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).
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.