Advocacy & Safety - Ironic comment made by the US Transportation Secretary.

"We will not rest until these cars are safe," LaHood told the Senate Commerce Committee.

From http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100302/ap_on_bi_ge/toyota_recall

Of course he is speaking specifically of the Toyota recall...

But one has to wonder what is considered "safe" when motor vehicles kill about 40,000 Americans annually.

Sure seems like someone "rested" a long time ago.

So you're guessing, then, that driver recertification isn't part of the dealer service package.

But one has to wonder what is considered "safe" when motor vehicles kill about 40,000 Americans annually.Well, how many cars are there in the US? 250 million? (It's a tough question to answer, but here's an attempt (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_cars_are_currently_in_the_US).)

So, if 40,000 die annually, that's only one per 6250 cars per year?

Smoking is estimated to kill 1000 Americans per day? That's nearly ten times as many as cars ...

I'll bet obesity kills even more. And even when you take out the risk factors, heart disease and cancer kill far more than cars ...

In the grand scheme of things, perhaps cars aren't as dangerous as we like to claim. Sure, they kill, but almost everybody in our country partakes on a regular basis -- and yet only a small percentage are killed even over their entire lifetime.

And really, cycling is roughly as likely to kill you as being in a car, according to some studies I've seen (the differences come when you look at "per mile" values vs. "per hour" values, and of course the data is unreliable, as people don't accurately track how much they bicycle.) And of course, these cyclist deaths often come from collisions with cars, so it's difficult to completely separate the two -- but they are generally included in the 40,000/year figure bandied around.

We're way too complacent about how dangerous cars are (@ dougmc... how many of those cyclist fatalities do you think involved a car??? I don't think it's the cycling that's the danger there). Driving is the most dangerous activity most people will ever do, yet many seem to find it so routine that their vehicle is an extension of their living room or office.

Who here can say they don't personally know anyone who died in a car accident? I have 2 family members and 3 acquaintances who died in car accidents. I also have a friend who suffered a serious brain injury. All of those people were under age 25, one was only 4.

Using dougmc's numbers, if 1/6250 cars is going to be involved in a fatal accident each year, and if most of us are in and around cars our whole lives (let's say with an average North American life expectancy of at least 75 years), that's a 1/83 risk that your cause of death will involve a car, and odds are it's not going to happen near the end of your natural life expectancy, unlike most deaths related to disease. The 'life-years' cost of car-realted fatalities is higher than for smoking, obesity, heart disease, cancer etc...

I guess that's the price we're willing to pay for convenience.

That is not irony.

Who here can say they don't personally know anyone who died in a car accident?


Me.


Using dougmc's numbers, if 1/6250 cars is going to be involved in a fatal accident each year, and if most of us are in and around cars our whole lives (let's say with an average North American life expectancy of at least 75 years), that's a 1/83 risk that your cause of death will involve a car, and odds are it's not going to happen near the end of your natural life expectancy, unlike most deaths related to disease.

So, that's a 1.2% chance, yes?

Also, as to what time it happens in your life and odds - that's a fallacy. Consider a coinflip. Regardless if you've flipped a coin a hundred thousand times and landed on heads, there is still a 50/50 chance it will land on tails next flip. Length of time has nothing to do with it, earlier or later.


I guess that's the price we're willing to pay for convenience.

Pretty much.

EDIT: I found this interesting http://www.livescience.com/environment/050106_odds_of_dying.html


All figures below are for U.S. residents.Cause of Death Lifetime Odds

Heart Disease
1-in-5

Cancer
1-in-7

Stroke
1-in-23

Accidental Injury
1-in-36

Motor Vehicle Accident*
1-in-100

Intentional Self-harm (suicide)
1-in-121

Falling Down
1-in-246

Assault by Firearm
1-in-325

Fire or Smoke
1-in-1,116

Natural Forces (heat, cold, storms, quakes, etc.)
1-in-3,357

Electrocution*
1-in-5,000

Drowning
1-in-8,942

Air Travel Accident*
1-in-20,000

Flood* (included also in Natural Forces above)
1-in-30,000

Legal Execution
1-in-58,618

Tornado* (included also in Natural Forces above)
1-in-60,000

Lightning Strike (included also in Natural Forces above)
1-in-83,930

Snake, Bee or other Venomous Bite or Sting*
1-in-100,000

Earthquake (included also in Natural Forces above)
1-in-131,890

Dog Attack
1-in-147,717

Asteroid Impact*
1-in-200,000**
Tsunami* 1-in-500,000

Fireworks Discharge
1-in-615,488

I think about it this way: There are no dangerous roads, intersections, cars, etc., only dangerous drivers. A big factor of dangerous drivers is incompetence due to a lack of appropriate training.

