.
I thought this too, but after looking at data it doesn't really seem any more dangerous than driving a car. I think the reason it sounds dangerous is that when it happens everyone hears about it and talks about it a lot more than car accidents.
Mrmoneymustache did an analysis and if you define 'safety' as 'expected life span', cycling is actually safer than driving a car.
To be clear, there are actual costs involved that affect these dynamics. Property values anywhere near a transit line go way up. For many years I rented and biked to work, but when looking for a house it was massively more expensive to get anywhere within a reasonable bus ride of Redmond. I ended up to the north, where it's still not a bad bike commute (an hour, but mostly on dedicated bike trails instead of roads), but the fastest bus ride is to go west above the lake to downtown Seattle and then east back across the lake to Redmond.
That wasn't my experience, but I'll grant that maybe I got lucky. I also live where it takes a transfer (a local bus that comes every 15 minutes to downtown and get on the 545) and, at least in the case of my coworkers, a lot of people are vehemently opposed to transferring. A bike commute would be awesome if I could make it up that hill to the IH-90 bridge...
This article is being flooded with weird anti-car hate. Yet, my car is perfectly safe and can only kill someone in a hit and run at 100 MPH if, and only if, I get drunk first.
Given that I don't drink very much and then only at home (a sixer lasts me about a season, sometimes half a year) that means my car is incredibly safe and will almost certainly never kill anyone. Odd how there's no anti-alcohol hate here on HN, yet its the alcohol doing the actual killing.
If you subtract out deaths due to drunkenness, cars kill less people than bathtubs. Perhaps we need a war on bathtubs. Because nothing is ever a drunk's fault.
...dude. No, you don't have to be a drunk going 100mph before you kill someone with your car. That you "don't drink very much" doesn't mean that your "car is incredibly safe and will almost certainly never kill anyone."
Your car is an extremely heavy, extremely fast machine that will crush anyone unlucky enough to be in its path. That includes not only incompetent/incapacitated/elderly drivers, but also dumb accidents and unaware pedestrians. You will easily kill a child who tries to play in her suburban street even if you go 10mph -- not because you're a drunk, but because American structural design forces everyone to drive two-ton bullets to go anywhere, which inevitably results in lethal wrecks. Compare Denmark's road fatality rate of 3.0 per 100,000 inhabitants versus the US ratio of 11.6 per 100,000. [1]
The question is not whether you enjoy driving. The question is why cars are entitled to the vast majority of public space -- not only for parking (often for free or nominal fees), but also for individual transportation that endangers the lives of pedestrians and cyclists. Please take a look at this illustration to get an idea of how much land your car takes from everyone else. [2]
Do you really think a kid trying to bike to school should have to risk his life every day... because you feel entitled to barrel through his home town?
"because American structural design forces everyone to drive two-ton bullets to go anywhere, which inevitably results in lethal wrecks. Compare Denmark's road fatality rate of 3.0 per 100,000 inhabitants versus the US ratio of 11.6 per 100,000."
Check the per-vehicle-km rate. Denmark isn't safer because they drive less.
Unless I'm reading the table wrong, US is still at 7.6 deaths per billion km, while Denmark is at 3.4. That's more than a 1:2 ratio. I'd certainly say that's safer (even if the difference is smaller than GP indicates).
Scbrg beat me to it, but Denmark is still twice as safe as the US when you consider kilometers driven. Keep in mind that this means cars-vs-cars.
And more to the point, take a second to think about what you just said. Denmark is nearly four times as safe as the US because they gave people lovely cities like Copenhagen where kids can safely bike to school and adults can walk to work or to a local restaurant. This means...
...yup, that they don't risk their lives every day in cars and thus the per-vehicle-kilometer rate isn't terribly useful in assessing a walkable lifestyle. The kids that bike to school in Copenhagen don't die in automobile wrecks and aren't exposed to risk on a per-vehicle-kilometer rate. Those dangers are for American kids.
Even when you disregard the safety/quality of daily life for urban Danes and use the car-vs-car per capita per-vehicle-kilometer rate, it's astonishing that Denmark's excellent urban planning has even influenced Danish drivers, in that it's more than twice as safe to drive in Denmark as it is to drive in the US. Contrary to your last statement, Denmark is RADICALLY safer because they drive less. Even drivers are safer because of the superior design of Danish cities and streets.
> If you subtract out deaths due to drunkenness, cars kill less people than bathtubs.
In case anybody actually thought this might be true, here are some statistics that show it almost certainly isn't.
Accidental motor-vehicle crashes account for slightly more deaths than accidental drowning and falls combined; in America, about 35,000 people were killed in car crashes in 2013, while about 33,000 died by falling or drowning [0, 1]. Alcohol was involved in less than a third of traffic fatalities in the same year [2].
Meanwhile, figures for 1990–2010 show that only 9.7% of accidental drowning deaths occurred in bathtubs [3]. So roughly three quarters of all fatal falls must occur in bathtubs if we're going to reach the number of deaths caused by car crashes in which everybody involved is sober. I can't find figures, but the number of total deaths that occur in bathrooms suggests that it's not close.
I saw a girl on a bike get hit and killed by a taxi trying to beat a light. She was going across even though the light was red, as is common in China. I'll never get the "crash" out of my head.
I don't really blame the driver, but the whole system is crazy: you have tons of cars and tons of non-cars (bikes, electric bikes, pedestrians) mixed up all together with limited infrastructure, these things are just bound to happen. I can't wait for self driving cars to be a thing, they'll be able to handle this much better.
I agree, it's the drunk's fault. But that's irrelevant if you're trying to stop people from getting killed, instead of just trying to assign blame. What matters is what we can do about it, and pushing for a reduction in car usage is an effective way of reducing vehicular manslaughter.
Being drunk is not the only way to kill someone while driving at 100mph. As someone who was in a car when the steering wheel simply stopped controlling the wheels while we were in a road with heavy traffic, which culminated with it rolling over 270°, I can guarantee you that (nobody got killed, but it was pure luck).
"What matters is what we can do about it, and pushing for a reduction in car usage is an effective way of reducing vehicular manslaughter."
