10 ms·
there’s another thing that started to get quite popular in the late 2000s… smartphones
by mcdow 3mo ago
there’s another thing that started to get quite popular in the late 2000s… smartphones
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- soperj 3mo agoAlmost like we need a study to figure out what the actual cause is. Oh, that's what the article is about, the study.
- ericpauley 3mo agoPer tfa vehicle size “ represents about 10 percent of the recent increase in pedestrian deaths” so the title is really a distraction from the (likely) root cause that GP brings up.
- estebank 3mo agoCould it be that the other differences are driven by differences in the built environment? Like narrower roads making people drive slower, or bollards, or alternatives to driving making it less likely to have people that shouldn't be driving doing so? Also, 10% is a huge effect.
- buellerbueller 3mo agothat's called a hypothesis. now go author a study to test it, like the study being reported on. hypotheses without evidence don't stand up to hypotheses that have been tested.
- kortilla 3mo agoAnd how did this study rule out smartphones?
- amanaplanacanal 3mo agoYou could compare rates to other countries that do have smartphones like the US, but don't drive the large vehicles like Americans. That might be illuminating.
- Sayrus 3mo agoThen surely Europe shares that trends and shows growth in pedestrian death. But that isn't the case at all, maybe Europeans are immune to smartphones: https://road-safety.transport.ec.europa.eu/document/download/ed29ad84-b2f1-429e-97ca-2b713e7dc1b1_en?filename=ERSOnext_AnnualReport_20260323.pdf https://road-safety.transport.ec.europa.eu/document/download...
- redwall_hp 3mo agoSedan hits you, you get hit in the knees and fall on the hood. Brodozer hits you, it strikes your chest/head, pushes you over and drives over you.
- cucumber3732842 3mo ago>Sedan hits you, you get hit in the knees and fall on the hood. Brodozer hits you, it strikes your chest/head, pushes you over and drives over you. You just made that up. Pedestrians are mostly killed by head onto solid object. Your two most common options are pavement and windshield. Pavement is worse because cars have a fair bit of engineering that goes into preventing head onto windshield. At the end of the day it's mostly a question about getting hit above or below center of mass. Modern (ie. larger than they were 20yr ago) crossovers and midsize SUVs are doing a lot of heavy lifting in these stats. But the people who want to talk about this problem tend to drive Rav4s and not Chevy 2500s so the latter gets complained about even though the former outsold it 2:1 Relatedly, minivans are kind of bad no matter how you cut them because it's hard to stay true to the form factor and not have pedestrians go straight into windshield in fairly low speed crashes.
- hackingonempty 3mo agoTFA addresses this. > The issue isn’t mass alone, but also height. Yes, spreading impact over a greater area reduces the force experienced by any given part of your body, but when that surface area rises further and further from the ground, the impact point on your body rises with it. If you’re hit below your center of mass, you’re likely to fall toward the vehicle. If you’re hit at or above that point, you’re likely to be knocked down in front of of the vehicle instead. The latter becomes less survivable due to the poor visibility offered by taller trucks and SUVs. > “We see a lot of devastating collisions even at lower speeds because the pedestrian gets punted forward,” said Shawn Harrington, whose company, Forensic Rock, conducted crash testing for the report. “Before the driver knows what’s happened, the pedestrian’s head is under the wheel.”
- TulliusCicero 3mo agoOther countries have smartphones too.
- cpursley 3mo agoThey generally don’t have brodozers
- TulliusCicero 3mo agoExactly.
- trollbridge 3mo agoAustralia had plenty, yet mysteriously has far fewer deaths.
- cpursley 3mo agoA Hilux is hardly a lifted 1500.
- alamortsubite 3mo agoYou're either grossly misinformed or you're being disingenuous; try installing 40" mud tires and a 6" lift kit on your truck in Australia and see what happens. In the U.S. it's just another brodozer and no cop will ever bat an eye.
- trollbridge 3mo agoAustralia has plenty of crossovers which are the bulk of these deaths. Vehicles with 40s on them and a 6” lift are so rare in America they have no statistical significance in regard to accidents.
- alamortsubite 3mo agoYou wrote that Australia has plenty of brodozers. Crossovers are not brodozers, nor is it possible to operate a brodozer on public roads in Australia. Clearly, you're misinformed, if not entirely disingenuous, but your commitment to stay the course is admirable. > Vehicles with 40s on them and a 6” lift are so rare in America they have no statistical significance in regard to accidents. Do you have a source for this? Asking as someone who recently narrowly escaped death with a loved one as victims in a highway rollover crash caused by a dimwit operating a brodozer with 40" mud tires and a 6" lift in America.
- mc32 3mo agoSurely someone somewhere will bring to bear a solution that will disable all but voice calls on smartphones while the smartphone is paired to the car and the car is moving but allow for the devices of minors in a moving vehicle to still function like smartphones. They might also use interior cameras to ascertain who is driving and which device should be neutered but for emergency communication. Yes, people would be annoyed at first but they also will experience a sigh of relief that they don't have to reply to a boss's or co-worker's text in the middle of a commute or running deliveries, etc.
- trollbridge 3mo agoWon’t happen. Self driving AI is the only way out of this. Until then, we will have mass carnage on the roads because that’s what people choose.
- bell-cot 3mo agoYep. The linked NYT article has this weak-sounding line - > Most other wealthy countries haven’t seen similar increases, suggesting that possible culprits like smartphones don’t tell the whole story. - but it is so focused on telling a long-winded story that I didn't bother checking whether they'd really tried to correct for that. (My cynical guess is "no" - since if they really cared and had ruled phones out, they'd clearly say so.)