Chicago traffic fatality rate is 6.0, that of Utrecht (where I live) it’s 2.6. (per 100.000 inhabitants). Homicide rate Chicago is 22.8, Utrecht 0.7
You had a good point until you revealed it was made by AI.
AI agents get office tasks wrong around 70% of the time. Your figures may be correct, but they are more likely not to be. If you had done your own research this would not have been an issue.
I second this. Pulling any info from ANY AI model without verifying it is dangerous. IMO anything that is AI generated deserves to be smacked with a ban hammer.
Chicago civilians were abducted in the early 1980s and were experimented on. some went back for Johnny and never returned.
Neither of these topics should even be drawing media attention, considering how frequent and non-notable they are. They just report on this stuff every day because it’s cheaper and easier than exclusively finding and reporting on real notable local news, and television news needs filler content for selling ad spots. Ever had a day where there was no news, and they ended early?
Cars are not designed to inflict harm. This cheap false equivalence tells us a lot.
Yeah, cars aren’t even designed to kill people and they still do it just as much as guns. They’re way too dangerous to be legal.
That doesnt make any sense. Since card have other purposes than killing they can be legal.
Since guns only exist to kill they should not be legal. But it is a fight against wind mills since americans love their ability to kill who they want more than they love their kids.
Are you saying that OP is making a “cheap false equivalence”? They are commenting on news coverage, so I don’t follow what you mean.
Yes, OP is very much doing that. They are commenting on how they think that news coverage should do a false equivalence on those two things.
Right. I can’t ride my gun to work or the grocery store. I get that there’s a lot of negatives associated with car culture, but it’s a tool in a way that firearms are not.
An automobile, at the end of the day, is a luxury item. A toy. Humanity existed for most of its history without cars, and even today, you can get to work or the grocery store without one. (Granted, often not easily, but that’s only because we’ve made it difficult to get there any other way. But making it difficult was a deliberate policy choice designed to exclude poor people.) One could argue that the automobile is an anti-tool, as its use is making our lives materially worse (traffic violence, health impacts, pollution, ecosystem destruction, climate change, the burden on government and personal budgets), but that ignores a car’s major function as a cultural identity marker, and for wealth signaling. We humans value that a lot. Consider, as but one common example, the enormous pickup truck used as a commuter vehicle, known as a pavement princess, bro-dozer, or gender-affirming vehicle.
In that way, they’re exactly the same as firearms, which are most often today used as a cultural identity marker. (Often by the same people who drive a pavement princess, and in support of the same cultural identity.) Firearms are also also luxury toys in that people enjoy going to the firing range and blasting away hundreds of dollars for the enjoyment of it. But beyond that, the gun people have a pretty legit argument, too, that their firearms are tools used for hunting and self-defense. They are undeniably useful in certain contexts, and no substitute will do. One certainly wouldn’t send mounted cavalry with sabers into war today.
Your car is just as dangerous as a gun. You’re not allowed to wave your gun around at McDonald’s, so why can you drive your car through it? It’s corruption. Cars were going to be banned in cities before the auto industry started passing bribes around.
Cars, roads, and car culture are inflicting harm though, even if it’s seen as a neutral tool by many
Lots of things cause harm while also doing good things. It’s a balance.
The problem is when that balance skews more one way than another.
I hope the next “acceptable casualty” of car culture is you
This doesn’t super surprise me. Driving should be taken more seriously. You’re controlling a 2 ton death machine and it shouldn’t be taken lightly.
We should be retaking driver tests every seven to ten years to keep our license.
Poorly designed roads, signage, and intersections cause a lot of accidents. Think on ramps that throw you into traffic, and off-ramps that want you to get over three lanes after exiting in order to turn right at your cross street.
Lack of traffic enforcement drives up insurance costs and reduces city revenues. Some states have cheaped out on the reflective paint used to stripe roads, so you can’t see lane dividers in the rain. More of that wonderful “deregulation” and people not wanting to pay taxes I guess.
