Boy would I love to see "cars" like this on the road! Especially here in Aus.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sickpuppy318
yeah, well i've seen three bike accidents, two died and one had his leg in the road. Don't think that more car isn't more safty...
|
If a car and a motorcycle collide, and the motorcyclist dies, which would we say is more dangerous? The car or the motorcycle?
When people can STILL manage to kill themselves in car accidents, while being protected by all the safety rubbish we have these days - Surely that is a frightening indication on how dangerous _we_ have become.
It's human/animal nature to seek a risk equilibrium, see 'risk compensation', which is receiving increasingly more support in ethology & psychology circles.
The general theory (relative to driving) goes that, regardless of the vehicle we're driving, we'll seek our personal "comfortable" risk level, by adjusting our behaviour accordingly, relative to our _perceived_ risk. So if we perceive that a situation is less risky than our comfortable risk level, we'll do something 'risky' to increase our perceived risk of the situation to our comfortable level, and vice-versa.
An argument goes, therefore, that by promoting vehicle safety and reducing the perceived risk associated with the vehicle, the driver is more inclined to drive in a more dangerous way to equilise their perceived risk level.
If we were convinced that everything was very dangerous (ignoring the concious effects of being distracted and nervous, for the sake of this theory haha), we'd drive much safer...
So an equally plausable argument could be that, motorbikes and ultra lightweight small commuter cars are actually safer than large cars.
That idea is also supported when you look at racing statistics, deaths of motorcycle racers vs car/truck racers, and also periods when regions have changed between left/right handed driving.
*end rant