Let me play a bit of devil's advocate here. Where are you going to draw the line? All too often I see people talking about reducing this, preventing that, etc. However, everyone does so with all sorts of weird convenience and funding constraints/caveats, effectively reducing the problem to "how far can we take this before it becomes too inconvenient/expensive for us".
I say, if you want to prevent/fix something, do it. Throw money/laws at the problem until it goes away or is near-zero. I genuinely used to say that, and believe in it. These days, with my eventual political beliefs, I hope it gets taken seriously so we can all realize the futility in it. Like grasping a balloon in a fist.
I view it in the opposite way - to me, there's nothing weird about stopping when it becomes too expensive; nor do I see a need to draw a line - each possible measure has a different line over which the costs are higher than its benefits.
I don't want to "declare war" on drunk driving. I want to take small and measurable steps that achieve a sustained y/y reduction in those deaths.
Alcohol? For me, every time during the day that I see a car doing stupid things (i.e. stuff that can kill me on my bike) they are on their phones. Looking down, driving erratically, either too fast or too slow, etc.
I still can't believe its not illegal to use the phone while driving on many parts of the US (and where its illegal, its just a slap on the wrist)
According to NHTSA, 39% of all traffic fatalities in 2005 were alcohol-related. Your car is not "perfectly safe", not to you and certainly not to non-drivers around you, no matter what you would like to convince yourself.
If you subtract out deaths due to drunkenness, cars kill less people than bathtubs.
If you remove a major cause of road deaths, road death becomes less common? You amaze me.
my car is perfectly safe and can only kill someone in a hit and run at 100 MPH if, and only if, I get drunk first.
Absolutely false. Everyone is capable of making mistakes, you and I included. You can be a perfect driver 99% of the time, but that one time when you look down because your phone went off, or because there was a noise on your right, or the guy coming the other way has his full beams in your face, or... you're deluded if you think you cannot possibly crash your car unless you are drunk.
We've created a national infrastructure that IMO nearly requires driving to be a civil right. That sucks. But I really don't have an answer to this problem when proposals to address this are either voted down or end up ridiculously over budget.
Considering the sheer vastness of the continental US, it's not surprising to me that there haven't been many good plans to remove our dependence on cars. The only options, really, for good nation-wide transport are trains and planes. Trains have an incredibly expensive infrastructure, especially the high-speed trains needed to traverse the thousands of miles between the East and West coasts. Planes are slightly less expensive, but the pain of needing to show up three hours early for a one hour flight, risk of lost luggage, and general fear now associated with traveling by air make planes a less than attractive option.
The US "sheer vastness" is irrelevant. Most of the US population live in states with a population density higher than countries like Norway, which have good public transport (only 10 states, with an aggregate 12 million people, have a lower population density).
Nobody cares if "empty" areas in places like Alaska have poor public transport. You get 90% of the benefit if there's decent public transport in the higher density regions.
Most transport is not nation-wide, but short distance commutes anyway. Even places with very low population density tends to have some places where public transport is useful. It's not about eradicating car use, but to reduce the number of journeys for which they are required.
EDIT: And the US as a whole has a population density twice that of Norway.
EDIT: And before anyone brings up the oil: Most of Norways transit infrastructure predates the oil with a significant margin.
Long-distance and regional transport needs are significantly different from local ones, and different land-use and activity patterns can hugely reduce transportation needs. The fact of a large country doesn't mean that individual urban areas can't be designed for mass transit or walkability.
If you can find shopping, school, recreational, and work activities within a few blocks (or at most a few miles) of one another, then a car becomes more a nuisance than a requirement. The exceptions become trips out of town -- the outdoors, visiting friends, etc.
Shopping can be dealt with through deliveries (scheduled and bundled, or online). Or local pick-up and a cart, wagon, or bike trailer.
Trades and crafts will still likely require transport, but that becomes an outlier exception.
Depending on what long-term fuel and economic trends look like, I suspect the US will see either regional high-speed rail or plain-old conventional slow rail. Aviation with expensive fuel becomes an expensive proposition. Roughly half a large jet's take-off weight is fuel, and for an efficient airliner at 40 passenger miles/gallon, a 3,000 mile flight involves 75 gallons of fuel -- at 6.8 pounds per gallon, that's 510 lb. of fuel, 2-4x the weight of a passenger. And while trains can be electrified, the options for doing so to aircraft pose a few larger technical hurdles.
But people don't commute across the US, just like they don't commute from Brussels to Madrid. Cities in the US are crap for a variety of reasons (racist zoning, defunding of transit, forced car infrastructure in the form of parking minimums, absurd NIMBYism, etc.)
You get a job at Google or Facebook in part so that you can buy a nicer "two ton bullet" than you otherwise could. No one wants to walk out of necessity, and that will not change anytime soon.
Still, its not too tin foil to think that maybe somebody has an interest in VR not happening, or not in this way. It wouldn't shock me in the least of some wing-nut thinks that AR/VR is the antichrist.
Unfortunate how many humans we have driving cars at various levels of impairment. It's killing so many people.
Drunk driving in suburban areas is rampant and feels almost inherent without real public transportation options at last call. I think most of Seattle's public transit options stop right around midnight.
If you live in Seattle proper, there are busses that run all night. Most of them will get you within a 20-minute walk of wherever you want to go.
Still, with Uber, Lyft, Sidecar, and 5+ cab companies at your disposal there is no excuse for being drunk behind the wheel.
Before I moved here I was a pretty obsessively responsible driver. Now that I live here, I have to keep my irresponsible drinking in check because I never have a driving obligation to convince me to stay sober...
Either a drink is super expensive where you are, or Uber is very cheap.
Hanging out at a place within walking distance of home really is the best bet. Sadly a lot of American cities don't seem to have bars anywhere near where people live, unlike European ones where you can throw a rock from your window and hit a pub.
One mile? I'd argue you can walk that even (or especially? I tend to like that) if you're drunk.
The GP probably talked about a somewhat bigger trip, maybe (sorry, miles isn't something that feels natural) on the order of 10-15+ km.
