Re:Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war
by throw7 on Monday June 06, 2016 @12:16PM
(#11847874)
It's the opposite... knowing an area well usually makes dangerous drivers. Most accidents happen within some miles from home, mainly because one "knows" the area so well one lets their guard down.
Re:Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war
by SilasX on Monday June 06, 2016 @12:48PM
(#11848148)
Or, that result is just an artifact of how most driving happens within a few miles of the driver's home.
If 70% of one's driving is within 5 miles of one's home, but 55% of accidents occur in that radius, then people are indeed safer drivers near their homes -- probably because of familiarity.
Re:Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war
by superuser2 on Monday June 06, 2016 @12:48PM
(#11848142)
"Most accidents are close to home" is a Stat 101 Day 1 example of fallacious statistical reasoning.
Hint: what do nearly all routes driven have in common?
Re:Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war
by LanceH on Monday June 06, 2016 @03:44PM
(#11849712)
I do know that if I never go within 20 miles of my house, I have an 80% chance of living forever.
Re:Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war
by incongruity on Monday June 06, 2016 @12:55PM
(#11848196)
Source? It seems much more likely that most accidents happen within some smallish radius from home because one is much much more likely to be driving there as home is the presumably, on aggregate, most frequent starting or ending point for a person (besides, possibly work or a transit hub, etc.) – the other end points are much more dispersed, but home definitely biases the distribution of driving location and therefore one would expect to see more accidents near home even if the moment by moment probability of getting into an accident was uniform.
Re:Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war
by cortesoft on Monday June 06, 2016 @01:34PM
(#11848564)
Two people have made contradicting claims, neither with a source.
Unless there is evidence stating otherwise, I am going to go with the null hypothesis that people drive the same no matter where they are.
Re:Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war
by breischl on Monday June 06, 2016 @12:30PM
(#11848009)
Certainly knowing an area can breed inattention, or risky behavior based on familiarity. My hunch is that it still works out to be safer on average, but admittedly I have no data for that.
I was always under the impression that accidents happen close to home because that's where people spend most of their time so they get a lot more chances to have an accident there.
Re:Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war
by mikeash on Monday June 06, 2016 @12:50PM
(#11848162)
Most accidents happen near home because most driving happens near home.
Re:Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war
by pc86 on Monday June 06, 2016 @03:29PM
(#11849592)
A flash mob of commuters is going to know whether a stop is 2-way or 4-way (there are signs), and they are going to know what the speed limit is (there are signs). If someone is as attentive as they need to be while driving, it's irrelevant whether the park is a playground or there are three schools nearby or whether there are kids in a given house. I don't know about you, but if I'm somewhere I've never been before because I'm going around a traffic jam, I am even more attentive than normal.
If someone isn't as attentive as they need to be, that's a different problem altogether.
I know that the streets near my house are filled with kids because of the three schools nearby that use the park as a playground, that almost (not quite) every other intersection is a two-way stop instead of a four-way, and that even though the streets are wide the speed limit is 25.
A flash mob of commuters is not going to have any of those advantages, and they'll be trying to route-find at the same time, so they are going to be less safe drivers. And they're probably going to be frustrated from dealing with traffic and going too fast on top of it.
>>If the street has insufficient safety measures on it
"Sufficient safety measures" is a function of the traffic load. eg, 2-way stops work fine with small volumes of traffic, but not at all for large volumes. Changing safety measures takes lots of time and some money - they cannot possibly react quickly enough to deal with flash mobs of commuters.