Simple solution [LWN.net]

Simple solution

Posted Sep 21, 2011 20:25 UTC (Wed) by jackb (subscriber, #41909) [Link]

I believe it's a conspiracy to make education be viewed badly by the majority.

It's more of a design feature than a conspiracy. You can't call it a conspiracy when the alleged conspirators wrote and published books describing exactly what they were doing and why.

It's sad that you're probably serious

Posted Sep 21, 2011 22:32 UTC (Wed) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]

When someone writes this...

"we know almost everyone learns to drive well in a few hours"

... about one of the leading causes of preventable death in their country, you know they're past the point where they care if what they're saying is true.

It's sad that you're probably serious

Posted Sep 21, 2011 23:14 UTC (Wed) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455) [Link]

I am trying to understand what you are saying is preventable? Are you suggesting that one of the leading causes of preventable death in some country is "people driving only hours after they learned to drive", and that if those people were prevented from driving that the death rate in that country would be greatly affected compared to what it is today? Strange thought, do you have any evidence to back this up?

It's sad that you're probably serious

Posted Sep 22, 2011 0:34 UTC (Thu) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]

RTAs are a preventable cause of death. The main reason they occur is that people aren't actually any good at driving. Basically the author has it upside down, instead of the situation being that anyone with a few hours on their hands can learn to be a good driver and therefore everyone gets to drive a car, the reality is that society decided everyone gets to drive a car, and so even though most of us are _bad_ drivers, that has to suffice.

Collective arrogance doesn't help, most drivers believe they're better than average, and although many have been in at least one accident of some kind, very few believe they were even partly to blame...

It's sad that you're probably serious

Posted Sep 22, 2011 5:29 UTC (Thu) by jackb (subscriber, #41909) [Link]

The main reason they occur is that people aren't actually any good at driving.

Rather that rely on subjective judgments of "good" and "bad" I find it helpful to refer to objective facts instead.

At least in the United States the data on the number of miles driven per year is publicly available as is the number of automobile accidents per year and the number of automobile-related deaths per year.

The last time I looked at those statistics the average number miles driven before an accident is 500,000 and the average number of miles driven between fatalities is 80 million.

I can't measure "good driving" but the data tells me that the average driver in the US has a 0.0002% failure rate when measured on a per-mile basis and the fatality rate is nearly two orders of magnitude lower.

If you have another way of measuring "not good at driving" besides the objective outcomes of accidents and fatalities I'd be interested in hearing it.

It's sad that you're probably serious

Posted Sep 22, 2011 9:49 UTC (Thu) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]

This has gone very far off topic.

They're bad drivers because they drive badly. They make unsafe manoeuvres, they drive at unsafe speed, they create distracting environments, they disobey or don't even notice traffic signals, they drive while unfit, and so on.

The accidents are the _result_ no matter how you try to diminish them. The US record on motor car fatalities is particularly horrendous, as much as ten times worse per person than other economically similar countries in the same year. Many factors have a role to play, it's hard to untangle lax driver standards from the mix but they're in there.

On the ground civil agencies just work with the reality of society's decision. Bad drivers will be put behind the wheel of several tonnes of rolling metal, they will be too distracted to look where they're going for a few vital seconds and they will hit a truck. So we have to design the car and the truck so that when (not if) this happens the accident is as survivable as possible. That's why death rates have gradually fallen, the drivers remain just as bad, but their mistakes cost less lives. But it's a gross mis-statement to pretend that since we've re-shaped our whole society around this decision therefore people are good drivers.

It's sad that you're probably serious

Posted Sep 22, 2011 16:19 UTC (Thu) by rahvin (subscriber, #16953) [Link]

Agreed that this is very off topic, but I can't let what you said stand without response as this is my field of expertise. Every human makes mistakes every single day. It doesn't make someone a bad driver because they make a mistake. The single most important factor in accidents happening isn't the quality of the driver, but whether two drivers make simultaneous mistakes. In the vast majority of cases an accident will only occur when one driver makes a mistake followed by the subsequent mistake by a second driver that allows the accident to happen.