So a number of people died because the car suddenly accelerated? Yeah, okay; the car had a malfunction. But how many of these drivers didn't know to simply shift the transmission into neutral and turn the ignition switch back one click, thus simply turning the car off? Dangerous drivers. Incompetence due to lack of training.

I think about it this way: There are no dangerous roads, intersections, cars, etc., only dangerous drivers. A big factor of dangerous drivers is incompetence due to a lack of appropriate training.

So a number of people died because the car suddenly accelerated? Yeah, okay; the car had a malfunction. But how many of these drivers didn't know to simply shift the transmission into neutral and turn the ignition switch back one click, thus simply turning the car off? Dangerous drivers. Incompetence due to lack of training.

I think just incompetence, period.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9aWSKMiPL0

I agree. Incompetence comes from lack of training. How many times have you seen on TV or YouTube a driver flipping their vehicle because they over-corrected when they hit the shoulder? Or drivers sliding due to over-application of the brakes? Or causing a serious or deadly accident trying to miss a small animal in the road?
On the bicycle side, I've witnessed riders due really dangerous things in traffic due to incompetence, whether that came from ignorance of the laws, general lack of situational awareness, or ignorance of proper bike control.

I think just incompetence, period.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9aWSKMiPL0
:lol::lol:

And then, of course, some people are just stupid.

Several years ago a woman I knew approached me. Seems she couldn't get their car out of park. Floor shift, automatic transmission. So I got in the drivers seat to have a look. It shifted fine for me. She got in. It wouldn't shift.
"Okay, now try it with your foot on the brake to release the thumb button on the shifter.":rolleyes:
"OH, thankyou-thankyou-thankyou-thankyou-thankyou.":)
<"How long have you been driving this car? How did you even get here?":rolleyes:>

A woman approached a friend of mine in a parking lot. Seems the battery in her key-chain remote had died and, close to :cry:, she couldn't get her car unlocked.
He got it open for her using, wonder of wonders, the key in the door lock.
":eek: You can do that?"

And just so I don't get accused of picking on the chicks:
I came across a guy one time who has his 4x4 stuck in the sand. Now he knows about MANUAL locking hubs.
"Lock - Right. Free - Left. Lock - Clockwise. Free - Counterclockwise. Lock - Right (more than four letters in "right"). Free - Left (four letters in each word)." :lol:

And then there was the guy who once topped-off the hydraulics of a tractor with Diesel fuel. But we won't talk about that one. :o

... Yeah, okay; the car had a malfunction. But how many of these drivers didn't know to simply shift the transmission into neutral and turn the ignition switch back one click, thus simply turning the car off? Dangerous drivers. Incompetence due to lack of training.

Officer Saylor was driving an unfamiliar car which had three fundamental blunders in human interface engineering.
1) There is a "start engine" button, but no "stop engine." On any machine shop floor, every green "start" button is accompanied by an equally or more prominent red "stop" button. To turn off the engine, one counterintuitively presses the start button once if stationary, but must hold in for 3 seconds if moving. Pressing it several times in succession will turn off a Nissan engine, but not a Toyota.
2) The brake light switch on any late model German car tells the throttle body's butterfly valve to return to its neutral position, irrespective of the position of the accelerator pedal. Toyota is now rushing to retrofit this lifesaving feature.
3) The Lexus shift gate's PRND label and manual shift gate are both on the left, so that someone in a panic situation can easily push the lever into the manual upshift (+) position instead of the intended neutral. I strongly suspect this is what happened to Officer Saylor. I have done precisely the opposite on my Passat, which at least has the manual shift gate to the right and the PRND432 label to the left, hitting N when wanting +, damaging only my ego.

