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Utah State Prof Says Hybrids Don't Kill More Pedestrians
thecarchik writes "Preliminary data seemed to show that hybrids were more likely to be involved in pedestrian crashes or hit cyclists. But now EV enthusiast Mark Larson (he's also an Emeritus Professor of Spanish at Utah State University) has analyzed some additional data and found this not to be the case at all. He used 1994-2008 figures from the Fatality Reporting System maintained by the NHTSA and found that the rate of pedestrian fatalities has in fact fallen over that same period."
Do you have any idea what welding ramming spikes to my Prius will do to my mileage?
Ugh. Lies, damn lies, and statistics. I don't really care whether EVs are more dangerous to blind pedestrians or not, but this is just bad statistics aimed at producing a desired result. The claim is that electric vehicles will not be more dangerous, because hybrids at low speeds are also quiet and there has been no significant change in pedestrian fatalities.
From that one sentence summary, the fundamental flaw in this study should be apparent.
The summary fails to mention that the liked study only focuses on blind people. So blind pedestrians are no more likely to get hit by a hybrid then full sighted pedestrians.
"Maybe this world is another planet's hell"
Aldous Huxley
These stats have nothing to do with hybrids specifically, but just the trend in traffic fatalities. In my area, and I suspect most others, the percentage of cars that are hybrids would be in the low single digits. Looking at overall traffic fatalities and trying to draw a conclusion about something that is such an insignificant factor is useless.
TFA writer is just an EV fanoi.
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Natural Selection removes the slower and less attentive pedestrians out of the gene pool.
Ok TFA isn't bad, in that it makes clear professor Larsons analysis is basically crap. A former professor of spanish failing at stats doesn't warrant a slashdot posting. Overall rates of accidents involving pedestrians are down over the last 10 years, some car makers are working on making sure their vehicles will be audible, and proposed legislation is mostly crap. None of this is news.
How about data analysis by someone who isn't an "enthusiast" and by someone who is qualified?
"...rate of pedestrian fatalities has in fact fallen over that same period" yes, we've been designing pedestrian safe bumpers and hoods in that period, cross walks are safer with better lights and audible warnings.
As someone who was clipped by a Prius in a parking lot when it was on battery, the damned things are quiet as hell and sneak up on you like a ICE powered automobile doesn't.
'nuff said
Spanish professor?
Well there's your problem right there. You can't identify the contribution due to hybrids by looking at the total. There are on the order of what, 100 million vehicles on the road, and maybe 1% of them are hybrids. So if pedestrian kills by the other 99% of vehicles drop by 1%, hybrids could be 99 times more deadly than them and you wouldn't notice from this guy's analysis.
What he said.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Someone who buys are care for its fuel economy
tend to be more aware of the world around them than people who buy hotrods.
Or at least they are aware enough to realize that killing pedestrians
looks bad to the other soccer moms.
I'm going to speculate that the hybrid's target market is not representative of the overall road users.
Are your V8, Super/Turbo Charged street race car driving types buying these hybrids?
Who poses the greater risk to pedestrians?
Never happened. True story.
In other news my Biology teacher thinks that Beowulf is a Shakespearean play. Something tells me that a Spanish teacher isn't an expert on analyzing statistics, hence why he teaches Spanish, not math or science.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Preliminary data seemed to show that Al-Qaeda were violent terrorists. But now AQ enthusiast Mark Larson (he's also an Emeritus Professor of Spanish at Utah State University) has analyzed some additional data and found this not be the case at all. He used 1988-2001 crime data from the Uniform Crime Report and found that the murder rate in fact fell over that same period.
you kill BETTER pedestrians.
it's an improvement.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
It's not a problem with the cars, it's with dumbshits who don't look where they fucking walk. I ride a bicycle everywhere and it makes zero noise even when freewheeling, not that it matters I can ding my bell til my thumb falls off and many won't hear it because of the ipod craze.
People step out on the road in front of me all the time, maybe not realizing the speed I'm moving at when they last looked up the road, but it's still their fault. There are two ways to deal with this problem: Screaming at the top of your lungs at pedestrians "get of da focken road jackass!" or alternatively, pedestrians can take responsibility for their own personal safety and look with their fucking eyeballs.
POKE 36879,8
So if someone who has a Ph.D in Spanish is qualified to be a reliable source for this study then I'm going to get a PhD. in underwater basket weaving and then work at a hospital, they are not even realted to each other but it's all good.
People kill people
Spoken like someone who has never gotten run over by a hybrid before.
