Advocacy & Safety - What is a non issue about fatal accidents?????

Any death is a tragedy, but this cell phone issue is a non issue invented by news programs to bost ratings, 2600 dead is .001 % of the US pop. (based on 250 million) and 330,000 injured is .13% of the US pop. If the government was to legislate on every issue that is tied to such a small % of deaths it would be crushed under its own weight

Thank you fellow cyclist for sharing this little tidbit of wisdom. May I suggest the following....

A letter to the family of the deceased.......

Dear loved ones of Joe P Biker,

We are sorry to hear of the recent tragic death of your loved one. It was unfortunate that an automobile struck your 12 year old son. Please understand that the driver really needed to find out what time the ball game started. They also knew that they had slept in too late so they simply could not pull over to make the call. We will note this distraction on our records for future use. Unfortunately the current statistics of death rate for accidents involving cellular phones is barely noticable in the grand scheme of things. In short, the death of your loved one was tragic, but insignificant. Please take comfort in the fact that you actually do live in a relatively safe environment.

Hope your next child fares better,
Uncle Sam and his statisticians.

Perhaps we should recommend this as a standard letter format for the families of victims of many tragic acts of irresponsibility. It would be less expensive and not as taxing as trying to pass a law that requires responsibility of automobile drivers.

All I have to say is that I could end up in prison if some dolt talking $hit or Business was to ever run over one of my loved ones. I would be hard pressed to restrain myself and probably would not even try.

All you chatting morons need to pull off the road and talk. If you are one of the very few elite drivers that actually can stay in control while chatting then I salute your powers of coordination.

The laws would be to curb those with no regard to anyone elses safety. Unfortunately we will never be able to depend on people to be responsible. This has been proven thousands of times over.

I couldn't have stated it better myself. Great post!

Seems the public accepts the fatalities due to auto accidents as the cost of doing business. What is it something like 30k-40k a year die in auto related accidents? Isn't that close to our loss in Viet Nam? Crazy.

I once read an article that stated, 100 million people (world wide) had been killed in car accidents by the end of 2000, since the introduction of the car. More people have been killed by car accidents, than every war ever fought.

Sorry I can't remember the source.

CHEERS.

Mark

Great letter Sam.


Originally posted by SamDaBikinMan
Unfortunately we will never be able to depend on people to be responsible.
Too bad the politicians are included in this group. That's why it will be a cold day in hell before laws regarding "proper" cell phone usage are enacted. :mad:

I know they don't represent the same level of threat as a motor vehicle, but the moron cyclists that are talking on their cell phones while riding need to pull off the roadway/pathway as well.

Originally posted by morsen
I know they don't represent the same level of threat as a motor vehicle, but the moron cyclists that are talking on their cell phones while riding need to pull off the roadway/pathway as well. I couldn't agree more. Now to continue work on my portable EMP generator......

Ill say it again it is a nonissue, statistically these numbers are negligible. You all really want to bog down the legal system with NONISSUES such as this when there are real issues that kill far greater numbers (that are greater than a fraction of a percent of the US population). You would be taking resources away from these much larger issues and perhaps delaying legislation/reasurch/funding resulting in deaths that could have been prevented if the focus had not been on your cell phone NONISSUE. Now I perpose this, a catch all charge for all those other NONISSUES that when added up create a statistically signifficant number of deaths, something like manslaughter (or is that exactally what manslaughter is, I am not a lawyer), I believe this would do far greater good.

Originally posted by temp1
statistically these numbers are negligible.

Is 2600 an annual figure? If so, 2600 represents 5.2% of the annual 50,000 motor vehicles deaths in the U.S - a significant percentage. If this figure is not an annual figure, it's still not worth ignoring.

"Sorry, miss. This serial killer that you are attempting to report has only killed six victims. That's an insignificant number. Don't bother us again until they've killed at least 100,000 victims."

(Note for the analogy impaired: I'm not saying that cell phone users are serial killers, but just making an analogy to demonstrate that the notion of an insignificant number of possibly preventable deaths is questionable.)