Now, driving drunk is absolutely no excuse. But I do agree that the price of getting home by Cab-Or-Replacement-Service is probably not in the 'one more drink' range. A bus ticket though..?
To be fair, I did say at least the cost of one. Relative to my area, it seemed like the cost of a drink was at least a mile drive. Like I said, if people have the money to buy enough drinks to get drunk, they should have enough money to pay for some alternative mode of transportation.
Don't Uber and Lyft have carpooling options now too? There are different ways to cut the cost. It really comes down to a question of responsibility.
Ugh, the thought of walking a mile (1.6km) while drunk is not pleasant at all. In fact, the thought of any physical exercise while drunk makes me want to vomit right now. The world just keeps tipping side to side... like a ship in rough waters... I'll take a cab, please.
Just how drunk are you getting that even a mile is a life-and-death situation?
Maybe the problem is not cabs or walking but knowing your limits.
"Drunk" by legal standards when driving and drunk as in can't see straight are typically two different things. You can be technically too drunk to drive but have little trouble getting home walking.
It's not just Uber to get home; It's the logistics of picking up your car in the morning, paying the overnight fees/parking tickets for wherever you left it, and the additional time it's going to take you to get it back. Getting 'home' is not a solved problem with Uber, unless you have some serious foresight.
Take Uber/bus/cab to the bar and back home. If you can't afford any of that, you shouldn't be getting drunk in a place you can't sleep and if you do, you deserve to go to jail if you drive. Logistics problem solved. It's not a lot of foresight and it's certainly not too much to ask of anyone who's going to get drunk.
I can understand that. Why not take public transportation or carpool with friends/coworkers there and then for the way back take some other transportation method?
I'm not sure what foresight is lacked in this kind of situation. Most likely you know beforehand drinking enough to not be able to drive safely. Occasionally that won't be the case.
In Seattle, overnight parking does not cost. They actually have stickers on the parking meters reminding drivers of this in the case that they're planning to drink.
Those buses might get you to within a 20 minute walk of your destination, but depending on when you are departing, you might have to wait up to an hour to catch the bus in the first place.
Seattle's public transit may be better than many American cities, but it still isn't great.
You make a great point about services like Uber, etc. For this reason alone, I now think cities need to stop with the bans and such. Cabs are not a substitute as no one likes to wait hours or walk miles or both in hope of catching one, a situation that's quite common in places like San Francisco (especially at night) and I imagine, many other cities.
It's funny you mention suburban drivers. I have lived and have friends who lived in both suburban and rural areas and I found that without exception rural drivers are far, far, more likely to drive drunk.
Not to minimize drunk driving deaths, but it's hardly "rampant." About 10,000 people are killed each year in drunk driving accidents in the US. 30,000 a year die from falls.
Well yes, millions of people die every year from causes we could pretty much summarize as old age. None of this has any meaning if you don't differentiate by age.
Thankfully, the CDC has done that, and here it is in an easy graphic:
Still, I think it is a valid point that drink driving is seen as a moral problem and therefore its practical impact as a cause of accidents and deaths is perceived as larger than it actually is. Yes, it's horrible when a drink driver kills a child, etc, but the risk of that happening per DUI incident is not actually very high.
I'm not from the US, but over here (Finland), drink drivers are generally most dangerous to themselves. Of course there are some innocent people who are killed and injured by drink drivers, and these cases are particular tragedies, but most deaths resulting from drink driving are either people who kill themselves by stupidity, or at least consent to be in a vehicle where the driver is DUI.
Another thing I could bring up from analysis of traffic deaths is the large number of suicides we have -- about 20 % of traffic deaths; this is becoming a burden on truck drivers because they carry a lot of the emotional burden when someone decide to smash their car at high speed to an oncoming truck.
And yet another astonishing factor is deaths of "natural causes" (heart attack, stroke etc) while driving. These make up something around 10-15 % of traffic deaths here.
>Still, I think it is a valid point that drink driving is seen as a moral problem and therefore its practical impact as a cause of accidents and deaths is perceived as larger than it actually is...
> ...over here (Finland), drink drivers are generally most dangerous to themselves. Of course there are some innocent people who are killed and injured by drink drivers but most deaths resulting from drink driving are either people who kill themselves or consent to be in a vehicle where the driver is DUI.
You can't argue that problem is being overly focused on condemnation of the person who drinks and drives and then ignore our responsibility to keep them from hurting themselves either.
Umm, why couldn't I? If we don't think of suicides or drink driving as a moral wrong (we could call this idea "sin"), why couldn't we let people do whatever they want, up to allowing them to end their lives - as long as people are not hurting others? The externalities are a problem but not as big as we perceive.
> About 10,000 people are killed each year in drunk driving accidents in the US. 30,000 a year die from falls.
That number is highly biased towards the elderly. "Falls" are basically another kind of "died of old age". If you exclude people over 55, you get about:
- ~6,700 deaths from drunk driving
- 2,459 from falls
If you look at all driving fatalities (because we fleshy humans can be impaired by more than alcohol and often make mistakes), you have
30,000 is a pretty shocking number. There's a lot of work on falls prevention in UK health and social care. The prognosis for someone over 65 who falls over is not great, especially if they break a bone in the fall.
There's some interestin brain stuff going on for some of it. A person with failing vision (and dementia can cause some loss of vision even though the eyes and optic nerve work fine) will learn the layout of their home. A care worker comes in once a day and moves something? That person falls over.
Someone from my local MH trust realised that people with dementia in hospital could not see (because dementia) the zimmer frames and weren't using them. He painted them red. This means people can see them (red is one of the last colours to go) and thus they use them. This simple measure has reduced falls and the associated deaths and injuries.
The population of the US is roughly 310 million people. Using your figure for driving fatalities, 3.1x10^8 / 2.5x10^4 = 1/12400 chance of dying in a car accident. This tracks reasonably well with the admittedly outdated information in [1], which gives the odds of dying at home as 1/7875.
By your reasoning, then, my apartment is about 33% more deathtrap-y than my car, and I should probably consider living out of doors, as well as giving up my car and staying away from roads.