"Personal ownership is a hallmark of conservative capitalism. And I don't believe I am entitled to anything that I did n
The closest I've come to being hit by a car was in a parking-lot where some dude in a Prius was driving on the "wrong" side of the lane. I was walking into the lot on the left hand side, and then started to cross over, looked over my shoulder and a Prius was doing around 3x my speed a few paces behind me, and passed within a few feet of me. I'd been lifting my foot to step out before I noticed him, I couldn't hear it at all.
:-)
Sure, this guy shouldn't have been coming up from behind me to pass going so much faster than me. particularly driving on the left hand side of the lane, but it wouldn't have been a problem in almost any other car. At least someone on a bicycle probably would have said "On your right", because they KNOW that pedestrians probably can't hear them. But, more importantly, if a pedestrian steps out in front of a bicycle, the bicyclist is probably going to be hurt as badly or worse than the pedestrian, so they have a vested interest in you knowing they're there. Not so much with a car.
Can these things run some fans, or have some speakers installed to make some kind of noise so we can hear them? People are *USED* to hearing cars approaching. It's a simple fix. I'm sure one day cars will use their cameras and/or radar (like the adaptive cruise control radar) to detect pedestrians and make their presence known via audible or other signals. Until then, run a fan or speaker or something. Play La Cuccaracha for all I care.
How is the person doing the study being a Spanish professor in any way material to the story?
What's most astonishing about this is that the linked article states that Larson's analysis has two problems. The only way I can figure you'd stop at two is that one and two are the only numbers you know. Or perhaps more astonishing is the fact that nowhere in this list of flaws did the author of the article see fit to point out that this is a completely meaningless analysis. Instead the author of this article, who obviously has even less experience analyzing and undertanding data than this Larson fellow, focused on two very peripheral and arbitrarily chosen points. If you want to see this kind of analysis done right, visit http://www.venganza.org/about/open-letter/.
For the benefit of the exceptionally clueless, let me just point out that this article failed to mention the most obvious and devastating flaw with this kind of analysis -- the critical assumption that no other factor could possibly have influenced pedestrian fatalities since 2000.
"I kill more pedestrians."
As I use my bicycle to go to work, I have the same problem as you : pedestrian being idiot (and i would note , car thinking they have a priority over cyclist , no respecting right of passage but that's for another slashdot story). But those damn hybrid are really quiet too. While with a colleague which was getting her car out of parking he only noise I could hear was the strident "touting" noise the constructor added to the car. While going *forward* there was no noise at all. As pedestrian (and cyclist) are USED to be warned by noise, it doesn't come off as surprising that they get caught pant down. Constructor should simply add a noise to the vehicules, something akin to an ICE motor runing noise.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
It concluded that hybrids like the Toyota Prius were involved in pedestrian crashes at a rate of 0.9 percent, half again as high as the 0.6 percent rate for gasoline vehicles. Hybrids were also twice as likely to have hit cyclists, at a rate of 0.6 percent versus 0.3 percent.
Okay, this is pretty clear - the original study.
But now EV enthusiast Mark Larson (he's also an Emeritus Professor of Spanish at Utah State University) has analyzed some additional data. He used 1994-2008 figures from the Fatality Reporting System maintained by the NHTSA. If silent hybrid vehicles posed a threat to pedestrians, he reasoned, then the number of pedestrian deaths should have risen since 2000, when the first hybrids were sold. There are now roughly 1 million hybrid-electric vehicles among the 300 million on U.S. roads. But in fact, despite increasing numbers of hybrids on the roads, the rate of pedestrian fatalities has in fact fallen over that same period.
Wait, what? There's kind of a gaping hole here folks... But reading on shows that this objective and reputable news site has some doubts of their own as to Larson's methodology. Phew.
We like Larson's analysis,
Yeah, I'll just bet you do.
but we would observe that it has two problems.
Oh? Pray tell...
First, it doesn't factor in Vehicle Miles Traveled, which is correlated with a fall in accident deaths.
Okay, sure.
Second, Larson really only addresses half the issue. Fatalities from accidents are one data point, but injuries would be another--and are far more common than deaths.
Oh, yeah -- you nailed it exactly! Oh, wait - no, no you didn't. My bad, it was a typo -- I meant to write "you just completely ignored the glaring hole in the methodology applied by this professor of Spanish Studies". You can see how I made such a mistake, can't you? It could have happened to anyone.
Here it is, because I have to say it even though it's pretty flippin' obvious: In spite of the fact that OVERALL accidents are going down, the percentage of accidents caused by EVs is higher than non-EVs -- and when you consider that EVs still make up a very minor portion of the vehicles on the road, that's a pretty disturbing trend. Or how about the premise of his "report": The overall fatalities have decreased, and the number of EVs on the road has increased -- therefore EVs clearly do not pose any additional threat over their louder counterparts.