There are exceptions to this rule such as a driver running a red light where a single driver can cause an accident without time for the other party to react but in general accidents happen because someone makes a mistake and the second party in the accident makes a mistake in responding or not responding to the first mistake. As an example, a driver speeding (maybe they are late to work and in a hurry so they don't get fired), most of the time there is no hazard in doing this and the majority of people do it, but it IS a mistake. Then a second driver makes a mistake and cuts off the speeder without time for the speeder to react causing an accident.

But if you want to see the truth in this watch more closely the drivers around you for a few days. See the mistakes that are made (applying hard braking for no reason, speeding, looking at scenery, etc) and simply ask yourself what mistake another driver would have to make to cause an immediate accident with the first driver.

Oh don't get me wrong, there are bad drivers, they just aren't the majority like some people make out.

It's sad that you're probably serious

Posted Sep 23, 2011 3:33 UTC (Fri) by JEDIDIAH (guest, #14504) [Link]

The whole problem with the "but everyone makes mistakes" mentality is that some people actively tempt fate on a constant ongoing basis. They aren't just making mistakes. They demonstrate a pervasive pattern of recklessness. They aren't just "screwing up occasionally". They are screwing up constantly and it's only because of the vigilance of other drivers that there aren't even more accidents and fatalities.

It's similar to how some companies approach how their products are engineered.

It's sad that you're probably serious

Posted Sep 23, 2011 17:05 UTC (Fri) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]

And you've missed the point another person made. The MAJORITY of drivers believe they are BETTER than average. In other words, a lot of them just have to be fooling themselves. And it's a well-known psychological phenomenon that, given poor feedback (which is inevitable given that most drivers ride solo most of the time), people over-estimate their abilities.

Make EVERYONE attend a training school every couple of years, where they are scored on a statistical deviation basis (like IQ - average is 100, SD is 15, results massaged to fit) and driving standards would probably improve dramatically. Just by telling people the results - no coercion required!

Cheers,
Wol

It's sad that you're probably serious

Posted Sep 22, 2011 16:45 UTC (Thu) by jackb (subscriber, #41909) [Link]

The accidents are the _result_ no matter how you try to diminish them. The US record on motor car fatalities is particularly horrendous, as much as ten times worse per person than other economically similar countries in the same year. Many factors have a role to play, it's hard to untangle lax driver standards from the mix but they're in there.

Which countries have accident rates less than 1 per every 5 million miles (8 million km) driven?

It's sad that you're probably serious

Posted Sep 23, 2011 6:59 UTC (Fri) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Traffic_related_deaths_... countries with lower accident rate than the US include the UK, Sweden, Finnland, Switzerland and Australia. Unfortunately for most countries there's no data. Accident rate is usually given in accidents per capita.

It's sad that you're probably serious

Posted Sep 23, 2011 11:05 UTC (Fri) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]

The units aren't the same (per capita vs per base length driven).

Per capita clearly (to first order) is going to trend lower with lower per capita levels of car ownership, and I'd guess that the us has much higher rates of car ownership than those countries. Per length is murkier; it would be lower with longer unpopulated distance, but driver effects like highway hypnosis and driver fatigue would counter that.

It's sad that you're probably serious

Posted Sep 23, 2011 18:40 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

I doubt if most people realize how much driving is common in the US. In all but a very small handful of cities, things tend to be _very_ spread out and as a result the number of miles driven is very high. This is the case even in 'urban' environments.

I agree that per mile stats are a far better picture of real risk than per capita stats.

This is a large part of the reason why public transportation doesn't work well in the US.

Public transportation works well if you have a very dense population center that you can saturate with public transportation. New York City is a great example of this with it's subway grid.

It also works well if you have a major work area with an outlying population and can have radial feeds into the downtown areas. Cities that grew up around a single major factory complex or who have a huge amount of downtown business skyscrapers meet this criteria.

but everywhere else, the cost of building public transportation Infrastructure (and then running it) that would be able to get everyone where they need to go with both a decentralized worker pool and a decentralized work area is so high that it is impractical. And as soon as people start needing to have their own care to get to some of the places they need to go routinely, the marginal cost of using that car to go elsewhere is small. As a result it becomes more cost effective to upgrade the road grid than to build enough public transportation to eliminate it.

