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Comment by valuearb | Hacker News Reader

In the US only about 1 out of every 70 deaths is from an auto accident. As a single cause of death, it's not even in the top 10.

Less than 1 in 3 accidental deaths is auto accident related.

More people commit suicide (42,000) than die in auto accidents (40,000).

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/282929.php

Deaths per mile driven have plummeted over time. From 24 per million miles in 1921, to 7 per hundred million miles in 1950, to 2.5 PHMM in the 1980s, 1.5 PHMM in early 2000s and now about 1.1 per hundred million miles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i...

They are set to plunge further as automated braking and collision avoidance become standard features over the next decade.

Edits: Corrected to deaths per 100M miles, not deaths per 1M miles.

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1 out of 70 is pretty damn huge. We have global campaigns about preventing cancers that are less dangerous than car accidents. There was panic over Ebola, which killed essentially nobody compared to car accidents.

Yet the general response to 1/70 people deaths being because of cars is "meh, oh well."

I think you might misunderstand the statistic. He's saying one out of every 70 deaths. If there were only 70 deaths a year, one would be from a car accident. Far more would be from suicide, cancer, and heart disease.

I grasp that. ~1.5% of deaths is a significant number. People worry about getting brain cancer or being struck by lightning more than they worry about the risk of being annihilated by a machine, despite the latter being more common.

Because you don't make an implicit cost/benefit analysis when you get ebola. You do when you drive. Every time you drive, you willingly take some risk and accept it.

It's the same reason people shrug their shoulders when a mafia guy gets gunned down but lose their shit when a child is killed by stray gunfire. The mafia guy opted in to the risk.

Agreed. Part of the problem is that we use the word "accident" when it's almost always someone's fault.

Everytime I see someone driving terribly I know there's a 50%+ chance they have a sizable dent on their car from a car crash or from them hitting some inanimate object. It's actually a game I play - I'll see someone driving poorly and then say "where's the dent" and look for it. Sometimes I'll even switch lanes to check the other side where it will inevitably be. For certain cars like the Pontiac Grand-Am, my theory puts the dent % and dent damage much higher.

In many ways, insurance and how we treat collisions as "accidents" enables them to drive with no regard. By the time they're dropped from insurance, they probably already hurt someone.

Except that statistically car injury accidents are so rare, they probably haven't.

I was talking about those that get dropped by insurance (usually multiple crashes) and also - you can get injured and not report it.

But anyway, 4.6 M injuries isn't rare. "But there are also millions more who are seriously injured — an estimated 4.6 million in 2016 according to NSC" [1]

[1] http://fortune.com/2017/02/15/traffic-deadliest-year/

One day you'll be so intent on checking dents on other peoples cars you will cause an accident yourself! My theory is that people should be looking at traffic, not at the detailing on someone else's vehicle.

I'm not that hardcore focused on it haha. Most of the time I'm trying to get away from them and get a distance. I'm also checking in on them for any sudden movements.

If someone's car is dented, like real dents from a crash, I take extra precaution. It's a filter that works. I'll notice big dents all the time and then the person drives like shit but I'm aloof and safe. I look for people on the phone (calling or texting) too and avoid them. I'll look for 90+ year old people too; their reflexes aren't as quick.

Knock on wood, but I've never been in a car crash. Apart from when I was stupid as a teenager, I'm very cautious.

Driving through Chicago always worries me. People in big cities like that often drive like maniacs, and the number of BMWs, Audis, and other expensive luxury cars I see missing their bumpers or with large amounts of damage on quarter panels is astounding. Yet they're still zipping in and out of their lanes to get to their exit 20 seconds faster than everyone else.

Ebola doesn't give you freedom to live where you want and work where you want. We live in a world where we can afford to travel what was once long distances to do so, all due to the automobile. We spend tons of time in our cars, and it's safe time because we have to drive 100 million miles before we can expect one death among us or our passengers.

Well fortunately car accidents aren't contagious like Ebola. If Ebola had spread it easily could have killed far more people than car accidents, hence the panic and need to quickly address it.

1/3 of avoidable deaths is not insubstantial - and traffic accidents aren't the only harm done by autos.

Add in an estimated 53,000 deaths in the US due to transportation emissions.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231013...

Potentially millions killed by auto emissions worldwide.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/dec/17/pollutio...

The leading cause of death in the US for people under the age of 25.