Electronic, mechanical, and electromechanical systems and components will fail from time to time*. I fault the Lexus dealership for putting oversized all-season SUV floormats in that particular car, but to me the greatest blame lies with Toyota's abysmal human factors engineering.

___
* My late mother's 1969 Camaro still has a retrofit restraining cable to keep the small block V-8 from snagging the throttle cable while twisting under heavy acceleration. This happened once to my 5'0", 100 lb. mother, a Multiple Sclerosis victim, who fortunately was able to shift into neutral and to turn off the ignition before colliding with anything. Neutral was easy to find, and ignition cutoff was easily and intuitively accomplished by twisting the key.

I find the following very ironic

US DOT LaHood: we propose $50 million to help the states put an end to distracted driving. I know I've been on a tear about this deadly behavior, but that's because it is killing thousands of Americans every year. That sickens me, and we need to help the states educate drivers and encourage enforcement.
http://fastlane.dot.gov/2010/02/modest-dot-budget-tackles-bold-challenges.html

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials' (AASHTO) survey of 32 state DOTs finds that 26 states (or 81%) are now using Twitter to communicate with travelers when major traffic incidents
http://news.transportation.org/press_release.aspx?Action=ViewNews&NewsID=291

Even Jon Stewart has covered the issue: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-october-1-2009/cnn-warns-against-texting-while-driving

It's not even lack of training, it's just that people can't handle emergency situations and they panic.

When I was about 8 years old, I was in the car with my grandmother when her accelerator stuck down under the carpet (on an old Oldsmobile 88 IIRC) and she panicked. She started saying "what am I going to do? I can't stop!"

I just reached over and turned off the ignition. I thought about shifting into neutral but I didn't want to damage the engine. These days that's not such a big consideration since the engines are RPM governed by the computer to not redline and explode.

I agree. Incompetence comes from lack of training. How many times have you seen on TV or YouTube a driver flipping their vehicle because they over-corrected when they hit the shoulder? Or drivers sliding due to over-application of the brakes? Or causing a serious or deadly accident trying to miss a small animal in the road?
On the bicycle side, I've witnessed riders due really dangerous things in traffic due to incompetence, whether that came from ignorance of the laws, general lack of situational awareness, or ignorance of proper bike control.

Agreed, it IS lack of training... I wonder how many of the folks mentioned bothered to read their owners' manual. I wonder if they bothered to ask questions. I wonder if they bothered to seek knowledge, or just assumed they knew everything.

but to me the greatest blame lies with Toyota's abysmal human factors engineering.


That whole lack of human factors engineering is pervasive across the industry. Mercedes pulled a real blunder a few years back and put all controls into a touch screen system in the center of the dash... to just change a radio station, one had to go through a menu. Gee did any human factors engineer consider that it would mean the driver HAD to take their eyes off the road for such operation?

Remember when all car radios operated with the same 2 knobs and 5-6 buttons... you could tune the radio without looking, or select a preset with a quick jab. Now car radios come with thick manuals, and even simple operations require the operator to look at the unit... very very POOR design. More such devices are filling the dashboard.

Me.
Also, as to what time it happens in your life and odds - that's a fallacy. Consider a coinflip. Regardless if you've flipped a coin a hundred thousand times and landed on heads, there is still a 50/50 chance it will land on tails next flip. Length of time has nothing to do with it, earlier or later.


Well probability has no memory, and length of time passed does not affect probability - but it does matter - we are talking about what causes death, right? Well everyone dies. You have 100% chance of dying. The real problem is not death, it's avoidable early death.

So we should not be talking about chances of death, we should be talking about loss of life years.

The probability of you dying by a particular "method" means less than the cumulative number of life years a given "method" takes away from us collectively.

So we should be taking the average life expectancy, and the average age of death by each "method", and taking the sum of years lost. THAT is the number that should concern us.

So in the list, does "Heart Disease" encompass everyone who dies from cardiac arrest, AKA "old age"? If so, under "life years lost", we'd see the dire-ness of heart disease read much lower, since most people die of heart failure when they are close to their life expectancy - or even beyond it. But things like accidental injury and car accidents would be bumped up because they are age-independent.

