Why people start to cry for regulation whenever they see something new these days? Hasn't been the case before, something has shifted in people's minds in the last 10 years or so
The leading causes for 'unintentional injury' deaths in the USA (age 1-44) are:
1. Drug overdose
2. Motor vehicle traffic
Maybe there is a need for regulation? Especially if you consider that the USA has 2-4x more road deaths per million people compared to europe. Safe technoligies through regulations are one aspect in addressing this problem.
Road safety is increased in countries with more regulations - there is direct evidence across the (developed) world.
Drugs is an entirely different problem that has way more factors that make comparisons between countries rather difficult.
And just because drugs are regulated AND an increasing doesn't mean that the problem is resolved by less regulation. Maybe there is just a need for different / adjusted regulations.
Enforcement is lacking, incentives for criminals are extremely high - cocaine, for example, explodes in value from $2000/kg in the jungle where it's made to $20000/kg after it's been smuggled to the US - and quite a few popular drugs can be made at home using basic tools and skills (cannabis, amphetamine, alcohol, tobacco).
Enforcement isn't lacking, it's just done counter-productively. About 20% of US prison population is already for drug offences, and of course it doesn't help anything. There is absolutely no reason to believe that other regulations are or will be enforced in a smarter way.
No one is advocating for no regulation at all, but there is evidence on how limited regulation and not putting people behind bars for consuming even hard drugs like heroin is actually benefitial and results in fewer deaths, look up what happened in Sweden.
Clarification- I didn’t think they were referencing illegal drugs, rather I believed they were talking about regulations to bring medical drugs into the market. Eg cancer drugs etc, which have to go through rigorous trials and validation first.
No. It’s because of shifting standards. The “can’t play outside” applies just as much in places with no more cars than there were 40 years ago (or even no cars at all for most kid -> playground routes)
The town I grew up in has, for 95% of kids, no more than 3 internal, slow roads to cross on the way to school. There’s more traffic, but only slightly so - most cars drive away from town, so despite much more traffic in general, inner roads are only slightly more crowded.
And yet, it was perfectly normal for me to walk to school 40 or so years ago as a 6 years old, and it is now illegal for anyone under 9 to do so.
Yes. It's because the city I raised my kids in had cars speeding everywhere, including residential areas, running red lights and stop signs constantly and when a driver killed someone with their car, they were on the road the next day with no consequences.
Sure, it's multifaceted. But pedestrian fatalaties have gone down at least partially because children walk to school less often, in a reaction to the huge number of pedetrian killings of the past.
If we're using anecdotes, cars are the reason my kids don't walk independently, and the reason we're moving to the Netherlands next month. Drivers are the leading cause of dead children in the US.
Aside from directly killing children in impacts, car dependent design is usually hostile to walking anyway, for adults as well as kids. Walking to school is nice, but challenging when hundreds of parents late for work in tall, poor front visibility SUV's are running stop signs on the same streets where your child is walking.
because this is a device installed in two tons of steel moving around at lethal velocities in close vicinity to human beings who didn't sign up to be unwilling beta testers. If anything 10 or 20 years ago this wouldn't have even made it on the streets.
Can you imagine a factory where machines with the potential to dismember someone are installed by amateurs with no certification? This is like that except factory machines don't drive next to school yards.
>Can you imagine a factory where machines with the potential to dismember someone are installed by amateurs with no certification
I've got some bad news for you about human drivers, they're typically allowed to get a single certification as a teenager that lets them operate a motor vehicle for 50+ years with no recalibration other than maybe a decadal vision test.
We inspect elevators more often than human drivers, despite elevator deaths being much more rare (maybe that's a cause and effect relationship?)
You are presenting it like "certification" is some kind of guarantee. The reality is that it isn't. Industrial accidents happen all the time and it remains to be proven that certifications and regulations actually improve anything.
I am pretty sure that it was meant "unintentionally". I would say that nobody has killed another person with a shovel unintentionally since shovels exist (maybe injure). OK maybe one since shovels exist /s
1. Drug overdose
2. Motor vehicle traffic
Maybe there is a need for regulation? Especially if you consider that the USA has 2-4x more road deaths per million people compared to europe. Safe technoligies through regulations are one aspect in addressing this problem.