I have to wonder how much better off American society would be if we had cities designed to be walkable like other parts of the world. Better public health (fewer car accidents, more exercise), less of these costs related to car accidents, less public spending on roads (the constant yearly summer construction season).
Walkable cities are great and that's one way to reduce the impact of car accidents. Another way is to prevent the most catastrophic kinds of accidents from occurring in the first place by manufacturing the cars to be incapable of them.
There's no reason, for example, that a car traveling on an urban street must dutifully obey the command of the buzzed teenager driving it to accelerate to 100 mph. We don't need to wait for full self-driving to make the cars more aware of their surroundings and incapable of doing things that are already illegal and absurdly dangerous.
All new cars manufactured for use on public rights-of-way should immediately be throttled to the nation's highest speed limit on any road (85 mph in the U.S.). The most obvious kinds of awareness capabilities should shortly follow (e.g. am I on an Interstate Highway right now? No? Then I cannot travel at speeds that are only legal on Interstate Highways.)
We don't manufacture any other product with buttons that invoke illegal functions and then spend millions on education and enforcement to persuade people never to press them. It is absurd to allow the manufacture of a product that is designed for breaking the law and that we know with great statistical certainty will used to do so.
It'd be nice but is ultimately frutless. the US is the 4th largest country and in top 5 of population, despite being extremely young. As is there is already a large, large amount of fertile land in the US that isn't used nor desirable.
It can be hard to scope out if you haven't live in the US. You can travel for 8-12 hours in a car and still be in the same state. Some singular states are larger than some Eu countries.
The economic percent loss of value due to car accidents, per capita is likely the same around the world. What stands out is the extraordinary rate of vehicular deaths and serious accidents in the US. [1] [2] Yes, everyone knows it's high. But, 5x the traffic accident and fatality rate of other comparable developed countries is unforgivable.
Now high car crash numbers are bad enough, but their breakdown is even worse. It is the primary driver of child death [3]. Cars don't just kill other car-drivers. They kill every type of road user, while the others barely register, even when normalized per capita. [4] [5]
Ironically, bigger and safer cars make both the driver and the roads a lot less safe as the prisoners dilemma means everyone loses. [6][7]
And these are just the numbers. There are insidious cultural patterns that appear when cars are the only way to travel. The US has a shocking cultural acceptance of DUI. I don't blame them. If the only way to party is to go downtown 20 miles away, and an uber is 75$ each way, then people start making dumb decisions. No one follows the speed limit, frequently exceeding it by 100% in slow neighborhoods. [8] Stop signs are considered optional across the country and the assumption is always that 'might makes right'. I have learnt to never engage with a pick-up truck on a road, and never to trust a car to stop just because you have the right of way as a cyclist/pedestrian. Old people, sick people, the sleep-deprived, 15 year olds, and the soon-to-be-blind all drive in the US, no matter how suited for it. Because the other options are so much worse. Ofc they're out there running over people. What did you expect would happen?
The article tries to quantify the damage done by cars with the least relevant metric : "$$". As bad as those numbers look, the economic damage is in fact the most charitable way to look at damage done by car culture in this country.
P.S: This is not arbitrary link spam. These are carefully curated links I have accumulated over years of this being my proverbial hobby horse. I am a broken record. I know that.
> Ironically, bigger and safer cars make both the driver and the roads a lot less safe as the prisoners dilemma means everyone loses. [6][7]
You can have safer cars, like cars with emergency braking, without having bigger cars. Americans have just been severely been marketed to to make horrible financial and social decisions on cars: how many people do you see buying giant SUVs the moment they have a kid and save zero dollar for their college? Absurd.
We don't do public transit in the US, even where it makes sense.
Even where we do, we don't. For example, the trains in Salt Lake City stop running an hour or two before bars close.
--
It's also with mentioning that speed limits are their own problem: they are a baldfaced lie that pits believers against disbelievers; endangering everyone in the process. The reality of speed limits put into practice accomplish nothing except to violently clot traffic flow. Drivers who aren't convinced to slow down are vilified, while the system itself continues, perpetually immune to the blame it deserves.
We can do better, but only if we are willing to recognize the issues present in the system itself, instead of blaming human disobedience in a country that celebrates it.
One problem is that alternate transportation services are not profitable, and if they're not profitable, people don't think it should exist.
But that's just short-sighted thinking. If you ensure every drunk person has a ride home, that alone would save millions in costs caused by drunk driver accidents.
It's not actually a prisoner's dilemma, that's a very specific game theory thought experiment that almost never happens in real life. I guess you could call it an arms race.
