Expertise is the Application of Experience: Lessons from the Calabasas Crash

Experience is the application of expertise. The more you’ve been through a situation, the better you are at handling it.

It’s been three weeks since the Calabasas helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant and eight additional occupants of a 1991 Sikorsky S-76B helicopter.  Out of respect to the deceased, here is the rest of the manifest:

“..his 13-year-old daughter Gianna; her teammates, 14-year-old Alyssa Altobelli and 13-year old Payton Chester, and their parents Keri and John Altobelli (head baseball coach at Orange Coast College) and Sarah Chester; basketball assistant coach Christina Mauser; and pilot Ara Zobayan”

I focus nearly exclusively on auto trauma, but that’s simply because it’s my area of expertise. It’s what I’ve spent the most time learning about, so it’s what I’m most qualified to talk about. With that in mind, the principles behind safe road use (individual behavior, vehicular safety, and societal infrastructure) apply in a wide range of disciplines, including in aviation safety (which we’ll briefly discuss today), water safety (many adults and children die each year due to drownings related to boating, swimming, or cold water immersions), fire safety (again, there are many deaths related to home fires each year), and elsewhere. Today, we’ll focus on air safety. I don’t have the background to extensively discuss the degree to which pilot behaviors, the safety of the S-76B, or the US’ aviation infrastructure may have led to the unfortunate outcome that claimed 9 lives on January 26th, 2020. However, as noted above, I do believe we can glean information through the application of best practices in one field to another, if we work from a sufficiently low, base level. After all, everything is connected if you see things broadly (or simply) enough. With that said, we’ll start with a saying I’m fond of using with my wife:

Expertise is the Application of Experience

I thought of this some time ago before heading off to bed. I’m surely not the first person to have come up with the idea; there are very few truly novel ideas on a planet with 7 billion people as capable as you or I, but simply differences in opportunities afforded to us to make our ideas known. With that said, to me, it simply means that when you’re qualified as an expert, it means either you or others perceive you to have much more knowledge than the average person about something. It doesn’t really matter what it is; someone who has a lot of experience fiddling around with teeth is called a dentist, for example. I happen to have spent a fair amount of my free time learning about road safety. The point is that expertise, or being an expert, simply means you’ve got a lot of experience with something. To quote Becky Bailey, you can’t teach what you don’t know. And you can’t claim (or more importantly, use) expertise if you lack experience.

In aviation, expertise (applied experience) is largely measured in flight hours

This is why in aviation, pilots are rated by their flight hours. You can’t obtain an airline transport pilot certificate in the United States (what you need to fly airliners), per the Federal Aviation Administration, which legislates such things, without at least 1,500 flight hours in addition to a range of other requirements. You also need to be at least 23 years old, The minimum age requirement, incidentally, dovetails with prior discussions we’ve had on the CCD about the folly of encouraging 16-year-olds to get behind the wheels of multi-ton vehicles (cars, minivans, SUVs, and pickup trucks) and pilot them at highway speeds, as is the case throughout the United States. You’ll remember that Norway, which has both one of the lowest rates of car deaths per capita on the globe as well as one the most demanding driver education programs on the planet, restricts licensure to 18-year-olds. It makes perfect sense when you see how likely young drivers (specifically young men) are likely to be involved in fatal collisions when they start driving in adolescence, and how this risks drop with time. However, leaving age aside, the key point again is that expertise comes from experience. You can’t have the former without the latter. Chesley Sullenberger, known as “Captain Sully”, gained fame for safely landing US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in New York after losing both engines due to bird ingestions, with 155 lives saved. He retired a year later. After more than 40 years of flying experience, how many flight hours did he rack up?

Twenty thousand.

How many did Ara Zobayan have?

Per various reports, he had more than 10 years of flight experience and more than 8,200 flight hours.

