A lot of the lowering of vehicle deaths is due to automatic stability control in SUV size cars and even collision sensing automatic braking. In other words, instead of surviving collisions, we are increasingly not having collisions.
Both of those farmers would still be alive, if they had used some common sense
it’s especially sad, because it didn’t have to happen. I’m assuming no drinking involved, so it was really just extremely poor judgement
All the stability control, collision sensing, automatic braking, etc., couldn’t have saved those farmers
I’m not an engineer, but that technology has been out a few years, I’ve worked on some of it, read up on it, and it couldn’t have helped those farmers.
I don’t understand why people still think they can beat the train. Everybody knows people get killed every year, when illegally crossing the tracks. It’s not as if it isn’t common knowledge. Why take a chance? I suppose every one of them thought it couldn’t happen to them?
I have a relative who races to beat trains at RR crossings including driving around the gates. She says she doesn’t care but I sure as hell do and won’t ride with her driving.
People who drive like that are selfish. They don’t endanger only themselves, they risk passengers in the car and risk train crews and passengers. Train crews who endure hitting a car at a crossing have to live with that grisly memory as do the emergency responders who have to retrieve the bloody mess of what once was a living person. But wantonly reckless drivers believe thrill driving is only and all about themselves.!
For me, I’d buy an intermediate (Accord/Fusion/Camry/etc.) instead of a compact to get some of that benefit. Not a tank, not a 3 ton SUV.
Yeah, but you’re rational. Societally speaking, that makes you an oddball. Look at how many idiots are running out to the nearest dealership waving fistfuls of cash, just desperate to buy an SUV again now that fuel prices have dropped. As though the price of gas will never go up again.
People are irrational in general, and they’re especially so when it comes to things that scare them.
Hell, a discredited, de-licensed quack doctor and a former porn model claim that vaccines cause autism and suddenly we’ve got measels, mumps, whooping cough, and a slew of other diseases that many younger doctors have never seen outside of an archaic textbook because vaccines had wiped them out in the developed world, making a vigorous comeback.
One inept moron brings a shoe full of explosives on a plane, and can’t even detonate them because his foot sweat got the fuse wet, and the country invests billions in new security equipment and makes everyone take off their shoes before boarding so they can be run through scanners that can’t detect the type of explosives he used anyway.
Fear is one hell of an effective motivator for irrational people, and so if enough stuff comes out about “bigger is safer” then they’ll be running out to buy the biggest land barge they can afford, and then they’ll run over the rest of us with them.
I have a relative who races to beat trains at RR crossings including driving around the gates. She says she doesn't care but I sure as hell do and won't ride with her driving
In many states that’s a hefty fine. Some states - over $1,000.
@MikeInNH, as well it should be!
Agreed.
@B.L.E.
And, our response to that has been in part, “let’s raise the speed limits”. A “rational” for higher speed limts is the increased survivability during accidents of it’s participants. It’s like, everyone is a statistic and a certain number of deaths is allowed at the expense of getting somewhere quicker. Just as an example, If 50% of all accidents resulted in the death of an occupant of the car involved in one on a particular highway at it’s speed limit of 55mph, how likely would we be to raise the speed limit to 70 mph ? Hardly. How likely too would we keep building cars with more powerful motors…cars that have no use in towing or carrying heavy loads. I guess, we can “blame” safty devices.
From what I have heard, the speed limits are based on economic productivity rather than safety. If we get there faster, we would have more time to work. If we don’t get there, someone else would do the work 
The speed limits are based on economic productivity rather then safety
Perhaps economic reasons are “also” considered. But IMho, speed limts are not raised for one reason alone with no concern for safety. The reason given in our state makes no mention of economic productivity, though many would like to sleep later, drive faster and still make work. It was given here because people are generally driving their “comfort speed” which I feel over the years means cars are handling better and people feel safer doing it.
I don’t think any agency would go along with any reason to increase speeds If they thought modern cars could not safely do it regardless of what the official reason was. If everyone suddenly owned a 1957 Chevy with a 283, perfectly capable of cruising at 85, speed limits would stay at 70 in areas where they are and not increased for safety resons. Smart drivers don’t drive death traps very fast and, they stop buying them ( early Ford Broncos) as soon as they find out the accident and death rates are high in them. And, if everyone owned an old Ford Bronco, I don’t feel their comfort zone would be 75 plus no matter what it had for a motor and no matter who was about to get their job because they overslept…️
I read on the old Car Talk about General Motors running a BLACK BOX test on several models in an effort to determine the most common situations in which vehicles were wrecked. And while there was a vast range of circumstances on all the various models across the country there was a very common occurance in pickup trucks in the south. In a significant proportion of serious crashes the last conversation recorded was “here, hold my beer.” and after a pause, “now watch this.”
If you really want drivers to get to work more quickly, eliminating stops wherever possible will be more productive than raising speed limits. Overpasses, synchronized traffic signals, merging lanes, etc. Most of us totally overestimate how much time speeding saves and at the same time totally underestimate how much time stopping costs us.
I’ll take a free flowing non stop 65 mph route with few and far between towns to go through over a stop-wait-and-go 75 mph speed limit route that has a traffic jam every 30 miles or so any day.
Traffic engineers actually have very limited control over things like speed limits and “traffic controls” (speed limits, stop signs, rotaries, etc.). They either comply with countless federal standards or they lose federal highway funds.
For starters, I believe we could change well over half of our stop signs into yield signs with no measurable increase in traffic accidents. Traffic engineers should be in charge of timing the lights, not the chamber of commerce.
Strange, when ever the power around here goes off in the small town we live in, and the trafic lights go out, the traffic runs much more smoothly with not nearly the same “back up” . I don’t pretend that would remain that way if it went on longer then a day. One intersection in particular has a dozen or so tractor trailor rigs over an hours time that have to make a particularly tough corner. They would yield to NO ONE of the lights were replaced with signs.
@dagosa; Thanks for the link on Main’s logic, it makes sense.
You guys are lucky you don’t live in Southern CA. It is stop and go no matter what pretty much all the time. And when the traffic light goes out, at least in my neighborhood (planned community), it is hell. Just the other day I saw the lights were out and had to call my wife to get out earlier. Nobody wants to wait and they are jam the intersection. These are wide roads with speed limits of 50 MPH and a lot of cars that have to make left turns/etc.
BScar, thank you sincerely for those videos. They confirm indisputably what many of us believe, that while size matters, design matters more… unless other variables are added too. I only wish they’d pointed out the actual difference in inertia between the 60mph that the Landy was going in the side impact video and the 40mph that the vehicles in the other videos were going, and elaborated more on the effects of the energy vector of the side impact sequence… and how little of a difference it made to the driver. Very different than a headon.
I wish I could get that “fifth gear” show. I’d like to see a lot more of it. They did a fantastic job with these videos.
Sorry about your reckless relative, @Marnet. I have relatives who are engineers and conductors, and hitting people is the one thing they really hate about their jobs (which they mostly love). It’s a fact of life that anyone who does those jobs long enough will eventually hit a vehicle or pedestrian. In the case of vehicles it is especially frightening as it can be dangerous to the train crew.
I just hope a cop sees your relative going around a gate and writes an expensive ticket. It’s sometimes the best way to teach a lesson. Of all the bone-headed things people do, this is one that I have about the hardest time understanding. Trains are huge and fast and can’t go around you or just stop.