> But, 5x the traffic accident and fatality rate of other comparable developed countries
Are there actually other comparable countries in terms of the quantity of roads and the car & driving culture of the US?
I don’t know nor experienced of another country (developed or not) where a majority of people have cars and where road-trips are a thing. Most places live more densely and have fantastic public transit.
Maybe the quantity of accidents reflects what actually happens with car culture at scale.
Fun one I read recently... In the U.S. an average of 11 our of 100 drivers having a car in their name have an at-fault accident on their record. Do you know what's the brand where, on average, the owners that have an at-fault accident is at the lowest for any brand, with only 8.62 out of 100 drivers having an at-fault accident?
This is honestly a good reason in my opinion why having everything be so car centric in the US is such a bad idea. If there are other transportation s than driving then you can gate keep driving more with more strict drivers license requirements and pull licenses from bad drivers more easily, but as it stands in the US you need to be able to drive to function as a member of society so if someone has a DUI pulling their license is almost as bad as giving that person house arrest for the rest of their life.
Obviously cars are still the best form of transportation in a wide variety of situations but it really wouldn’t kill to have a functional bus system that doesn’t take 10x the time to get somewhere as driving
This makes sense because Porsches aren't daily drivers for disproportionately large percentage of their owners. This needs to be normalized by miles driven to be meaningful.
What are the chances that the Porsche drivers have better lawyers and generally don't get found "at fault" as often as people who drive Toyota Corollas or Ford Escorts?
Do Porsche owners have fewer accidents even while driving other vehicles? That would make a huge difference. But either way, Porsche drivers probably don't drive in rush hour traffic or on interstate highways, in any vehicle, period.
Also, another important question: What counts as an "at-fault accident"? If you back your car into a traffic cone, does that show up in these statistics?
"These losses include medical costs, lost productivity, legal and court costs, emergency service costs, insurance administration costs, congestion costs, property damage, and workplace losses. These figures include both police‐reported and unreported crashes. "
So it costs $340 billion... but then that 'cost' also counts as GDP. It pays for insurance companies, cops, medical staff, repair shops, lawyers, etc. Right? So in a perverse way, there are people who care benefiting economically, and helps with flow of money.
If traffic crashes were to go down to 0 and the cost goes down to $0, has anyone calculated what the total impact would be?
The interesting question for me is if self driving type tech will be able to fix this. I mean things along the lines of Tesla fsd are probably worse than humans at the moment but improving in an exponential manner year on year and if they get 50% better each year in terms of miles between accidents then within a decade they'll be much safer than humans.
You wouldn't have to have self drive on but it could still break etc if you looked like hitting something.
Probably also the tech will get cheaper and become widespread. It'll be interesting to see.
At first glance, this seems like a drop in the bucket compared to USA's 23.32tn GDP.
But if you look at savings, US savings rate is 3.4%. That's $792 billion. Suddenly blowing away $340B a year on car crashes doesn't seem so insignificant.
If we had data on the median insurance cost per person - I know I pay a lot more than $1035/year - we could hypothetically have a rough estimate of how much the uninsured cost everyone else.
> The total translates to $1,035 in extra costs incurred by each and every American due to increased medical and automotive insurance premiums for everyone, property damage, lost market productivity, and increased taxes to fund public services like first responders.
The amount we have adopted cars is ridiculous. And there really is little need. I have lived all over with no car.
Most cities used to have awesome tram networks that were dismantled to please drivers.
See the YouTube video by Not Just Bikes called “Why Cars Rarely Crash into Buildings in the Netherlands” for an interesting six minute talk about speed, road design and cultural expectations.
Wouldn’t that be part of “costing Americans”, even if it flows through insurance premiums?
Also, my maxed out liability only insurance for 5k miles per year is ~$50 per month, $600 per year.
For an extra $2k per year, I assume you have significantly more comprehensive/collision coverage, miles, and/or prior incidents on your driving record?
For some savings, I always tell people to drop personal injury protection or reduce it to lowest legal amount if you have ACA compliant health insurance, since your healthcare costs would be covered by health insurance anyway.
Need to account for the fact that not all Americans drive.
To get to the $1,035 per person they have taken the total cost ($340B) and divided it by the population, but if you divide it by the number of drivers (i.e. people actively insured) then you would get a bit closer to $2600.
I assume that some $2600 policies have multiple drivers too.
Multiple factors may lead to you paying more than the average:
1. Not all Americans have cars or drive.
2. Each state has different legislative structures which impact payouts and medical costs. Some states cost more than the average per accident, some cost less.
3. Your risk may be higher than average
4. You may drive more or less miles than average
5. Your choice of car makes you more or less risky
In various jurisdictions, your insurance company may bear the cost of accidents irrespective of “fault.” Thus joining an insurance company with a lower-risk pool of drivers does not necessarily reduce your insurance premiums.
