[AnimalMuppet]

"Murder Machines"? Come on. Not all deaths are murder.

We Americans have this idea that nothing bad should ever happen, that we should find a way to prevent it. It's a goal to shoot for, certainly. But calling it murder if you don't reach that goal? No.

Can we climb down from the overheated rhetoric? It smells like propaganda.

[ChuckMcM]

I came here looking for this comment, I was not disappointed :-)

The headline is hyperbole, but it is common hyperbole. Factories pumping out pollutants are "murdering" our people, Cigarette manufacturers are "murdering" their customers, Etc.

The interesting point in the story is how we went from 'cars need to look out for people' to 'people need to look out for cars' in a relatively short time frame. The discussion of the various articles and points of view and how they gained favor over time is similar to things like Nuclear power which went from 'power to cheap to measure' to 'tool of the devil', or gun ownership, or Television ownership, or any number of things that have impacted the community at large.

The thing to remember for this community is that these are emotional arguments presented as rational arguments. Hence the term 'murder' which evokes the desired emotion (outrage) rather than 'dangerous' which evokes a statistical mindset of potential harm.

[Dylan16807]

Intentionally releasing poisons is a hell of a lot closer to murder than performing an activity with risks (aka any activity). Factories are a poor leading point, because I could see a world where they are required to capture toxins to the point that only uncommon accidents release non-negligible amounts. But driving would still be okay in comparison.

[lutorm]

Until the same attention is placed on traffic deaths as on deaths by other causes, it's hardly "overheated".

[AnimalMuppet]

I agree that we should pay the attention to traffic deaths that the death toll warrants.

But don't call accidental deaths murder. That's the "overheated" part. Murder has a definition, and traffic deaths aren't it.

Even if you are a fervent advocate of traffic safety, this kind of manipulative rhetoric does you no favors. It makes people tune you out as a demagogue.

(Why do I call this "manipulative"? Because it tries to play on peoples' view of the horror of murder to make people realize the horror of traffic deaths. Traffic deaths are horrible, but the technique is still manipulative.)

[lutorm]

Of course it's not technically murder. I interpreted the headline as pointing to the fact that, like murder, traffic deaths are "premeditated" in the sense that we know full well that they will occur but do little to prevent them.

[mikeash]

Is it not? There are certainly some outliers (e.g. terrorism), but overall, traffic deaths seem to get more attention given its death rate than other causes of death.

For example, annual traffic deaths in the US are about the same as annual deaths from chronic liver disease or suicide. Suicide gets some attention, liver disease very little, while traffic deaths get all sorts of attention, from massive R&D efforts by car makers to seat belt campaigns to heavy police enforcement of safety-related traffic laws.

As another example, heart disease and stroke kill about 20 times as many Americans as traffic accidents, but it's legal for me to eat 6,000 calories of bacon a day while it's illegal for me not to wear my seat belt. (This is not a complaint against seat belt laws. I think they're a fine idea. I'm just pointing out a disparity in legal attention.)

[ryandrake]

Also, cars are not killing people. Drivers are. Unless we're talking about self-driving cars that spontaneously turn themselves on, back down the driveway, and mow down pedestrians on their own.

[panic]

People don't intentionally mow down pedestrians. Our current system, which includes both cars and drivers acting with the best of intentions, kills huge numbers of people each year. Instead of trying to assign blame to a particular actor in the system, we should be thinking about ways to change the system as a whole so it kills fewer people.

[vacri]

Ugh, when 'cars' is used in this context, it's obvious it means a car and driver together, not the inanimate car.

If you ask someone how they got to the meetup and they say "Bus", do you say "yeah, right, like a bus can drive itself. It was probably a bus driver responsible. Unless we're talking about self-driving buses that can spontaneously turn themselves on (blah blah blah)"?

"I'm going to fly to Berlin next summer" -> "What? Humans can't fly. Don't you mean that a pilot (blah blah blah)"?

[rtpg]

What about things like Toyota's unintended acceleration debacle?

Just because driver's actions count for a lot of accidents doesn't mean that car manufacturer are absolved from doing anything. Considering how many accidents there are, cars need to be designed with that in mind, much like how touch keyboards work around our fat finger inputs.

User error is a design consideration (or else we wouldn't have undo commands in all of our software).

[Dylan16807]

The Toyota debacle where they had buggy code but no evidence of anything other than driver error?

[joncrocks]

http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1319897

http://www.edn.com/design/automotive/4423428/Toyota-s-killer...

[Dylan16807]

That doesn't contradict what I said.

Even if the code failed in some situations I would comfortably bet that most cases were user error.

[rangibaby]

Two by Stephen King: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085333/ http://home.loloyd.com/ebooks1/Stephen%20King%20(Bibliograph...

[briantakita]

It's clever marketing. It seems Americans really listen to re-branding of terms.

We have been playing this game where Americans live in burbs and spend time commuting. That has a huge psychological, familial, physical, environmental, financial, economic, & diplomatic toll.

Our landscape is dominated by asphalt & concrete to support the norm.

I think we can do better. If it takes some stigma to turn the discussion and to show more attention on the alternatives, then bring on the stigma.

In reality, not enough attention is paid. America seems to be more afraid of flying in an airplane or terrorists than the ubiquity of automobiles.

[saraid216]

> Can we climb down from the overheated rhetoric? It smells like propaganda.

And your comment smells like shilling. If we're making baseless accusations.

[Dylan16807]

Shilling for who? I think you're being ridiculous.

And if you're being ridiculous on purpose, you're not making whatever point you think you are and need to stop posting.

[saraid216]

Yup. I entirely agree with you that AnimalMuppet's post was ridiculous.

[bunderbunder]

Murder? No.

Negligent homicide? Yes.

