Installing automatic gates at crossings can fix (almost) 15~20 fatalities a year there? I've seen at least double-digit traffic deaths in my life, 4 of which I've watched happen and can vividly recollect, here in the USA. Installing infrastructure to prevent deaths seems like a no-brainer if you live in a country that supposedly cares.
It's apparently not a no-brainer here -- two of the lethal accidents I've witnessed [one involving ripping the door off a car with the help of some kind stangers, to get someone out of a literally flaming wreck] would have been entirely avoided by a simple traffic circle. The most grizzly one I remember could likely (it seems to me; I'm not a traffic...engineer?) have been avoided by not having a low-traffic on-ramp connect directly to a major highway, when there was a clearly-denoted on-ramp a quarter-mile away. Seeing another human with their head 20ft away leaves a bit of an impression on a child.
I always find it funny when people say "you can't put a price on a human life" because this is exactly what traffic engineers do on a daily basis.
I don't know what the exact figure is but there's a number where below that improvements won't be made.
It sounds bad but at the end of the day resources aren't unlimited - $1 spent on road safety improvements is $1 that can't go healthcare, law enforcement, schools, military etc.
At some point spending millions of dollars to probably save one life isn't worth it
This is true, but the problem is that there is so much low-hanging fruit here like painting new lines, adding cheap concrete barriers, or installing elevated crosswalks.
The price is far far less than whatever the price of a human life is. The reason they are not implemented is not cost, but because people here consider it their god-given right to drive as quickly and aggressively as they want.
> The reason they are not implemented is not cost, but because people here consider it their god-given right to drive as quickly and aggressively as they want.
As an amendment to this: People in many western countries tend to do this.
Writing from Germany with, e.g., speed limits on some high ways being a broken promise from the last election.
Yep. A major arterial in my city is very obviously too wide for the traffic it carries, even during rush hour. I don't remember the exact number, but a study a few years ago found that the average speed was something like 12 MPH above the posted limit. People completely lost their shit when it was proposed to narrow it and put in bike lanes (the bike lanes weren't the point, but people were cycling on the sidewalk to avoid the impatient/distracted/aggressive drivers, and it would have been silly to not use the space for anything at all).
The following estimates have been applied to the value of life. The estimates are either for one year of additional life or for the statistical value of a single life.
- $50,000 per year of quality life (the "dialysis standard",[38] which had been a de facto international standard most private and government-run health insurance plans worldwide use to determine whether to cover a new medical procedure)[39]
- $129,000 per year of quality life (an update to the "dialysis standard")[40][39]
- $7.5 million (Federal Emergency Management Agency, Jul. 2020)[5]
- $9.1 million (Environmental Protection Agency, 2010)[41]
- $9.2 million (Department of Transportation, 2014)[42]
- $9.6 million (Department of Transportation, Aug. 2016)[43]
- $12.5 million (Department of Transportation, 2022)[44]
Long ago (too long for a search to dig it up) there was an article in the Wall Street Journal comparing litigation for wrongful death in different circumstances. If I remember correctly, two determinants were location (major urban center vs rural) and profession/status of the victim. The variance was considerable. An aggregate statistical value for something like a QALY is a pretty rough measure.
It’s worth pointing out that these numbers don’t exactly represent either of the things that the parent comment talked about. These are the statistical economic effect of people dying on average, but this is not meant to be taken as putting a number on all the value of human life. Note the DOT doesn’t call it the “value of life”, they call it the “value of a statistical life (VSL)” in an attempt to help distinguish between those two different ideas.
“This conventional terminology has often provoked misunderstanding on the part of both the public and decision-makers. What is involved is not the valuation of life as such, but the valuation of reductions in risks.”
Additionally, these numbers do not represent the threshold for whether a given proposal for roads is undertaken. They are used to inform the process, along with other relevant factors. That ‘Guidance’ like just above is interesting reading, they take time to point out that neither the economic data nor the risk data is perfect. (Perhaps that was obvious, but it’s good to know they recognize that fact officially in their analyses.)
The VSL for 2023 is 13.2 million, and one might assume based on the recent trend that it’s probably around ~$14M for this year. It’s good for our personal safety the higher their VSL estimate goes, but as parent noted, bad for our taxpayer pocketbooks, so we try to balance those forces. I know government processes can look bureaucratic and strange from the outside, and seem like a big machine we don’t control, but ultimately we do decide as a society how much we’re willing to pay to keep ourselves safe; public sentiment and tax/anti-tax pressures do have a massive influence in what gets done.
It doesn't seem inconsistent to say "you can't put a price on a human life" and also believe that it's possible to calculate the economic impact of a human death.
For example, saying that a particular individual's life is worthless is very different from saying they have no dependents.
How many crossings without automatic gates are there, vs how many fatalities at those crossings, and how many people cross at those crossings at all? When you remember that other important things to spend money on also exist, the math probably works out for leaving many of the rarely used crossings as they are. In America, there are a few hundred thousand crossings and only a few hundred deaths. Most of those deaths are concentrated at a relatively small number of crossings, while most of the crossings have very infrequent traffic across them.
It's the same kind of logic that has most train tracks not put behind fences. In populated areas where lots of people roam around, putting a fence up next to the track helps keep people off the track. But in most of the country, the population is too sparse and people being on the track too infrequent for anybody to rationally prioritize putting fence up alongside all the track. Half a billion dollars worth of fence to save maybe a few dozen lives just isn't going to fly when there are schools to fund, old lead water mains to replace, bridges to repair, NASA probes to Uranus, etc etc.
Yes, Austria has only a population of 9 million, with 1937 (as per 2015) unsecured railroad crossings with just a sign and no barriers or lights. The number of people being killed in car accidents was close to record lows at 178 last year with 42 of those not using a seat belt. Saving 15~20 lives by upgrading infrastructure is of course a gamble of prioritizing crossings but of course worth it as there's not just those 15~20 people but also their relatives being impacted. We have a lot of rural railroad, something better quarter-mile away is rarely an option.
Having a speed limit on the German Autobahn would save 140 lives a year. It's hard to understand why they still don't have a limit. Countries like Denmark and the UK have much less traffic deaths on their highways.
It's apparently not a no-brainer here -- two of the lethal accidents I've witnessed [one involving ripping the door off a car with the help of some kind stangers, to get someone out of a literally flaming wreck] would have been entirely avoided by a simple traffic circle. The most grizzly one I remember could likely (it seems to me; I'm not a traffic...engineer?) have been avoided by not having a low-traffic on-ramp connect directly to a major highway, when there was a clearly-denoted on-ramp a quarter-mile away. Seeing another human with their head 20ft away leaves a bit of an impression on a child.