Apps are a plausible contributor. But I also noticed that some new cars ship with infotainment systems that consist solely of a (bad) touchscreen; as new cars slowly replace old ones, the number of cars with actual physical buttons for the music player or radio is dwindling. This is awful because the lack of physical buttons prevents the tactile feedback needed to operate the device without having to look at it.
Luckily, some manufacturers go the other route and put music controls as paddles on the steering wheel, which is amazingly useful.
Also, the widespread 'safety feature' of cars refusing to pair bluetooth while in motion may actually defeat the point. If one forgets to pair in the beginning, they may just keep using the phone when the need arises -- when a notification arrives, the phone rings, or they remember they want to stream some music.
As a cyclist in SF, Uber/Lyft drivers are the most dangerous thing going. They're driving by staring at their phone's map for directions and pickup/dropoff. Once they stop, they stare at their phone for the next ride. Very little situational awareness.
It'd be nice if there was some sort of way for them to indicate they drive erratically. Perhaps by painting their cars all yellow or something...
I'm of the belief that while phones have contributed, it's just not hard enough to drive anymore. Try driving a manual shift, non power steering vehicle some time and using your phone. That's the world the roads were built for, not this ultra easy, power assisted, auto-speed control, auto-lane control world where you don't even feel the speed difference between 60 and 90.
I used to hear people say they couldn't drive without the radio because they "needed the distraction". I never got that. Isn't driving supposed to be the only thing you're doing while driving?
All the hands free apps in the world can't solve split focus. Even a bluetooth, voice activated system requires you to commit brain cycles to the conversation that's coming through that will take away from your ability to drive.
We sit and argue about how bad context switching is, how important it is in our careers as developers to focus on what we're doing, then we build apps and devices that are competing to be the best attention stealing devices they can be.
What does a journalist think when he writes something like "biggest spike in traffic death in 50 years"? The NYT even has a nice plot, that clearly shows that there are two, perhaps three significant, spikes in traffic death, and overall traffic death were reduced to a third of the late seventies. I mean I just eyeball the plot, but to me it seems the story is that there is a plateau since ~2010.
As an aside, sometimes I wonder about how much more efficient we are today due to smartphones. Places where we've lost time:
- at the stoplight, the driver in front of you is too busy looking down to notice the light has changed
- in the bathroom, people check social media on the toilet
- on the sidewalk, folks walk slower because they're pre-occupied with texting
- meeting up with friends, it's more acceptable to be late because one can always send a last minute update, "I'll be there in 10 minutes!" (read: just got on lyft)
- even talking with people present: "Sorry, could you please repeat that? I was just responding to an email."
I know of digital detoxes (gag), but the inevitable seems to be this distracted-presence as our new reality (until we go full virtual-reality).
The UK, Germany and Austria have banned the use of phones in cars entirely with a whitelist of permitted uses (like passively using it for navigation). I am pretty sure that is something that is happening all over Europe now.
Not necessarily just apps, how about IOS: The worst for me is the delay in rendering the bar that occupies the top of the screen when navigation is in use or when tethering is in use. I often look at the screen, then tap, but in between those events the bar appears and receives my click.
It's nearly always inconvenient to get the phone back to the intended screen.
It seems that the delayed appearance of the bar is an intentional UI 'feature' because in all cases the state is known prior to waking the phone.
Incredibly misleading title/premise.
Should be titled: "Traffic deaths slightly spike, but remain lower than 2008 or any other year after 1956."
It has increased slightly since 2011, but less than 10%. What we might be seeing is that vehicle deaths has plateaued. We kept seeing decreases because technology kept being introduced (e.g. seat belts, air bags, ABS brakes, crumple zones, partial overlap resistance, safety cages, better safety testing, etc). That kind of slowed at the end of the 2000s and is now picking up again (e.g. automatic braking, lane keep assist, blind spot warning, cross traffic alert, backup cameras, full automation, etc).
The whole article is trying to manufacture a story out of statistical noise. We'd need more data (more years) to even start to speculate on an actual increase in deaths.
