this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2024
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...

Over a 15-year period, 6,253 cars crashed into 7-Eleven storefronts in the U.S. – an average of 1.14 per day.

7-Eleven apparently fought in court to withhold that data from the public.

"They have not been producing that information for many, many years," Rogers said, "and that's what's important about this case - getting this information out about how frequently this happens."

Rob Reiter is co-founder of the Storefront Safety Council. He was retained as an expert by Carl's attorneys in this case.

"If you install bollards, you pretty much solve that problem," he said of the danger.

Reiter advocates for safety bollards or protective barriers being placed in front of storefronts – especially those with parking lots that face the front door.

...

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 month ago (6 children)

Seems like one of those facts that uses the law of large numbers to fake a point.

Like how if you have 50 people in a room, there's a 97% chance that two people share a birthday, therefore certain birthdays are more likely.

6,253 sounds like a lot, but there are a lot of storefronts, too. How many of them happened at the same store? How many were a result of drunk driving vs driver error vs some other confounding factor? Ar 7-11 stores more likely than other storefronts to be the scene of a crash?

Bollards are cheap, so by all means put them in the requirements. Or point the parking away from the storefront.

[–] brbposting 14 points 1 month ago

Bollards are cheap, so by all means put them in the requirements.

Ya. If people are getting hurt way too often and a reasonable investment would prevent a commensurate number of injuries, maybe it’s OK to use raw numbers to shock the company/legislators and action.

I would def give you that “X preventable injuries could be avoided for [$Y]/[$Z per injury]”, and some context on how much could be done if that money were spent another ways, would be good.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (2 children)

If people are driving with appropriate skill and care, the number driving into large, well-lit buildings should be approximately zero per year. It sounds like you're willing to excuse a lot of bad driving

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago

If people are driving with appropriate skill and care,

Then there would be a lot of road laws and protection devices that become obsolete.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

No true Scotsman fallacy. Have you met other drivers?

Half of them are arguing with their spouses, texting, masturbating, arguing, road raging, or sleeping at any one moment.

The other half are the REALLY bad drivers who are doing all 6 at the same time.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Mate, you're agreeing with him. He's saying lots of drivers are terrible.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Yeah but that's kind of like saying if I had a billion dollars paying rent wouldn't be difficult for me.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Especially in the US where we have nearly 10x the traffic fatality rate of countries like Sweden, Switzerland, Japan, Korea, etc.

[–] xmunk 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'd say there are likely some sneaky factors in play as well, though - drunk drivers are probably most likely to be driving to a home or to a 7/11 to get more booze/snacks.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

We also used to get high outside the 711 in my neighborhood. But the storefront wasn't facing the parking lot, and I wasn't driving. We hung out there because it was within walking distance and it was open late.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Aren't 7/11 usually located on gas station? That also a factor I suppose.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

The odds aren't that crazy. There's about 12k 711 stores. More than 1 gets hit per day.

I'd play that lottery.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Yes, usa is overrun with deadly machines. So it's no surprise when they crash into buildings, murder children, etc. It's just big numbers, y'all! It's like two people having the same birthday! Isn't that neato? It's just math! Nothing to see here. \s \s \s

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago

I have no idea what point you're trying to make. What does 7-11 putting in bollards have to do with murdering children?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago (1 children)

won't anyone stop that one car, i mean how hard could it be, at this point someone had to have gotten the license plate

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

If we know he strikes every day there's a limited distance he can travel between crashes - that should help narrow down our search

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Maybe drivers simply didn't see the building. These stores need to be painted with high-viz paint! You can't blame drivers for these stores being invisible! /s

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

These buildings are lay-in-wait ambush predators. They stalk their prey, then bam, car accident. They never see it coming.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (3 children)

7-Eleven released a statement that read in part: "We are heartbroken by this tragedy…. It is important to note that this unfortunate accident was caused by a reckless driver who pled guilty, and this store followed all local building codes and ordinances."

"Of course it's not 7-11's fault, anyone but us"

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

Sounds like an argument in favor of mandating bollards to me.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

This isn't a 7/11 specific problem. In my area coffee shops tend to be the most common hit, and many of them seem to be a case of someone putting their car into the wrong gear and driving forward when they meant to reverse.

If they are going to demand that 7/11 needs bollards, then just about any business with a parking lot should need them too.

