Safely?

Motor vehicles are the most dangerous things we interact with on a daily basis.

The US doesn't even factor in safety of non-occupants in safety requirements.

Modern cars are safer than older cars, but they are still very dangerous.

> Motor vehicles are the most dangerous things we interact with on a daily basis.

Hardly. Self-inflicted injury leading to death is the #3 leading cause of death in the US. Mostly, that's ladders and falls that kill you. Suicides are more common than car accident fatalities. _YOU_ are the most dangerous thing you interact with on a daily basis.

The flu is more common. Emphysema is more common. So is Alzheimer's.

Most car accidents are single vehicle accidents where the driver was drunk or impaired.

Again, _you_ are dangerous to yourself. Which makes sense, you have to be around yourself all the time, so you _would_ be the most likely cause of your own death.

> The US doesn't even factor in safety of non-occupants in safety requirements.

The vehicle can never be made safe for these circumstances. The road and pedestrian walkways _can_ be, though.

> The vehicle can never be made safe for these circumstances.

This is not true at all. Vehicles have been getting taller and heavier, which has led to worse outcomes for pedestrians and cyclists. We could be going the other direction, but instead we're continuing to make it worse without regulation.

[1] https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/vehicles-with-higher-more-v... [2] https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/new-study-suggests-todays-s... [3] https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/higher-point-of-impact-make...

Ironically, it's regulation that made them like this. Obama-era emissions rules stipulated that trucks had to get a certain fuel economy, unless they were heavy duty trucks, which did not have the same requirements. The option was to either make all trucks less capable to meet requirements, or to start selling almost every truck as a heavy duty truck. Nobody would want to buy a truck that cost just as much or more while delivering less, so everybody got jacked up mega trucks instead.

While it definitely contributed to it, the trend towards SUV/crossovers was already underway[1][2] far before with CAFE standards[3]. It's also just higher margins for the auto companies (mostly similarly priced components, but upcharge for size), so they've been pushing it everywhere. While not drastic as US, the same trend can be seen outside US even without the same laws[4].

[1] https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2018/05/the-changing-mix-... [2] https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/research/the-rise-of-th... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy [4] https://www.forbes.com/sites/judeclemente/2019/10/23/suvs-a-...

> Most car accidents are single vehicle accidents where the driver was drunk or impaired.

That seems unlikely to be true. Most fatal car accidents are single vehicle, but I doubt that most car accidents are single vehicle. It wasn’t immediately obvious how to search for reliable data there (since many single vehicle minor accidents would likely go unreported into a reliable/authoritative database).

Among fatal crashes, I found data to state that the majority of single car fatals involved excessive speed or alcohol, but not data to say that single car alcohol-related fatals were a majority of fatal crashes or of overall fatalities. The data I did find suggested that around 1/3 of car crash fatalities were alcohol-related (though some sources were as low as an 1/8th).

>Hardly. Self-inflicted injury leading to death is the #3 leading cause of death in the US. Mostly, that's ladders and falls that kill you. Suicides are more common than car accident fatalities. _YOU_ are the most dangerous thing you interact with on a daily basis.

Isn’t that saying that if you combine all other accidental injuries it edges out cars. So cars are almost as dangerous as all the other things put together? Why are cars broken out into their own category from all the other things? Is it because they are incredibly dangerous?

> The vehicle can never be made safe for these circumstances. The road and pedestrian walkways _can_ be, though.

Pedestrian crash safety standards exist, in Europe, for example. As a result, some European cars offer active pedestrian safety systems that are stripped from North American equivalents. Cars certainly can be designed for passive and active pedestrian safety, and they are notably safer in areas where this is a requirement.

Modern cars are safer for the occupants, but more dangerous for everyone else, not only pedestrians and bicyclists, but also occupants of other vehicles.

Bicycles are more dangerous, from what I can tell - about 10x the risk when travelling the same distance. (Due to the lack of safety equipment and the inability to keep up with the prevailing flow of traffic.)

What you're seeing there is the failure of traffic engineers to design safe systems for people outside of a motor vehicle, because they're myopically focused on maximum throughput.

Cars are the ones hitting bicycles, I'm not really sure what you're trying to say here about what the statistics show.

That's not true. According to:

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2011/05/20/1364622...