I've seen so many drivers either texting or using their phones while driving and not paying attention to traffic signals, stop signs, and pedestrian crossings. I wish there was a way to stop smartphones from displaying notifications and other things that distract users.
We need automatic driving so people can remain connected. Volvo has the right vision. See their commercial.[1]
(\Volvo is about to be the first with production automatic driving. Next year, Volvo will put 100 self-driving cars on the road with real customers driving. They'll only self-drive on certain roads in Gothenburg at first. The user is not required to watch the road, and if anything goes wrong, Volvo accepts full responsibility. Tesla talks big, but Volvo gets it and has it.
I drive three to four hours a day in Los Angeles a few times a week, mostly on the 405. The number of people I see looking down or down an to the right at their phones is staggering.
Now I can call it from afar because there's a commonality to the lack of speed control and lane keeping. They meander left-right on the lane, don't maintain speed and break abruptly as they look at traffic and have to re-synchronize with it.
So, yeah, I don't know if I'd blame apps in particular but the advent of "smart" phones is definitely having an impact on our highways and, from what I see often enough, it isn't positive.
Blame apps?
No, that's secondary. Blame smartphones.
Perhaps that too is secondary. Blame humans.
With cars being built to safety standards that make cars from even 1-2decades ago seem like tin cans, - spike in traffic deaths as I see it is likely due to: 1) distracted driving/apps 2) increase in prescription pill usage/drunk driving. I don't think it's #2 at all.
I don't need statistics to tell me that I am on of few drivers that puts my telephone in my pocket/center console so that I don't look at it. I will cop to hands free telephone talking and I admit it makes me a worse driver, but at least I have my eyes on the road. Bad journalism or not this is a real, infuriating, DANGEROUS, and completely preventable problem. I also can't believe how many people don't want to hear that they are doing something that makes them much more dangerous and much more likely to have an accident. I guess people just don't "feel" like it's wrong if they're sober. I am hoping that autonous cars are cheap and safe before my 9 year old starts driving. People don't seem capable in general of choosing either texting or driving and not both.
Every time I ride a taxi or something I'm stunned by how many drivers I see futzing around with their phones. I don't find it hard to believe.
> When distracted driving entered the national consciousness a decade ago, the problem was mainly people who made calls or sent texts from their cellphones. The solution then was to introduce new technologies to keep drivers’ hands on the wheel.
Which by the way don't help
I'm not sure if it's apps alone. At least in The Netherlands I'm seeing multiple reasons for this (we are also seeing a spike in accidents):
* Cars are too easy to drive. Drivers have no clue about speed and danger. This is especially true for trucks. You can steer tons with your finger, but you have no idea about the real powers going on.
* Individualization: The 'fuck you' way of driving.
* Social media.
This appears to be a false premise, traffic deaths per miles driven shows a rather steady decline according to wikipedia.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths...
This article neglected to mention the apps most often used while driving, map apps.
The author neglected to mention that miles driven in the United States increased by a record 107.5 billion last year, up 3.5% [0]. Even at 2014's all-time low death rate of 1.08 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled [1], that increase in driving would lead us to expect 1,161 more deaths on the roads. There were actually 2,417 (7.4%) more deaths in 2015 than in 2014, so the increase in driving accounts for "only" 48% of the increase in deaths.
What accounts for the rest? More notable than the increase in deaths is that the death rate increased from 1.08 per 100 million VMT to 1.12 (3.7%), only the second year-on-year increase in the death rate in the past two decades. The only other increase in the death rate occurred between 2011 and 2012, and the biggest decreases in the death rate over the past two decades occurred in 2007–8 and 2008–9.
What was happening in those years? First the Great Recession, then an economic recovery. The years of the Great Recession were saw the steepest declines in miles driven in decades, and the last several years of economic recovery have seen the sharpest increases in driving (to an all-time high last year). The recession years were also the only years vehicle registrations fell in recent decades, and the number of licensed drivers flatlined for the first time since the previous recession in the early 2000s; licenses and registrations ticked up again during the recovery years, and were up strongly in 2014 [2].
