[CodeAndCuffs]

I was a cop for several years. I worked hundreds of crashes, and a few fatalities.

If cars had a max speed limit of 85 mph, and required the seatbelt to be engaged to work, we'd cut our fatality rate in half.

Most nations' DUI laws consider a 0.05 BAC as illegal. In most US states 0.08 is presumed under the influence, 0.06 - 0.079 is considered no presumption either way, and under .06 is considered not under the influence. My alcohol tolerance is fairly average, but after some off the cuff experiments with whiskey and a preliminary breathalyzer, I shouldn't drive at a .055. My wife shouldn't drive at a .03

Something like 80% of fatal crashes involve either alcohol, no seatbelt, or excessive speed, but not wearing a seatbelt is like a 50 dollar ticket, and a secondary offense, in many jurisdictions.

[admax88qqq]

> Something like 80% of fatal crashes involve either alcohol, no seatbelt, or excessive speed

This is the crux of the issue on why we as a society ignore car crashes and panic about train/plane crashes.

I'd wager it mostly comes down to filtering out things we feel we have control over stressing about those we don't.

[tifik]

Yep I believe that is a pretty well established cognitive bias called Illusion of Control [1]. Going down the rabbit hole of cognitive biases is a fascinating journey, and lot of them are relevant when driving a car.

One I found especially interesting is specifically about how improving safety features may not reduce accidents as much as it could, because when people feel safer, they tend to take greater risks [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion_of_control

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation#Peltzman_eff...

[MichaelCollins]

Refusal to drink and drive is not an illusion. I've been refusing to do that successfully my entire life.

[6yyyyyy]

But other drivers can drink, and you can't do anything about that.

Are you a good enough driver to save yourself in this situation?

https://litter.catbox.moe/ed5an4.webm

[MichaelCollins]

I generally don't fear other people driving drunk (except on holiday evenings when I refuse to be on the road.) My personal risk of dying in an alcohol-related crash is massively reduced by my decision to never drink and drive, or get into a car with a driver who's been drinking. The risk is never zero, but it's low enough that I generally don't worry about it.

Do I have absolute complete control over it? No. Do I have a whole lot of control over it? You betcha. The control is not an illusion.

[throwaway0a5e]

>Are you a good enough driver to save yourself in this situation?

Are you a good enough pedestrian to dodge a drunk that jumps the curb?

That's a rhetorical question. My point here is that the standard you're trying to apply is an asinine one. Unless you live beside the train station you have some exposure to drunk drivers.

[jjav]

> Are you a good enough driver to save yourself in this situation?

> https://litter.catbox.moe/ed5an4.webm

No. Nothing the camera car driver could've done to see or avoid that one.

But surely you realize that's not a very common scenario crash. Watch the endless youtube dashcam videos of crashes, the vast majority are simple scenarios where the driver could've done something smarter than what they did.

[noobermin]

According to the statistics, it's far more common in the US, far more common than it could be compared to other developed countries.

[jjav]

> Yep I believe that is a pretty well established cognitive bias called Illusion of Control

It is not an illusion that the car driver is in control of the car and their decisions.

It is an euphemism to call car crashes "accidents" because the vast majority were not an accident that simply randomly happened, it was an event the driver could have avoided by making better choices (e.g. call that cab instead of driving drunk, etc).

[kortilla]

That’s not the illusion of control. It’s the opposite. Those 3 things that dominate crashes are quite literally things you can control.

[ajmurmann]

I think you are definitely on to something here. For the alcohol and speeding I wonder how many of the fatalities are people other than the person speeding or drunk. I am not even thinking about passengers, but people in other cars, bicyclists or pedestrians.

[melling]

Nobel Prize winner John Nash, and his wife, both died as backseat passengers when their driver lost control, hit the guardrail, and they were thrown from the car on the way home from the airport.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forbes_Nash_Jr.#Death

Needless to say we should wear seatbelts even in the backseat of an automobile.

[anigbrowl]

I don't think people panic about plane crashes; the grounding of 737s a few years back might have been an overreaction to the statistical signal, but that signal also seemed to point to a deep control theory problem (sensors and systems that prompted pilots to do exactly the the wrong thing in a particular corner case.

9/11 is a better example of what you're talking about, where a genuine disaster was so traumatic as to reshape the whole society in ways often detached from risk or rationality.

[gffrd]

Like sharks: so few fatal interactions, but so much large-scale hand-wringing about shark attacks.

I'd double-down on that same wager …

[namesbc]

Cars should have a regulator installed by the manufacturer to limit speed to 20mph on roads with people, and to 60mph on grade separated highways.

This maximum would barely change your time to destination, but it would save thousands of lives per year.

- 20mph: 90% survival rate

- 30mph: 60% survival rate

- 40mph: 20% survival rate

https://www.betterstreetschicago.org/blog/chicago-speed-came...

[MontyCarloHall]

>This maximum would barely change your time to destination

Yes it would. The drive from LA to San Francisco is about 300 miles on Interstate 5. Much of this highway is completely straight, with excellent visibility through an unpopulated desert. When sparsely trafficked (as it is much of the time), it is safe to drive 80+ MPH on I5 for hours at a time. At 80 MPH, this is a 3 hour 45 minute drive. At your proposed 60 MPH, this would be a 5 hour drive.

>but it would save thousands of lives per year.

How many lives do you think would be saved by capping speeds to 60 MPH on I5? If alcohol or distracted driving are not factors, I would say probably close to zero. As a fun aside, the fatality rate on the unrestricted German Autobahn is about half the fatality rate across all US highways, and is comparable to other similar European countries’ highway fatality rates.

I completely agree about lower speed limits in cities, however, where pedestrian deaths are the main concern. While I don’t think a governor in the car would be practical or safe (what if I’m rushing because of a medical emergency?), automated enforcement would serve the same purpose.

