Carws are scawwy

"Spanfeller is a twat" (theaspiringengineer) 04/16/2018 at 08:51 • Filed to: None

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One of my best friend’s parents were just involved in a wreck with a bus, one of them is in the hospital with punctured lungs and blood clots in the brain: he’s stable and getting better but I am still shocked... which made me look up a few numbers

A Mexican highway called the Northern Arc (link) for your time

In the US over !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in car accidents each year, the number in Mexico, a country with 40,000,000 cars, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! deaths per year... My question is... how?

We have forty million cars, which means that a little more than 0.012% of cars are involved in deadly wrecks here. The US has two hundred and sixty three million cars in the road, meaning that a little under 0.014% of cars are involved in deadly wrecks there. But what do these numbers mean? What can we do to make our roads safer?

Data bias:

In the case of Mexico it’s the national statistics institute reporting 4,600 deaths per year, significantly lower than in 1997 where 6,000 people died. However, this report could be underestimating road deaths as wrecks are sometimes not reported, or municipal police officers don’t file the correct reports, and it could be excluding deaths caused by medical complications from the crash.

In the case of the US’ numbers it’s an NGO looking for safer roads. Even if they stand to gain from this number in perhaps more coverage or more donations, it’s normally accepted that road deaths hover around 30,000 per year.

Additionally, nowhere in Mexico is the speed limit higher than 120km/h, where some highways in the US allow for up to 137km/h. But we have way worse enforcement of traffic laws, hence those common internet posts testing a car’s top speed in Mexico.

All the percentages are rough calculations. But it’s still horrifying because one thing is true: even with much tighter laws, better driver examination, tougher crash tests and more car inspections in the US, the United States and Mexico have very similar numbers, which begs the question, are current methods working?

DipodomysDeserti > Spanfeller is a twat 04/16/2018 at 09:10

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I was always amazed at how Mexican drivers managed to avoid getting in wrecks. Despite a complete lack of rules or concern for safety in some areas, I never saw any wrecks when traveling in northern Mexico. It was like they were enchanted. With that said, it’s hard to believe there are only 4,600 road deaths a year.

Spanfeller is a twat > DipodomysDeserti 04/16/2018 at 09:13

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It is, which it’s why I digged deeper and I found nothing.

Statistics in Mexico are hard to come by, specially when talking about anything related to the municipal governments which often suck at doing their jobs and there’s little data handling. However, the only other figure I saw was 24,000 but it’s an unverified report from a single website from a radio show that cites an “investigator” with no public disclosures, where INEGI does disclose where they got their data. it also doesn’t say which year the number represents.

SilentButNotReallyDeadly...killed by G/O Media > Spanfeller is a twat 04/16/2018 at 10:09

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The secondary question is...does it matter? Or at least does it matter to the society in which it is happening. If not then why worry?

The really interesting statistic is not how many get killed. Death is cheap because dead people don’t require any further care. It is the number and extent of injuries that matter.

We have many fewer deaths in Oz in recent decades. But the injury toll remains not so nice...

facw > Spanfeller is a twat 04/16/2018 at 10:21

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Obviously we get a lot of the same stuff, but is the Mexican fleet as a whole as safe as the cars sold in the US? I was under the impression that you get some down-market options that we don’t that might effect passenger safety?

Also, how much do people drive? The US traffic deaths are closely linked to miles driven (as you would expect) which seems to be a main cause of going from around 30k up to around 40k annually. You can see a correlation here:

Spanfeller is a twat > facw 04/16/2018 at 10:25

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More Americans drive, and they drive more. We also see higher incidence in the northern states where people drive much more.

We get worse vehicles, but normally our highways are so bad that you can’t even do 60km/h (arco norte is a glorious exception)

Spanfeller is a twat > SilentButNotReallyDeadly...killed by G/O Media 04/16/2018 at 10:27

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In a high speed crash, current saftey tech could reduce a deathly injury to a life challenging one... We ought to ask ourselves that too, if it’s the safety tech saving people after accidents or better tech and driver ed saving drivers from getting in a wreck in the first place, as always, passive prevention is better than active

My bird IS the word > Spanfeller is a twat 04/16/2018 at 12:19

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Another question, At what point do you have to accept that people just die from things? Is there such a thing as acceptable losses? Aren’t we all going to die in the end?

Im a Christian so these questions don’t bother me.

Spanfeller is a twat > My bird IS the word 04/16/2018 at 12:23

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Dark but true; but I feel leek there’s still space to improve

My bird IS the word > Spanfeller is a twat 04/16/2018 at 16:39

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Nothing wrong with that. I just naturally don’t like the ban-happy rubber room mentality that typically goes with it.

Spanfeller is a twat > My bird IS the word 04/16/2018 at 16:49

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Well, we don’t have any of that rubber room bullshit and our numbers are very similar to yours, We could focus on tougher examinations for drivers and an added effort to offer safe, fast, efficient public transportation, cars today are pretty safe, and in countries like Germany where they have the Autobahns unrestricted in some segments they have less road deaths than the US, with electric cars/ hybrid cars becoming more common everyday we could also have a higher speed limit without causing a significant increase in emissions while saving driver hours which could be used to cut on other expenses/emissions.

It’s very much a 3D problem with many things to consider, it’s fascinating and we don’t have to make driving boring in order to save some lives.

TheRealBicycleBuck > Spanfeller is a twat 04/16/2018 at 17:12

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I find it much more interesting to look at the trends over time. Death rates have been dropping while posted speed limits have been increasing. The best explanation for the trend is that our cars are much  safer than they used to be. In the U.S., the riskiest (statistically) activity a young person can do is take a ride in a car. When we get older, health-related issues are more likely to kill us, but cars reign supreme until our mid-20s.

Even so, as you pointed out, the risk is really, really low. It’s hard to drive down the risk once you get it below 0.1%. How much lower can you go? Is it worth the cost? How much would it drive up vehicle prices? If you determine it’s an infrastructure-related problem, how much are we willing to spend to fix it? If it’s speed-related, what are the societal and business costs for dropping the speed limits?

Every death is a tragedy, but we are willing to accept some risk in order to reduce trip times and keep costs low.