Except that, from the same data, my odds of dying at the hand of another person are about one in sixteen thousand. I live in a large city, so my options are starting to look pretty limited! Subsistence farming may be the only way. (Or perhaps hunting and gathering -- this is prime whitetail country, and there are few enough hunters for deer to've become a serious pest through overbreeding.)
All life is risk, and the outcome is known ahead of time - the probability of dying of something, given long enough, eventually reaches unity. Maintaining a healthy sense of perspective seems warranted.
10000?! The UK, with a population of approximately 1/4 that of the USA and more liberal alcohol laws, had ~260 deaths from drink driving in 2013. Rampant might not be the right word, but something isn't right.
The US has far more sprawl where people live in suburbs which are a significant distance from the closest restaurant, bar, etc. and public transportation ranges from unreliable to non-existent even during the workday. In most of the country, that's also be paired with high speed limits and road designs which encourage driving at or above the speed limit which increases the likelihood of a crash being fatal.
The default mindset is so heavily dominated by the assumption that you'll drive that the building codes in most of the country require bars to have significant parking available for customers, even if the bar is in a heavily urban neighborhood and the owner would prefer to use the space for seating.
Fair point - so taking the proportion of road deaths related to drink as the measure instead (which should control for your points to a great recent), 31% of US deaths are drink related, compared to 15.2% in the UK. (according to https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...).
Would you include getting behind the wheel if you are tired, sick, stressed, taking antihistamines, or impaired in any other non-illegal-drug related way as well? Because I'm pretty sure those can impair drivers to the same degree. It's just that driving while impaired due to drugs is seen as being a moral failure, while it's perfectly socially acceptable to drive in other circumstances.
What are the numbers of deaths related to these? You quoted 39% of auto deaths as being alcohol related elsewhere. If we determine there was a problem, we should seek to address it. At the moment, it sounds like you're just trying to sidetrack the conversation.
We can measure blood alcohol so we can estimate the degree of impairedness. Furthermore, it is already illegal.
Cars are pretty safe, but I'm always a little shocked that we don't have governors built into cars with sane limits. How is it even possible to do 100mph and why should that speed be allowed? Cars should top off at 75.
Not to mention, why are cars dumb machines? If someone is going crazy fast in an area where there is no safe way to decelerate, then the car should not allow that speed to be reached. Freeway speeds should not be allowed when you're not on the freeway.
The self-driving car isn't the solution here. Its too sci-fi, too out there, and no one can make it work with snow and rain right now. We middle a practical middle-ware nanny and we need one quick. We need a new Ralph Nader focused on intelligent safety systems and advocating for them to be law. We'll never stop drunks, but we might be able to stop drunks from performing fatal strikes. Its great that they caught the drunk, but that doesn't bring Mike back to life.
Personally, I dont think we're getting to these self-driving cars without these kinds of baby steps. Best to start advocating them now, which will give us public support when fully automated cars are truly here.
Cars are very UNSAFE, for the record. [1] Self-driving cars will be better... but autonomous cars are SUCH an intellectually lazy progression from the status quo that I hope they won't happen.
Rather than autonomous cars, we should be focusing on Taleb's antifragile solutions like walking and biking. This means the design of dense housing and walkable streets, and the removal of two-ton bullets that massacre children every day.
I grew up in Los Angeles, so I'm aware of how alien the concept is of a walkable city to Californians. It wasn't until I moved to the East Coast and Europe that I realized other people don't need to drive ten miles to see friends or pick up dinner.
If HN types don't recognize and question these car-dependent assumptions, there's no chance the rest of the country will. Nor would most Americans want to address the question. To accurately price vehicle traffic for real infrastructure costs (much less negative externalities or pigovian taxes) would absolutely devastate the value of car-dependent real estate... which is most of the country.
I guess we'll just continue letting children and geniuses be killed. At best, self-driving cars will continue this horrible urban planning and somewhat lower the body count. It's a goddamn shame.
Those "antifragile" solutions have been used to great effect in Netherlands where they have built a massive cycling, walking, and transit infrastructure.
They were able to build this infrastructure due to a popular protest movement, 'Stop de Kindermoord' (Stop the Child Murder) which was in reaction to exactly the problem we face in the US of deaths and injury caused by motorists.
Completely agree on your suggestions for urban areas.
However, not everyone wants dense housing... Suburbs exist because people do not want to be that close to each other. Some people want to own their own yards/property/houses, have open space, and are willing to trade driving significantly more (with its associated dangers) for these features. People are going to create the kind of environment they want to live in, and we should figure out ways to make that environment better/safer, rather than dictating that everyone must live in (well-planned) urban environments.
The dependence on cars creates very unhealthy political climate (wars, climate change denial) and creates obesity. Unwillingness to comprehend the issues, created by cars is actually a cultural defect of the nation. OTOH, preference for suburban lifestyle is also a purely cultural phenomenon, and is caused by the fact people prefer living arrangements the grew up in. I grew up, for example in a dense Soviet city, and find big house with a yard absolutely repulsive.
Frankly I think you'd find a lot of people would happily move into denser areas if they were more pedestrian friendly.
And so much of the sprawl in the US is not about residential housing taking up lots of space, but about separating shops and other essential parts of infrastructure from housing in a way that is only tolerable because of the car culture.
E.g. I used to travel to Palo Alto and Menlo Park a lot for business a few years back. I don't have a drivers license, so I experimented with how possible it was to stay at various hotels while walking as much as possible (didn't want to depend on co-workers or cabs to get everywhere, and I like walking).
At one point I stayed in Atherton and walked to/from offices in Menlo Park. People probably thought I was pretty crazy, but to me the distance was no more than what I'm used to, and the "commute" length was shorter.
But what got me was the structure of these - by US standards - quite reasonably pedestrian friendly small towns. If you lived right next to Menlo Park or Redwood City or Palo Alto town centres, a lot of things would be within walking distance. But basics were missing. Such as grocery stores. I soon learned to pick hotels in suitable locations to be within walking distance of somewhere where it'd be possible to actually find a decent selection of food nearby (eating out every day gets boring surprisingly quickly).