[Steltek]

> As a fun aside, the fatality rate on the unrestricted German Autobahn is about half the fatality rate across all US highways

Germany has fanatically strict traffic enforcement, licensing rules, and vehicle inspections, compared to the US. You can't point to just the Autobahn without any further context.

[pkulak]

Gonna go ahead and say the unthinkable here... so what? The person driving fast endangers themselves and everyone else around them. In what other area of society do we tolerate extremely dangerous behavior (40,000+ deaths a year) because to not would be an inconvenience? Guns, I suppose. But I'm not a huge fan or our polices around those either.

[vel0city]

In a controlled access highway (no intersections, no pedestrians, no other kinds of traffic but cars going the same direction) with people paying attention and everyone going roughly the same speed the overall safety doesn't really change from 60 to 70 to 80mph. Texas raised the speed limits on a lot of back country highways to 90MPH. Guess what happened to the fatality rate. Practically unchanged.

[kortilla]

> what other area of society do we tolerate extremely dangerous behavior (40,000+ deaths a year) because to not would be an inconvenience?

Lol, heart disease wipes out an order of magnitude more people every year and we do absolutely nothing to stop people from eating and drinking themselves into obesity. But I guess you’re cool with it as long as it’s just suicide and a strain on our healthcare system?

[pkulak]

You just gave three examples of people endangering their own lives only, not my family. I'm not "cool" with it, really, but it's a whole different discussion.

[axiomsEnd]

And obesity in certainly not connected to the amount of time people in USA spend in cars.

[Shaanie]

Don't forget alcohol, and arguably smoking and being obese.

[pkulak]

Those doesn't endanger other people though.

[vermilingua]

DV statistics say otherwise (for alcohol), second hand smoking is a real problem, and obesity is typically generational.

[unsupp0rted]

People shouldn't really drive 300 miles in individual private vehicles.

Apart from the chance of accidentally killing oneself or others, it's hugely inefficient.

If we changed an interstate full of cars to high speed trains (or hyperloop or whatever) which depart every half hour, it'd be safer, cheaper, cleaner... you name it.

[rootusrootus]

So what should I do? Take a train? Doesn't go there. Bus? Again. Fly? That's not more efficient. Maybe grandma just doesn't need a visit from her grandkids.

Instead, I bought an electric car. I bet it compares quite favorably to a typical bus. And grandma does like to see her grandkids, let me tell ya.

[bee_rider]

I expected to see better performance from the bus, but it is surprisingly poor:

https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint

Haven't dug into their sources, but I assume this is because buses often run with low utilization. Anyway the answer is trains, the answer is always trains in public transit.

[rootusrootus]

Trains are a tough sell, at least in the western US. So much wide open space, trains are slow, high speed trains too expensive to justify given the sparse population.

I remember once doing the math and finding that there are many times when our local light rail is less efficient than just putting four people in a sedan. When the train is full, though, it's unbeatable.

EVs throw another wrench into that math since they're so much more efficient than ICEVs.

[ATsch]

> Take a train? Doesn't go there.

It should, that's the point. The only reason it doesn't is because the US has been regressing on rail infrastructure for a century.

> Bus? Again.

It should. And it should be so often you don't need to check a schedule.

[ascar]

Biggest problem for any non big-city to big-city transit are the last few miles. In the end my options are often to use a taxi or get a rental car. In both cases the price needs to be added to the cost of public transit making my personal car cheaper, more convenient and often also faster. It's a tough nut to crack. And I'm saying that as a German with one of the best public transport systems in the world.

[cafard]

From San Francisco to Los Angeles, sure. From San Francisco to any one of the many small towns within 300 miles, well, that's a lot of track to lay.

[gernb]

not really. The population of the bay area is on par with the entire population of the country of Switzerland yet they manage to have tons of trains in a much larger area

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32180236

[omgwtfbyobbq]

In the several trips my wife and I have taken between East Bay and SoCal, it's been hard to maintain 80+ mph. Between interchanges, construction, slower drivers, trucks passing other trucks, and so on, we're lucky to hit an average of 70mph.

On the flip side, cruising at 60+mph is totally doable, and while it is ~40+ minutes slower in theory, we only need to stop for gas once at lower speeds, which shaves off ~10-20 minutes.

Also, fighting through traffic takes the same regardless, so it's usually better to adjust when we're driving than trying to drive faster.

[hnov]

An average of 70 means you’re doing at least 80+. Maintaining an average of 80 requires going over 100 on that route in my experience.

[cobaltoxide]

> How many lives do you think would be saved by capping speeds to 60 MPH on I5?

The speed limit was in fact 65 MPH until 1995.

[ineedtosleep]

> How many lives do you think would be saved by capping speeds to 60 MPH on I5? If alcohol or distracted driving are not factors, I would say probably close to zero.

Amazing how you'd think it's actually close to zero. So many dangerous situations are removed once speeding is at least attempted to be removed from the equation.

To name two: reaction times are increased, stopping distances are reduced. I probably know what you'd say next: the driver is distracted. Not the speed's problem. To which I'll say, yeah of course the driver's distracted -- it's because the driver's human and will never be paying attention to the road 100% at all times.

IMO driving speeds, and how a community feels about it, are huge indicators on how hostile and how selfish a community can be.

[ascar]

> IMO driving speeds, and how a community feels about it, are huge indicators on how hostile and how selfish a community can be.

My gosh, you must think horribly about us Germans.

All your points make sense on the surface, but empirically in Germany our high speed roads cause a lot less deaths than regular roads [1]. So while you might think your argument makes a lot of sense other factors are a lot more important. To name one counter argument: I'm much more focused when driving faster and regularly adjusting my speed and hawkishly watching out for slower vehicles that I am passing than when I'm cruising straight at the same low speed for hours. Other than that a lot of terrible accident situations (turns or getting into opposing traffic) don't occur on separated highways.