It also doesn’t help that many states are getting rid of car inspections for some bizarre reason. Not great to avoid shit falling off of the car in front of you when you’re going 70 mph.
Yeah my state has gotten rid of inspections and it’s baffling to me.
Texas?
Mine has been arguing this point for a while. Apparently there wasn’t really a drop of issues here when they went into place, so they question the usefulness.
That said, they’re just done incorrectly in the first place. They are done by dealers/shops that lose money in doing them and are instead banking on charging you lots of money for problems they find and hope you get fixed with them. They need be done at an independent run spot with no interest in anything but safety and no way to be bought out.
Wouldn’t the dealers / shops by the most motivated to find the problems, if that’s the case?
Over my 25 yrs driving and getting inspected here, I’ve found a mix of issues… I always inspect my car before dropping it off, most times in their own parking lot.
- good old boys that don’t care and pass it without obviously checking because they know they won’t make money on it anyway.
- ones that talk down to my wife because she must just believe any BS they make up (until I get involved, call them out, the apologize and I don’t go back)
- dealers that make problems for you to have to fix (had two places… one obviously shoved a screwdriver through my CV boot that was fine when I drove it in and wanted $989 to fix. The other said I was missing lug nuts that I know were there when I dropped it off and wanted to charge me $5/each plus $100 installation.)
- places that are actually good and fair.
One issue with the first is that the state doesn’t actually pay them enough per hour that it makes sense to take their time and do it right… they just crank them through finding obviously high money making issues and skipping the rest.
They’re so motivated, they find problems that don’t exist!
Where I live, car inspections have never been a thing. Some cities in my state mandate emissions tests, which I think include a basic inspection. Nothing at all in my county. Just pay to re-register it every year.
It would have to be a written test to do any good. And for that to be administered properly costs money.
Yes, safety costs money.
it shouldn’t be taken lightly
Well, of course not. It’s 2 tons!
I’ll get out…
Not gonna make much of a difference unless you take your mum with you.
Ohhh!! Hahahahahajaj that was a good burn! Hahahahahahah
Road deaths are typically viewed as a risk we take while going about our day, while firearm deaths are either an intentional act, or someone doing something very stupid.
How many people drive a car daily in this area?
Yeah heart disease kills more than either but we don’t hold candlelight vigils to ban butter. Because food is a normal part of life. I know a lot of people grow up with guns, but to me, guns are weird. I don’t know anyone who owns a gun. Not that I know of anyway. I have never held a gun. I have never seen a gun, except strapped to a cop walking by. I hope to never touch a gun (or be touched by one).
Nobody should grow up in car culture either. It’s not safe for kids to be surrounded by Death Zones. It leads to kids either being kept inside all day and getting brain atrophy, or dying on the road. Not to mention all the asthma. Raising a child in a car neighbourhood is abuse.
I’ve used firearms before, including doing smallbore shooting, it can be a lot of fun.
But they’re also a massive responsibility, and I don’t plan to actually own one.
I mean, how many times have we seen news reports of people intentially driving into protesters? I do wish they had the leading cause of death for comparison tho. Probably cancer, looks like a low-estimate is 6000 people a year just in Chicago.
Driving is orders of magnitude more likely to kill you at any second you’re in a car, than flying is at any second you’re in a plane.
People who are terrified of flying will get in a car and drive like a monkey like it’s no big deal.
Phobias are, by definition, irrational.
Driving is orders of magnitude more likely to kill you at any second you’re in a car, than flying is at any second you’re in a plane.
This is an oft-repeated factoid that comes straight from the airlines bending statistics to meet their desires. It’s true that on a per mile basis, planes are safer. But on a per trip basis, cars actually win on safety.
And this makes some sense once you actually think about it. A car ride is typically going to be a frequent, short distance; An average of like 90% of all driving happens within 5 miles of the person’s home. Whereas air trips are infrequent and cover huge distances. So the accident-per-trip stat is watered down with cars having lots of trips, but the short distances tend to inflate the accident-per-mile number. In contrast, the accident-per-mile stat is watered down with planes covering a lot of miles per trip, but the infrequent nature of the trips means the accident-per-trip number is inflated.