On top of the distance, the pedestrian friendly areas were "islands" not linked in any reasonable way. E.g. from Menlo Park to Atherton or Redwood City it seemed to me I had the choice between walking down El Camino Real, including a long stretch with pretty much no roadside lighting (fun walk back late evenings) and no sidewalk (for those unfamiliar, El Camino Real is one of the main roads in the area and heavily trafficked), or taking a huge - 3 times the walking distance or so - (but scenic) detour through back roads past Atherton estates.
(Amusingly, as I tried the backroads through Atherton, everyone I met greeted me as I walked past. It seemed like people assumed I must belong there, because why else would I be walking there? (I'm used to people being more friendly in California than I'm used to from London, but this was a huge step up).)
This is not about density, though density helps, but about a culture where everything is centralised because everyone drives, and where everyone drives because everything is centralised.
Of course there's a place for suburbs, and I'm not opposed to the idea of less dense housing. Such housing can exist in the context of walkable neighborhoods with public transit, though. I think there's quite a bit of merit to firm city limits that prevent sprawl and car dependence.
That said... if someone wants to live in exurbia, he should pay an appropriate amount to access amenities downtown. It's absurd that someone can pay $1500/month for a studio downtown, but only a few feet from his front door, anyone can drive a similarly-sized vehicle at hazardous speeds for free.
Driving is essentially free in the US, despite enormous costs in terms of infrastructure and public space. That needs to change. If car-dependent exurbs must continue to exist, then we should at least make those exurbs responsible for their own costs rather than forcing urban residents to have their neighborhoods destroyed and then pay for the privilege.
Downtowns are dying because parasitic exurbs have both removed tax revenue from the urban core while multiplying their infrastructure/services/health costs. It's unsurprising that residents flee cities that become dangerous, dirty highways.
Some of these cities are now beyond repair, not least for the overarching national trend of capital concentration in Silicon Valley/Silicon Alley, but these reforms would still help enormously. For example, Bloomberg's plan to toll bridges into New York City that was vetoed by car-dependent Albany. It's absolutely ridiculous that exurban commuters are allowed to devastate NYC every day, for free, because they're too entitled either to live in the city or even to commute via less destructive trains.
I would really love to hear your explanation why New York City should be required to spend billions on bridges and roads crushed by automobile traffic for commuters who don't even pay taxes into the repair fund. Much less why NYC residents should be forced to give up enormous swaths of precious road real estate at peril to their health and quality of life.
"I would really love to hear your explanation why New York City should be required to spend billions on bridges and roads crushed by automobile traffic for commuters who don't even pay taxes into the repair fund"
They don't. They can stop doing it any time they want.
I don't think the result is going to be what you expect, though, especially now that no one has to live (or even visit) the city to do most types of business.
Downtowns dying? This is something new. In some cities - yes, but in actually desirable ones (Pittsburgh, Austin, Portland, you name it) - no, they do not
The population density in thousands of places in the US is more than high enough to support more sustainable transportation solutions, but yet even those places don't.
Do you believe that the existence of exurbs and rural areas is what's preventing cities from pursuing less fragile means of transit? Why?
"The population density in thousands of places in the US is more than high enough to support more sustainable transportation solutions, but yet even those places don't."
Places where the population density is high enough to have it (New York, other parts of BosWash, Chicagoland) by and large do have it.
The OP was complaining about Los Angeles. Five minutes with Wikipedia and a calculator will demonstrate why mass transit sucks there, and always will. And LA is dense compared to most of the country.
Because the land is cheap, it is generally easier to expand and drive, and also because the US auto industry is 3 million jobs directly, 13 million indirectly, 2nd biggest auto industry on the planet, and so politically I guess it would cause problems to push for biking cities.
I'm not "implying" it. I'm stating it. And it's not a "dependence", it's a blessing. It's given people the freedom to live where they want, far away from the filthy, crime-ridden cities that you appear to idolize.
Living in the city can be fun when you're a 20-something with no dependents. Most people change their minds once they have families. That's why suburbs exist.
Meanwhile poverty in subarbs growing faster than in cities and crime is also quite a bit growing. Safe area of Brooklyn is a lot safer than in Elyria, OH, although Elyria is a suburb of a big city.
> Fine. Show me a "safe area" of Brooklyn that has a crime rate of 6
6? No, I cannot. May be somewhere on Mars.
But according to city-data, overall crime rate in NYC was 256.1, so in the safer parts of Brooklyn it should be not more than this number; and it is lower than average for US.
And 6 is actually an artifact , erroneous number because...
...according to FBI report, Westlake does not report offenses anymore to FBI (ad city-data uses the FBI report).
> Well, for a start you don't pick out the one with the highest crime rate.
> That map demonstrates that Elyria is an extreme outlier, even for the area, much less for the country as a whole.
No it is not. Extreme outlier is East Cleveland, a suburb of Cleveland.
> You got busted, dude.
No I am not, because 325 is slightly above average crime level in the US.
No matter how you bend data, cherry pick data, preferentially choose tiny white affluent suburbs, NYC, a quintessentially big American city is not crime-ridden, especially if you do not venture into the hoods.
You can spin as hard as you want, but the fact remains that people with families move to the suburbs for what they see as quality of life reasons.
Besides crime, people want to have yards for their kids to play in, rather than some littered public park full of drunks and discarded hypodermic needles.
They want their kids to be able to have bedrooms of their own.
They want to own a car (with the concommitant freedom to travel as they wish, when they wish) without paying outrageous parking fees (if parking is even available).
They want to have a kitchen and dining room for family gatherings.
They want any number of things that are either exorbitantly expensive or flat unobtainable in urban environments.
The key takeaway here is that you don't get to choose for other people.
They move to the suburbs because that's where they want to live.
I realize that this conflicts with your opinion on how people ought to live, but that's how it is. Sorry.
> Rather than autonomous cars, we should be focusing on Taleb's antifragile solutions like walking and biking.
Self-driving cars are an enabling technology for lower-cost, more-readily-available, on-demand transport, which is a wedge to dismantling the car-ownership-necessary society, which itself is a route to get to public support for community planning that better supports walking and biking as primary modes of transport for able citizens for tasks for which they are suitable, with automotive transport as a secondary form for situations and individuals for whom walking/biking are not suitable.