To be clear, I'm never speeding and I do go slower at all the limited parts of the Autobahn, which are usually limited due to some kind of danger at higher speeds.

[1] https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Verkeh...

[nonameiguess]

Amusingly enough, though I didn't witness this and can't verify he was telling the truth anyway, my ex-wife claimed that when she went to traffic school, the instructor there told the class the number one cause of traffic accidents on Texas highways was cars going too slow. But I suppose you could argue it's really the opposite even in those cases, that all of the people cutting you off, deciding to get onto a highway doing 20 MPH, doing 40 in the passing lane, or randomly slamming on the brakes because they get spooked by a plastic bag or something, wouldn't be causing accidents if everyone else was also driving really slowly, and the accidents that did happen would be less deadly.

Although, as far as I understand, fatalities on highways are somewhat rare anyway, with most vehicular deaths happening at intersections. After all, it's the stopping force that kills you, and two vehicles doing 80 and 60 in the same direction will collide with less force than one doing 40 and one crossing the path in a perpendicular direction, or two going 20 and hitting head on.

[vel0city]

A ton of highway accidents are people changing lanes going way under the average speed of traffic. If everyone was going about the same speed there would be fewer accidents. If everyone is going 75mph and you decide to go 40mph, you're putting yourself and everyone else on that highway in more danger than if you just went 75.

[throwaway0a5e]

But the accident won't be "your fault" if you're hit from behind and that's what matters more in the minds of those people. It's the Principal Skinner "everyone else is wrong" attitude in real life.

As someone who used to drive a very slow commercial vehicle I absolutely cringe at the people who voluntarily fail to keep up with traffic. It's just not safe and if you're looking in your mirrors you can see all sorts of stupid happen in real time. All sorts of people cutting each other off and getting in each other's way happens as they merge to pass you. All those interactions are potential for something dumb to happen and they are needless.

[lsh123]

Staying home on the couch: 100% survival rate

[midoridensha]

The other thing you can do is move to a city where most people get around with public transit or walking/biking.

[fipar]

A sedentary lifestyle will increase the chances of circulatory diseases though, so close to 100% survival rate, but not there :)

[drdec]

Until someone drives into your house

[rootusrootus]

Given how low the actual rate of fatalities is compared to miles driven, you are proposing that we significantly lower the bar for when we think government intervention is the right answer.

[notatoad]

the government already owns the roads and enforces speed limits. speed governors are already required for scooters and e-bikes in many jurisdictions.

requiring cars to have the same limiters as scooters if they want to access the government-owned roads is not a huge change in scope.

[rootusrootus]

Even a Tesla can't reliably figure out what the speed limit is sometimes. I don't know that I want a governor that may suddenly decide I can only do 25 mph on the interstate.

[zip1234]

Even just capping all road worthy vehicles to 80 would probably save a lot of lives.

[BitwiseFool]

Car manufacturers who voluntarily implemented this would go out of business so fast. Politicians who propose making this mandatory would face constituent uproar.

Limiting cars to 20mph on most roads would energize disengaged constituents like you wouldn't believe.

[throwaway0a5e]

Good. Companies and politicians that favor the vocal few over the masses should face consequences for their actions.

The public gets what it wants. Even if what the public is stupid.

[noobermin]

e-bike and e-scooter manufacturers have not gone out of business over similar speed metering and geofencing, it can and should be done for cars.

[BitwiseFool]

e-bikes and e-scooters are relatively new. It's not like people were able to use these things for decades unrestricted and now they have to be throttled.

[hintymad]

What if occasionally you need to accelerate to a higher speed to avoid an accident?

[kfarr]

What if that were a fecetious argument proposing a situation that does not happen in real life that people bring up when speed governors are discussed?

[nostromo]

It happens all the time. People regularly speed up when passing to limit time in oncoming traffic lanes.

Limiting speed in such a scenario could reasonably lead to a fatal accident.

[anigbrowl]

It's not facetious. I used to ride a motorcycle and oblivious or sometimes malicious drivers were a constant hazard; I'd say I got out of trouble by speeding up as often as slowing down, and I am not into speed for its own sake. Acceleration and maneuverability are as important as braking and (for larger vehicles) structural integrity.

[hotz]

Agreed, riding bikes gives us a different perspective on it all. I'd say we're generally more aware of our surroundings and other vehicles. A lot of the suggestions just won't work. Rules/laws/devices etc won't get rid of the human factor. Some people just lack the ability to be considerate to others.

[leetcrew]

it's not that rare. a pretty common one (in my area, anyway) is someone starts merging into you from the side while someone is riding your bumper. if you slammed on the brakes, it wouldn't be "your fault", but it would be much better to just speed up and avoid the collision.

[kleer001]

Then you won't get there and the accident will be less fatal.

[pif]

Sorry, but no. Cars are meant to move people around, not for strolling.

Every road and every situation have a reasonable limit, which is often higher than what you posted.

[SilverBirch]

Well done, you've specified a superset of self driiving without delivering any economic benefit. Oh, and every road in Europe is now a hazard because you've designed new cars with absurdly low speed limits.

But no I'm sure your baselesss opinion on speeds is best.

[Drunk_Engineer]

Europe is now mandating intelligent speed limiters, so I don't know what you are getting on about.

[MontyCarloHall]

No, they are not. Cars must alert the driver if they are exceeding the speed limit, but there is no forced limiting.

https://jalopnik.com/no-europe-didnt-just-force-automakers-t...

[Drunk_Engineer]

Many expect the EU to eventually remove override capabilities as the systems become more widespread.

[Akronymus]

Basically impossible to get through. As there are often cases where it picks up a speed limit from something like the off ramp on the equivalent of a highway. Which would be dangerous if it suddenly decelerated from 130 to 80.

[tinco]

You do realize in general persons on the road have a positive impact on the economy if they survive their travel right?

[robotresearcher]

> without delivering any economic benefit.