Is 2600 an annual figure? If so, 2600 represents 19.23% of the annual 50,000 motor vehicles deaths in the U.S - a significant percentage. If this figure is not an annual figure, it's still not worth ignoring.

So where are all the big headlines and what is being done about the other 80.77% of motor vehicle deaths?

Andrew

Originally posted by ViciousCycle


Is 2600 an annual figure? If so, 2600 represents 19.23% of the annual 50,000 motor vehicles deaths in the U.S - a significant percentage. If this figure is not an annual figure, it's still not worth ignoring.

It is an annual number (per recent Harvard study), but the math works out to 5.2% if the 50,000 deaths is an accurate number. This is still a VERY SIGNIFICANT number. That works out to more than 1 in every 20 fatal accidents.

The more telling number is the 330,000 (or over 900/day) per year that are injured. Certainly, some of these injuries left the victims in a permanently disabled state. Even if only 75% of the drivers on the road obeyed a law disallowing cell phone usage while driving – it would save over 678 people PER DAY from this sort of injury.

The number that I've found for the total number of automobile accidents that cause injury is around 3,000,000. That makes cell phone related automobile injuries @ about 11% of the total.

Again, for those who think these numbers are insignificant - what is your number? Where do you draw the line in terms of % or number of injuries/deaths?? 50%? 1,000,000???

Why are people singling out cell phone related accidents? I've never seen a thread here titled 50,000 dead and 3M injured in relation to all auto accidents. Why single out a minority of them?

I agree basically with what Temp1 said, if you make a law against this its still going to happen. The menial fine for something like this isn't going to deter anybody, the police are going to use it as another way of boosting end of month revenues (therefore killing off another piece of police/citizen relations). We have a law against speeding, there are fines for it as well - in some states they can be quite heavy. Do people still speed? Of course they do, so what exactly has the law done in this case? VERY little.

There is already laws in place for careless driving, wouldn't talking on a cell phone while barreling down the highway at 70mph be considered careless? Why don't you make a push for the police to actually enforce the laws already on the books. My biggest grief with driving is the fact that the police around here don't actually give a damn about careless drivers, improper lane changes, lane dicipline, running yellow/red lights, etc. But sure enough there will be 5 of them around the next bend in the patented revenue collection mode. How has that made driving safer?

We don't need more laws, we need the laws we already have to be enforced, and we need a huge amount more of drivers education.

Andrew

Originally posted by Ajay213
I agree basically with what Temp1 said, if you make a law against this its still going to happen.
So your argument is that laws don't work, so we should have none?


The menial fine for something like this isn't going to deter anybody
Perhaps the fine shouldn't be menial then.


The police are going to use it as another way of boosting end of month revenues (therefore killing off another piece of police/citizen relations). We have a law against speeding, there are fines for it as well - in some states they can be quite heavy. Do people still speed? Of course they do, so what exactly has the law done in this case? VERY little.
Laws prohibiting speeding don't work? Just becasue SOME people speed, regardless of the law, doesn't mean that the law isn't working.


There is already laws in place for careless driving, wouldn't talking on a cell phone while barreling down the highway at 70mph be considered careless? Why don't you make a push for the police to actually enforce the laws already on the books.
That's a great idea that I support. However, that is one giant hurdle. Can we not have a law that saves lives, and then concentrate on enforcement of other laws that make sense?


We don't need more laws
I couldn't agree more. However, laws that have a direct affect on my safety are needed - this is one of them. We could wipe out 75% of the laws currently on the books, and IMHO, the world would be a better place.

That's a great idea that I support. However, that is one giant hurdle. Can we not have a law that saves lives, and then concentrate on enforcement of other laws that make sense?

I see so make another law because the other laws aren't being enforced. That makes sense. What makes you think that a new law would be enforced any differently than the old ones?


I couldn't agree more. However, laws that have a direct affect on my safety are needed - this is one of them. We could wipe out 75% of the laws currently on the books, and IMHO, the world would be a better place.

