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Re:Dust from Car Brakes More Harmful Than Exhaust, Study Finds by lazide on Sunday February 16, 2025 @02:58AM (#43066230)
I used to be an EMT in the US. I also was an avid motorcycle rider for many, many years. And an avid bicycle rider for even longer.

It is dramatically easier to screw yourself up on bicycles and motorcycles than cars. It’s frankly shocking how stupid someone can be in a modern car and survive.

It doesn’t require another car to kill someone on a motorcycle or bicycle, but the squids tend to filter themselves out pretty quickly. Many of them actively collide with cars due to their own recklessness and/or stupidity, making the statistics somewhat hard to interpret.

Was the 80 year old driving the RV ‘the cause’ of the head on collision, or the 22 year old with the 1.5l super bike illegally passing over a double yellow at 50 over the speed limit around a corner?

I can provide graphic details of who ended up winning in that situation, regardless.

If everyone had to ride instead of drive (including drunks, soccer moms, burnt out graveyard shift workers, medical workers on their second 24 hour shift, retirees, etc), you’d see a lot more dead folks overall.

Because even though cars are also more dangerous to other people, for the most part, those other people are in cars in the US, and the danger still generally cancels out.

Even head on collisions at highway speeds are more survivable than anyone should reasonably be able to expect.

Vehicle vs ped calls are still the worst though.

Protip: don’t get out of your car after an accident on the highway unless you’re really really sure you can see all other traffic. Chances are you can’t, especially at night. Especially when the drunk coming the wrong way on the highway never turned on their headlights. Wait for the firefighters to physically block the road with their rigs first. That was a gnarly call.

Re:Dust from Car Brakes More Harmful Than Exhaust, Study Finds by dijit on Sunday February 16, 2025 @04:32AM (#43066731)
my perspective is someone where the city has been largely built for cycling, which leads to less deaths overall.

Population of Malmo is actually higher than Orlando, FL for example.

Yet, for Skåne (the region where Malmo is; pop: 1,421,781), 25 traffic deaths were recorded in the year 2019[0].

173 road deaths were recorded in Orange County (where Orlando is; pop: 1,429,908), during the same period.[1]

That’s a difference of 7x, and Skåne is one of the largest regions in the country, many places are car dependent - yet the major change is that urban areas are sufficiently dense so can be cycled (even during cold climates) and that there’s dedicated infrastructure for doing so, which eases the traffic burden too.

[0]: https://www.transportstyrelsen.se/globalassets/global/press/...

[1]: https://www.flhealthcharts.gov/ChartsReports/rdPage.aspx?rdR...

Re:Dust from Car Brakes More Harmful Than Exhaust, Study Finds by lazide on Sunday February 16, 2025 @07:50AM (#43067609)
So if everything is different, everything is different?
Re:Dust from Car Brakes More Harmful Than Exhaust, Study Finds by dijit on Sunday February 16, 2025 @01:26PM (#43070270)
Make life require cars: more fatalities.

Seems pretty evident.

Arguably the conditions are better for personal electric vehicles and bicycles in Florida (than the comparatively frigid and rainy conditions of Sweden).

Even the topography is flat[0][1], it's literally the perfect place for cycling, but the US has chosen something else.

So, yes, if things are different they are different: comparable populations, a better climate and an equally flat topography and somehow 7x the amount of deaths; and the only difference is the approach to infrastructure by the county.

[0]: https://en-gb.topographic-map.com/map-c3fdcz/Orange-County/?...

[1]: https://en-gb.topographic-map.com/map-5749m/Malmö/

Re:Dust from Car Brakes More Harmful Than Exhaust, Study Finds by fragmede on Sunday February 16, 2025 @01:33PM (#43070337)
Florida may not get as cold as Sweden, but it's certainly not hurting for rain.

https://247wallst.com/special-report/2024/02/02/discover-the...

Re:Dust from Car Brakes More Harmful Than Exhaust, Study Finds by AnthonyMouse on Monday February 17, 2025 @03:45PM (#43083126)
It also has the opposite problem in terms of temperature. There are days when the wet bulb temperature in Florida requires humans to be in an air conditioned environment because they would otherwise literally die from the heat.
Re:Dust from Car Brakes More Harmful Than Exhaust, Study Finds by ndsipa_pomu on Sunday February 16, 2025 @05:26AM (#43067008)
> If everyone had to ride instead of drive (including drunks, soccer moms, burnt out graveyard shift workers, medical workers on their second 24 hour shift, retirees, etc), you’d see a lot more dead folks overall.

That's rubbish as cyclists/bikers are not the cause of most collisions. Once you remove the majority of car drivers, the number of collisions will plummet along with the severity of those collisions.

(Sedentary disease such as heart disease and type II diabetes will also reduce if more people are using active travel - not so much if they're motorbiking).