You've saved an enormous amount of energy.

[JoeAltmaier]

A Patrol officer I knew said once "I never unbuckled a dead man"

[unsupp0rted]

They unbuckled plenty of people who'll never walk/turn their heads/poop normally without chronic pain again though.

Cutting fatalities by 50% is a good start, but the other 50% aren't walking away from car accidents trouble-free, with or without seatbelts in play.

[koheripbal]

It's a nice zinger, but obviously false.

[bee_rider]

There were around 42k traffic deaths in 2021 (a 16 year high apparently) and around 610k patrol officers

https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/early-estimate-2021-tra...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/751015/number-of-police-...

So, assuming every fatality is wearing a seat belt and is handled by a cop ('optimistic' assumption for it to be 'obviously false'), it would still be around a 7% chance per year for a cop to "unbuckle a dead man." So this isn't obviously false, depending on the career length. For example, after 10 years, assuming independent probability of such an encounter per year, .93^10 ~= .48.

[robotresearcher]

The quote is not "No one ever unbuckled a dead man".

[not-so-jerry]

Not sure if you are implying this or not, but how would lowering the BAC limit prevent fatal crashes?

Figure 3 in this report shows a somewhat normal distribution around .15 g/dl and the mode being around .17 g/dl: https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

This is already ~2x the legal limit.

[moistly]

Google being what it is these days, I’m finding it difficult to track down the study that was performed a decade after British Columbia reduced the BAC limit and instituted severe penalties for DWI offences, so you’ll have to trust me when I say that there was a significant and long-lasting reduction in DWI cases and automobile accident rates.

Our BAC limit is 0.05, except for new drivers, where it is 0.0.

http://www.dui.ca/bc.php

[sebazzz]

> If cars had a max speed limit of 85 mph, and required the seatbelt to be engaged to work

Wait, wearing a seatbelt is not mandatory?

[jjcm]

Legally it's required, but I think their point is it should be required by hardware. Right now most new cars just beep at you, but you can still operate them.

[andorov]

You can buy clips that prevent the beeping.

The top result is also a bottle opener... https://www.amazon.com/seat-belt-buckle-alarm-stopper/s?k=se...

[cmckn]

Or people just buckle the belt and then sit on top of it. As insane as that is, I've seen plenty of grown ass adults do it. An older person I knew went so far as to find a seatbelt at a junkyard, cut the buckle off, and leave it in the holster permanently.

[0xbadcafebee]

We never pushed for it politically because it wouldn't change anything but it would piss people off. You can simply buckle the seatbelt with nobody in the seat, then sit down, and the requirement is defeated.

On the other hand, a mandatory breathalyzer for ignition would be useful to prevent a lone driver from driving drunk. We already have them for people with DUIs, so we should make them mandatory for all cars.

[skeeter2020]

>> We already have them for people with DUIs, so we should make them mandatory for all cars.

Yes, because the idea that every single person should now start doing what historically only a reprehensible convicted drunk driver was required to do will go over so well.

[toast0]

> On the other hand, a mandatory breathalyzer for ignition would be useful to prevent a lone driver from driving drunk. We already have them for people with DUIs, so we should make them mandatory for all cars.

I don't drink often, and I have never and would never drink and drive, but please no. Mandatory breathalyzers for everyone is an immense expense and a huge inconvenience and I suspect would be easily bypassed by those who choose to drink and drive. And I don't want to live with the consequences of making it hard to bypass such a device, because it likely makes working on a vehicle nearly impossible.

[asveikau]

My understanding is that many people drive above the legal limit for DUIs and do not get caught. DUI prosecution is somewhat the story of selective enforcement.

What would piss people off is coming into contact with the fact that they're driving illegally. I think many drivers are unaware of being above legal limits and would probably be angry when confronted with it.

I guess playing devil's advocate... There's probably some odd scenario where driving above the limit for an emergency circumstance could be justifiable. So perhaps the car should not be disabled in this way.

[daedalus_j]

Or you could simply make it so that the threat of driving drunk was so high that people actually thought twice.

Get caught in a DUI? You simply never. drive. again... Ever. No 2nd chance. Hurt or kill someone as a DUI? Mandatory minimum jail time.

The difference is that this encourages personal responsibility and has personal consequences, rather than attempting to police the entire population for the bad deeds of the few.

[throwaway0a5e]

> Or you could simply make it so that the threat of driving drunk was so high that people actually thought twice.

Every jackboot says this but in reality it does nothing because everyone thinks they're good and won't get caught.

[daedalus_j]

Well, then we just have to accept is as a cost of doing business and not try to stop it, because the same could be said about anything short of a full all-knowing surveillance state. People commit murder because they think they're good and won't get caught. Some don't. Better that ten guilty persons go free than one innocent be convicted though. So we just have to decide how far down "convicted" really means, and if I need to ask the tech gods in the sky for permission to start my car every time I want to go somewhere I'm feeling rather convicted...

Personally I'd rather live in a world with consequences than live in the lowest-common-denominator big-brother world.

[trashtester]

> On the other hand, a mandatory breathalyzer for ignition would be useful to prevent a lone driver from driving drunk. We already have them for people with DUIs, so we should make them mandatory for all cars.

People who frequently drive under the influence tend to have a strong habit. Those would just keep driving an old car if such a device is introduced in new cars.

For most other people, such a device would be seen as a very annoying.

For it to have the desired impact,it needs to be fitted in all old cars, and then we're adding a significant expense on top of the annoyance.

Now, MAYBE if the device can be used to reduce insurance fees, it might be doable, but only in countries without public healthcare.

[officeplant]

Had a friend dumb enough to drive drunk a few times and get multiple DUI's resulting in a breathalyzer in his hopped up WRX. I will never forget the pure frustration of him dealing with stalling out a manual car and having to grab the breathalyzer while also trying to get started again. I wish he would have had to deal with that for years instead of 6 months, but at least he cleaned up his act.