Eight thousand hours are nothing to scoff at. They were paired, after all, with 10 years of flying time. But I can’t help but wonder if he and his passengers would still be alive today if he’d simply been a more experienced pilot. Or, of course, if he had flown with another pilot, as was custom with the helicopter he piloted that day. What is clear is that he appears to have flown beyond the bounds of his expertise that day in the fog, and unfortunately, nine people lost their lives as a result.

Safe driving is no different from safe piloting–it means knowing and abiding by our limitations

I’ll take another look at the crash from the angle of experience, with additional attention given to pilot behaviors and vehicular safety–that of the helicopter–in another article. However, if there’s a takeaway from this sad and from all accounts, thoroughly preventable tragedy, it might simply be found in quoting Harry Callahan in Magnum Force: a man’s got to know his limitations. Or to state it inclusively, when working in life and death situations, it’s essential to know just where our competences end, and not venture beyond them. We must not overestimate our expertise, because it is bounded by our experience.

When driving a car, to frame this squarely within the bounds of driver behavior, this means observing the speed limit as if our lives depend on it. It means remembering that the speed limit is just that–a limit, and that we have no obligation whatsoever to reach it if conditions are not appropriate. It means driving in the daytime instead of at night whenever possible. It means using winter tires in the cold months if we live in a region with snowfall, even if–as is the case throughout the United States–winter tires aren’t actually required by law. It means using our headlights when we drive in the daytime–not so we can see, but so others can see us. It means choosing divided highways whenever possible and limiting ourselves as closely as possible to 43 miles per hour when driving on undivided highways.

It means avoiding a single drop of alcohol before we get behind the wheel with the knowledge that there isn’t a safe amount of alcohol a man or woman can consume before getting behind the wheel. It means understanding that driving while drowsy can be just as dangerous as driving after drinking, and that the only cure is to pull over and get some sleep (or to avoid driving to begin with). It means remembering to use seat belts 100% of the time, and ensuring that every occupant does the same. It means choosing appropriate restraints for child passengers, which can be summarized as rear-facing seats until at least 5 and booster use from then on until at least 10 to 12.

It means a lot of things to keep in mind and do so often that they don’t have to be remembered because they become automatic. It means approaching driving a car with the same level of attention as we’d expect a pilot entering a cockpit, because the stakes are just as high.

Parts 2 and 3 in this series are here and here respectively.

If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can buy my books here or do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can shop here for Canadian purchases.  It costs nothing extra to do so, but when you shop through my links, a small portion of your purchase, regardless of what you buy, will go toward the maintenance of The Car Crash Detective.

Only 71% of US Motorcyclists Wear Helmets, Only 19 States Require Them

Motorycles aren’t safe. But if you ride one, make it safer by using a helmet 100% of the time.

I don’t often write about motorcycles. They combine the worst elements of cars and pedestrians: they propel people at high speeds without significant protection. The statistics reflect this; you’re roughly 30 times more likely to die per mile of motorcycle use compared to each mile driven in a car. To me, that’s an unacceptable level of risk for increases in fuel efficiency and the wind in my hair. So to be clear, I don’t recommend motorcycles for anyone beyond professional riders using them on closed circuits.

That said, if you’re going to ride one, ideally you’ll do so safely. Unfortunately, that’s not what our laws encourage in the United States. Tonight I was reading (as is often the case) one safety article after another, and came to the United States’ section in the 2019 International Transport Forum (IRTAD) Road Safety Annual Report. There were a number of interesting bits of information, including how we lost 37,133 people to road trauma in 2017, representing a 1.8% drop compared to 2016’s bloody tally of 37,806. However, the part that stood out to me for today’s article involved the current state of motorcyclists. The IRTAD report, as usual, was filled with sensible thoughts.

Wearing a helmet is essential for a motorcyclist, but most states don’t ask you to

For motorcyclists, wearing a helmet is the most effective passive safety habit. In the United States, currently 19 states require helmets for all motorcyclists. Most other states require helmets for certain riders, and a few have no helmet law.

The first sentence is basic but crucial information. Wear a helmet when motorcycling. It’s as essential as a seat belt when driving. However, not every motorcyclist does so. Part of why is because only 19 states actually require all users to do so. Imagine a world where only 19 states required drivers to use seat belts.