[+] [-] kderbe|2 years ago|reply
The press release has a link to the full report.
[+] [-] metaphor|2 years ago|reply
[1] https://content.naic.org/article/naic-releases-2019-2020-aut...
[+] [-] dang|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] czx4f4bd|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|2 years ago|reply
Submitters: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[+] [-] RajT88|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dionidium|2 years ago|reply
There's no reason, for example, that a car traveling on an urban street must dutifully obey the command of the buzzed teenager driving it to accelerate to 100 mph. We don't need to wait for full self-driving to make the cars more aware of their surroundings and incapable of doing things that are already illegal and absurdly dangerous.
All new cars manufactured for use on public rights-of-way should immediately be throttled to the nation's highest speed limit on any road (85 mph in the U.S.). The most obvious kinds of awareness capabilities should shortly follow (e.g. am I on an Interstate Highway right now? No? Then I cannot travel at speeds that are only legal on Interstate Highways.)
We don't manufacture any other product with buttons that invoke illegal functions and then spend millions on education and enforcement to persuade people never to press them. It is absurd to allow the manufacture of a product that is designed for breaking the law and that we know with great statistical certainty will used to do so.
[+] [-] johnnyanmac|2 years ago|reply
It can be hard to scope out if you haven't live in the US. You can travel for 8-12 hours in a car and still be in the same state. Some singular states are larger than some Eu countries.
[+] [-] nah93|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] screye|2 years ago|reply
Now high car crash numbers are bad enough, but their breakdown is even worse. It is the primary driver of child death [3]. Cars don't just kill other car-drivers. They kill every type of road user, while the others barely register, even when normalized per capita. [4] [5]
Ironically, bigger and safer cars make both the driver and the roads a lot less safe as the prisoners dilemma means everyone loses. [6][7]
And these are just the numbers. There are insidious cultural patterns that appear when cars are the only way to travel. The US has a shocking cultural acceptance of DUI. I don't blame them. If the only way to party is to go downtown 20 miles away, and an uber is 75$ each way, then people start making dumb decisions. No one follows the speed limit, frequently exceeding it by 100% in slow neighborhoods. [8] Stop signs are considered optional across the country and the assumption is always that 'might makes right'. I have learnt to never engage with a pick-up truck on a road, and never to trust a car to stop just because you have the right of way as a cyclist/pedestrian. Old people, sick people, the sleep-deprived, 15 year olds, and the soon-to-be-blind all drive in the US, no matter how suited for it. Because the other options are so much worse. Ofc they're out there running over people. What did you expect would happen?
The article tries to quantify the damage done by cars with the least relevant metric : "$$". As bad as those numbers look, the economic damage is in fact the most charitable way to look at damage done by car culture in this country.
[1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fk7HavRaYAMRa_w?format=jpg&name=...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4igbmr3Qj30
[3] https://twitter.com/buttermilk1/status/1446513576559194118?c...
[4] https://twitter.com/ETSC_EU/status/1461356632042979339?cxt=H...
[5] https://twitter.com/fietsprofessor/status/138004836808543027...
[6] https://twitter.com/emollick/status/1568797893888249858?cxt=...
[7] https://twitter.com/jdavey_2/status/1533865942731526146?cxt=...
[8] https://twitter.com/WarrenJWells/status/1501638281573777408?...
P.S: This is not arbitrary link spam. These are carefully curated links I have accumulated over years of this being my proverbial hobby horse. I am a broken record. I know that.
[+] [-] thatfrenchguy|2 years ago|reply
You can have safer cars, like cars with emergency braking, without having bigger cars. Americans have just been severely been marketed to to make horrible financial and social decisions on cars: how many people do you see buying giant SUVs the moment they have a kid and save zero dollar for their college? Absurd.
[+] [-] thomastjeffery|2 years ago|reply
Even where we do, we don't. For example, the trains in Salt Lake City stop running an hour or two before bars close.
--
It's also with mentioning that speed limits are their own problem: they are a baldfaced lie that pits believers against disbelievers; endangering everyone in the process. The reality of speed limits put into practice accomplish nothing except to violently clot traffic flow. Drivers who aren't convinced to slow down are vilified, while the system itself continues, perpetually immune to the blame it deserves.
We can do better, but only if we are willing to recognize the issues present in the system itself, instead of blaming human disobedience in a country that celebrates it.
[+] [-] WWLink|2 years ago|reply
But that's just short-sighted thinking. If you ensure every drunk person has a ride home, that alone would save millions in costs caused by drunk driver accidents.
