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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

Because there are always tradeoffs, and tradeoffs that may actually increase total deaths. That increase would be "acceptable" because they aren't road deaths. Such goals replace reason and judgement with slogans.

For example, consider "zero tolerance" laws. They result in convicting kids who carry a one inch Lego toy gun to school, because "my hands are tied" by the legislation.

Or the "3 Strikes" laws which send people to jail for life for stealing a handbag.

BTW, I support removal of cars from high density pedestrian areas. I wish Seattle would do that.

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I've made the unpopular argument in the past that when figuring the calculus on plans of lowering speed limits, you should consider added commute time as time subtracted from the individual driver's lives. Thus if the net time subtracted is greater than the loss of life from accidents, lowering the speed limit is the greater loss of life.

It's surely a slightly flippant argument, but I certainly think there's at least a little nugget of truth to it.

I am not sure. Usually when you add things that make commute faster (highways, more and faster trains, etc) people don't shorten their commute, they move farther away (for less crowded neighbourhoods, cheaper housing costs, etc). I wouldn't be surprised if commute time hasn't changed much since horse and buggy days and all technological advancement has done is increase the distance while keeping the time constant.

Do you think it is reasonable to compare the loss of a life, of future achievements, opportunities, possibly leaving others unattended (that needed this person now dead) against sporadic minutes collectively gathered from many people?

In my opinion, those were likely going to be wasted either way.

I can see a literal point of view where if you add all sporadic minutes there also were opportunities, achievements, etc, but it just seems so far fetched for me.

> In my opinion, those were likely going to be wasted either way.

Try telling that to all the parents who would love to be able to spend more time with their kids. Or all the people who have hobbies or side projects who would love to have more time to work on them.

The better argument is that cars are more fuel efficient at lower speeds. The 55 speed limit nation-wide was brought in during the oil crisis in the 70s. [1] Cars are more economical to operate at lower speeds because of the exponential increase in drag forces with respect to speed. Car fuel consumption is big-O(n^2) where n is measured in mph.

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/editorial-cap-us-speed-limit-at...

How exactly would this particular trade-off increase total deaths? Do you think this is happening in Oslo?

> How exactly would this particular trade-off increase total deaths? Do you think this is happening in Oslo?

What if I am having a heart attack and the ambulance is on the way? If it gets there within 5 minutes, I can be saved, if not I die. Oh well, no going over 20 mph, I'm dead.

I would hope Oslo has a carve out for emergency response, but I don't see one in the article.

Much, much, more abstractly, as the article points out, suburbs are much denser in American than in Olso. "If I could work on my lifesaving cancer cure 8hr/day I would cure it in 10 years, but at 7hr/day I only cure it in 12 years. I can only spend so much time at work and commuting. Oh well, no going over 20mph, it takes me years longer." Lots of productivity losses (some of which are undoubtedly going to result in loss of life) if a(not atypical) American 20 mile commute now takes an hour instead of 20 minutes.

It would take restructuring of roadways on a massive scale in America to have this policy not result in staggering productivity/time losses. The article admits this ("it's going to require both institutional and far-reaching cultural changes", "It will take decades"). Without massive changes, adopting this policy would, as the article states, "incite riots in no time." I'd welcome taking steps towards transit restructuring.

However, there seems to be little political will for even basic incremental steps. That's why zero deaths seems impossible - getting even basic, functioning, public transit is hard in America.

Emergency vehicles are exempt from many laws and granted priority exactly for this reason - so that they reach you in 5 min, quite an impossible task given the congestion. I'm not sure about Norway, but definitely in Poland.

Suburbs too dense sounds like a virtual problem. Concentrate like Singapore or Seoul, more density yet less traffic. Even more ecological if public transportation works properly.

US population density is kept artificially low because everyone wants to own land. That is a "dream" sold by realtors, with obvious lack of focus on the costs of it.

> How exactly would this particular trade-off increase total deaths?

People die riding bicycles, too. They die in mass transit accidents. As mentioned earlier, they die because they can't get to the hospital in time. They die because the economy does worse because fewer people shop.

It's really hard to tease a simple answer out of an extremely complex, interconnected system.

I'm reminded of the argument for the 55 mph speed limit in America, that it "obviously" saved lives. Turned out, it did not. Freeway travel was significantly safer than city street travel, and reducing freeway speeds pushed more traffic onto the city streets, resulting in a higher death rate.

Also, everything you do carries some risk of death. But you decide that the benefit is worth the particular risk of death. Demanding that the risk be zeroed out comes with it a reduction in one's standard of living.

For example, every time I get on an airplane I risk death. I know it. But I go anyway, because (say, visiting family, having a nice vacation, closing a business deal) is worth it.

So, per the article, they suggest the response should be to:

"eliminate all instances where a driver could hit a pedestrian at a speed greater than 15 to 20 mph, even if one or both parties make a mistake.

This means in places where people will be out and about (i.e. streets), cars and trucks must either be kept out entirely, or must not travel faster than 20 miles per hour. Period."

In the US, this would require an immense amount of infrastructure building and/or an increase in the amount of time people spend in vehicles (due to lower speed travel). Either, with the current status quo, would raise carbon emissions.

In 2016, 5987 pedestrians died in the US [0]. And there were 37806 motor vehicle related deaths the same year [1]. Engaging in trillions of dollars of infrastructure spending or increasing the amount of time vehicles spend at low/inefficient speeds will almost certainly kill more people (indirectly) than it saves.

I am absolutely for public transit and other infrastructure improvements, but the fact is that preventing deaths just isn't a compelling argument in its favor with the relatively small amount of deaths - substantially more people die from the flu than traffic accidents [2].

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/pedestrian_safety/ind...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

[2] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm

Source 1 deals only with accidents vs pedestrian. There are many more crashes with fatal result than just with pedestrians. The numbers are comparable to flu - mind you the influenza statistic counts complications.

Most importantly, you have to look at the age structure. Influenza currently takes people in old age. Vehicular accidents are the top cause of death of young people, meaning they're much more impactful in disability adjusted years, which is the real useful measure here, not death count.

It's easy to fall prey to Lake Wobegon effect - everyone thinks they are above average and deserve more. Paying 20 minutes daily despite reducing crashes by two orders of magnitude saving average 3 hours of life will be obviously rejected for that reason.

Accidents here are generally caused by people ignoring the limits and law anyway, so this measure is unlikely to fix anything unless it causes congestion.

More subtly quality of life decreases need to be accounted for.

How many marginal person-years spent in traffic, or on less efficient alternative transport, is each road death worth? How many dollars per capita per fatality is appropriate (for e.g. infrastructure improvements.)?[1] Such absolutist and naive policy motives run the strong risk of making society worse, not better.

[1] I make no claim that we are at any optimum value, only that the optimum value is not 'no one dies on the roads, costs be damned'

The article just doesn't do itself a favor with its headline.

The useful point of the article is that the Scandinavian countries are so much less dependent on cars (and so much smaller) that you have years where no one dies by a car hitting pedestrian. But it do better pointing out the overall (considerable) quality of life benefit rather than the factoid - factoid arguments just raise people's hackles these days.

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