Let's not enforce the ones in place, but add more. That's a good way towards achieving the goal of lowering the number of laws on the books.

Andrew

I support getting rid of all laws, lawyers, judges, and police officers and we all just start toting 6 shooters. Somebody does you wrong and the fastest draw lives.

Dear Mrs Jones,

We are sorry about the tragic death of your son, who died at the hands of a gang of thugs. The responding officer, Sgt. Doe arrived just minutes too late because he was busy writing a ticket to a motorist that was using a cell phone while driving. Of course you understand.

Sincerely...

Originally posted by Moose
Dear Mrs Jones,

We are sorry about the tragic death of your son, who died at the hands of a gang of thugs. The responding officer, Sgt. Doe arrived just minutes too late because he was busy writing a ticket to a motorist that was using a cell phone while driving. Of course you understand.

Sincerely...

Touche'. The same argument can be said of any number of possible misdemeanors that a police officer could be taking care of. What you imply with this bone headed comment is we not waste time with misdemeanors that may prevent fatalities and just wait for true violent crime is threatened before we act.

Yep, we have adopted a new law enforcement philosophy. All officers will disregard misdemeanors and wait at their radios to respond only to violent crimes.

The act of stopping misdemeanors will often times prevent death. Go back to sleep.

Touche'. The same argument can be said of any number of possible misdemeanors that a police officer could be taking care of. What you imply with this bone headed comment is we not waste time with misdemeanors that may prevent fatalities and just wait for true violent crime is threatened before we act.

Yep, we have adopted a new law enforcement philosophy. All officers will disregard misdemeanors and wait at their radios to respond only to violent crimes.

The act of stopping misdemeanors will often times prevent death. Go back to sleep.

There were 5.7 Million violent (homicide, manslaughter, aggravated assault and assault causing bodily harm) crimes in 2001, that's just a mere 15,000+ a day - or 650 an hour - 11 a minute.

Obviously there ought to be a balance here for what the police should be doing. But where do you draw the line? How many millions of cars are on the road each day? Out of those how many have cell phones? How many use their cell phone while driving? We've got to still be talking numbers will over a million, each day. 7 of those people are involved in accidents that involve fatalities out of the million+.

So yes it's horrible that this happens and something should be done about it, but I think there are much more important things (ie more people dying for various other reasons at a much higher percentage rate) that we should be concentrating on.

Andrew

What I was trying to imply is that any scenario can be dreampt up to favor ones argument.

If it's such an abhorrent thought to have people use phones while driving because of a percentage of fatalities, then why not argue that driving itself should be banned for it's contribution to the overall fatality rate?

Originally posted by Ajay213
So yes it's horrible that this happens and something should be done about it, but I think there are much more important things (ie more people dying for various other reasons at a much higher percentage rate) that we should be concentrating on.


So what would be so wrong with increasing the size of the police force to try to combat both issues?

Originally posted by Moose
What I was trying to imply is that any scenario can be dreampt up to favor ones argument.

If it's such an abhorrent thought to have people use phones while driving because of a percentage of fatalities, then why not argue that driving itself should be banned for it's contribution to the overall fatality rate?

The funny thing is that I would certainly not mind if driving automobiles were banned. I could live with just my bike.

I do see your point and will post a new thread based on a thought it has spurred.....

Sam

Originally posted by Chris L


So what would be so wrong with increasing the size of the police force to try to combat both issues?

I would absolutely support this idea!

Originally posted by Dutchy
I once read an article that stated, 100 million people (world wide) had been killed in car accidents by the end of 2000, since the introduction of the car. More people have been killed by car accidents, than every war ever fought.

Sorry I can't remember the source.

Not only that I read once that the automobile has cost society financially more than any other invention Sorry likewise I cannot remember the source that and the bicycle is almost the most perfect machine ever to be invented- minimal resources to build, and operate cost of infrastructure is minimal and it is the only (well since I don't remember the source maybe it was one of the only) machines to carry something more than it weighs