[drdec]

FYI, one of the recent giant bills that passed in the US requires automakers to implement passive systems which detect impaired drivers.

[ectopod]

The breathalyser is a lovely idea but couldn't it be defeated with a pair of bellows?

[rootusrootus]

> On the other hand, a mandatory breathalyzer for ignition would be useful to prevent a lone driver from driving drunk.

That would do nothing accept waste countless man hours of productivity, consume a great deal of money, and ensure that the next generation of politicians would be Libertarians.

[rascul]

> Wait, wearing a seatbelt is not mandatory?

Not in New Hampshire.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has published this document I have found with some statistics from 2018. I'm not sure if there's newer stuff published. It might be interesting to look at.

https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

[dmead]

They are, but cars will function without them being used.

[GuB-42]

At least in Europe, there is a very annoying beep if you don't wear the seatbelt. You can still drive, and there are ways to disable it, but most people just wear their seatbelt.

I don't think it is mandatory, but it counts in the EuroNCAP score, and since it is one of the easiest safety feature to implement, they all have it.

[toast0]

The beeps in the US are not that annoying. Ding ding ding ding ding for 30?seconds at start up, again when you put it into drive, and then again when you hit a certain speed (around 7-10 mph) and/or periodically. It's not pleasant, but it's tolerable when I'm moving cars around between my house and my barn. Yeah, I probably should still buckle up, but it's not critical for sub 15 mph, private road driving for a minute or two.

My first car didn't have a seatbelt reminder, and it needed a bit of time to warm up, so I got in the habit of starting it and then buckling, and 20 years of driving with seatbelt reminders hasn't trained me to switch the order.

[14]

You are right there are ways to disable it easiest being a seatbelt delete that clips into the buckle and disabled the annoying beep and you can clip into that should you choose. Who would choose to not wear a seatbelt is strange to me but I also rode a motorcycle so we are dead meat anyways if something goes wrong.

[freedomben]

US cars are the same way. If you move faster than 5 mph (which is really slow) and aren't wearing the seat belt, the car will start with uncomfortable beeping. It eventually climaxes to a nigh unbearable screech.

[VectorLock]

My brother does this and it drives me crazy when I'm a passenger in his car, I can't fathom how he just deals with it.

[mantas]

It was fun when people were sitting on engaged seatbelts to prevent the beep :)

[rootusrootus]

My brother in law still does exactly that.

[jhaile]

It's mandatory but the car will still operate without it buckled. Many newer cars will beep at you if it isn't buckled, but older cars don't.

[WalterBright]

Not wearing a seatbelt is an individual choice, and should not be a crime.

P.S. Growing up, my dad had the dealer install seatbelts in the family wagon before he picked it up. We never moved an inch unless everyone was buckled up. Nobody else, and I mean nobody else, had seatbelts in their car at the time.

P.P.S. Seatbelts also saved my life.

[CodeAndCuffs]

Its a choice that effects others. When you get ejected from the crash and hit someone else's car. When we have to shut down the interstate north and south bound for 3 hours to do a full reconstruction. When we have to do a death notification.

Dealing with a dead body isnt a big deal. Your mind kinda puts it in the pile of "just evidence". Working the fatality is easy. The hard part is the death notification. Having to find the family member, either waking them up at 2 am or knocking on the door in the middle of an otherwise normal afternoon. Its not like brain surgery gone bad. There was 0 warning of this happening. Noones prepaered for it.

Death notification is a full day of training in our academy. Noone deserves to learn their loved one died on the news or thru a rumor or over the phone. You have to tell them in person.

And you have to be blunt. Anything less just makes it harder to cope. "There was a crash, he didn't make it" leaves their mind to fabricate a weak lie, like maybe he didn't make avoiding the crash, and he's just hurt. This just makes the pain last that much longer

"Sir, I'm sorry to tell you that your son was killed in a motor vehicle crash".

If you want to make dumb decisions, that's fine, but don't try to justify it with this isolated "well it's my choice" nonsense. Your choice effects others, and I can still remember the reaction of every single death notification I've done. The viet nam vet trying to pass a tractor trailer on his motorcycle, and the way his wife screamed. Having to tell a Dad who's son was touring a college, that his sone was the only one in the car not in a seat belt. Having to wake a mother up at 2 in the morning to tell her her son is dead, and not having an answer to "How do I tell his little sister"

Individual choices generally effect more than the individual

[thereisnospork]

>Individual choices generally effect more than the individual

One of the fundamental principles of this country is that individual choices are up to the individual unless they present onerous effects on others. Simply, any choice can be construed to have externalities, much like anything can be considered interstate commerce if you squint at it strongly enough. To say nothing of the logical incongruity of allowing people to ride motorcycles.

Of course if you don't wear your seatbelt you're an idiot, but this doesn't feel like an epidemic reaching a reasonable threshold, e.g. being deleterious to national security.

[ArnoVW]

Yup. Also, that's the Good scenario. What if you are unfortunate, and don't die, but just become paraplegic? Aside from the financial impact on society (unless you are a millionaire, you'll end up needing help) you'll spend the rests of your life regretting your choice of not wearing a seatbelt.

I somehow suspect that we should just call them "freedom belts" and enshrine them in the constitution.

[WalterBright]

I don't envy your job. I'm sure it is tough. I respect you for taking on such a difficult task.

However, people still have a right to be stupid with their own life. It's not nonsense.

For example, Wilbur and Orville Wright were quite aware that they stood a high chance of dying in their airplane experiments. Neil Armstrong figured that he had a 1:3 (or something like that) chance of dying going to the moon. The people who free climb have a very high death rate.

They all have the right to decide for themselves what is worth doing and what isn't. If you've got family depending on you, you should think about them before taking stupid risks. It's your right and your responsibility and your decision.