So we saw the death rate fall as the recession hit and people drove less, fewer people got licensed to drive, and fewer vehicles were on the road. Then during the recovery we saw the only increases in the death rate in decades, as people started driving more and more new drivers got licensed and hit the roads.
Here's a hypothesis: the death rate fell sharply during the recession because (a) fewer cars were on the road, making roads safer, and especially because (b) the cohort of drivers changed, shifting older, more experienced, and more cautious as fewer young people (who were hit hardest by the economic downtown, and who have the highest rate of death by car) could afford to drive. Then during the recovery those changes reversed and people began to die on the roads at a higher rate.
Corollary: this article about apps causing driving deaths is mostly journalistic nonsense.
0. http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/travel_monitoring/...
1. http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx
2. https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2014/d...
No mention of lower gas prices which means more driving ?
I'll be curious to see if this had a bigger impact than apps.
The article fails to provide any statistics to show that apps are the cause. It just publishes a few case reports where apps were involved in an accident, and notes an uptick in traffic fatalities.
I think apps have reduced my chance of causing a traffic death:
My cognitive load for driving is much less than it used to be.
I no longer need to scan my environment for street signs, store signs or exit signs. I never need to look at a physical map/notes. If I miss a turn/exit, I'll recover. I don't have to suddenly shift lanes because I'll be in the correct lane a kilometer or two before the actual exit. Confusing signs telling me which lane to use are a non-issue.
I'll also drive fewer kilometers because of optimized routing. Sometimes it's more, but that's because I'll be diverting around congestion. I can also wait out the traffic and know exactly when to leave at a time that has fewer cars on the road.
Music streaming apps mean I don't have to fumble through radio stations, or clunky physical media.
I think someone wants to sell some more hands free solutions before the holiday season, so lets use some bogus "evidence" to make choices easier.
Oh look, it just may happen that some tech companies are offering some that aren't selling well !
You'll probably can't prevent this. That's why cars should be self-driving asap and common safety features like autonomous emergency braking, lane assist have to be mandatory in the meantime.
I don't know why this is bothering me...
But does anyone know why the title wasn't: "largest spike in..." As opposed to "biggest spike in..."?
I wonder if mobile phones have been responsible for more deaths or more lives saved over the past 10 years, and how you could attempt to calculate it.
If one believes the premise, this is a situation where better voice control could literally save lives, as well as my sanity.
"Text John"
"I'm sorry, I can't do that right now"
...
http://www.thedrive.com/opinion/5979/we-need-an-nra-type-lob...
Ill admit, I have not read it yet, I'm reading an ecology paper currently, but I will read it tonight.
what about the increasingly number of auto-vehicles? how about the increase in the speeds people travel at? how about the materials the cars are made nowadays compared to 50 years ago?
This link takes me to the login page.
Other side of the coin is that law makers who have held up self driving cars and govt not funding enough grants is to blame
Expected to see a nice big chart showing the spike. was disappointed so didn't read the article :\
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Headline: "Blame Apps"
Evidence given in the article:
- "Safety experts say" that it's true. The experts are not named or quoted. No evidence or reasoning is given to support the claim.
- Highway fatalities are up this year. However, they're still significantly down from 2007, when the iPhone was first introduced. Mobile has been booming for almost a decade - if we should "blame apps", why hasn't it been a concern before now?
- One driver who caused a fatal accident was using Snapchat shortly before the crash. This driver was also going at 115 mph. It goes without saying, therefore, that Snapchat is to blame, not speeding or general recklessness.
- "Insurance companies are convinced", according to one Robert Gordon. Gordon is actually named and quoted. However, the quote again doesn't provide evidence or reasoning.
Maybe it is actually true. I don't know. However, the evidence given is nowhere near strong enough to be convincing. There's also the issue that newspapers are direct competitors with the apps they're railing against (for ad dollars), and have been losing badly: http://charman-anderson.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/newsp....