This isn't even considering the massive amounts of secondary pollution via production and maintenance of vehicles, the enormous land use and sprawl costs (financially and environmentally), harm done via driving induced stress and sedentary lifestyles.

Cars may be getting safer on those who can afford to be on the inside, but for everyone else outside they're a nightmare. Our climate, resource and many of our social problems are not going away as long as we center society around the car.

Except that some illnesses like cancer are avoidable, it's not just accidents.

Except that buses and trains and horses and teslas kill people and pollute. Even bikes kill people. Every mode of transportation is a killer, so if you want to eliminate travel deaths you can only eliminate travel.

If you eliminated cars completely tens of thousands would likely still die in the US from transportation accidents. But now you've trapped people and forced them to live close to work, do less traveling, and live crappier lives.

Automobiles provide freedom to choose where you want to live and work. They are cleaner than ever and getting cleaner every year.

And the vast majority of the US is empty land.

And the below age of 25 stat is incredibly misleading. People under the age of 25 rarely die of disease or cancer, which are by far the leading causes of death. They rarely die at all which is why car accidents are disproportionally represented for young people. In reality 99% of people who die had a cause of death unrelated to traffic accidents.

> Except that some illnesses like cancer are avoidable

Sorry?

Sorry, keep smoking your cigarettes, it won't be your fault.

1) I don't smoke

2) You can get cancer from many other things than cigarettes.

Most lung cancer is caused by cigarettes. Many cancers have a "lifestyle" component. This does not mean that every single case of cancer is caused by something the person did. It does mean that we need to give people better information. Some lifestyle factors are much stronger than others. Smoking causes a lot of cancer. Alcohol causes less.

http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/lung-cancer/ris...

> Smoking tobacco is one of the biggest causes of lung cancer. More than 8 out of 10 lung cancers (80%) are caused by smoking .This includes breathing in other people’s cigarette smoke.

https://www.drinkaware.co.uk/alcohol-facts/health-effects-of...

> Over the long term, drinking alcohol increases your risk of serious illnesses, such as mouth, throat and breast cancer1. Of course, not everyone who drinks will get cancer. But scientists have found that some cancers are more common in people who drink alcohol than those who don’t.

[...]

> One study has estimated that around 4% of all cancers are due to alcohol consumption

I'm objecting to the general statement that 'cancers are avoidable'. Some cancers are, not all cancers are and there are plenty of people that ended up with lung cancer that never smoked so even that isn't a guarantee.

I used the word "some".

The health benefits from riding bikes more than offset the dangers, especially when they're not forced to share lanes with road tanks piloted by people who don't take their driving responsibility seriously. Driving cars don't yield the same benefits. When you take that into account, driving is much more hazardous to your health.

Also, forcing cities to accommodate cars via zoning has lead to a huge host of problems, from making centers that are no longer walkable, and destroying the social fabric of the city that used to happen via face to face interactions. Anywhere there is fast traffic, people no longer want to walk, because it's incredibly stressful being near speeding cars.

If you want a visible demonstration of the difference, visit some small pre-car cities in Italy, the public places are wonderful, and you can see people bumping into each other and chatting all the time. People walk everywhere. Compare with the sprawling wastelands of asphalt we've created, including on some of the most expensive parking lots in the world in Silicon Valley.

Yes, people in Italy are poor and trapped in small urban areas unable to leave. That's not better.

Have you been to Italy? or Germany or any western European county?

Even relatively podunk towns have typically walkable centers and local transit connecting to frequent regional train service and sometimes stops by long distance, high-speed services.

In Germany, regional all day rail passes can be had for as little as 10 EUR! I imagine the situation is quite similar in Italy.

Sorry, you don't know what you're talking about. They make less on average, but the trains are ubiquitous and can take you from city center to city center in less time and for less money than it would cost to drive, even at US gas prices. They're not "trapped", Europeans travel far more than Americans.

>>If you eliminated cars completely tens of thousands would likely still die in the US from transportation accidents. But now you've trapped people and forced them to live close to work, do less traveling, and live crappier lives.

>>Automobiles provide freedom to choose where you want to live and work. They are cleaner than ever and getting cleaner every year.

I think you're still ignoring the pollution deaths and massive negative external effects the automobile has on society, especically on those who can't participate in an auto-dominated society. The waste is colossal.

Automobiles provide freedom if you're luck enough to not be young, old, poor, disabled etc. Why do we want to design society around excluding huge groups from mobility, when bikes, effective public transit and walkability can open up our country to everyone?

