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Comment by cjensen | Hacker News Reader

It's odd to me that such a significant source of fatalities is being addressed in a very unambitious way. Left turns are clearly difficult maneuvers in many parts of SF. Why not turn them into protected left turns?

This "just blame the drivers" attitude is really odd. Their response is to tell drivers that they need to take more care and then enforce the care with an obstacle course. Why not do something harder that would be more effective? Protected lefts. Separating walk signals from green lights. Tickets to penalize poor driving. Tickets to penalize anyone walking out of turn. Tickets for anything that makes the left turn more complicated so drivers can focus on the job.

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Protected left turns don’t work well without insanely wide roads. There is not room for protected left turn lanes in most of sf, and too much traffic to do one direction at a time signals.

I've not driven in San Francisco. Are cars allowed to sit and block an entire lane until they can turn left? That is how things worked in the rural town I grew up in, but I can't imagine it working in a city. All the streets in the city I live in now which are too narrow for a turn lane are either one-way (thus have no need for a protected left) or they prohibit left turns.

Many streets have "no left turn" signs that apply during busy hours to prevent this (but of course those are often ignored anyway).

In practice the thing that determines if you can turn left and block traffic is how high your tolerance to honking behind you is.

Another option is to make left turns illegal on more streets and make right turns easier.

The obvious answer is that it’s easier to blame drivers than enact meaningful change, which requires time and effort.

You’re absolutely right though, this is a systemic problem fand needs a systems-based approach to solving it. Speed limits, limiting hours for motorized traffic… there are many ways in which this problem can be alleviated.

> This "just blame the drivers" attitude

Where do you see blame? I just see people presenting ways reduce serious harm to others, something I think most drivers would appreciate. As a driver, I'm glad to read it.

Protected lefts require a dedicated turn lane, and many of the intersections where this is a problem simply don't have room for them. Removing parking spaces to make room is unfortunately a fraught process that can take years. So you wind up with training that nobody's going to take

You got me a bit confused by this. You say we shouldn't "just blame the drivers," but then advocate for increased ticketing. That's a contradiction.

Just blame the drivers is shorthand for asking drivers to do better, without any other changes. Rules and laws to penalize drivers are a more effective strategy since people respond better when there are real costs associated with driving poorly (or so I hope; it seems logical but maybe it doesn’t, maybe the laws will be selectively enforced, not sure).

It's a systemic issue drivers are one stakeholder and many are responsible. Vehicle designers & manufactures, Urban Planners etc.

> people respond better when there are real costs associated with driving poorly

The real cost is that driving kills 40,000 people a year in the US.

The mortality rate is an externality to most drivers. Financial penalties or better designs have a more direct effect. Similar to how coal power plants kill thousands due to air pollution but don’t really care until they’re penalized financially or made to design systems to reduce emissions.

> The mortality rate is an externality to most drivers.

Killing or injuring someone is not an externality. It's a horrible, traumatic event. Most people absolutely do not want to do it. I don't need fines to deter me - in fact, if it happened, the fine would be of vanishingly little concern.

Also, almost every driver is also a pedestrian and has loved ones who are pedestrians.

I'm sure most people will agree. After it has happened. Then it's too late. Untill it happens it is definitely an externality to most.

> I'm sure most people will agree. After it has happened. Then it's too late. Untill it happens it is definitely an externality to most.

Wow, that's a pretty negative belief about human nature. IME, everyone I know is concerned and serious about it before it happens, though certainly they take more risks beforehand and of course have a much stronger response after something happens (or even after a close call).

Don't think this is the correct usage of externality... It's more that it's an acceptable risk, until it happens. Externality would imply the vast majority of drivers who are never involved in fatal accidents contributed to causing the accidents but did not suffer its consequences.

> Externality would imply the vast majority of drivers who are never involved in fatal accidents contributed to causing the accidents but did not suffer its consequences.

Is that wrong?

If 1000 drivers are being unsafe, are they not all contributing? Surely the one driver that actually causes a fatal accident doesn't absorb the blame from the other 999.

And just about all drivers are unsafe sometimes and/or drive on roads that were designed with compromised safety.

> If 1000 drivers are being unsafe, are they not all contributing? Surely the one driver that actually causes a fatal accident doesn't absorb the blame from the other 999.

1000 drivers contribute to 1 accident ??? No they are essentially independent events. Drivers can cause a bunch of externalities (Noise, Pollution, Traffic) but most are not causing or contributing to fatal accidents.