[–] VirtualOdour 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

So if a car hit your house and the postman gets hurt you'd hold yourself personally responsible and pay all his costs and stuff?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Strawman, you've changed too much in your scenario to be taken seriously. This didn't happen on residential property or to a federal on-the-job worker which would both have drastically different laws applied than a commercial property and their own employees and customers. You don't even touch on 1.14 crashes per day over 15 years. Go fabricate fights somewhere else.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

So if you owned a 7-11 store and some dude ran his car into it, it's your fault?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Why do I have to argue any case except the article's? Reductionism will make us all look like fools and we'll deserve it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Ok so if some bozo who can't drive double-amputees a dude in front of a store, it's the store's fault. They should install safety measures. Noted.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You're the second person to conveniently forget that this has happened statistically daily for 15 years.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

At different locations. But even then, it's the fucking driver's fault. Every time. Unless cars are too hard for the general public and they should only be allowed for professionals, or banned entirely

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

There's commonalities that make a particular type of site a hazard. Parking a sidewalk's length from the building is pretty unique to these types of stores. People run over people or damage property all the time but why do you think these kinds stores are so targeted in this article? Because they built an environment where it's MUCH easier to happen than say apartments, grocery stores, hospitals, or most anywhere else. And then they didn't protect you from what is apparently a common enough danger that they have created and you don't have an alternative.

You should be able to walk into a 7-11 without fearing you're going to lose your legs.

"Who needs safety equipment when there's someone we can blame." Boy am I glad we invented seat belts before this every-man-for-himself mindset took over.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

do you think it already happened today?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Yup

I a totally unrelated note, could anyone lend me their car?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Roughly 12,600 7/11's in the US, so a 0.01% chance of any individual 7/11 getting a car on a given day, or a 1 in a thousand chance.

According to this https://slate.com/business/2022/06/car-crash-buildings-how-many.html about a 100 cars crash into buildings each day, so 7/11 makes up 1% of building crashes, but that tracks since a lot of people go to there for quick needs with distracted minds.

I don't have much of a point, but the statistics don't paint a some scary point that I think the lawyers are trying to make.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

You are telling me that statistically speaking, a store is likely to be crashing into within 3 years of its most recent crash

[–] VirtualOdour 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Also a car bumping a wall or even breaking a window doesn't seem like a real problem, feels like this is one of those 'man chokes eating his shoe, shocking statistics show almost all Americans wear dangerous choking hazard shoes!'

Also bollards don't change the situation significantly for the occupants of the car, the only statistic that's actually interesting is how often do people outsidw the car get hurt when it happens - since they're only talking about one tragic incident I'm guessing it's a low number.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

One of their primary sources of revenue

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

IMO, any confirmed case of “pedal confusion” in a driver should be followed by an irrevocable loss of the driver’s license for life, and a ban on driving anywhere, anywhen.

I would even gladly see an international registry to prevent people like these from moving to other countries and getting driver’s licenses there.

If you cannot tell which pedal is which, and maintain 100% control over which is getting pressed, you are a lethal threat to everyone around you. You cannot be allowed to drive, full stop end of story. There is no reality in which you could ever be “safe” behind the wheel.

And we have similar limitations for other people: those subject to medication-resistent grand mal seizures also cannot drive for much the same reasons, in that there is no way to prevent them from being a lethal threat once operating a vehicle.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

@rekabis @fpslem Honestly, I don't think any human is attentive enough to drive a SUV in a town.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Pedal confusion has to do with the person, not the size of vehicle that they drive.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

@rekabis I wasn't talking about pedal confusion, just the attentiveness needed for safety.

Size of vehicle makes the attention required to operate safely around other people higher. Both from risk due to vehicle bulk and mass, and the difficulty in being aware of your surroundings that a larger and higher vehicle has.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I wasn't talking about pedal confusion

Then why respond to my comment? Because pedal confusion was 100% of the subject under consideration. All you did was add noise to the signal by bringing in something entirely unrelated to what I was talking about.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Where do you think they get the meat for the hot dogs? Seriously though 7/11 parking lots rival trader Joe's

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

It could be a case where 1 7-Eleven car crash per day is the median, but not the majority, with 0 and 2 or more combined being more than 50%, so they mean (but communicate poorly) that most days have 1 or more cars crash into 1 or more 7-Elevens, but they couldn't say that most days have 1 car crash into a 7-Eleven. The only additional information that that would give above simply reporting the 1.14 average is that it's not highly concentrated on a few days, like if 300 of the annual car crashes into 7-Elevens all happened on 7/11 when people jostle over free slurpees.

In short, "average" has too many meanings for its average use.