Interesting post! Curious what you think of Jeff Kaufman’s proposal to make buses more dangerous in the first world, the idea being that buses in the US are currently too far in the “safety” direction of the safety vs. convenience tradeoff.
GiveWell also has a standout charity (Zusha!) working in the opposite direction, trying to get public service vehicles in Kenya to be safer.
Allow the driver to start while someone is still at the front paying. (The driver should use judgment if they’re allowed to do this, because the passenger at the front might lose their balance when the bus starts. Wheelchairs might be especially vulnerable to rolling back.)
Allow buses to drive 25mph on the shoulder of the highway in traffic jams where the main lanes are averaging below 10mph.
Higher speed limits for buses. Lets say 15mph over. (I’m not so sure about this: speed limits exist in part to protect pedestrians. Buses still cause fewer pedestrian and cyclist deaths than cars, though.)
But these should be considered only after we’ve exhausted the space of improvements to bus service that don’t sacrifice safety. For example, we should build more bus-only lanes first.
I don’t have statistics, but my best guess is that if you sample random points across all public buses running in America, in over 3⁄4 of the time, less than half of the seats are filled.
This is extremely unlike my experiences in Asia (in China or Singapore).
Interesting post! Curious what you think of Jeff Kaufman’s proposal to make buses more dangerous in the first world, the idea being that buses in the US are currently too far in the “safety” direction of the safety vs. convenience tradeoff.
GiveWell also has a standout charity (Zusha!) working in the opposite direction, trying to get public service vehicles in Kenya to be safer.
I like Kaufman’s second, third, and fourth ideas:
Allow the driver to start while someone is still at the front paying. (The driver should use judgment if they’re allowed to do this, because the passenger at the front might lose their balance when the bus starts. Wheelchairs might be especially vulnerable to rolling back.)
Allow buses to drive 25mph on the shoulder of the highway in traffic jams where the main lanes are averaging below 10mph.
Higher speed limits for buses. Lets say 15mph over. (I’m not so sure about this: speed limits exist in part to protect pedestrians. Buses still cause fewer pedestrian and cyclist deaths than cars, though.)
But these should be considered only after we’ve exhausted the space of improvements to bus service that don’t sacrifice safety. For example, we should build more bus-only lanes first.
Wait, do buses some place not start moving until… everyone’s sitting down? Does that mean there’s enough seats for everyone?
I don’t have statistics, but my best guess is that if you sample random points across all public buses running in America, in over 3⁄4 of the time, less than half of the seats are filled.
This is extremely unlike my experiences in Asia (in China or Singapore).