[pshc]

> For example, Wilbur and Orville Wright were quite aware that they stood a high chance of dying in their airplane experiments. Neil Armstrong figured that he had a 1:3 (or something like that) chance of dying going to the moon. The people who free climb have a very high death rate.

In these examples, these people aren't posing a threat to other people around them in their risky behavior.

[base698]

Rescue attempts for a variety of mountain sports do put others at risk. In addition most of the above post was about the effect on first responders.

[anigbrowl]

the other poster's point went over your head. Risk-accepting people and their families understand what they're doing and that they're making a bet with their life. I've done so, and not without cost. Opinions might differ on the value of such bets, and acceptance of that risk might be grudging rather than serene, but it's not unexpected.

But sudden random death is a different story. Car crashes or stray bullets can suddenly kill people uninvolved in and not seeking any risk. An unbuckled driver is primarily a danger to themselves, but also highly incentivized to drive differently - eg swerving to avoid an unsurvivable collision, but causing someone else to have a more serious accident.

I'm not sure where you'd start a statistical analysis, but the worst outcomes in the many traffic accidents I've seen always seem to involve 2 cars that have a minor collision causing a third car to have a major one, like hitting a structure or rolling.

[profile53]

Not wearing a seatbelt is also a choice to force the healthcare system to support the person for 50 years after they break their neck in a preventable way. The choice is individual but the consequences are societal.

[WalterBright]

One of the things I don't like about free health care is it comes with the notion that the government should force you to do things to reduce those costs.

[pkulak]

The alternative is letting people die on the street who may not be able to pay. No developed country will ever have a health care system that shifts 100% of costs to the individual.

[robotresearcher]

No it doesn't. The US government doesn't force military vets and retirees to quit smoking and eating donuts.

I don't think a single one of the many countries with socialized health care for all does this.

They may pay for education and awareness of the risks of smoking, and they may highly tax cigarettes to dissuade you. But they don't force you.

[WalterBright]

Seatbelt laws and helmet laws.

[robotresearcher]

These apply to everyone in the US, whether or not they are eligible for 'free' medical care.

[pas]

then it's not free :)

anyway, spending on carless infrastructure to provide alternative transport modalities to people is what works, whereas trying to force people to just "do the healthy things" doesn't really

plus there's nothing stopping the US from coming up with "free healthcare 2.0" that also solves this with clever incentives (eg. via a voucher system, people who opt out of the hazardous things get a voucher, for example people without a car get a "free" monthly public transit ticket, etc.)

[clint]

Not wearing a seat belt is dangerous to others when you're catapulted through your windshield at 90mph into traffic. This is not the clear-cut case you want to make it out to be.

[Fricken]

Is there any evidence that an ejected car occupant injured a bystander even once?

[WalterBright]

If you're catapulted through your windshield, you're going to hit whatever you drove into, not traffic.

[Arrath]

If you hit a giant wall, sure.

In the other case, a violent roll over accident will happily eject you from a side window and off on a happy trajectory towards whatever might be in that direction.

Forward through the windshield is hardly the only way to be ejected.

[WalterBright]

You're going to fall out in the direction you (and the car) are travelling/rolling.

[vel0city]

You're going to be thrown out in some additive vector of where you were going and where the other car influenced your car to go, depending on what other impacts you're getting pre-ejection. That can easily be into another car, into other traffic, etc.

[myroon5]

whatever you drove into could be traffic

[campbel]

As long as you're held accountable for your body flinging into others and injuring them, sure.

[WalterBright]

Fair enough.

[fzeroracer]

I've seen your exact same argument made by people who believe the BAC limit should be abolished and it's just as disingenuous to engage with there as it is when applied to seatbelt laws.

A family that refuses to wear seatbelts and doesn't buckle in their children is an individual choice as well in your world, but the end result can be killing someone that didn't have a choice in the first place. And your argument around seatbelt laws seems to assume that the driver is the one at fault, not the one being rear ended or involved in an accident outside of their control resulting in them being ejected from their vehicle.

[tzs]

A good seat and shoulder belt can reduce your movement relative to the steering wheel from centrifugal forces during a sudden sharp high speed swerve to avoid an obstacle, which should reduce the chances that you will lose control.

[Arrath]

An individual choice that can endanger others when e.g. you cannonball through your own windshield and hit someone, or cause follow on accidents as people swerve out of your way, etc.

[bendbro]

Yes, you survive 2 tons of steel smashing into you only to die against .1 ton of perfectly aimed flesh. I wonder what the odds of this are? Just kidding, I'm not Wiley E Coyote so I don't waste time worrying over comically unlikely ways to die. I do however spend time worrying about people with comically detached models of physical reality.

[everforward]

It's actually a fairly substantial risk, but from unbuckled passengers in the back slamming into the person in front of them. Studies said about a 20% increase in risk of death to the person in the front.

[cityofdelusion]

This seems so incredibly unlikely that it is going to need some kind of citation. Deer hitting cars is a drop in the bucket in terms of human mortality and must be several orders of magnitude more common than flying unbuckled humans.

[WalterBright]

Not going to happen.

[lovich]

Well that’s a bold statement, guess the rest of us are just wrong and there are no externalities associated with not wearing a seat belt

[WalterBright]

First off, the physics are you are going to be thrown into whatever your car hit. Second, I've never, ever heard of a flying body hurting someone else.

[ok_dad]

My parents were both in vehicle accident reconstruction for just such things and I don’t even know how to count how many times I watched a car accident reconstruction (dummies in crash test vehicles) end in a dummy being thrown in any direction you could imagine. It might not hit a person but it will hit a car in the other lanes and cause accidents.

You’re out of your element here, stick to compilers for once.

[jahewson]

Well, that’s because almost everyone wears a seatbelt.

[BrianHenryIE]

Graphic car safety ad about seatbelts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epTdI-9V6Jk

[WalterBright]

When I drive I don't move unless my passengers buckle up. When I'm the driver, it's my rules.

