Two way roads.
If they didn’t exist today and someone came up with the brilliant idea of having people in control of machines (cars or bikes) moving in opposite directions at 50mph, separated by a few feet and a painted line, it would be dismissed immediately.
Ok, this is a weird hypothetical, but if the world had been overcast for the last thousand years, and then suddenly there was sometimes just a completely blinding light in the sky that you sometimes have to drive straight toward, it would be chaos.
Before COVID I imagined that the death toll would be so high that most roads would be shut down until technology had been developed and distributed so that you could never be blinded by the sun while driving. (Not just a flip down sun visor, but something like an LCD screen front windshield with head tracking that automatically blocks just the sun from your view).
Now I know how quickly and easily people become acquainted with mass death.
Now I imagine there wouldn’t even be a new driver’s test required that requires you to demonstrate that you can safely drive into the sunset.
Just “We recommend, but don’t require, that you have a sun visor in your car when using public roads.”
Motorcycles, for the same reason
Your car. Just think about the forces and mechanisms invovled for this to happen. Every single day we travel at 100km/h in our 2ton at least metal box surrounded by hundreds of other people in their equally large and heavy and fast machines in a space barely wide enough to react in case of an emergency(not even considering if most are actually ready to act in such a case. All of this with realistically little training. Not to mention most people don’t really pay attention while driving and certainly don’t consider the life of others while doing so. It’s so impersonal and dangerous. If it was a never heard of concept, individual cars driven by any normal person would be considered laughably stupid at the very best.
The top three causes of preventable fatal injury in the US are:
- poisoning (including drug overdoses)
- motor vehicles
- falls
We might generalize these to:
- chemistry
- engineering
- physics
im pretty the engineering is not at fault for most car accidents.
Sure, but neither is the chemist at fault when someone drinks bleach.
We could use engineering controls to limit the speed of consumer vehicles to 10 mph, still faster than a human can walk, but slow enough that most deadly accidents could be avoided.
Then establish administrative controls to have public transportation or other professional drivers (taxi operators) have “unlocked” vehicles. They would be required to have routine training and testing to keep their unlocked license.
#1 Distracted Driving. …
#2 Drunk and Drugged Driving. …
#3 Poor Weather. …
#4 Reckless Driving and Road Rage. …
#5 Speeding. …
limiting speed would not affect the leading 4 causes of car accidents
It would affect fatal injury car accidents. A driver would have to be holding a knife pointed at their jugular to be killed in a 10 mph wreck (20 mph total relative speed of get hit another 10 mph limited car).
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Ladders. Most serious workplace accidents in a lot of trades can be linked back to falling from a hight. Don’t be cocky when up a ladder, even little ones.
Ladders are legitimately one of the leading causes of death and serious injury among otherwise healthy middle aged adults. A basic fall protection system with some flex rope and a climbing harness can be had for around $100. I don’t care if my neighbors think I’m a dweeb, I’m not dying for clean gutters.
Can confirm - fell from one this week. ;(
RIP to this man
A friend of mine’s father died falling from a ladder on her birthday while decorating for her party.
That is horrifying, I hope she’s managed to recover at least a bit from that
Dihydrogen monoxide. That stuff’ll kill you.
Psh, I drink it everyday and I’m FINE
But everyone who drinks it will die…
But it’s the stuff which is used in nuclear power plants to store the used rods.
Too much dihydrogen monoxide? Death.
Not enough dihydrogen monoxide? Also death
Just enough dihydrogen monoxide? Believe it or not, also death
Careful! It’s found in 100% of all malignant tumors!
At least here in a very anti-public transit US city: Automobiles
Short of war zones, they are the most common cause of unnatural death almost everywhere.
Capitalism. Most of the other (daily, specific) dangers out there are dangerous because someone’s making money off putting other people in danger. I’m including the military industrial complex, but also regular industries and the exploitation of vulnerable populations.
Idk if we use capitalism so much as we get used…
What would you call the military industrial complex of CCCP?
Edit: I love that one reply is claiming it’s self defense, the other is claiming they’re capitalist
Necessary to prevent invasions by imperialists and capitalists who feel threatened by successful socialist models or who are looking to exploit other countries.
Imagine how much more they could have accomplished if they didn’t have to fear the very real threat of foreign invasion. Remember, they were invaded by foreign powers shortly after the revolution in 1918.
Fossil fuel pollution.
Swimming pools, with kids in the house. More dangerous than owning a gun:
Pools are more dangerous than owning a gun in the same way that vending machines kill more people than sharks.
People are near vending machines way more often than they are near sharks, and people let their kids play in the pool more often than they let them play with firearms
Nope. Under 10% of households have a swimming pool, but over 40% of households have a gun in the USA. When we’re talking about owning one as opposed to actively using one, the pool is more dangerous than the gun.
Now, if you just left your loaded gun out in your backyard 24/7, it may be a different story.
I don’t doubt your numbers, but that wasn’t the point I was making. Guns may be more common, but it isn’t common to let your children play with them. It is, however, common to let your children play in the pool.
Electricity?
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titanium implants are pretty leet though
I’ve got balls of steel!
Would you say you understand the weakness of your flesh?
Gas stoves. Disasters waiting to happen with people sometimes forgetting to turn them off.
You know, it boggles my mind why stoves in some countries don’t come with thermoswitch. The decades old ones here come with it here. Either fire keeps the valve open via this thermoswitch or if fire goes out gas valve is shut off. Danger gone.
Plastics
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I’d say electricity. Even with all the safety precautions we have when using our electrical devices, there’s still so much that can go wrong
Here’s the thing with electricity: it’s invisible.
If you’re using a power saw, you can see the blade. You can see other cars (obviously there’s blind spots). You can see a burning flame on your stove, or maybe hear/smell the gas.
You may have a box and know that there’s electricity inside, but you have no idea if it’s wired correctly. You have no idea if the breaker is shut, or if there’s batteries inside. We’ve engineered a lot of controls to keep things safe like LEDs to show it’s on and ground wires on all the metal bits (thank you underwriter laboratories). But all of those can fail and you can still get shocked because electricity is essentially invisible and requires tools (multimeter) to inform you that it’s dead.
None of your senses will let you know if something with electricity is safe. It’s a gamble every single time you touch something electrical. You can be seriously hurt with voltages as low as 30v, assuming worst case conditions like you just finished swimming in the ocean.
Using electrical equipment is like walking through a construction site blindfolded while someone yells directions at you from afar.
