It's certainly true that a given accident would be more severe if speeds are higher. That's just physics.

However, in at least some circumstances, accidents are more likely to occur at slower speeds. In your example, rush hour has both more accidents and slower speeds. But also, there's a well-documented effect of a "risk thermostat", where people tend to balance risk such that they exhibit less care when other things would be making things safer. Thus, when speeds are slower, people perceive greater safety and are (maybe subconsciously) more willing to engage in offsetting risks such as playing with their phones or just daydreaming, just because they can. The result is that slower speeds can lead to a greater quantity of accidents (even if those accidents are of lower severity because they were slower).

What remains to be proven is how those two effects offset each other. It's not clear whether the "greater severity" or "more accidents" effect dominates the overall picture.

* It's common to see Nissans in the wild with body damage

* It's culturally known or at least assumed that Nissan will finance a vehicle for basically anyone, no matter how bad their credit is

* Nissans regularly engage in aggressive driver behaviors and driving patterns

Why it is so many problematic drivers are attracted to Nissans (and other "budget" brands, like Kia and Hyundai which also feature regularly on the sub) seems to come down largely to... well, people who make good choices in life don't generally sign an 84-month loan that will end with them having spent $70,000 on a car that costed $27,000. There's an air of classism to the entire thing, however it's difficult to disagree with based on what's shown.

Obviously that's all extremely prone to confirmation bias and all manner of prejudices so to be clear, I'm not saying I agree, I'm just saying it's interesting how Nissan as a brand is so widely associated with poor people who allegedly make bad decisions, financial, and in their driving. It's also worth noting (and probably what's anchoring this impression is) that Nissans are, in spite of their awful financing, cheap. As are Kias and Hyandais, so more people own them at scale, and therefore more bad drivers also own them at scale. Once the narrative is in the wild, there's little that will arrest it from being "confirmed" by people and passed along as understood fact.

They also have a ton of bumper stickers, too.

Leaves an impression.

By the next day the road had been swept clean. I searched and searched for info on the crash online and in police reports. No info.

'A policeman sees a drunk man searching for something under a streetlight and asks what the drunk has lost. He says he lost his keys and they both look under the streetlight together. After a few minutes the policeman asks if he is sure he lost them here, and the drunk replies, no, and that he lost them in the park. The policeman asks why he is searching here, and the drunk replies, "this is where the light is".'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect

Bad sample populations are a huge problem. There's only one really good study on sexual behavior in in the US, called "Sex in America, a definitive survey".[1] It was expensive, but they did it right. They used a random process to select a large number of regions across the US, then random individuals within those regions. There was a mailed survey, followed up by a phone survey, followed up by visits by interviewers, followed up if necessary by paying people to do the survey. The result was 90%+ participation. That's how you overcome selection bias.

The main result is that, for the overall population, sex is rather mundane.

[1] https://archive.org/details/sexinamericadefi00mich/mode/2up

  they'd have some interest in publicizing the worst of human drivers

This is a great example of an internal narrative which you could reframe (if you chose to).

Instead of framing the interaction as "breaking the law" and you protecting your property from the adversarial cyclist, you could instead see each of these as an opportunity for a friendly community gesture of allowing a cyclist to continue on without expending extra energy stopping and starting, plus helping them stay safer through movement (since most cyclists don't have a brake light to signal they are slowing or stopping and can't always use hand signals when navigating situations, and being rear ended is a real concern for bikes).

Either way you're doing the same thing, right? So you can internally decide to view it through a negative or a positive lens. But either way, I'm sure the cyclists you stop and wait for are grateful!

Yes, because my life depends on it.

Do you follow every single law when you drive? Probably not, because the consequences are far less mortal for you in a truck or car.

I also don't blame rape victims for wearing short skirts.

And as a motorist, motorcyclist, and bicyclist, it's annoying to see drivers break the law, which they statistically do more often than bicyclists per a Danish government study:

* https://politiken.dk/danmark/art7185605/Rygterne-om-cykliste...

* Via: https://electrek.co/2024/01/11/cars-or-bikes-surprising-resu...

Studies out of the UK and Florida have similar results: cyclists either follow the law at the same rate, or better. Motorists breaking the law has been so normalized that most people don't notice it.