Traffic deaths rose 8 percent in 2020 despite fewer miles travelled

Preliminary data puts the death toll at 42,060, with 4.8 million people injured.

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[numerobis]

1) parking sensors: when I pull into my garage, I know when it flips from yellow to orange, that I am perfectly spaced where I can walk in front of the car to get into the house and still open the tailgate with the garage closed.

In my old car, I'd eye-ball it and sometimes have to get back in the car and adjust... granted, I could have hung a tennis ball from the ceiling marking the position to stop, but ~20 foot ceiling and having a poor relationship with heights, I never did.

Surely a crossbow and a bolt with a string could solve this problem for you without involving any dangers due to height.

2) Adaptive Cruise control... love to just set cruise control on the highway and it is so much better with adaptive cruise control. Now I just set my max speed and if the car in front slows down or another car cuts in I don't have to do anything.

Definitely looking forward to this myself...

 

[numerobis]

Speaking of dash cam , I am gonna give a free idea to all the auto makers out there . Many cars now have forward cameras . Can we please make these function as dash cams too . My car has 4 cameras , why can’t the car store the last few days of footage of all those cams .

This footage should be accessible in my cars black box , and be accessible to the user

I second this. My car has a forward facing camera smack in the top-middle of the windshield for recognizing lane markers. I bet it would make a damn good dash cam. Instead, I have another camera stuck to the windshield right next to it.

Same for the rear camera. Every car has to have a backup cam. That would be ideal for seeing what the person who just rear ended you was doing other than paying attention to the road. But no, I have to put another camera in the rear window and hope it can see through the glass at night.

My pickup truck has 0 cameras. I asked it why it didn't have any cameras, and it told me that it assumes that recognizing lane markers was my responsibility. It went on to inform me that I should be able to parallel park all by myself. It was a pleasant conversation. We eventually concluded that if it adopted all the enviably technology in new automobiles, I would slowly become reliant on the tech and that my manual driving skills (including the ability to navigate to locations solely from my own memory) would deteriorate. I agreed; and my truck and I have gone on to enjoy our Spartan existence.

I'm not "reliant on technology." Backup cameras are incredibly useful and only add to the usability and safety if a vehicle. They have been legally required in all new cars for awhile now. The front facing camera is used for lane keeping, which is definitely a nice addition to radar guided cruise control for long highway cruises .

My car has a this tech and a manual transmission. I'm not sitting in it with my head up my ass. It's a driver's focused car, if just also has a lot of tech that makes it an enjoyable cruiser as well.

The comment about navigation is even more asinine. I have not driven to every possible destination from every possible starting point. If I drive 12 hours through a handful of states I've never been to, I'm going to need directions. So will you.

I got ya.

Keep adding new digital tech to cars, and keep poor folks for ever being able to afford one. All I want is a continued alternative, without all the tech, so that I don't have to sell my Rembrandt to be able to purchase a new car.

Sorry you had to trade down to a Picasso just to keep up with the new tech.

 

[numerobis]

ok, sorry, i've been a bit flip. this is really a very specific quibble with

For its part, the National Safety Council has some recommendations that seem reasonable, including more equitable implementation of road safety laws and infrastructure improvements, lowering speed limits, banning all drivers from using cellphones (even hands-free) while driving

have you ever had an uber driver call you while slowly rolling down the street, inquiring which driveway to pull in?

imagine the other end; how bad it can get -- you're an uber driver sent to some apartment complex with eight giant separate buildings strewn across the side of a massive hill. when you reach the giant rotary with the visitor's center, the uber lady GPS voice says "pick up wanda on the right." wanda is not at the visitor's center; obviously. we need to call wanda. and we're talking about banning this? hang on, i'll get lost again in 30 seconds, pull over, and call you back, we will iterate until i find you, wanda, in this giant ant farm

i am a love to drive car sort of person, and, before the pandemic thing, i thot: maybe this hobby can at least pay for itself, more or less, and so for a bit, i'm driving for uber. and i literally almost drove myself to tears trying to find wanda, at her scary beehive byzantine apartment complex. we were both so frustrated, but we supported each other. without hands-free we never would have made it from her apartment building to the restaurant

pretty much, there are many jobs that would become an utter nightmare if this became law -- and, since it's so hard to enforce in the first place, the people that would wind up getting fined for it are people like uber drivers who are already pretty screwed. when you take vehicle equity into account, it's hard to break even unless you're urban and v. tactical

i am actually reminded of the frothing debate w/rt how many cops don't wear seatbelts, because they slow you down getting out of the car

lowering the speed limits? i scowl; i am crabby. but i really have no actual counterpoint aside from not wanting to give up my toys

I am left wondering why this is an argument against it.

I do not care if wanda gets to her restaurant without needing to coordinate a pickup point. If your employer (contracting service, what are they these days?) tells you to violate the law, or puts you in a position where you need to do so in order to meet their requirements, the appropriate response is to say no. Find a spot, pull off, and call them if you must. If it takes longer, charge more. If they will not pay you enough to work there, do not work there.

People reject jobs all the time due to insufficient pay, but if you are the kind of person who would dump a bunch of industrial waste in a river because you were not given time or money to dispose of it properly by your employer, both you and your employer deserve the resulting prosecution.

I do not know why some people think anything is acceptable so long as someone told them to do it, but I tend not to accept that someone is just following orders. I am far more likely to consider them both jointly and severally liable.

That does occasionally lead to a rough interaction with some disposable employee who thinks they have no responsibility for what they are currently doing, but I care not at all for that kind of excuse. You picked up that phone, not uber. If you hit someone while looking at it, that was your poor choice.

Of course, I would almost certainly also try to sue uber if I was hit by an uber driver and they claimed their employer was partially at fault. Creating unsafe work conditions which harm bystanders is not acceptable either.

I should also point out that both deliveries and cabs predate cell phones by quite a while. It clearly is not necessary, even if it may be convenient. Needing to pull over to use the phone seems like a minor thing overall.

Also, the cop thing explains why it is a somewhat dangerous field. Most cops who die on the job die in car accidents. That seems odd, until you consider what happens when you tell an average driver they can ignore safety rules. The thing is, that rule is for their own safety. If they were generally interested in dying less, they would wear seat belts.

I agree in full.

That’s why we need unions.

 

[numerobis]

I have a very good layman's understanding of physics. I'd guess on the other hand you probably still believe two 110 story towers (and a 47 story tower) fell symmetrically into their own footprints due to 'fire'.

Ah yes, belief in conspiracy theories, the best way to show how smart you are...

(Saved everyone else the need to read another wall of text though - here's the shortcut to knowing it's not worth your time.)

The username made it clear already but thanks for the confirmation.

 

[numerobis]

The best skill in driving is learning to drive in such a way that you never need to demonstrate your skill.

(I've stolen that from pilots I know, who say it regarding flying.)