Most studies that look at it show that fault is about equal in bike/car collisions. Given that, it's worth looking to see what the outcome is - and for the same trip, you'll be safer in a car.

The other biker definitely isn't safer for it.

That's by virtue of being on the riskier vehicle - kind of my point. The choice to ride a bicycle has consequences.

Falls, in general, more commonly kill people than vehicles. It's not a perfect trade for safety. There's always factors that need to be actually measured.

No, they don't.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preventable_causes_of_death#...

I have significant issues with that chart. The source is the authors own work and it's not referenced or published anywhere else. The single reference is a 23 year old CDC report from which the author has extracted ICD codes from incomplete data charts that this report uses as a limited reference.

He also missed the fact that "Other and Non specified" categories include ICD codes that directly specify falls. Just falls from or to various circumstances that aren't covered by the basic W codes.

It's a bad chart, "They appear not to," would be more accurate, but I tend to think this chart was made with appearances as a priority over accuracy and understanding.

Alright, a different and more recent source shows it being significantly closer but still with motor vehicles leading: https://www.nsc.org/in-the-newsroom/nsc-statement-on-new-cdc...

Well, if you accept their notions of "preventable" and the categorizations that result. A vehicular death from DUI is still preventable in the vehicular category? Are we suggesting the vehicle was the primary cause or the alcohol? Are we trying to make vehicles safe enough for drunks to drive? If not, then this scheme is a little out of whack for what I was trying to get at. Or what anyone who doesn't have an prejudiced agenda against vehicles would want to know.

Those statistics also include pedestrians who got hit, and motorcyclists who met the end of their road. Those two together are 32% of the total. Again, is the vehicle at fault here, or risky behavior? Which are we trying to measure?

At face value, you are right, though; however, it's still pretty close and the rate of change suggests a crossing. In either case, I know which hazard I would consider more pertinent to avoid in my own daily life. You can drive defensively and just not drink, you can't exactly climb a ladder defensively no matter how sober you are.

Alcohol is far more dangerous.

Lack of exercise too

I think interacting with the standard American diet is many multiples more dangerous to the average person than getting into car.

If the built environment didn’t make them unsafe to use, e-bikes use a fraction of the battery and weight and cover most use cases, because most people are not doing things like moving a couch most of the time.

The US has some of the most bonkers bike lanes I’ve ever seen; my favorite is a bike lane sandwiched between a main travel lane and a high-speed right-turn slip lane.

those are bonkers and yet, when there is no bike lane, it's usually even worse

I’m not convinced it’s worse - I often bike on the road with a cycle lane next to me.

Bins, rubbish, man holes, street signs, uneven surfaces etc etc ruin bike lanes.

In large parts of the US, suburban distances and very bad biking weather make e-bikes cover relatively few use cases: When a shopping trip is a 15 minute car drive, and a typical commute to work is 40 minutes, the e-bike doesn't win at all. Perfect lanes don't cut bad distances, 100F summers or -10F winters. And often yes, what we see in US bike infrastructure is unsafe, leading to basically no cyclist using it.

Bikes are great when your development pattern is Netherlands-like: Not dense enough for serious public transport to the home, or to do everything on foot, yet not so light that many trips go past 10 miles. I bet there's a few large metro areas that could support this, but in a lot of the country, it's not about unsafe lanes.

I think there is more here than meets the eye.

The modern suburban arterial often has light cycles measured in a few minutes, which adds up if you're hitting a bunch of them.

Dedicated bike infrastructure, even at high volumes, does not require coming to a full stop, so while the top speed might be lower, the average is more competitive than it appears. And grade separating a bike lane is a lot easier than a whole suburban road.

Weather is not a major factor in ridership given good infrastructure.

On what planet? Finns ride bikes in very cold weather, but what do you do about New Orleans, where it's 75 F at 4 AM with 100% humidity? You absolutely need showers at work for anyone who is going to bike in because they will be covered in sweat.

A lot more people in this world live in the tropics than the frigid north.

Frigid north? What are you implying?

It’s cold close to the poles, right? Been that way every time I’ve gotten near.

Maybe it would not be that cold, if

If what?

"safely" because other people also have heavy vehicles (if we put aside transportation vehicles, that can be regulated)

People do on average ver small distances, so speed isn't worth it