And airlines conveniently only ever quote the accident-per-mile number when comparing safety statistics, because they have a vested interest in making airplanes seem statistically safer. If anything, seeing this factoid repeated is just a reminder that even math can be intentionally biased to fit a certain agenda.
Per trip is a completely useless metric as you say, that’s the reason.
So the point you’re making is that going far away is dangerous? No shit.
My point is that the “planes are safer” stat is, at best, disingenuous. Any single trip is going to be more dangerous in a plane. But people tend to fly less than they drive, so cars are cited as being more dangerous.
They should fear neither. Orders of magnitude relative risk to a minute risk is still very little.
I think the math works out that each year the average American has roughly 1 in 10,000 chance of dying in a car crash and a 1 in 200 chance of being injured in a car crash (Though the second stat likely leaves out a lot of unreported injuries). The average American rolls those dice once a year, so plan to live til 75? 1 in 133 chance that you die in a car crash, >1 in 3 chance you’re injured in a car crash at some point.
I’ve known two people who died in car crashes, and at least several dozen who were injured in crashes including several really gnarly pedestrian bystander injuries. And I’m barely middle aged.
Dumb question: which one draws more media attention in Chicago?
In my own experience (not Chicago), the local news is dominated by where the rush-hour crash is today, while national news talks way more about gun deaths.
I’m going to go with the general vibe of Lemmy here and assume you mean that auto deaths need to get more attention in America. To that I would say there is a general cultural attitude that cars are a necessary evil (even among most people who don’t outright love them, which is a huge demographic), and fixing the zoning and infrastructure would take decades and many tens of billions of dollars to restructure a large city around public transit. Besides bumper-sticker-slogan politics (“more public transit!”) there are precious few real, concrete plans for getting from the current situation to the car-free utopia.
Even then, you’d not eliminate cars entirely. Among the more developed western European nations that are known for good public transit, Ireland seems (at a quick glance) to have the fewest cars per person at 536 per 1,000, while the car-happy US has 850/1,000. So best case, you reduce cars by ~35%.
Gun deaths, on the other hand, are easier to imagine as a problem that can be solved relatively quickly and with less disruption. From an advocacy point of view, it’s the lower-hanging fruit.
there are precious few real, concrete plans for getting from the current situation to the car-free utopia.
Ban cars today and let people figure it out themselves.
Fuck cars and guns, ban both.
cars, like guns, should require a mental check and a license to even purchase and own, be kept in secure storage, and only used in highly regulated locations where safety is guaranteed.
Genuine question: do the lines diverge (and in which direction / how much) if you account for the number of cars / guns per person?
I want to see it broken down into the fatal and non-fatal portions and also the mental health of the cars at the time of the crash.
I want to know how many people got shot while driving and then had a fatal car accident
Oh is today your cake day? You have a slice next to your name.
What is a cake day?
I think it’s the “birthday” of when you signed up for your Lemmy account.
Oh my birthday isn’t for a couple more years.
I think the better stat would be time handling a gun/driving a car.
The average person probably spends about an hour in the car per day (based on some loose numbers I saw online). But I suspect the number of hours holding a gun is a lot less.
Its kinda like the fact that new Yorkers bite more people than sharks. It isn’t because new Yorkers are more likely to bite you, but with eight million people interacting daily the amount of interactions outweighs the odds of a bite.
this is not a valid comparison. the number of people in and around cars–and the amount of interactions that the average person has with a car–vastly outstrips those near or using guns. by at least two orders of magnitude, one would estimate.
it’s like saying that the number of papercuts received is marginally higher than the number of intentional stab wounds and the media only focuses on one.
that’s how it should be. one of those two things impacts a larger percentage of the people that encounter it.
That doesn’t make the comparison invalid, it can just be misleading to those with poor data literacy. Knowing how many “preventable” deaths from each source is valuable, but only if people are planning to do something about it.
No one does. Every road safety measure is pretty universally lobbied against.