The two approaches are complementary, not opposed.
Dense housing won't necessarily fix this problem. At Beijing-levels of density, we still have lots of problems with cars and plenty of people who bike and walk (including those damn electric bikes).
It works well in the Netherlands because the density is high but "not that high," and bikes are given good infrastructure. Even then, self-driving cars will be a big win for those times when you really do need to drive somewhere (e.g. to go shopping, fill in gaps of good transit, and so on).
"If HN types don't recognize and question these car-dependent assumptions, there's no chance the rest of the country will. "
Some of us do. If you hang out on HN when Europe is awake it helps.
I used to live in California, now am in Dublin, and indeed it's remarkable how much life fits in a 2 mile radius. More than I had within 40 miles in LA.
Unfortunately the US has a culture which is positively allergic to change, and a generally ignorant populace, so it's hard to imagine it changing substantially. It is, though, slightly. City centers are becoming more popular and the suburbanite boomers are starting to die off.
>Cars are pretty safe, but I'm always a little shocked that we don't have governors built into cars with sane limits. How is it even possible to do 100mph and why should that speed be allowed? Cars should top off at 75.
Why is it even possible? Because a car that can't do 100mph is going to have terrible performance 0-75
There's long stretches of highways in rural areas with speed limits higher than 75
>Not to mention, why are cars dumb machines? If someone is going crazy fast in an area where there is no safe way to decelerate, then the car should not allow that speed to be reached.
There are sometimes legitimate reasons to be going quickly. I have, at times, needed to have bursts of speed into the 90s to safely get around a drunk driver going 70.
You're now asking for cars to behave unpredictably based on their determination of the road conditions.
And you set the limiter to 75. Now someone is driving 75 in a 25.
Most highway deaths are rural[1] and involve a single car - they veer off of narrow lanes into a ditch or trees, or hit a large animal. The difference in reaction time needed to avoid said animals or other obstructions is not that different from 75mph to 90mph - low visibility is the underlying problem there, not speed.
The idea that we're suddenly safer on roads if we limit speeds is also not necessarily true.
In 2013, German autobahns accounted for 31% of the countries traffic, yet only 13% of the deaths. They had a rate of 1.9 deaths per billion kilometers travelled, while urban roads had 4.7, and rural roads 6.6.
I don't think there's really evidence to support the idea that limiting our cars to lower speeds will be beneficial.
>There are sometimes legitimate reasons to be going quickly. I have, at times, needed to have bursts of speed into the 90s to safely get around a drunk driver going 70.
Not convinced by this one. Surely reducing the kinetic energy in this scenario is the safest course of action?
As a motorcyclist, I have used bursts of speed to get out of sticky situations. The car that crashed into the guard rail behind me would have taken me out if I had slowed down.
As another motorcyclist, I want to give my support to this view.
I have no desire to ride fast (I rather enjoy doing 40 mph on a park drive), but I need my bike to be able to go 100 mph so that when the person next to me going 55 mph starts to merge into my lane, I have the choice of slowing down or very rapidly accelerating out of danger. It's the same with cars. Having the "headroom" means you can speed up quickly in emergencies.
You're right, but the bike needs a max speed of something like 100 in order to hit 70 within a second or so. If 70 is the max, it will take forever to get there. Headroom. I never want to actually go 100, let alone 70.
Which is presumably part of the reason why the person who started this expressed surprised at the lack of a governor to limit the top speed rather than surprise at the lack of restrictions on total engine power.
Exactly. You need a bike that can accelerate quickly, not a bike that can do a massive top speed. Top speed has nothing to do with how quickly you can maneuver out of danger.
>Not convinced by this one. Surely reducing the kinetic energy in this scenario is the safest course of action?
How is remaining near an impaired driver vs. leaving them behind the safer option?
It isn't always practical or possible to find another route, and staying behind a drunk driver and thus near them, or running the risk of running into the results of some sort of mistake on their part is certainly more dangerous than putting them safely behind you.
I don't think I've ever been in a situation where a drunk driver has been speeding around at 100mph - they almost universally go near the speed limit, but controlling their vehicle poorly.
I do not want to be in a situation where I am behind them. Even if I let them put a fair amount of distance in front of me, roads are not always well lit. If they crash, or hit something, I might now be having to deal with debris on the road that I won't be able to see easily, or potentially at all until it's too late.
I fail to see a safer course of action outside of just not driving at all, which, as I live in Texas, is distinctly not a possibility.
> and staying behind a drunk driver and thus near them
I don't think anyone is recommending that. I think they're recommending staying behind a drunk driver, and slowing down enough that you're no longer near them and have plenty of time to react to the results of any sort of mistake on their part. I think we can all agree that tailgating a drunk driver is an absolutely terrible idea.
(In general, I try and leave enough space to react to a sober driver's mistakes as well.)
> putting them safely behind you.
"Behind you" means you're in front of them. This is literally putting yourself in the path of danger. If they're relying on cues from traffic, speeding past them may let them know "they need to speed up" - and now they have some nice tail lights that are much easier to follow than those road stripes...
> I might now be having to deal with debris on the road that I won't be able to see easily, or potentially at all until it's too late.
You might have to deal with that whether or not a drunk driver wrecked in front of you. And even if you've left one behind you, what are the chances there's not one in front of you too?
You'll have more time to react going slower. If you keep your windows clean, your prescription up to date, your headlights in working order, and put down your phone - and I'd wager most debris you can't see in time to avoid is going to be much smaller, and as a result much less dangerous, than an entire car threatening to collide with you going the speed limit.
At least for the drunk-driver, yes. I think I read a while back that they were thinking/musing/planning on installing breathalyzers in cars that could prevent the vehicle from even starting.
I do, and I'm not convinced either; if the drunk's doing a steady 70, it won't hurt me to do 55 in the right lane for long enough so he's well ahead of me and I have time to react to whatever stupidity he perpetrates next. Too, when I'm driving, most of my attention is focused ahead, so dropping back puts him squarely in the region where I'm most likely to spot him doing something dangerous in time to avoid it.