The truth is that things are almost that bad. Only 34 states require front seat seat belt use to the point where individuals may be ticketed for noncompliance without other laws broken. In 15 additional states, you can’t be stopped for not using a seat belt in the front seat unless another law is being broken. In New Hampshire, the 50th and least competent state when it comes to this issue, adults can’t be stopped for sitting in the front seats without seat belts.

Rear seat laws are even worse. Only 18 states have primary seat belt laws for rear passengers. Another 10 have secondary laws, and the remaining 22 backwards states don’t have any laws about using seat belts in rear seats.

In total then, only 18 states have primary seat belt laws for both front and rear passengers. It’s reflected in our compliance rates; we’re at 89.6% for front seat occupants and only 76.1% for rear seat occupants.

Remember, seat belts are essential everywhere, every time.

This is ridiculous, and merits an article all on its own. Another day. Today let’s just focus on how only 19 states require all motorcyclists to use helmets.

That’s ridiculous. When you don’t require safe behavior, people tend to choose (wait for it…) unsafe behaviors. This occurs with seat belt use. States without primary laws have lower rates of belt compliance than states with such laws. Does the same effect occur with helmet compliance? Let’s see.

Most motorcyclists use helmets, but fewer do when they aren’t required

In 2018, the average wearing rate of a DOT-compliant motorcycle helmet meeting DOT safety standard FMVSS218 was 71%. Use of non-compliant helmets was 9% (an increase when compared to 2017) and 20% had no helmet. Among states with universal helmet laws, 83% were wearing DOT-compliant helmets with an additional 13.7% wearing nonDOT-compliant helmets. In states without universal helmet laws, 56.9% were wearing DOT-compliant helmets and an additional 3.5% were wearing non-compliant helmets

Yes! While 71% of motorcyclists use proper helmets, this percentage jumps to 83% in states requiring all motorcyclists to use helmets and falls to 57% in states without such laws.

People are poor assessors of risk. When we don’t have to use safety gear, we generally don’t–unless there’s been lots of cultural education and pressure to do so. We don’t have that in the United States when it comes to avoiding risky behavior like riding motorcycles without helmets.

As of June 2018, 19 States and D.C. required all motorcyclists to wear helmets. Twenty-eight States required only a subset of riders or motorcycle passengers to use helmets (such as those under age 17, 18, or 21). Three States, Illinois, Iowa and New Hampshire, had no motorcycle helmet requirement.

After the 19 states with universal helmet laws, there are 28 that essentially only mind if children don’t have them, meaning adults are free to ride without helmets and smash their brains to bits. That covers 47 states. There are three terribly backwards ones that don’t require helmets at all, for anyone, ever. Note New Hampshire’s ignominious presence again. They also show up on the list of states with the most backwards car seat laws. It’s a general state-level opposition to safety, unfortunately.

We’re far less likely to use helmets in the US compared to in other rich countries

Overall helmet usage rates in the United States are much lower than in most other OECD countries.

At this point, this bit of information likely won’t come as a surprise. In a country that, for the most part, doesn’t mind whether or not most motorcyclists wear helmets, far fewer people wear them than in countries that actually make this a priority for public health and safety. Remember, only 19 states require universal helmet compliance, just as only 18 states require seat belt use for all passengers to the extent that people may be ticketed for noncompliance without additional identified violations.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: safety isn’t nearly as much of a priority in the United States as it is in our fellow rich countries. We believe in the nonsense of individualism here, and tend to exclusively blame individuals when things go wrong instead of looking for society-based solutions and society-based protections for the good of…well, society. It’s the wrong approach, and it’s why we continue to stick out like a sore thumb in comparison to so many other rich countries in so many areas.

We need to be able to learn from other countries. There are better ways to do things when it comes to protecting our population. And part of those ways involve legislating sensible behaviors like helmet use for motorcyclists.

