Traffic deaths rise in U.S. cities despite billions spent to make streets safer

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/traffic-deaths-rise-despite-billions-spent-to-make-streets-safer/

by jbrins1 • 2 years ago

17 22 2 years ago

cbsnews.com

MBCook4• 2 years ago

If the number of cars keeps increasing, so will the number of deaths. If the size of cars…. If the speed of cars….

How about reversing those trends?

lenerdenator• 2 years ago

That costs money and requires regulation. Since this is the United States, we know how those two things will be received.

supertrope2• 2 years ago

The "Inflation Reduction Act" actually subsidizes bigger cars more than smaller cars. We're digging ourselves into a deeper hole.

MBCook4• 2 years ago

The insurance industry could start to more heavily incentivize things based on the dangers, but they don’t. Or not enough.

shiroiushi3• 2 years ago

How about reversing those trends?

How? Americans clearly want huge SUVs, and want to drive them very, very fast, and act like any effort to restrict these from them are attacks on their "freedoms". They even think it's an attack on their freedom if they have to pay for parking or for driving on a road.

MBCook4• 2 years ago

A lot of people only seem to want huge SUVs because of the safety issues caused by other huge SUVs.

People definitely don’t like the high costs. And I’m not sure how much they love the really big ones, only the smaller.

They’d live the better fuel economy of smaller vehicles. They hated SUVs at first and had to be convinced by years and years of ads and product placement.

Yes some tiny part of the populace will freak out about their rights to 20ft tall SUVs. Let them have them, just put an insane tax on them to cover the horrific externalities.

No one likes new cars pushing $40k. Sitting in an SUV and seeing the hood of the truck next to you is over your head.

Some people didn’t want seatbelts. Or airbags. Or helmets on motorcycles. It’s ok to move forward anyway.

supertrope2• 2 years ago

When the implied value of dismounted people is high enough, better design will happen.

Car drivers are forced to drive 20 MPH near schools during school opening and closing times. In tourist districts pedestrian safety and accessibility is favored over being able to drive an SUV 40 MPH down a street. In neighborhoods filled with relatively politically empowered people, roads are never straight to discourage speed, speed bumps are added, stop signs are added, and there can even be focused police traffic enforcement.

If an area has an 8 lane wide stroad with a 45 MPH speed limit then it's implied that the lives of drivers speeding through are valued over those who live in the neighborhood.

Moomoomoo309• 2 years ago

Better road design. Speed humps, trees on the sides of the road, narrower roads, all of which will make drivers slow down simply because of the design of the road itself. No one's speeding on narrow roads, they'd be too likely to hit something.

galdosdi• 2 years ago

No. I mean yeah, but no. Those things matter, but THIS change was specifically caused by the pandemic. All over America, many drivers became SIGNIFICANTLY less conscientious, for reasons left to the imagination of the reader who is assumed to also have lived through the pandemic. It almost seems like a new cultural norm of less caring about the greater good and more selfishness on the road -- antisocial behavior, in other words.

Both anecdotally and statistically you see this all over the country, just since 2019 -- a very quick change over a very short time. So it seems strange to even think about any other cause, even if in general they are relevant -- those are just much slower acting things than the sudden impact of the pandemic.

We actually had road harms down or at least flattish until then.

MBCook4• 2 years ago

I don’t disagree. But there are lots of easy ways to cut traffic deaths besides trying to turn back behavior changes of the last few years.

Like making cars less deadly. Cutting down the number of trips. Thus my comment.

Tiktaalik3• 2 years ago

The pandemic was hard on people world wide, probably harder on people outside of America. Only America is seeing this trend.

The pandemic and anti-social behaviour is not the cause. American people are not unique, but the built form of their cities and the type of cars they drive is. That is more likely the cause.

litoE• 2 years ago

I wonder how much of the increase in fatal accidents is due to the increase in mobile phone use by drivers. The improvements in SS4A do not seem to address this.

yeknoda• 2 years ago

Also weed and drugs.

addicted2• 2 years ago

If it was weed and drugs we’d probably be seeing a lot more arrests.

Tiktaalik3• 2 years ago

The rest of the world has phones and they're not seeing what America is seeing. Not likely the cause.

ncr1002• 2 years ago

It could then be how America does mobile phones. Mobile phones could still be a part of it.

Tiktaalik3• 2 years ago

Osborne said the vast majority of projects funded by U.S. DOT have focused on making America's roads faster and more efficient, not safer.

Pretty much this is the cause (alongside the steady increase in SUV use). We need the opposite trend and slow traffic to induce a reduction in injuries and deaths.

nbdy• 2 years ago

imo it's neither car size or speed but the people operating the vehicle.

ncr1002• 2 years ago

I'm 50 and have noticed that drivers are more cavalier these days than at any other time in any of the other decades, from the 1970s on up, that I've watched cars, watch people's behavior.

The expectation that you are your work, and you're always busy, seems to have given permission for people to be like,"My life is out of control so I will be too".

Goes hand in hand with the society not being for the care of people but for the care of bank accounts, gripe about the way they were doing capitalism these days. Setting people's wants higher and higher while simultaneously continuing down the path of stratifying society into permanent lower income class.

Traffic deaths rise in U.S. cities despite billions spent to make streets safer

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