4 ms·
I don't know to what extent that is true, I'm not saying it's not, but I also wonder. Having been in a lot of places where the traffic is unpredictable, I've no
by ftyers 4y ago
I don't know to what extent that is true, I'm not saying it's not, but I also wonder. Having been in a lot of places where the traffic is unpredictable, I've noticed that people pay a lot more attention to the road and their surroundings and in general drive more defensively than on places where there is an assumption that everyone is following the same rules. This is just anecdotal of course, but I think it would be interesting to look into. I certainly feel a lot safer as a pedestrian in Mexico than in the US for example, even though the traffic is more unpredictable. But again it might be an illusion.
- bombcar 4y agoThe key with Mexico is that all traffic is unpredictable. The US gets into an unfortunate "local maxima" where the car traffic is relatively predictable so anything that deviates is much more dangerous. Whereas free-for-alls like India, et al, are predictable in their unpredictability - you can't rest for a moment because everything is chaos. There's also a tipping point when you have enough crowding that everything slows down.
- ftyers 4y agoYeah I think there is definitely a trade off in terms of speed vs. predictability vs. safety, but wonder what it is. Like is it 3 pick 2?
- bombcar 4y agoIt's not quite that well defined, I think - I suspect that someplace with those massive "drive with your horn" traffic jams have tons and tons of "very minor" incidents that just happen. Trying to clean that up ends up speeding things up so that the incidents that DO happen become worse. We even kind of see that with air and train travel - they are almost perfectly incident-free, but when an incident does happen many can die.