If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can buy my books here or do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can shop here for Canadian purchases.  It costs nothing extra to do so, but when you shop through my links, a small portion of your purchase, regardless of what you buy, will go toward the maintenance of The Car Crash Detective.

3 Across Installations: Which Car Seats Fit a Kia Niro?

The Kia Niro is one of Kia’s latest forays into the hybrid market. It’s a subcompact crossover with both hybrid and electric versions, and is essentially Kia Motors’ version of the Hyundai Ioniq (with which it shares a powertrain). It competes directly with the Toyota Prius C (though not necessarily with the larger standard Prius) in a growing market of small, fuel efficient vehicles. But if it’s going to serve as a family vehicle, its’s going to need to fit some car seats. Let’s take a look at if it does.

Before getting into 3 across setups, it’s worth reviewing the core elements of car seat safety. From the get-go, they involve rear-facing. It’s the safest position available in every vehicle, statistically speaking, and the benefits of extended rear-facing extend from childhood through adulthood. I typically suggest keeping children rear-facing as long as possible (until 4 to 5 like the Swedes), followed by harnessing until they can safely use booster seats (until at least 5, like the Swedes), and then boostering until the 5 step test is passed (typically between 10, 11, and 12). Beyond that, I suggest keeping kids in the back seat until at least 13, and delaying teen solo driving until 18 if possible. The goal isn’t to move through seats as quickly as possible; it’s to keep kids as safe as possible whenever they’re in motor vehicles.

If you find my list of what I believe to be the most detailed 3 across guide for the Kia Niro  on the Internet, you can shop through my Amazon link below. I’ll add more seats as I test or confirm them over time.

You can access the complete 3 across guide for every vehicle here and the complete list of recommended seats here. The Canadian car seat guide is here. 3 across car seat images are taken by yours truly or are courtesy of Wikipedia or the NHTSA.

2018, 2019, 2020 Kia Niro

Guaranteed 3 across installations:

Clek Fllo (x3).

Clek Foonf (x3).

Diono Radian 3RXT (x3).

Diono Radian 3RX (x3).

Clek Oobr (x3).

Diono Radian R100 (x3).

Chicco KeyFit 30 (x3).

Tips and Tricks:

The initial generation of the Kia Niro is just over 171 inches long and 71 inches wide, which means you’re not going to be able to fit anything aside from the narrowest seats in 3 across setups. The good news is that if you use your seat belts and take your time, you can mix and match rather easily among the seats above. Front to back space will also be rather limited, so if you need to seat an infant, you’ll want to use an infant seat (e.g., the KeyFit) instead of a convertible, particularly if you have taller drivers or passengers.  If you’re using a Radian and rear-facing, you’re going to want the angle adjuster to give you more room, although this will preclude use with infants without head control. These setups apply equally to hybrid and electric versions of the Niro.

If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can buy my books here or do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can shop here for Canadian purchases.  It costs nothing extra to do so, but when you shop through my links, a small portion of your purchase, regardless of what you buy, will go toward the maintenance of The Car Crash Detective.

Swedish Traffic Cameras Reduce Speeding, Save Lives

Traffic safety cameras save lives. Let’s talk about why they’re used in Sweden and why they aren’t used here.

There are a number of reasons why it’s safer to be an adult or child  interacting with road traffic in Sweden than in the United States. However, just about all of them can be sorted into one of three categories: driver behaviors (including the use of best practices with car seats), vehicular safety, and road infrastructure. Today’s article is no exception. We’ve talked about how red light cameras reduce collisions and increase safety in the United States (despite fierce opposition to them throughout the country). Today we’ll take a look at traffic cameras, or road safety cameras as they’re known in Sweden, and the impact they have on speeding and road casualties. The upshot is that they reduce injuries, save lives, and are seen quite favorably among Swedes (who enjoy staying alive and unmaimed). Let’s take a closer look at the technology and its implementation.

Why are road safety cameras used in Sweden?

Per TrafikVerket, which is Swedish for the Swedish Transport Administration, road safety cameras are obvious, logical technology:

Speed ​​is the factor that has the greatest impact on the serious consequences of a traffic accident. Road safety cameras contribute to reduced speed, which saves lives.