[+] [-] Vecr|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] refurb|2 years ago|reply
The US is actually pretty good at 1.5 versus UK (5.3), Denmark (7.2), France (5.8).
https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatalit...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic...
[+] [-] bfung|2 years ago|reply
> But, 5x the traffic accident and fatality rate of other comparable developed countries
Are there actually other comparable countries in terms of the quantity of roads and the car & driving culture of the US?
I don’t know nor experienced of another country (developed or not) where a majority of people have cars and where road-trips are a thing. Most places live more densely and have fantastic public transit.
Maybe the quantity of accidents reflects what actually happens with car culture at scale.
[+] [-] cscurmudgeon|2 years ago|reply
E.g., we constantly tax road users to "fund" other schemes and infrastructure (but even those ending needing even more money magically)
Example: https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/bridge-toll-hik...
[+] [-] TacticalCoder|2 years ago|reply
It's... Drumroll... Porsche.
[+] [-] Shawnj2|2 years ago|reply
Obviously cars are still the best form of transportation in a wide variety of situations but it really wouldn’t kill to have a functional bus system that doesn’t take 10x the time to get somewhere as driving
[+] [-] ftio|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cratermoon|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phendrenad2|2 years ago|reply
Also, another important question: What counts as an "at-fault accident"? If you back your car into a traffic cone, does that show up in these statistics?
[+] [-] Freedom2|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xyst|2 years ago|reply
Like others have said, it would be best to see it normalized on a mileage basis to get a better view.
[+] [-] paxys|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcpackieh|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] listenallyall|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mint2|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] batter|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pcurve|2 years ago|reply
"These losses include medical costs, lost productivity, legal and court costs, emergency service costs, insurance administration costs, congestion costs, property damage, and workplace losses. These figures include both police‐reported and unreported crashes. "
So it costs $340 billion... but then that 'cost' also counts as GDP. It pays for insurance companies, cops, medical staff, repair shops, lawyers, etc. Right? So in a perverse way, there are people who care benefiting economically, and helps with flow of money.
If traffic crashes were to go down to 0 and the cost goes down to $0, has anyone calculated what the total impact would be?
[+] [-] tim333|2 years ago|reply
You wouldn't have to have self drive on but it could still break etc if you looked like hitting something.
Probably also the tech will get cheaper and become widespread. It'll be interesting to see.
[+] [-] throwaway22032|2 years ago|reply
Most people I know unless they have a particularly fancy car just leave the little scratches, dents, dings etc and do functional repairs only.
Spending thousands on a paint job is car enthusiast territory.
[+] [-] acchow|2 years ago|reply
But if you look at savings, US savings rate is 3.4%. That's $792 billion. Suddenly blowing away $340B a year on car crashes doesn't seem so insignificant.
[+] [-] paulusthe|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] megablast|2 years ago|reply
> The total translates to $1,035 in extra costs incurred by each and every American due to increased medical and automotive insurance premiums for everyone, property damage, lost market productivity, and increased taxes to fund public services like first responders.
The amount we have adopted cars is ridiculous. And there really is little need. I have lived all over with no car.
Most cities used to have awesome tram networks that were dismantled to please drivers.
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tim333|2 years ago|reply
(Brit who drove in Austin TX recently, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...)
[+] [-] jodrellblank|2 years ago|reply
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ra_0DgnJ1uQ
[+] [-] mensetmanusman|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rapatel0|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lotsofpulp|2 years ago|reply
Also, my maxed out liability only insurance for 5k miles per year is ~$50 per month, $600 per year.
For an extra $2k per year, I assume you have significantly more comprehensive/collision coverage, miles, and/or prior incidents on your driving record?
For some savings, I always tell people to drop personal injury protection or reduce it to lowest legal amount if you have ACA compliant health insurance, since your healthcare costs would be covered by health insurance anyway.
[+] [-] Closi|2 years ago|reply
To get to the $1,035 per person they have taken the total cost ($340B) and divided it by the population, but if you divide it by the number of drivers (i.e. people actively insured) then you would get a bit closer to $2600.
I assume that some $2600 policies have multiple drivers too.
[+] [-] wtvanhest|2 years ago|reply
1. Not all Americans have cars or drive.
2. Each state has different legislative structures which impact payouts and medical costs. Some states cost more than the average per accident, some cost less.
3. Your risk may be higher than average
4. You may drive more or less miles than average
5. Your choice of car makes you more or less risky
[+] [-] lr4444lr|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the_optimist|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dkjaudyeqooe|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] opmelogy|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rootusrootus|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] afavour|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] koiz|2 years ago|reply