Korina

An interesting article about some of the reasons behind the bad driving, beyond the usual distraction.

PS On an unrelated note, may I interest anyone in a corporate BS generator?

Daniel4

I guess we have a bit more sense in Toronto. Sure, stunt driving went up. But the overall fatality and injuries went down 27% and 46%.

Korina

Overall; what about fatalities and injuries outside vehicles? That makes all the difference, as pedestrians don't have 6 airbags and a crumple zone.

indyfabz

A great explanation of something I have felt all along and that I encounter every day walking in the big city around people who are distracted and/or preoccupied. It's particularly bad now that tourist season is here:Wolfe’s scientific interest is in what’s called “Look But Fail to See” errors, such as when one repeatedly proofreads a document but keeps missing a grammatical error someone else picks up their first time through. The term “look-but-fail-to-see” comes from auto accidents, Wolfe said, when drivers tell police that they looked but didn’t see the red light, the other car, or the bicycle rider.

“In many cases you can be pretty damn sure the cyclist was perfectly visible. But the driver isn’t lying, in the sense that the driver didn’t say, ‘Oh look, there’s a cyclist. Maybe I’ll hit him.’ In some meaningful way, they did not see the cyclist or the other victim of the accident,” Wolfe said. “These sorts of errors are going to be influenced by — among other things — how good a set of inferences you’re making at the time, and those inferences are going to be influenced by distraction.”

njkayaker

It is a good explanation.

The idea is kind of old. This is the "classic" demonstration of it;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invisible_Gorilla

Korina

In his book Confessions of a Recovering Engineer, Chuck Mahron applies system 1 and system 2 thinking to driving. Basically, once you become proficient at driving, system 1 takes over and driving becomes automatic, and can miss important cues, like bikes, pedestrians, and gorillas. System 2 thinking would see those cues, but it's exhausting while driving and can't be maintained for long.

njkayaker

When you learn to drive it's all "system 2" and, as you get experience (become more proficient), stuff moves to "system 1".

The idea is to include " important cues, like bikes, pedestrians, and gorillas" in "system 1" thinking.

Daniel4

Here's the breakdown.

Fatalities (2020 vs previous 12 yr average)
Pedestrian: 36% decrease (21 vs 33)
Drivers: 53.8% decrease (7 vs 15)
Motorcycle: increase (8 vs 4)
Cyclists: increase (4 vs 2)

Serious injuries
Pedestrian: 27.6% (105 vs 145)
Drivers: 76% (31 vs 130)
Motorcycle: 12% (35 vs 39)
Cyclists: 46% (26 vs 48)

Korina

Lucky Trono. Here in our little town, we had some incidents early in the year that just don't happen here: two fatalities within a month, one pedestrian one cyclist; and four(!) different drivers who came to a stop, proceeded, and ran into pedestrians and cyclists (fortunately low speed w/no serious injuries), and all drivers said they just didn't see them; again within a (different) month. I'm hoping it was a blip, but I'm not holding my breath.

Paul Barnard

2020 Nationally Boating deaths were up about 25% over 2019.
2021 Nationally Boating deaths were down 14% over 2020, but still well above 2019.

Our data doesn't allow us to nail down why, but our anecdotal observations are that more boaters spent more time on the water. Crowds at boat ramps were crazy.