They make no bones about it. Speed is the X factor. It’s what turns a crash from the kind you walk away from to the kind you’re remembered for a week later before being lowered into the ground. When discussing kinetic energy, as we often do on the CCD, it’s the part that’s squared. You multiply the mass of the object (e.g., the car you’re driving and the passengers inside) by its velocity. You then multiply that value by its velocity one more time. Speed is what kills you. You can run into a semi-trailer and walk away from it–if the speed is low enough. You can be hit by a train while standing naked in front of it and live to tell the tale–if it’s moving slowly enough.

Speed is what separates a fender bender from a crumpled heap of body parts and metal. Road safety cameras discourage speeding. Lower speeds save lives. This is why you want road safety cameras everywhere.

How many lives do traffic cameras save each year in Sweden?

At present, there are about 2,000 traffic safety cameras along the state roads. They save about 20 lives a year. In addition, more than 70 people per year are saved from being seriously injured in traffic.

Twenty lives a year may not sound like much. On the other hand, they’d certainly sound like more if you counted yourself, your spouse, your children, and just about anyone else you cared about. A family of four–two children, two parents–killed or alive due to speed cameras would certainly see the value in them. Remember this when advocating against the additions of effectively painless safety features. All you need to do to reap the benefits of safety cameras is install them and teach police to monitor and process them. Most of the work is done automatically.

Something else to keep in mind is that Sweden already does such a great job of managing road traffic trauma that there just aren’t that many deaths to be had there. They currently have a death rate per capita of around 3.2 per 100,000 per the 2019 road safety annual report by the International Transport Forum, or IRTAD. I enjoy reading their reports each year. Here’s the section on Sweden. You’ll note that they actually had an increase in deaths year over year, moving from 252 deaths in 2017 to 324 in 2018, which is where their per capita rate of 3.2 comes from. With that said, they still have one of the lowest rates of death in the European Union. For comparison, more than 3 times as many individuals die per capita in the US; our figure was 11.4 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2017, to a total of 37,133 deaths.  You can see the full report here or look at individual countries (they’re mostly OECD members).

What is public opinion like regarding road safety cameras in Sweden?

The most important success factor for road safety cameras is that road users understand that cameras save lives. The Swedish Transport Administration’s annual surveys show that more than 70 percent of Swedes have a positive attitude towards the traffic safety cameras. The positive attitude has been at a high level since its inception in 2006.

This is perhaps the most important difference between Sweden and the United States. There is a much greater cultural respect for communal safety there. To put it bluntly, Swedes are far more likely than Americans to support policies that help fellow Swedes than Americans are to help fellow Americans. There, the majority of Swedes think traffic safety cameras are a good thing because they reduce speeding and save lives. There aren’t people hopping mad in large numbers about how their personal rights to drive at high speeds are being infringed by Big Government. It isn’t that Swedes enjoy receiving speeding tickets. It’s that they understand that reduced rates of speeding means a greater likelihood of themselves and their loved ones making it home each night. Presumably they also don’t like other people needlessly dying due to irresponsible and preventable behaviors. This cultural respect for safety is also seen in the Swedish approach to car seat safety, which is the best in the world, as well as in other elements of life tied to road safety, such as mandatory daytime running lights, required winter tires, low alcohol driving limits, and a wealth of Vision Zero policies.

Safety is a pretty neat thing. It means more people get to live. It’s a communal way of thinking–the idea that what benefits my neighbor benefits me, rather than the idea that my neighbor and I are in constant competition for resources, and to hell with anyone who isn’t under my roof.

If they’re such a good idea, why aren’t they in the United States?