[throwaway0a5e]

That's like the car equivalent of D.A.R.E. It's so farcical it does more harm than good.

[BrianHenryIE]

Anecdotally, drink driving is more common in California than in Ireland, maybe because I grew up with ads like these on TV:

https://youtu.be/xtJqw--DGl8

And a cursory search says:

> threat-based road safety communications that target affective (fear) and cognitive (perceived efficacy) mechanisms can positively affect driving behaviours

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12889-016-3227-2

[jiveturkey]

Who cares if you kill yourself through your own negligence? There shouldn't be a fine at all for seatbelts. DUI, OTOH, should be treated even more harshly than it is.

[mauvehaus]

First, you're welcome to move to New Hampshire if you feel this way and drive around with your seatbelt unbuckled. You're also welcome to ride your motorcycle without a helmet there.

Second, part of the purpose of the seatbelt is to keep you in the driving position for the entire duration of the crash so that you can maintain as much control of your vehicle as possible until it comes to a complete stop. If the first impact of a crash throws you out of the position required to drive the car, you're no longer capable of controlling the vehicle in such a way that reduces the severity of or prevents further impacts. As some of these further impacts stand to involve persons not involved in the initial impact, it follows that wearing a seatbelt stands to protect them as well as you.

Third, We are in absolute agreement that DUI should be treated more seriously.

[ghastmaster]

> Second, part of the purpose of the seatbelt is to keep you in the driving position for the entire duration of the crash so that you can maintain as much control of your vehicle as possible...

I largely agree with this sentiment, however, practically speaking I doubt it matters much. Any impact hard enough to significantly displace you would likely render you useless at operating the vehicle if you are wearing a seatbelt. The forces at work during crashes are stronger that most people realize.

I read hundreds of traffic accident reports every day. If you must traverse the roads, wear your seatbelt, don't ride a motorcycle, and avoid excessive speeds. A large portion of the reports I see with deaths are single vehicle excessive speed loss of control, with a significant portion of those not wearing their seatbelts.

Driving is dangerous. Stay safe.

[GLGirty]

In the linked article, Strong Towns doesn't say much about the nature of these deaths, but in other articles, (e.g. below) they explore how many of these killings are vehicle-on-pedestrian deaths, and how we've normalized blaming victims.

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/7/14/new-report-ame...

[wizofaus]

Aside from the fact your own death is always going to impose a cost on society, I'd assume having a seatbelt on as a driver significantly increases your ability to maintain at least some control of a vehicle in a collision, reducing your chance of injuring others (both in and outside said vehicle).

[WalterBright]

You have a right to be stupid, even if it results in your death.

> I'd assume having a seatbelt on as a driver significantly increases your ability to maintain at least some control of a vehicle in a collision

Not a chance. The g forces are tremendous, and you're just along for the ride in a collision. In my major accident, I had a lap belt on, but my arms and legs and torso flung about totally out of my control.

[dhc02]

Seatbelts don't magically stop major accidents from happening. But they definitely keep minor accidents from turning into major accidents.

They don't keep you in control after you slam into something head on or flip the car.

They keep you in control after you clip a deer, or hit a rock, or someone rear-ends you, or you swerve hard to avoid something, and that can be the difference between a good story and killing yourself or others.

[WalterBright]

Do they? I've been rear-ended, wearing a belt. There was no possible way I could control the car under the g forces.

If you've got enough side forces to pull you out of your seat, you've lost control anyway.

BTW, race car drivers know to take their hands off the wheel just before impact, as the front wheels hit they can jerk the steering wheel hard enough to break your arms.

It's true that if you're going to do performance driving, tightly belting yourself in will enable you to feel the car better, and enable you to concentrate on driving rather than trying to stay seated. But hitting something is a whole 'nuther story. If you haven't been hit hard in a car (I have), you're not in control. Belt or not. You're just along for the ride.

[wizofaus]

That would depend on the collision. The worst I've had, the car I was driving was T-boned by another (their fault). If I'd had no seat belt on I somewhat doubt I would've been able to maintain control of the vehicle and it very likely would have hit other cars.

[Arrath]

In my own accident, despite being slammed against the driver's door by the impact, I was able to keep my foot stabbed onto the brake pedal throughout the event thanks to the belt keeping me more or less in the driver's seat.

[WalterBright]

There's no doubt that the belt played a role in reducing your injuries.

[wizofaus]

But you'd then argue being able to keep your foot on the brake doesn't help your chances of avoiding causing injury/death to others?

[avianlyric]

Seatbelts also protect other car occupants. When your car goes from 80mph to 0mph, if you’re not wearing a seatbelt, you become a 80kg, 80mph meat missile bouncing around the car.

If someone else happens to be in that car with you. Then it very likely you’re gonna kill them. If multiple people are not wearing a seatbelt, then the problems only escalates from there.

Sitting in the back doesn’t changes the dynamics much either. Car seats aren’t designed to withstand a 60+kg mass hitting them from behind at 80mph. They fold flat, and anyone still sitting in them gets folded flat at well, and that’s all before you start worrying about what happens when two skulls collide at 30-100mph.

[WalterBright]

I'm aware of that, and when I drive I require that all my passengers buckle up.

[lttlrck]

I just saw this on Reddit.

The driver would most likely have regained control had he left his seatbelt on. SFW.

https://reddit.com/r/IdiotsInCars/comments/w4kyx3/oy/

[WalterBright]

If he hadn't gotten out of his seat to dig in the back, he wouldn't have had the accident.

I'm sorry, this is not an argument for seatbelts. It's an argument for keeping your eyes on the road.

[pkulak]

> You have a right to be stupid

To _be_ stupid, sure.

[lovich]

> You have a right to be stupid, even if it results in your death.

Do you? I’ve not seen hide nor hair of that right defined anywhere.

