EDIT (7/27/23) After very preliminary research, I now think “telling people to ride in SUVs or vans instead of sedans” may turn out to be worthwhile.
As I’m working on derisking research, I’m particularly aware of what I think of as “whales”… risks or opportunities that are much larger in scale than most other things I’ll likely investigate.
There are some things that I consider to be widely-known whales, such as diet and exercise.
There are others that I consider to be more neglected, and also less certain to be large scale (based on my priors). Air quality is the best example of this sort of whale, though 3-8 other potential risks or interventions are on my mind as candidates for this, and I won’t be surprised to discover a couple whales that did not seem to be so prior to investigation.
I thought that road safety and driving was a widely-known whale. Based on a preliminary investigation (more on what this means), I now tentatively think it is not.
This preliminary analysis yielded an expected ~17 days of lost life as a result of driving for an average 30 year old in the US over the next 10 years.
I’m not sure how many of these 17 days an intervention could capture. I suspect most likely readers of what I’d write already grab the low-hanging fruit of e.g. not driving while impaired and wearing a seatbelt. So it does not seem probable that I would discover an intervention that alleviated even 30% (~5 days) of risk. Furthermore, I suspect most interventions in this space could have large inconvenience or time costs, causing greater reduction in the expected gain of my research in this space.
While this analysis does neglect loss of QALDs due to injury, which I don’t know the scale of, I predict they are unlikely to greatly affect this conclusion.
The 10 year timeframe may seem odd to some. But if we assume that self-driving cars of a certain ability level will greatly increase the safety of vehicle travel, which I personally believe, then 10 years may be even longer than the relevant window for investigation. Metaculus predicts L3 autonomous vehicles by the end of 2022, L4 autonomous vehicles by the end of 2024, and L5 autonomous vehicles by mid 2031. It’s not entirely clear to me at which of these stages most of the safety benefits are likely to occur, nor how long widespread use will take after these are first available, but it does seem to me as though the dangers of car travel, at least for most people who are likely to read my content, will not persist long into the future.
I have some context for effect sizes I think I’m likely to find with various interventions. I have preliminary estimates for interventions affecting air quality & nuclear risk, and more certain estimates for interventions on smoke detectors and HPV vaccination. With that context, road safety does not seem to particularly differentiate itself from much else I expect to investigate. With this discovery that road safety does not seem to be a ‘whale’, I tentatively think I will not further investigate it in the near future.
If you’re interested in a perspective from left field, I wrote a post about how we should perhaps be valuing life wildly more than we currently are, and that if so, driving becomes a terrible idea.
Furthermore, I suspect most interventions in this space could have large inconvenience or time costs, causing greater reduction in the expected gain of my research in this space.
Wearing a helmet when driving in a car would be one intervention that isn’t that inconvient but I don’t know the impact.
Thanks for sharing the idea. I think I’d find this inconvenient, but I do expect the inconvenience of various changes will vary significantly between people.
EDIT (7/27/23) After very preliminary research, I now think “telling people to ride in SUVs or vans instead of sedans” may turn out to be worthwhile.
As I’m working on derisking research, I’m particularly aware of what I think of as “whales”… risks or opportunities that are much larger in scale than most other things I’ll likely investigate.
There are some things that I consider to be widely-known whales, such as diet and exercise.
There are others that I consider to be more neglected, and also less certain to be large scale (based on my priors). Air quality is the best example of this sort of whale, though 3-8 other potential risks or interventions are on my mind as candidates for this, and I won’t be surprised to discover a couple whales that did not seem to be so prior to investigation.
I thought that road safety and driving was a widely-known whale. Based on a preliminary investigation (more on what this means), I now tentatively think it is not.
This preliminary analysis yielded an expected ~17 days of lost life as a result of driving for an average 30 year old in the US over the next 10 years.
I’m not sure how many of these 17 days an intervention could capture. I suspect most likely readers of what I’d write already grab the low-hanging fruit of e.g. not driving while impaired and wearing a seatbelt. So it does not seem probable that I would discover an intervention that alleviated even 30% (~5 days) of risk. Furthermore, I suspect most interventions in this space could have large inconvenience or time costs, causing greater reduction in the expected gain of my research in this space.
While this analysis does neglect loss of QALDs due to injury, which I don’t know the scale of, I predict they are unlikely to greatly affect this conclusion.
The 10 year timeframe may seem odd to some. But if we assume that self-driving cars of a certain ability level will greatly increase the safety of vehicle travel, which I personally believe, then 10 years may be even longer than the relevant window for investigation. Metaculus predicts L3 autonomous vehicles by the end of 2022, L4 autonomous vehicles by the end of 2024, and L5 autonomous vehicles by mid 2031. It’s not entirely clear to me at which of these stages most of the safety benefits are likely to occur, nor how long widespread use will take after these are first available, but it does seem to me as though the dangers of car travel, at least for most people who are likely to read my content, will not persist long into the future.
I have some context for effect sizes I think I’m likely to find with various interventions. I have preliminary estimates for interventions affecting air quality & nuclear risk, and more certain estimates for interventions on smoke detectors and HPV vaccination. With that context, road safety does not seem to particularly differentiate itself from much else I expect to investigate. With this discovery that road safety does not seem to be a ‘whale’, I tentatively think I will not further investigate it in the near future.
If you’re interested in a perspective from left field, I wrote a post about how we should perhaps be valuing life wildly more than we currently are, and that if so, driving becomes a terrible idea.
Wearing a helmet when driving in a car would be one intervention that isn’t that inconvient but I don’t know the impact.
Thanks for sharing the idea. I think I’d find this inconvenient, but I do expect the inconvenience of various changes will vary significantly between people.