I disagreed with you and went looking in the article for evidence (yeah bad, epistemologically). I actually found evidence for your point. The largest cause of fatal crashes is Generally distracted or "lost in thought" (daydreaming) at 64%. That happens to most people,.
How many of those 64% had their accident because of phones/drugs/recklessness and claimed to be distracted instead? With all the liability and shame involved in fatal crashes there's absolutely no way people are going to honestly self report illegal behavior.
Phones definitely fall in that category. I’m guessing they are the majority, but I don’t know how to substantiate that.
Hopefully police are figuring out that one of the parties in the accident is high while they do the interview.
The human brain was not designed for a task which requires hours of siting down doing mostly nothing while being hyperfocused the entire time ready to take over in an instant on the rare occasion something happens. While running or cycling your brain is actively engaged keeping yourself upright and avoiding obstacles which keeps you alert.
Seems at least somewhat comparable to walking through a forest full of predators, while, say, hunting/gathering.
Evidence that is is compatible with our psyche is the fact that we're at 1.19 fatalities per 100 million miles driven, and ~50% of those being booze and/or speeding.
That's true. Humans are bad at this task. On the railways they have a problem with this too, "Lookout" seems like a ludicrously easy job, but it's basically impossible because you must pay attention to an incredibly boring thing for hours or your friends might die. Getting rid of human lookouts should be a priority but it feels easy and so it's hard to motivate this.
This is also a big challenge for airline pilots. The planes mostly fly themselves these days, and most takeoffs and landings are uneventful. Being an airline pilot involves an absolutely massive amount of business as usual and preparation, for the very rare times something happens and you suddenly need a team of very focused experts to solve a difficult problem in a stressful environment.
At least they have simulators. Last time I saw a driving simulator I was a teenager.
Imagine you had to pass a simulator test involving responding to ANY crisis while driving before your license would be renewed. Rates of driving would plummet.
I bet most drivers don’t even correctly handle a flat tire on the expressway.
> The human brain was not designed for a task which requires hours of siting down doing mostly nothing while […]
The average one-way commute time in the US is less than half an hour:
* https://www.census.gov/topics/employment/commuting/guidance/...
If you can't pay attention for less than 30 minutes should you really be operating a multi-ton death machine?
Their point is that a “driver take over autonomous” mode is useless because nobody would pay attention to their surroundings at all.
The average person can't last even the length of an elevator trip without reaching for social media.
You can see it in what people say right after an accident, stuff like "He came out of nowhere".