Contrariwise, if I speed up and pass him, I have to keep worrying about him. What if he decides 70 just isn't fast enough? He's both more willing to drive fast, and willing to drive faster, than I am, so if I make it about who can stay ahead of whom, I lose. But I, being neither drunk nor proud, am both more willing to drive slowly, and willing to drive more slowly, than he is. So I make it about who can stay behind whom, and I win.
(None of this, I hasten to note, is intended in support of mandated governors on cars, nor should it be taken as such; I've seen enough to know that trying to make something foolproof results only in a lot of annoyance and a better fool. But it makes anyone a better driver, and safer to be around, to understand that faster doesn't always equal better.)
>There are sometimes legitimate reasons to be going quickly. I have, at times, needed to have bursts of speed into the 90s to safely get around a drunk driver going 70.
So.. you reasoned that it would be safer to be /in front/ of the drunk driver?
>So.. you reasoned that it would be safer to be /in front/ of the drunk driver?
Yes? In one scenario I am stuck behind them and potentially having to deal with the results of any sort of screwup on their part, or having to find a completely different route, which isn't always practical.
In the other I leave them behind me and am no longer having to deal with them.
In what world is it more advantageous to be near a drunk driver than away from them?
You're travelling at speed to get past a dangerous driver -- so for that short time you're at risk. And then when you're in front of them you risk their poor brake control amd distance judgement until you get far enough away from them.
When you're behind them you iust need to leave a suitable braking gap. They're unlikely to come backwards.
>You're travelling at speed to get past a dangerous driver -- so for that short time you're at risk
Certainly. For that short time, rather than the extended time if I'm driving behind them.
>then when you're in front of them you risk their poor brake control amd distance judgement until you get far enough away from them.
Thus why I get away from them quickly.
>When you're behind them you iust need to leave a suitable braking gap. They're unlikely to come backwards.
Until they run into something. Even if they manage to not completely wreck, they very well might leave behind debris.
If I stay near them I am going to constantly be having to react to their actions, which are extremely unpredictable by nature. Even with a suitable breaking gap, I can't account for every possible outcome, and any lapse in my concentration is many times more dangerous than it would be otherwise. The longer I am behind them, the more fatiguing it is to be on a hyper state of alert, increasing the chances that my focus will slip.
> In one scenario I am stuck behind them and potentially having to deal with the results of any sort of screwup on their part,
If this is a concern, you are following too closely. You should always be far enough from the vehicle in front of you that you have ample time to stop without hitting them if they stop abruptly or hit something.
You've answered your own question. Cars are dumb machines because we don't yet have the technology to judge what is "crazy fast" and make decision about where it should be allowed. Other than the obvious reasons of racing and car enthusiasts, there are legitimate reasons for a car to do 100mph. Often in emergency situations, you need to speed up rather than slow down to prevent an accident. If we start placing limits on people's cars, there will almost certainly be accidents caused by that, because the last thing you want in a situation where you need to react quickly is the car not doing what you want it to.
WRT "Cars are dumb machines" I find it fascinating in this discussion that its assumed we can trivially deploy an AI smart enough to out drive a human, but nobody wants to talk about humans being so dumb they get drunk then go driving after decades of incessant propaganda and punishment. I don't think a species that can't stop drunks from driving stands a chance at creating an AI that can outdrive humans.
Stopping drunks from driving is a political/social problem, not a technical problem. IIDs have been around for a long time, but mandating their installation on every sold car is political suicide in most places (though it seems some countries like Sweden are considering it).
Ah, the 280. If Bellevue had wanted to keep that route, it could have done exactly what Seattle did: pay for the route. The other owls (82, 83, and 84 within Seattle) were also slated to be cut and Seattle ponied up $500,000 from its coffers to keep them going. Seattle proposed to split the cost with Bellevue and Bellevue declined.
On the other hand, I can kind of see why. According to Metro's statistics, almost all riders on the 280 were using it as a mobile shelter instead of transportation to a specific point. (Judgment on whether that is good or bad is left as an exercise; I personally had no problem with it.)
> On Monday, a judge set bail at $100,000 for Robert Malsch, accused of drinking and of driving more than 100 mph before rear-ending a car and killing the driver inside.
Odd, the photo caption doesn't match the article text. "Robert Malsch, accused of drinking and of driving more than 100 mph" vs "He faces vehicular homicide and felony hit and run charges."
I worked with Mike Ey at IMVU for several years. He was the first tech lead for our 3D engine team, and his contributions to the company are innumerable. Moreover, I only now see how much he meant to me. He taught me how to solder, basic electronics, and spun me up on Unity3D. He was always willing to help, and one of the happiest people I've ever met.
The world dimmed a little this weekend. We'll miss you Mike.
When trying to find this story, I googled "employee killed by driver" and it's just a non-stop parade of stories of drunks and ragers killing people.
If you cause an accident either drunk or by rage, you should go to jail, period. The Netherlands has no tolerance for this kind of bullshit. Injure someone while stoned, 3 years jail time. Kill? 6 years or more.
People obsess about self driving cars killing people, and yes, there will be accidents. yes, there's going to be a case of a little girl chasing after a ball into the street who gets run over. Yes, there's going to be cases of a self driving car running over a pedestrian, or turning head on into traffic. I'm almost sure of it.
But these incidents probably will be insignificant compared to 30,000+ people killed per year and even more injured by human drivers. If 100 people lose their lives to software bugs per year in cars (which will improve over time), but 10,000 people lose their lives to human bugs, it will be a vast improvement.
This is where the troublesome nature of humans comes into play. I first want to say that as someone who works in robotics, I want the automation revolution to come as much as the next guy. As a matter of fact, you are probably going to be hard pressed to find a demographic on this site that thinks differently. However, our world is sometimes driven by the vocal minority and in this case it will be the luddites that VEHEMENTLY OPPOSE self-driving cars for short minded purposes.
