Hedges & Company, an auto marketing data firm, publishes statistics articles on cars, drivers, and vehicle owner demographics.
HN links it for US driver and vehicle statistics, which commenters use in debates about road deaths, Tesla safety claims, and truck popularity.
I started tracking the advertisers who upload my contact information a few months ago. One day I "hid" all of the pages in that section of the ads settings page and the next day it showed that over 100 pages had uploaded my contacts. I messaged a selection of the "new" pages (I'm not sure if they were actually new or if the had just re-upped their list). Most of them responded that they were confused as to how my info would end up associated with their pages, since most or all of them are quite a distance from where I live. A couple mentioned that they outsource their marketing to outside groups. My theory is that there may be industry marketing groups that collect contact information for use in social media advertising.
One auto dealer worker responded to my question, "how did my name get on a list that your page uploaded?" by saying "I don't know, I just post ads."
The ad settings page suggests that usually the uploaded identifying information is a phone number or email address, but the wording is vague enough that it could probably be just about anything. So if you've ever shared your phone number with Facebook (even once, I suspect, even if you've since deleted it) I wouldn't be surprised if they use that to identify you. Similarly, a postal address or even a city might enough to identify you for these purposes.
Edit: A quick Google shows a number of groups similar to [1] that sell lists of auto owners. I would be surprised if there were not similar groups for other…
> I would not be making such claims with a global recession and wars increasingly prevalent. A lot of legislation around clean energy may be pushed aside for economic or security purposes.
The economics of renewables are favorable in comparison to fossil fuels, even when you remove all subsidies. What makes them appear more expensive today is that the infrastructure for fossil energy carriers is already there, the one for renewables is often just being built. Obviously there is a tipping point somewhere in the future. Unfortunatly, time is the one thing we don't have.
> What makes 1.5C key? Why not 2C [1]? And is this normalised for background rise vs actual rise?
The Wikipedia link you provided alludes to the reasoning why 1.5 °C are key. The article also links to a longer piece by the IPC explaining the reasoning.
> The earth's temperature has risen fast in the past too [2].
True, the changes in temperature earth has experienced over the last 500 millions years are vastly larger than 2 °C. Only 400 millions years ago oceans were hot baths with a thriving ecosphere! From this vantage point the "there is no planet B" slogan seems less clever, agreed. Climate change will not end earth or nature in general, both will be fine. It will just end the living conditions in which humanity can thrive or even survive.
> By far the most environmentally friendly thing to do currently is to keep existing vehicles running for longer, until they are eventually traded for something…
I'm just trying to help folks understand how it works outside the HN bubble. People buy trucks because it's what they feel they need (even if it isn't; that truck likely is going to be a garage queen and never leave pavement), for some it satisfies a part of their self image and ego, and a lot of folks buying them aren't fiscally responsible and buy them anyway (repo lots are a savvy way to find lightly used diesel pickups in good condition someone overspent on before a sophisticated broker/dealer acquires them and marks them up to the public).
https://hedgescompany.com/blog/2018/10/pickup-truck-owner-demographics/
> The Ford F-150 is the single most popular truck in America today and the most-popular vehicle in 44 states. It outsold the Ram pickup in 2019 by 78%.
> The average age of the new F-150 buyer is 55. It may not be too surprising that about 16% of new Ford F-150 owners are female/84% male. About three-quarters of all new Ford F-150s are purchased by white males, although Hispanic buyers account for 22% of total incremental growth of new F-150 sales from 2010 to 2017.
> Despite any TV ads you see with F-150s in a rural or country setting, the vast majority of these new trucks are in large and medium-sized cities.
> The average household income of a new Ford F-150 owner is about $82,000 per year. By comparison the median household income in the United States is $61,937.
> If that average household income sounds high, remember this! The F-150 has a base MSRP…
Sorry for the delay. I don't get notifications. Not sure how people are so active on here with communication. Maybe you or someone could recommend a way?
Anyways:
> But what do you mean by 'across the board'?
By that I mean across all of the people driving in the US and their rate of incidence. For example, average miles driven, the amount of drivers and the rate of accidents. I think the most intriguing detail could be drawn from the rate of fatal accidents, since that's the most concerning, ignoring accidents that cause a casualty as I don't know the method for gathering that data off hand. One could glean a lot of info from that. Here's some rough numbers I gathered, and please forgive the naive approach to my data gathering to express a point:
Average miles driven/person[0]: 13,000
Average fatalities/year[1]: 37,000
Approximate number of licensed drivers[2]: 231,652,000
I don't have numbers for self-driving cars and the number of accidents, but regardless, would it perform the same with the same number of miles driven per car. Keep in mind that self-driving cars currently aren't navigating in all circumstances and will beep to make the human take control again. At least with Tesla.
[0] In 2019, there were almost 229 million licensed drivers in the United States. (Source: https://www.asirt.org/safe-travel/road-safety-facts/)
[1] Over 37,000 Americans die in automobile crashes per year. More than 90 people die in accidents every day. (Source:…
I agree this seems bizzare at best.
"According to a study conducted by the Motorcycle Industry Council (MIC), the number of American households with at least one motorcycle in their garage has reached 8.02 percent in 2018." [1]
"The total of motorcycles owned by US families has now reached 13.1M—12.2M or 93 % of which are active on the road, a decrease in percentage over 2014 (96.1%)." [1]
While these numbers do not say "and they plan to purchase tires" (tyres?), I can not imagine that the number of those planning to purchase tires would be greater than the number of people with cars who plan to purchase tires.
There are roughly 276.1 Million cars registered. [2] That does not mean anything, but inference would seem to suggest more people would purchase tires for cars.
Of course, this article may have given the respondents a multiple choice sheet (with just those choices :)
I sill lay claim, I can not imagine asking 100 people what they want to do with the tax refund, and their answers even remotely aligning with those. I might live in a strange part of the US, but I know the answers here would look much more like:
Fishing rods.
Fishing reel.
Tackle.
Parts for the boat and motor.
That #$@%^ thing I have not fixed on the house yet.
That other #$^!@# thing I have not fixed on the house yet.
BBQ supplies.
Pay off debt.
[1] https://www.rideapart.com/articles/302630/more-americans-own-bikes-survey/
[2]…
> 18 people have died in space exploration since the 1950's. Over a million people die in car wrecks each year on earth
I was curious about the statistical risk here, so I crunched some numbers.
There are approximately 230 million licensed drivers in the United States alone¹, versus approximately 560 astronauts². So let's do the math here:
18 space deaths / 560 astronauts¹ = 3.214%
1,850,000 US automotive deaths² / 230,000,000 US licensed drivers³ = 0.804%
50,000,000 worldwide automotive deaths⁴ / 1,200,000,000 worldwide drivers⁵ = 4.167%
So by US automotive safety standards, space travel has a long ways to go in terms of fatality reduction, whereas by global safety standards space travel is approximately on par.
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¹: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_astronauts_by_name
²: https://www.asirt.org/safe-travel/road-safety-facts/ (your link), assuming the 37,000 per year is constant
³: https://hedgescompany.com/blog/2018/10/number-of-licensed-drivers-usa/
⁴: Assuming - again - a constant 1 million deaths per year over 50 years
⁵: https://www.quora.com/What-percent-of-the-world-population-knows-how-to-drive-a-car, which assumes that there is at least one person capable of driving per registered vehicle in the world; this is almost certainly a drastic underestimation, since it doesn't factor in passengers at all.