[WalterBright]

Your inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

[lovich]

Supreme Court recently ruled if it’s not in the constitution it’s not a real right sooooooo

[willcipriano]

Certainly you have seen "My body, my choice".

It isn't respected as it should be but I would consider it a natural right to do what you will with your own body. If you don't own that, what do you own? Bodily autonomy is the core of all human rights if you think about it.

[anthonypasq]

jumping off mountains is legal

[wizofaus]

Except when there are sufficient cases of people seriously injuring or killing themselves, then the area is typically fenced off/given restricted access.

[cityofdelusion]

Curious, is there actually evidence of this? I've been in a few accidents and I can't think of how a seat belt would maintain control. I feel that anything that would throw you out of the seat is basically uncontrollable. My accidents with any significant force all happened in the blink of an eye.

[vel0city]

I've been forced to make swerving maneuvers which would have been difficult to stay in my seat and in control without a seatbelt. I was in a low speed rear end collision which would have definitely jarred me out of my seat and had me lose control after the fact, probably would have caused me to roll into a busy intersection.

[kyleamazza]

Because your body tumbling around in your car during a crash can kill passengers, or be catapulted onto the street causing another accident/injury from someone trying to avoid it

[fumeux_fume]

Believe it or not, cleaning dead bodies off the road everyday has a cost.

[powerhour]

A cost borne by others, in fact.

[notch656a]

Forcing manufacturers to put in a seatbelt in cars is a cost born by others for something many of them never wanted, forced on them by people who legislate not only having seat belts in their own car but installed in every car.

[greedo]

Because your death becomes an externality that others have to pay for.

[goatcode]

Should we treat all behaviors that are associated with a significantly increased mortality rate the same way, or should we pick and choose depending on the political and social context at the time, like we do with seatbelts?

[scoopertrooper]

Few other behaviors associated with increase mortality can also turn you into a missile.

https://youtu.be/bdW_3oQFO0c?t=42

[goatcode]

Be that as it may, that wasn't the point I was replying to.

[scoopertrooper]

Is not missiling into another person a form of externality?

[wizofaus]

I would say we generally do exactly that, when the threshold is significant enough and it's a behavior that has no beneficial/ safe level (we tax and restrict cigarettes heavily, but not so much overconsumption of food etc. Arguably we should/could have penalties for failing to get enough exercise, though there are almost certainly better ways to reduce dangerously sedentary lifestyles).

[goatcode]

>Arguably we should/could have penalties for failing to get enough exercise, though there are almost certainly better ways to reduce dangerously sedentary lifestyles

This is my point: we pick and choose, and we're subject to the whims of society, when it comes to what we deem unacceptable. Citing a collective norm that potentially could have been influenced by societal ebbs and flows is not an objective argument, ever.

[wizofaus]

Absolutely - regulation is hard. I wonder if there are successful instances of government using big-data/ML to determine where, when and in what manner it makes sense to apply it. And would people vote for governments that relied solely on that for what legislation to enact...

[colinmhayes]

Generally yes. That’s why sugar taxes are needed and popular with economists.

[goatcode]

What would you say should be the threshold for increased mortality that would subject a given behavior to heavy taxation and regulation?

[Fricken]

Everybody is entitled to one free death.

[SoftTalker]

Cyclists take note.

[californical]

Riding a bicycle is incredibly safe. It’s cars that are dangerous, around bicyclists and pedestrians alike (and even other car drivers).

[notch656a]

Bicycle deaths per mi is like 6x of cars. Maybe bicycling around cars is a big reason for that, but we're measuring against the reality there is not the world we want to move towards.

I'd say bicycling should be outlawed before driving without a seatbelt is (although I'd prefer both be legal).

https://www.ntsb.gov/safety/safety-studies/Documents/SS1901....

[californical]

I think that alternatively, considering how approximately every death of a bicyclist or pedestrian, or car driver, is all caused by someone driving an enormous 5,000lb machine irresponsibly, we should redesign our cities in such a way that most people don’t need to drive those cars in the first place for most trips. And if you do need to drive a car, you have much less congested and smaller streets for those trips.

That also allows us to repurpose some of that road space that’s not needed anymore, for separate bike and bus infrastructure that will also be more convenient and safer for everyone.

I don’t want to live in a world where you have to own a giant dangerous $20k machine just to move around, when there are cheaper, safer, healthier, and better-for-the-environment ways to accomplish the same thing.

And I drive too, a lot! I just don’t want to be forced to anymore, but we’ve kinda built society so that you only have one option, and it creates all sorts of problems.

[valeness]

What are you insinuating precisely?

[nextstepguy]

Because if you don't kill yourself, insurance will care footing the bill to send you to the hospital. Maybe insurances shouldn't cover people without seatbelts and have the ambulance let them be injured at the scene.

[WalterBright]

Frankly, if the injured person wasn't wearing a belt, I wouldn't award him medical damages regardless of who was at fault in the collision.

[bhahn]

I would imagine that most auto insurance policies require seatbelts (under some general safety baseline provision) for coverage to be valid.

[seabea]

If your accident involves more than one vehicle, the other driver shouldn't need to live with your death on their conscience (as it would for most people, regardless of whether or not they were at fault).

[vel0city]

Who cares? Loads of people. My wife lost a coworker from an auto accident, one that they probably would have survived had they been wearing their seatbelt. She was a single parent to a small child. Losing his mom at such a young age probably made a big difference to him. It probably had significant impact on her mom, who now has a complicated custody battle with an abusive deadbeat dad and massively different life having to try and take care of her grandson.

She had a lot of friends, I'm sure they cared about her. My wife cared about her. My wife's other coworkers also cared.

Its incredible how selfish so many people are on this site. Is there nobody you care about?

[notch656a]

Won't someone think of the children?

[SheetPost]

your body yeeted out of the car makes an even bigger mess and could hurt/kill sb.

so wear your damn seatbelt