Hacker News Reader

Comment by aetherson | Hacker News Reader

About six years ago, I would drive from San Mateo to Oakland at least twice a week, after work, to meet my then-girlfriend. So that's down 92, across the bridge, and up to Oakland. It's about 30 miles, all on freeway, and at that time of day all in heavy (though not all stop-and-go) traffic.

I don't think I ever saw three separate rear-ends in a single drive. I can't say for certain that I ever saw two. I didn't drive it every day, but I probably did 100 such commutes.

You sound either like you're massively exaggerating or live someplace with apocalyptic traffic.

View on HN

>I don't think I ever saw three separate rear-ends in a single drive. I can't say for certain that I ever saw two. I didn't drive it every day, but I probably did 100 such commutes.

I drive 30 miles through Chicago traffic on the Interstate everyday. I see at least 3-4 accidents per week (people pulled over to the side of the road, out of the way, or at the accident investigation sites.) Most of these are minor fender benders. I'm sure if I was in rush hour traffic for the full 4-6 hours (not just my 90 minutes of commute) I would see way more. They mostly happen in near bumper-to-bumper stop and go traffic (someone misses the guy in front of them stopping) or when traffic unexpectedly comes to a standstill from going 10-20 MPH.

The guy I was talking to said he saw 10 a week minimum.

Yeah, if you spend 4-6 hours a day in traffic, you'd see a lot of accidents. That... seems uncontroversial.

Every single day of this work week so far there has been at least one and as many as 5 accidents on the same 5 mile stretch of I95 headed in to Waltham, MA.

Every morning and at least two of the evenings. And the weather has been reasonable. I typically see 4 to 5 Teslas a day during my commute... driving sedately, and they aren't they ones involved in the accident.

Maybe we'll break the streak tomorrow and have no accidents.

Here are the traffic stats for Canada[0]. In 2015 there were 116,000 "personal injury collisions". That is ~300 injuries a day across Canada.

The Greater Toronto Area has approx. 20% of Canada's population (~35M). If we assume that 300 injuries are evenly distributed across Canada, which seems unlikely due to how bad the driving conditions are on the 401 and DVP, there are ~60 injuries per day in the GTA of various severities.

I don't think someone encountering ~3 per commute during rush hour is unreasonable.

[0]: https://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/motorvehiclesafety/tp-tp3322-2015-1...

You drove 30 miles up 880 twice a week and never saw a rear-end accident? You should play the lottery. I don't know if I see three every day, but I do see one every week. This week's was some clown in the #2 lane, _staring_ down at his phone, rear-end into a stopped car at ~20 MPH. His car was completely totaled with one of the wheels spinning off to the shoulder.

A few months ago I saw a guy, face-down in his phone, smash into an existing accident that was already surrounded by fire trucks. That was amazing.

I didn't say I never saw a rear-end accident, I said I never saw three in a single commute and am not sure whether I saw two in a single commute.

The guy I was replying to said that he saw at least 2 every commute, often more. (Edit: Actually, sorry, 2 every day, not every commute).

How do you have the bandwidth to look at other drivers' postures while driving?

I ride my bike in the Peninsula. I personally witness 2-4 accidents monthly ranging from fender-bender/taps to full-on smash-ups. Maybe 2-3 daily is an exaggeration, but they're plentiful. It's a rare day that goes by where the major freeways don't have slowdowns because of wrecks. I'd be surprised if the typical commuter on 101 saw less than 1 per day on average, actually.

Between San Jose and San Francisco on 101 pretty common to see at least 1 fender-bender per commute.

Driving and down 280 over a year's time, once a year, there can be a single day with three separate fender benders. Appearing to have happened within a 30-min window of passing by. But never witnessed 3 to happen --like happening as I was driving.

I'm in the UK, but I used to drive an hour each way to work which was about 25 miles. In a year I saw like one accident and that was someone being rear-ended in slow moving traffic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com