Featured Elon Musk’s big lie about Tesla is finally exposed

Not to say Tesla is good or bad, but I did do a little Google researching the other day on pedestrian safety and found that in the USA pedestrian safety was at it's highest in 2009. Then it went down from there, according to the IIHS.

I don't think the main reason had any thing to do with autonomous driving though. The main reason was that more people have shifted to Pickups, SUV's and crossovers, which are all harder to see what's right in front of you in, hence an increase in pedestrian causualties.

Now I'm not a fan of utilitarian vehicles at all. I'd rather walk than to drive a crossover, even if the crossover were a gift. But still, if autonomous driving or at least automatic stopping can help save pedestrians, even in utilitarian vehicles, I'm all for it.

 

There was a report by ABC on YouTube about how for every 1,000lbs a vehicle is it increases the chances of death in an accident by 10%. So you may be safer in a bigger vehicle, but you also make it more likely that someone (maybe not you, but someone) will die if you're in an accident.

 

That is one possible contributor.

It seems like those little hand-held glowing-screen thingies are also a very likely contributor.

Back at the turn of this century, one of the NHTSA reports I read clearly showed an increase in non-occupant deaths. For any given vehicle being rated, non-occupants means pedestrians, cyclists, and occupants of all the other vehicles involved in multi-vehicle crashes. Back then, they were still mostly exempt from passenger vehicle safety and crash compatibility requirements, those pickups and SUVs were guilty as sin. For every occupant they 'saved', they killed more than two extra non-occupants. But the surviving Pickup-SUV drivers were looking at the deaths of others in their mutual crashes as 'proof' that their bigger rig 'saved' them. Never mind that similar crashes between similar-size cars were becoming increasingly non-fatal.

Regulations have changed considerably since then, and those vehicles brought under regulations more similar to passenger cars, so results today should be much different. But I haven't seen an updated equivalent to that old report.

 

IIRC, Engineering Explained (you can tell I get all my info from YouTube ) talked about the safety of even the touchscreen infotainment center. Using Apple CarPlay and Android Auto were worse than driving drunk according to some statistics.

When I figure out what made my Prius dash screen stop working I'm going to also try to figure out a way to keep it off when I'm driving. The same with the Avalon. I hate those screens with a passion.

 

Wondering now what the death rate would be from thugs - along the way of that long walk - for comparison ½ way, ⅛ of the way etc across the United States.
& as far as large vehicles go, we wouldn't mind having a big pickup (to replace our low profile mileage king) because we are in an environment now - where big snow drifts can destroy your low profit hi mileage king's journey. Certainly not the usual scenario - but you can't disregard that all together. Plus .... you will never get rid of the large hat / no horse Cowboys that "need" their pickup or SUV for a good feeling.
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dup

 

I can see that as being a reason. Just having one do-it-all vehicle also has an appeal I cannot deny.

Personally if it's too snowy for me to get around in my low-to-ground cars it's not worth trying to go anywhere anyway. And I live where we can get several feet of snow in just a few hours.

 

Yeah, when I was involved in a head-on collision in 2008 with a sleepy driver in a Sonata (I was in a 2005 Civic), when she apologized for have fallen asleep while driving, my answer was "I'm just happy you weren't driving a truck". Too many big pickup and SUV for what they are used for. This needs to stop.

 

Jeez - accident statistics are all over the place, with Texas having the highest DUI rates per capita & other states with the highest fatalities, but General accidents are in the following order per capita;



our present state of Montana, & #7 on the top list & others below these top ratings are often states w/ high amounts of snow drifts so I'm thinking that may be some of the dynamics?
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That’s too much. I like mechanical devices, manual. Like a manual lathe. It’s ok to rename the nameless, like an animal shelter does. I didn’t want my dog called “coco” like they named him. That should be sufficiently off the topic.

 

Utes have 2 great purposes nowadays, carrying fridges and making great dash cam videos. when the cowboys that drive these like a sports car stuff up, it always ends spectacularly. Very funny, as long as they don't injure anyone on the way.

 

We agree on the time interval but other distractions are easily in the same time range. Fortunately, I had a sleep study last week and will be getting a new CPAP machine. BTW, truck drivers and pilots have to maintain their CPAP therapy to keep their driving and pilot licenses. Truck drivers in particular have a threat from a long hours of a low exercise job and frequent stops at truck stop restaurants (cheap calories!)

Bob Wilson

 

To be fair, when they do crash testing, they should always ram the vehicle with the same BIG piece of s*** for a fairer evaluation. a 5 star Yarris wouldn't stand a chance against a 2 star Tacoma eg:

 

They are doing that now. The IIHS has a new set of tests that test the vehicle against what would essentialy be a large SUV or Pickup ramming into the tested vehicle.

 

Duno ... stats show these taller vehicles are more prone to roll over which then kills the driver passengers in many circumstances - ah la the Firestone/Explorer debacle.
PLUGin & EV versions - not so much
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after sleep apnea diagnosis -
the better ½ has dropped 30Lbs - reducing her nightly breathing stops significantly .... so much so that if another 20 Lbs get shed - she may be able to dump the CPAP theropy all together. Downside is - excuse for a new wardrobe
LOL
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Signalling "WOPPIE?"

Bob Wilson

 

One needs to look very closely at those rankings. Are they ranking traffic deaths per-capita, as most state-by-state statistics do, or per vehicle mile traveled?

The per-capita measures inherently put low population drive-through states at high risk of looking bad. They have a disproportionately large share of vehicle miles being driven by interstate commerce and travel, all adding to the crash risk, but just small resident populations for a denominator. Rankings based on vehicle miles traveled would be more enlightening, but are harder to measure and produce. Per-capita figures are a whole lot cheaper and easier to figure.

The very low populations of Montana and Wyoming make them very susceptible to this bias.

I once saw a case of traffic fatality ranking by county. The worst counties were all low population counties with high traffic volume Interstate highways running through them. A very large share of their traffic crash risk was from people not appearing there in any census.

OTOH, with interstate highways being much safer on a per-mile basis than local streets and minor highways (even if not on a per-trip basis), a per-mile ranking might just skew those counties the other way.

 

those listed were tops among per capita accidents - not deaths ... which were different stats. Coincidentally #1 in accidents was also the same for vehicular deaths - but the death list was otherwise all over the place.
In a similar vein - purchasers of Tesla have to go outside the state to get their tesla.\
Prohibiting sale, lease of Tesla vehicles in SC infringes on freedom.

EDIT
Checking different websides (& not providing links in the past) - the stats seem to vary (both accidents as well as deaths) from year to year

Places with Most (and Least) Traffic Fatalities in America | San Diego California

noticing we Montanans lead (at least sometimes) the nation in drunk driving deaths. I DO notice a ton more plastic memorial flowers along the highways than any other of the 2 dozen or more states we've driven through. Co-incidentally - most folks up here are much opposed to them thar fancy cars w/ lots of auto features.
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all one needs to do is drive through a busy parking lot this time of year to see the sleepy pedestrians paying no attention, walking down the middle of the isles, or crossing without lookink, and the frantic drivers looking for parking spaces instead of the road ahead of them to know where part of the problem lies