It's sad that you're probably serious

Posted Sep 23, 2011 18:55 UTC (Fri) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455) [Link]

> As a result it becomes more cost effective to upgrade the road grid than to build enough public transportation to eliminate it.

I doubt this is actually true. I think most people underestimate the real recurring costs of roads and cars put together. In fact, I suspect that is the real reason they are the primary transportation mechanism in the US: more expensive roads and the need for cars / gas makes more businesses dipping into the pie needed to support this infrastructure. This in turn means more political clout. It's a pretty safe bet in the US (not ruling anywhere else out here) that any solution to any problem which costs more will likely be adopted by political parties (and pushed by businesses/interest groups).

It's sad that you're probably serious

Posted Sep 23, 2011 19:14 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

don't forget the large ongoing cost for public transportation in terms of both labor costs and maintenance cost for the rolling equipment.

railroads are very expensive to build, but (on a per-ton-mile basis) very cheap to operate.

but if you don't have a lot of cargo/people to transport the ongoing savings won't catch up with the initial infrastructure costs.

bus transportation is cheaper in that it can use the same road infrastructure as cars do, but you have to pay the driver and vehicle maintenance even if you don't have any riders. Bus service is also significantly slower than personal car transportation.

I lived in the greater Los Angeles area for a little over 6 years without having a car. During this time I lived pretty close to bus routes (within two blocks of both north/south and east/west routes). It can be done, but it's very inconvenient.

It's sad that you're probably serious

Posted Sep 23, 2011 19:34 UTC (Fri) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455) [Link]

> railroads are very expensive to build

I don't even buy that. They utilize way less land than roads do. Even a massive high speed rail is thinner than a small neighborhood road. The steel is likely the only really high ticket item.

You have to also think about what you are comparing. It is not fair to compare RRs designed for interstate freight traffic to local roads. If RRs were to be used for more local transportation, they would have scaled down by now to something that would not be recognizable as normal RRs. There would be much lighter weight rails than what is even considered light weight today. We would be using very small gauge rails to run through our neighborhoods. The cost of these would be significantly less than those of major RR lines today.

Oh, and it really doesn't help to use he word "public" in any of this conversation. Roads are just as public (or not) as rails/buses/trains. All are mostly funded by taxes. It is not a good differentiator when comparing transportation modes.

It's sad that you're probably serious

Posted Sep 24, 2011 2:16 UTC (Sat) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

railroads are far more sensitive to grade and unevenness than roads are.

don't discount the cost of the rails, over miles that really amounts to a large amount

also, all the control points where other traffic needs to get stopped to let the railroad go through cost

then you have the need to engineer specific places where the traffic can be redirected (switches, etc)

what makes railroads efficient to run is that they have very low friction, and as a result you can pull the same load with less power. As a result of having lower power for a given weight (and less friction with the tracks), trains accelerate slower than normal vehicles. due to less friction, they decelerate slower as well. As a result you want to avoid having the train make speed changes as much as possible

if you are going to stop frequently (and don't have a huge volume of passengers that need to fit in each vehicle), then dedicated busways (2 lane roads usable only by buses, with railroad like crossing guards) are actually cheaper, and the buses can leave the busways and use normal streets as well.

It's sad that you're probably serious

Posted Sep 22, 2011 7:13 UTC (Thu) by wichert (subscriber, #7115) [Link]

That depends on how they interpret 'driving'. The technical aspect of driving (starting your car, steering, etc.) is quite simple and can easily be learned in a few hours. There is a huge number of other skills that are harder to learn: knowing the rules, being aware of what is happening around you at all times, reacting properly if someone unexpected happens, etc. In my experience (The Netherlands) driving lessons and exams are only 10% about technicalities and 90% about everything else.

Simple solution

Posted Sep 22, 2011 14:37 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

I am from Canada. While it's true that my kids get a lot more homework than I remember getting, I don't think it's all (or even mostly) busy-work. The occasional time my kids came home with useless homework, I just wrote a note to the teacher saying I told the kids not to do it, and that was the end of it.