Another way of looking at it is to take two causes of death which have an identical rate, but one that takes people only when they are over 80 years old and another that takes people only when they are under 10 years old. Lets say "death by valsalva" (bearing down, i.e. you die because you pushed too hard taking a dump) - this happens to old people mostly. Versus death by improper use of a booster seat which happens only to kids. Lets assume the exact same number of people die of each one every year... which is a greater concern to society?

I also question some overlaps... is "Motor Vehicle Accident" a subset of "Accidental Injury"? if so, it doesn't make much sense to have it one lower in a linear list. Same with "Falling Down" - is that a subset or separate item from "Accidental Injury"?

For as much as we worry about dying from accidents, accidents account for only about 4% of the annual deaths in the USA.

The trouble is nearly half of all the accidental deaths are attributed to motor vehicle collisions. You would have to stack up every other possible accidental death together to measure up to the automotive threat.

What most people turn a blind eye to are the far more common causes of death that could be diminished by improving health by doing something as simple as riding a bike. Instead, many people think riding a bike is dangerous, and driving a car is safe.

Thanks larry, you beat me to it. sudo bike must have misunderstood. For a time-independent event, odds that it will happen in the last 5% of the alloted window (your natural life span, for example) are 5%. That's what I was saying... if you die in an accident, it's probably not going to be in old age... the median age of accidental death victims will be close to the median age of the population.

The same can't be said for deaths from medical causes. Your risk of dying for a medical reason increases with age. That's why cancer, heart attack, etc., get such large numbers... everyone has to die of something. It's always sad when someone dies, but losing decades of what could have been a healthy life in a car accident is truly tragic, and far too commonplace.

I like closetbiker's point. I often use that when someone says 'isn't it dangerous to ride your bike'. Not only will I probably live longer, I'll be healthy and look and feel great while I do it.

My sister had one of these 'car won't stop' emergencies. She panicked, too. Hers was with an older VW Jetta, and she discovered that the engine wouldn't stop revving when she tried to slow to exit the highway. Braking wasn't enough to fight the engine. Fortunately, she was able to merge back on to the highway and maintain her speed, rather than continue on the off ramp at her usual driving speed (she's a speeder... 150 km/h isn't out of the question with her, so she was probably going at least 130 km/h). She used a cell phone to call our dad at work and ask what to do (not a fun call for him to receive!!!). He told her to put it into neutral (worried that she'd lose steering if she turned it off). She was just passing a long straight off-ramp to a highwayside service station, so she exited as she slammed it into neutral, so hard that she went right past and into reverse, while standing on the brakes. A trucker was exiting behind her, and she was lucky not to get creamed pulling that move, rather than just using the shoulder. Somehow the engine survived and she managed to get stopped and shut it down, still screaming away in neutral with enough rpms to go highway speed. Turns out there had been a recall on that car. She actually really had to fight to get it fixed, too, since the VW dealer couldn't find any record of the recall.

If her engine had frozen up like that anywhere other than a highway with good traffic flow, I have no doubt she would have crashed. She just wouldn't have been able to figure out what was happening in time, especially since she didn't discover the problem until it was time to slow down.

"We will not rest until these cars are safe," LaHood told the Senate Commerce Committee.

From http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100302/ap_on_bi_ge/toyota_recall

Of course he is speaking specifically of the Toyota recall...

But one has to wonder what is considered "safe" when motor vehicles kill about 40,000 Americans annually.

Sure seems like someone "rested" a long time ago.


Of course, isn't it wonderful now that GM stands for government motors, that all these non-GM vehicles have recalls? Heaven forbid the feds to have a conflict of interest.

Americans are very aware of the risks they take when being in a car, and apparently they have decided the risks are worth it.

roughstuff

... I like closetbiker's point. I often use that when someone says 'isn't it dangerous to ride your bike'. Not only will I probably live longer, I'll be healthy and look and feel great while I do it.

On average, regular cyclists live longer, healthier lives, even with all those accidents we hear about all the time.

everyone has to die of something.

That's just sad, as there is a difference between premature death and death by natural causes and that difference is growing.