This is the inevitable question that arises after learning about good ideas in other countries. The reasons are, as usual, political. We have a long history of cultural brainwashing related to the automobile in American society. Our cities and roads were built around it, and life was designed to require it in large portions of the country. We drive more than people in any other country on the planet, and it’s a significant part of why our death tolls–37,000 needless ones each year–are as high as they are. People have been trained to respond, much like Pavlov’s dogs decades ago, with anger and foaming at the mouth when presented ideas related to traffic calming. We’ve been taught to see high speeds, running over pedestrians, and other kinds of reckless, fruitless behavior behind the wheel as good, right, normal, and part of being red-blooded Americans. There’s certainly blood as a result of these ways of thinking, but there’s nothing right about it.

Are there any legitimate arguments against speed cameras?

In a word, no.

Speed cameras are based on the fundamental ideas that a.) speeding kills, and b.) enforcing safe speeds leads to (unsurprisingly) less speeding and safer speeds.

In this country, however, we still have plenty of people (mostly young and middle-aged men) arguing that speeding isn’t unsafe (hence our ever-rising speed limits across the country) and that it doesn’t need to be enforced (hence our tacit acceptance of speeding throughout our society and throughout law enforcement, aside from when people of color are involved).

The arguments that speed cameras are unnecessary are nonsensical. The numbers are clear. We lose more lives per capita to road trauma than citizens in just about any other wealthy country. We also have a much poorer level of enforcement of speeding laws (and much higher speed limits) than just about all the other rich countries.

There’s plenty of evidence that the use of speed cameras in countries that use them in large numbers (such as Sweden and Norway) see significant declines in speeding and speed-related casualties. There’s very little evidence that speed cameras are simply used to harvest money from freedom-loving citizens (one of the most frequent straw-men used in discussion in the United States).

Speed cameras exist to encourage responsible behavior. If we don’t see our cars as giant toys, pedestrians as speed bumps, and roads as race tracks or obstacle courses, following safe speeds and encouraging others to do so through automated enforcement isn’t nearly as threatening as heartening. The goal, after all, is for everyone to make it home safely. It isn’t to get where we’re going as recklessly as possible without getting pulled over. If you doubt this, just ask the dead.

If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can buy my books here or do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can shop here for Canadian purchases.  It costs nothing extra to do so, but when you shop through my links, a small portion of your purchase, regardless of what you buy, will go toward the maintenance of The Car Crash Detective.

 

IIHS Restores Technical Crash Test Data

Transparency is important, whether in glasses or in technical data regarding crash tests.

At its core, the Car Crash Detective is an advocacy site. Nearly every post falls into one (or both) of two categories: identifying best practices and providing case studies of what occurs when best practices aren’t followed (due to a lack of knowledge, a lack of interest, or the vagaries of fate). To that end, one of the three elements of best practices for safe road use involves vehicular safety (the other two are driver behavior and road infrastructure). And when one of the two major testing bodies in the United States for vehicular crash testing (the other being the NHTSA) decides to hide technical information related to their decisions on crashworthiness, that’s kind of a big deal. And that’s just what the IIHS did in 2019. And when they did, I immediately contacted them about the inherent problems in this issue. They responded by noting that they were continually improving their site and that my feedback would be taken into consideration. That wasn’t good enough, and I noted the disservice they were doing to the general US population and all individuals interested in crashworthiness and the march toward safer vehicles.

Fortunately, after some deliberation, they appear to have listened. Later in 2019, the IIHS decided to republish technical information related to their crash tests. They still don’t provide nearly as much information as the NHTSA, which prints a full technical report related to each crash, filled with hundreds of pages of data, charts, and large color photographs detailing thousands of elements of each test–those are the benefits you get from governmental organizations vs private ones, and the NHTSA is a public institution while the IIHS is literally funded by car insurance companies. However, any information helps us make better decisions, and I’m happy to see the IIHS take a step toward transparency and away from a dumbing down of information provided to the public.

If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can buy my books here or do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can shop here for Canadian purchases.  It costs nothing extra to do so, but when you shop through my links, a small portion of your purchase, regardless of what you buy, will go toward the maintenance of The Car Crash Detective.

35,000 Americans will die this year on the road. You don't have to be one of them. A car seat and car safety blog to promote best practices for families.