You essentially want to enslave people to push your dated concepts of how to live on them.

My job is 20 miles away, I'm not riding a bike. I don't want to spend hours going to and from work every day. I'm not moving my kids into a shittier house without a big yard in a shittier school district, just so I can bike to work.

I'm not going to move my family in a shitty apartment just so we can have "density" and force everyone to use shitty mass transit.

My daughters dojo is 5 miles from my house, she ain't walking there. I'm not sending her to the shitty dojo down the street.

No one is getting excluded. The young, old, poor and disabled are driven everywhere in cars. If they can't drive themselves, someone drives them. Thats what we do for family members. And soon the car itself will drive them.

Can it not be argued running billion dollar freeways through urban neighborhoods, flattening their commercial districts with "free" (subsidized) parking lots and choking them on pollution is enslaving people at the expense of how you want to live? You still haven't addressed the issue that driving fundementally pushes large costs on others and society in general.

There are plenty of ways to have a accesible city designed for multimodal transportation. Look to many European cities to show how this used to be done. It doesn't take much imagination to find out it doesn't have to be "shitty".

I don't think you really understand what life is like without a car in America. Like it or not, people are being excluded. A third of households in my city don't have a car (likely not out of choice). Transit is sparse. How are they supposed to access job centers, , shopping education opportunities built in the auto dominated sprawl? Hint: you can't build your life around asking other people for rides.

You don't seem open to the idea of a different lifestyle. I get that. At the very least I ask that you consider the real impact your choice of driving has on other people, and how it's subsidized by society.

The sure way to avoid cancer is not palatable to most people.

Except road "accidents" are the biggest killer of teenagers aged 10-19, people who are pretty much on the lowest possible spot on the natural mortality curve:

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-39920052

For many of those, it was someone else deciding to drive that killed them.

So yes, if you take slanted statistics and add some "but look over there" rationalizations... well, you still end up at "1 in 3 accidental deaths".

What you should be looking at is comparative injury rates for other methods of transport such as rail or tram. The picture is rather shocking, but even more concerning is the lack of a safety culture in the car manufacturers and ultimately the agencies regulating them and the vehicles on the road. Every plane crash has a root cause investigation, but we still have the same truck designs with massive blind spots because...? By the time autonomous driving becomes a reality cars will still have side mirrors with blind spots, you can't make this stuff up.

A more complete analysis of death rates compares the cause of death vs the otherwise expected lifespan of the person. Cancer and heart disease are major killers, but they primarily affect old unhealthy people.

Car crashes and suicides are much more likely to kill young people -- while they may be a relatively small proportion of "total deaths" they are a much larger contributor to "loss of average lifespan"

Driving is super safe. There is no evidence that driving is any less safe for young people. They just rarely die of anything.

Right. Which is why when they do die from preventable causes it has such a large impact on average lifespan. If we want more humans alive for longer we should not ignore these high impact relatively low frequency dangers.

If you're under the age of 35, driving may very well be the most dangerous habit you have.

If you are under the age of 35, you are essentially immortal, because if driving is incredibly safe and it is the most dangerous thing you do.

Yea, young people almost only die in accidents, so obviously cars would be a large proportion of their almost infinitesimal death rates.

Well yes, that is what we are trying to figure out here?! What is killing healthy people not expected to die shortly?

For people approaching 90, everything from a fall to a cut can be deadly. But that tells us more about 90 year olds than cuts or falls.

Driving is super safe. There is no evidence that driving is any less safe for young people. They just rarely die of anything. Your argument is akin to arguing the most egregious type of death is abortion, because it costs someone their entire lifespan

> no evidence that driving is any less safe for young people

Glad you checked all that evidence for us, saves us the hassle.

Interesting stat. 1 death for every 1 million miles. If the average person drives 12,000 miles per year for say 60 years (18 to 80, yes it's over estimating), that's 720,000 miles driven. That would infer your chance of dying in an auto accident is ~70% over a lifetime.

Oops! It was 100 million miles, not 1 million miles, my mistake.

That makes more sense. So your chance of dying in an auto accident is 0.7% over your lifetime.

It's probably less than that since I'm sure the average fatality per accident is >1.

Average fatalities per fatal accident maybe.

Our odds are likely many times better than that. Deaths per 100MM are provably going to be cut in half over the next few decades, if not more. Automated driving assistants alone will do that, even without fully automated cars.

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