And I would not solely blame the driver/participants in a fatal accident, you have to look at the system they are operating in (Car Manufactures, Road/Highway designs etc etc)

They're not all contributing to that specific accident, but they're contributing to the rate of accidents.

Getting lucky doesn't absolve you of endangering others!

For a more extreme example, imagine a million drunk drivers getting on the road at the same time to drive a significant distance. Nobody has crashed yet, but many of them will. I would say they are clearly "contributing to causing fatal accidents". Would you not?

> And I would not solely blame the driver/participants in a fatal accident, you have to look at the system they are operating in (Car Manufactures, Road/Highway designs etc etc)

That's why I said "and/or drive on roads that were designed with compromised safety"

> They're not all contributing to that specific accident, but they're contributing to the rate of accidents.

> For a more extreme example, imagine a million drunk drivers getting on the road at the same time to drive a significant distance. Nobody has crashed yet, but many of them will. I would say they are clearly "contributing to causing fatal accidents". Would you not?

It's like you are saying Shark Attacks are an externality of swimming in the ocean. That is not an externality, that is a risk of swimming in the ocean. Someone swimming in the ocean and is fine is completely independent of someone else who swims in the ocean and is attacked by a shark.

Road systems are pretty communal, though. We decide what safety systems to implement and what norms to uphold. I think 'externality' works well enough.

Shark attacks are an externality of having such a strong beach culture, or whatever.

Externality has a specific technical meaning

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

> Killing or injuring someone is not an externality.

I specifically mentioned the mortality rate, not the actual event of a driver being involved in an incident.

Peoples driving habits aren’t changed by a statistic (mortality rate) even though unsafe driving directly contributes to that number.

Fair enough, but people don't need a statistic to care about the risks of car accidents; people are averse to them.

Now calculate the percentage of drivers that it happens to.

Then reconsider the phrase 'most drivers'.

Rather than unintentionally causing a car accident, let's say it was an engineer bringing down production. You are saying Engineers need more negative incentives; they should loose there job for accidentally bringing down production. Bringing down production is obviously because they were personally negligent. This is blaming the engineer, when it is a failure of the system they are operating in.

> The mortality rate is an externality to most drivers.

Not sure what point you're trying to make here. If I killed someone else with my car, even If I don't die, there are real Physical, Emotional and Financial costs.

This is a pretty silly comparison. If an engineer for a medical device fucked up resulting in the death of people, they would absolutely be fired and face legal consequences. Which is why there are very strict regulations around these things (including fines and potential criminal charges).

plenty of decisions that result in the death of people in the medical industry and others suffer no consequences, but it's pointless to debate your unspecified hypothetical.

Not sure how you can possibly look at something that kills 40,000 people in the US a year and chalk it up to personally responsibility of the Driver. I guess you live in an a less complicated world, must be nice.

> Not sure how you can possibly look at something that kills 40,000 people in the US a year and chalk it up to personally responsibility of the Driver. I guess you live in an a less complicated world, must be nice.

If you tried to actually read what I’ve written you wouldn’t be creating straw man arguments. If you just wanna engage in snide personal attacks to placate your fragile ego, go ahead, it’s not really a discourse that interests me.

To clarify the point, the reason for imposing fines to influence driver behavior isn’t to hold them responsible personally for every pedestrian fatality; that already happens when there is an accident with the drivers involved. The point of fines and regulations is to encourage drivers to drive better to reduce the chances of the accidents taking place. E.g. Speed limits encourage drivers to change their behavior so that we have fewer accidents.

> The point of fines and regulations is to encourage drivers to drive better to reduce the chances of the accidents taking place. E.g. Speed limits encourage drivers to change their behavior so that we have fewer accidents.

Driver behavior is a factor, they have some responsibility, and yes you can modify behavior with incentives. But the world and most things in it are complicated systems & processes. The design of vehicles, the design of roads, the design of walk-ways are major factors etc. When you only promote solutions that have to deal with driver behavior, you are absolving all the other stakeholders of responsibility and de-facto blaming the driver.

People don't react to incentives the same way that corporations do.

Congratulations for adding absolutely nothing to the conversation.

I'm a little skeptical that people's driving behavior changes a lot when you increase the penalty.

It has been proven in lots of European countries with the ticket system (X times you do something deemed bad enough inside Y years you have to get another expensive drivers license). I'd bet that you could likely pick any EU country and see the difference before and after the system got implemented. Of course a lot of people in the US sees driving a car as a right, not a privilege. Without the risk of loosing your license and it being at least semi expensive and hard to get any system is pretty useless.

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