Growing up in Nebraska and witnessing the reaction to technological influence there was very eye opening in that you realize that the common man/women thinks very much with their emotions and not with logic. You can beat them over the head with facts like this and they will argue for their old ways. They want to be in control of the situation. They want to have the right to drive their car themselves and they certainly don't trust a machine to do it for them. (I guarantee that you will hear arguements like "it's taking away jobs" and "look at this instance where it malfunctioned") this leaves some very tricky features that engineers must work into it. Is there a manual override? Are there regulations on what kind of sensing equipment is on board or is it left to the private company? What is the acceptable error range for a car at the end of the day?
I think we will move into a world dominated by self-driving cars and other tech conviences that make our life easier, but I think it will be slowed down considerably by those who are resistant to change. I think anything that cuts down on instances such as this is a good and much needed thing that cannot get here any faster.
I drove past this accident Saturday morning on my way home from a friends house. It was fresh... maybe ten minutes since the accident happened. It was absolutely awful.
And now it looks like we've lost a brilliant co-worker. Absolutely awful. My thoughts are with his family and loved ones.
I fucking hate cars. I really tried to like them, because they are required for child care in the United States. But I failed.
Haven't driven a car to work since 1997. But I used taxis in 1998. Moved out to a remote area where I could walk to work in 1999. And my miles-driven-per-year remained the same as when I lived in the Bay Area.
Damn. America is big, and relatively sparsely populated.
This is so sad. This is the third time I hear of extremely gifted people that I know of, killed by road accident/hit and run.
Growing up, I used to hear cassettes of Jon Higgins (musician) and was impressed at his dedication to his craft. Upon asking my father, why we didn't have any new cassettes of his, I was told he was killed in a road accident.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_B._Higgins !Gutted!
Then, I was exposed to UNIX, and fell in love with it. Loved the man pages, tried to figure out how the man pages are created, got into the History of it.... and discovered that the original developer of the roff tool, Joe Osanna, was also killed by road accident. !Gutted!
Now, gutted again! :(
I sincerely wish that his family and near and dear ones are provided with the strength to handle this utterly painful situation that they are forced to face, all of a sudden!
How awful. My condolences to his family and friends. It's always awful when we lose such great minds in such senseless, preventable ways.
I'm a firm believer that anyone who gets caught driving under the influence should lose their license permanently. You drink and drive? You don't get to drive. Period.
Stories like these are so tragic. I'm very optimistic about self driving car technology, primarily due to it's ability to reduce these types of unnecessary deaths.
I came here wanting to know the same thing. I'm not exactly clued-up on accidents and cars, etc. But it seems highly odd that one can just die from being rear-ended by a car (even if it's going 100)? The only thing I can think of is that the breaks were on, so his body/head whip lashed forward badly or something.
Anyone have any other theories about this sad event?
You can see it easily from the story. Ey's car spun around the road into a concrete wall. Malsch, the drunk driver, had his car stay on the road, just suffering front end damage from hitting Ey.
In all the videos, Ey's car looks absolutely demolished while Malsch's looks like just a rough accident.
Let's not forget the responsibility of the bar that continued to serve the drunk coward. My friend found him on FB tagged in the bar just a couple of hours before the accident. His blood alcohol was 3 times the legal limit. I am told, one would be almost comatose and they let him leave.
They don't need to make sure that people don't get drunk.
They don't need to supervise people and ask them where they live and how the intend to get home.
There's zero responsibility from my pov. If he wrecked havoc in the bar, attacked people or whatnot, then they have a reason to throw him out. They can always refuse to serve him the xth drink, but that's not responsible, that's mostly "making sure that people don't vomit all over the place".
The single responsibility for drunk drivers lies with the drunk driver. Not the bar, the system, society in general or whatever. Cars are not the problem either. It was one person's act.
(Too harsh? I lost my license for the better part of a year about a decade ago - for crashing my car on the Autobahn returning drunk from a party. Cannot recommend that, it was a highly expensive - in monetary terms, at that time - but luckily otherwise harmless, mightily effective lesson. So when I say that this person was an idiot I state that from the position of having been that sort of idiot in the past)
Random thought... I wonder if the emergency stop systems being implemented in today's cars would help with situations like this. I'm not sure it could stop someone this reckless (100+MPH) but certainly it could have slowed the car before impact.
Google drive would solve drunk driving problem but a drunk driver deactivation system could be developed immediately. (I'm sure there would be legal issues to implement it!. And tech issues: ie if passenger drunk dont deactivate)
Did he design the hololens, or was he a designer on the hololens team? Not to take away from the tragedy, but spinning it as the former when it's the latter is clickbaity and disrespectful to the deceased.
Perhaps there could have been a legitimate point about traffic deaths, but whatever substance this comment might have had is more than squandered by that acerbic swipe.
I feel ashamed of Hacker News to see a thread about someone's death abused like that.
I agree with your sentiment. That said, this is an amazing community, no reason to feel ashamed of HN because of the ignorance of a few comments. That those comments almost always get downvoted to oblivion, reveals the true character of HN.
I wonder if HN would benefit from adding an autoflag to "'murica." I've very rarely seen it used for anything other than particularly ignorant insults or otherwise negative value comments.
Considering the role of environment on intelligence, I would consider that to be extremely unlikely. If you restricted your statement to "other developed nations", that might be a bit more plausible.
I went to RIT with Mike. He was a seriously passionate developer and very clearly destined for great things. Finding out about this here makes me wish I had stayed in touch. This is unreal, and makes zero sense.
Too many emotions that I don't know what to do with, so I'll end my comment there. Just hope the rest of his family and friends are doing okay. RIP, Mike. :(
Edit:
I just want to say a little more about Mike. We were fairly close, but only my first year or two at RIT when we shared a dorm building and met through mutual friends.
Mike and I didn't stay in touch when our housing situations changed, but whenever we ran into each other on campus, we'd catch up, usually talking about what sort of stuff we'd been working on.
He was a bit like Sherlock Holmes. Socially, he seemed to be operating on another plane, and was at most in his element when talking about our craft, or really anything he was passionate about. He was keen to become a master at everything he tried his hand in, and he was deservedly proud of that.
In hindsight, Mike really was more than a peer or an acquaintance -- I looked up to him.