Oh, wait, here's what happened: Nice "reporting" greencarreports.com. I am duly impressed.
Sadly, his study is fatally flawed because his assumption is flawed. Just because total pedestrian deaths have fallen, that does not mean the percentage of total deaths caused by hybrids isn't rising.
Well, for one, people driving hybrids tend to be slower speed limit (or 10 over) drivers. They tend to care about how much their next gas bill's gonna cost, and of course, brag about it to their workers next morning. There's a specific driving method regarding hybrids if you want to take advantage of the system (i.e., for Toyota's, brake, because the battery regenerates when you brake), and so forth.
Obverse is true, if the fatalities have fallen, maybe hybrids are safer. With the original study, were there changes for gas cars that didn't get to hyrids? Are hybrids still as "dangerous"? Since the numbers of hybrids were so low, the error bar could have been 0.9+/-0.6 in which case, no statistically significant difference. Errors in this study could just as easily have been present in the previous one.
What THIS study does is show that there may be something wrong with the previous study.
And just because they're a Spanish Prof doesn't mean he cannot do the sums, THAT is an ad-hom. That he didn't tease out different reasons for reductions is valid, his professorship isn't, not at this level. ANYONE who has managed a professorship should be able to manage this level of maths: "900>1200? True: False"
Maybe they should do a study to see if SUV's are more likely to be involved in exploding houses, oil heists and drive-by shootings....
If you don't like my sig then don't read it.
This is very disappointing to hear. Yet another modern convenience lowering the bar for natural selection.
Does the study still hold true for hybrid owners that drive down sidewalks?
It's convenient to choose 1994-2008 figures, given hybrids have only been around in the past few years.
It's not that hybrid cars have been killing pedestrians. It's the hybrid cars hitting pedestrians resulting in the fatality of the driver that is the problem. (tongue firmly in cheek).
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I'm appalled. It could easily be that, in general, the roads are getting much safer, but that *of the pedestrian accidents* a disproportionate quantity are by electric/hybrid vehicles. It could be that the roads are getting safer *because* there are many electric/hybrid vehicles on the road and people drive them like they are on novocaine. Assuming a proportional result from an overall quantity seems, to me, highly suspect.
The easy low-cost fix is spring-loaded center punches.
Pedestrians should carry one in their pocket. When they see a stationary hybrid or RV, simply push it up against the windshield until it snaps and the windshield disintegrates.
The sucking sound of the air flow into the open windscreen will then provide an adequate warning sound.
This technique also works well SUVs and other annoyances.
A: TFA is discussing blind people, you ignorant asshat.
B: Pedestrians have the right of way. Deal with it.
C: Follow the fucking traffic laws instead of weaving in and out of traffic. Yes, you. You know, you, the asshole cyclist who thinks that stop signs don't apply.
Yes, I got hit by a prius.
So he's "Emeritus Professor of Spanish at Utah State University" - in other words, this study was done by Senior Chang Sr.!
This means i do not have to buy one of those faggoty ass hybrids. I am now safe and secure in my knowledge that I can run over just as many meat paddies in my Hummer as I would in one of those sissy electric cars.
-Remember kids. If you walk or ride a bicycle you are a FAG.
-Brought to you buy a good ole MLB base ball fan. Go Boston Red Soks!!!!!
What does "were louder now" mean?
BTW, you should've got yourself a real driving instructor.
I can about guarantee you that once there are a lot of all electric rides out there, the modders and gear heads -watt heads- will go nutz with them. Electric drive lends itself to hot rodding quite well. They already are now, the only way you really can get an all electric ride is either be rich enough for a tesla, or build it yourself, and there are now thousands of home brewed rides out there, the garage hot rodders are the ones already doing it. Electric motors are burn out torque city! Of course they'll be some spiffy street rods.
I ride my bike a lot, and since hybrids have gotten more popular I abandoned sound as a source of clear roads because there really are times where the thing shows up. 100% eyes all the time... which is probably what everyone should have been doing in the first place. Don't walk out in front of moving cars, and you suddenly don't get run over by them.
"They confiscated everything, even the stuff we didn't steal!"
Using the vehicle's batteries as a power source for welding might hinder their longevity. ...Lorenzo
Come now, they're not all fat. Some of them have anorexia.
I mean to say, does he wear a hearing aid?
This is completely false, not a single bike made in the past 10+ years has this characteristic. Furthermore, it's illegal to ride such a bike in California (reg VC 21201a). Google may be paranoid of safety about it's employees (the famous bus-number comes into play here), but the situation you describe with the bikes is a complete fabrication.
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