[sukuriant]

That's not entirely fair. Maybe in some of the cases; but, I've seen people do some really, really, REALLY unwise things as pedestrians that they're lucky someone was paying a huge amount of attention so they weren't hit.

The most pressing example in my mind is a woman cross the street in the middle of a rain shower, within 15 yards, probably much less (my mind's eye paints the memory as 'the edge of my car was here and the lady was RIGHT THERE!!!'), of me and crossing several lanes of traffic with her umbrella all out like she owned the place. She wasn't at a crosswalk, she was crossing the road a 100ish yards after a major turn, and I don't remember if I was the first car in a long line of cars or there were several cars passing and then she elected to walk in front of mine, but I'm very glad I was hyper-attentive so that I could brake in time and that my brakes were 100% up to spec, and my tires had enough tred on them.

She intentionally put herself into harms way and any number of minor failures, including me looking to where I needed to be, because it was RIGHT AFTER A TURN (think of where your eyes go when you're taking a turn, it's not to the far corner ahead, it's to where your wheel-edge is and where your lane is placed, so you don't hit someone more likely to be hit, like the car that's attempting the exact same manuever beside you), or having just that little bit less attention because I was adjusting a radio dial to not have her thumped up onto my roof.

It's not always the driver's fault. Some pedestrians need to realize that we, focused drivers, are still rocketing a couple tons of steel in a direction.

[kaliblack]

It's your responsibility as a driver to pay full attention and avoid crashes. Isn't that hour 1, day 1 of driver education?

[tzs]

A driver paying full attention will still have that attention divided among several tasks. He should be monitoring what is happening behind the car. He should be checking the instrument panel. Even looking forward has subtasks. His forward scan should spend some time on things nearby, and some time looking far down the road.

[moron4hire]

get back to me after you've been driving every day for ten years and we will see what your interpretation of "full attention"means. you can't be 100% vigilante 100% of the time.

[dreamdu5t]

Get back to me after you've been cycling around autos every day for 10 years and we will see what your interpretation of "full attention" means.

[sukuriant]

Probably what you're not experiencing 100% of the time. You have plenty of examples of cars being bad, but I'm sure you also have examples of cars not being bad. Of not trying to hit you and of giving you a wide berth when you're riding your bike.

But on the note of your bike, full attention includes things other than you. It includes the opposite lane, the speed limit, people behind them that might not stop if he hits his brakes and so on.

As a side note, there's a lot of sharp emotions directed at what people are saying and the verbage people are choosing is, I think, unnecessarily harsh and in some cases mocking. We need to tone that back.

[mikeash]

I'd love to see some numbers on how many deaths are due to bad pedestrian behavior like that.

Anecdotally, I've never encountered that sort of thing from a pedestrian while driving, but I've almost been run down several times by drivers not obeying the law while I was legally crossing the street with the right of way. All it would take is crossing the street at the wrong time with a walk signal without checking both ways and splat.

Certainly there are cases with fault on either side, but I'd love to know which one dominates (if either).

[mikestew]

> Anecdotally, I've never encountered that sort of thing from a pedestrian while driving,

You must not live anywhere near Seattle. Even after fourteen years of dealing with attention-not-paying pedestrians who believe it to be their deity-given right to walk into the street at any moment without even a sideways glance at traffic conditions, I'm still amazed that more of them don't bounce off of car hoods.

> All it would take is crossing the street at the wrong time with a walk signal without checking both ways and splat.

It's called "not assuming the other person is always going to do the right thing". Look both ways? Duh. The same brilliant pedestrians I reference above have been known to occasionally drive a car, of course I look both ways whether I'm on foot, in a car, on a motorcycle, or a bicycle.

[sukuriant]

My instance was in Bellevue, funny enough.

[DougWebb]

I live in a suburban town that's mostly single-family homes, with lots of children. I also work in the area and often drive home for lunch, so I'm driving around a lot when the children are out. I've had a bunch of close calls over the years with kids wandering out in front of me without looking to see if there's any traffic in the street.

The closest was a teenage girl who literally walked into the side of my car by the passenger-side front wheel just as I was about to make a right turn. I looked right, I was clear. I looked left, I was clear. I looked right again and took my foot off the brake to start my turn, and there she was with her hands on my hood and a surprised look on her face. We're both very lucky her feet weren't under my wheel.

[bunderbunder]

I don't know if this really answers your question, but supposedly about half the times when a pedestrian gets hit by a car, the pedestrian is intoxicated at the time.

Anecdotally, there are few situations I find more stressful as a motorist than driving in the vicinity of a university on a Friday night.

[AnimalMuppet]

Agreed.

[downplay]

In 1885 Karl Benz construct the first automobile. It had three wheels, like an invalid car, And ran on alcohol, like many drivers. Since then about seventeen million people have been killed by them In an undeclared war; And the whole of the rest of the world is in danger of being run over Due to squabbles about their oil. -Heathcote Williams (Autogeddon extract).

[anigbrowl]

I don't care for cars and have never owned one, but horse-powered transport wasn't free of social cost either.

[sien]

The Economist had a much better article on 25 Jan

http://www.economist.com/news/international/21595031-rich-co...

That was about how car deaths will probably be the leading killer in the developing world within a few years exceeding HIV.

But without the incorrect shock title it wasn't getting posted around the net nearly as much.

Also, technically there would very probably be a few murders committed with cars each year. But it would be a vastly lower number than the total number of fatalities.

[LanceH]

"Can we climb down from the overheated rhetoric? It smells like propaganda."

Let's dial it up instead, I suggest it is part of the "War on People".

[benjiweber]

It worked in the Netherlands with the "Stop the Child Murder" campaign http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23587916

It's now one of the safest and most pleasant places to get around.