4 ms·

It's a bit of a cherry picked example though - the UK has some of the best road safety statistics worldwide. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_

by throwaway22032 3y ago

It's a bit of a cherry picked example though - the UK has some of the best road safety statistics worldwide. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic... Sort ascending, the UK is 7th from the bottom and some of those aren't really comparable (Monaco and HK are tiny). It's very obvious as a Brit as soon as you cross the border into France. Eastern Europe is something else entirely. The US is still "worse" than most of Europe, but it's only about 40% worse than the European average which is a fairer comparison IMO.

mandmandam 3y ago
It's pretty common to compare America and the UK more than America vs Europe, and there are good reasons for that. For example: > Researchers from Virginia Tech and Rutgers University compared the last 28 years of available transportation fatality data from the United States with data from the four countries with the most closely comparable national travel surveys and levels of affluence: Denmark, Germany, Netherlands and the United Kingdom. All four peer nations had reduced per capita pedestrian fatalities by at least 61 percent over the course of the study period — and standout Denmark did so by a whopping 69 percent — but the U.S. reduced ours by just 36 percent. - https://usa.streetsblog.org/2020/10/10/exactly-how-far-u-s-street-safety-has-fallen-behind-europe-in-four-bombshell-charts/ https://usa.streetsblog.org/2020/10/10/exactly-how-far-u-s-s... America had the safest roads in the world fifty years ago - so why not compare to the best, instead of an average that's brought down by some low-wealth countries with terrible historical road safety? Cherry picking or not, it's worth talking about what's going on.
- throwaway22032 3y ago
  I don't think comparing a tiny island to an enormous country makes sense. Speed limits are far lower all over the UK simply because they can be when you're not covering as much distance. It's far more usual to drive from e.g. California to Arizona than it is to go from even London to the Scottish Highlands (because there's barely anything up there). It's hard to find an accurate comparison in Europe for that reason. Even places that are quite big (tall) like the Nordics are basically unpopulated in the north so there's nowhere to go.
doubled112 3y ago
That graph didn’t have enough data in the deaths per KM driven column for me. I’m not in the US, but in Ontario, Canada. I think nothing about finishing a day of work, getting in the car and driving 750km to my in-laws (about 8h) through the night. The 401 is busy and unpredictable at the best of times. I’ve always assumed this type of travel wasn’t incredibly common in other places, and that skews the numbers.
- throwaway22032 3y ago
  Yes, agree.

mandmandam 3y ago

It's pretty common to compare America and the UK more than America vs Europe, and there are good reasons for that. For example: > Researchers from Virginia Tech and Rutgers University compared the last 28 years of available transportation fatality data from the United States with data from the four countries with the most closely comparable national travel surveys and levels of affluence: Denmark, Germany, Netherlands and the United Kingdom. All four peer nations had reduced per capita pedestrian fatalities by at least 61 percent over the course of the study period — and standout Denmark did so by a whopping 69 percent — but the U.S. reduced ours by just 36 percent. - https://usa.streetsblog.org/2020/10/10/exactly-how-far-u-s-street-safety-has-fallen-behind-europe-in-four-bombshell-charts/ https://usa.streetsblog.org/2020/10/10/exactly-how-far-u-s-s... America had the safest roads in the world fifty years ago - so why not compare to the best, instead of an average that's brought down by some low-wealth countries with terrible historical road safety? Cherry picking or not, it's worth talking about what's going on.

throwaway22032 3y ago
I don't think comparing a tiny island to an enormous country makes sense. Speed limits are far lower all over the UK simply because they can be when you're not covering as much distance. It's far more usual to drive from e.g. California to Arizona than it is to go from even London to the Scottish Highlands (because there's barely anything up there). It's hard to find an accurate comparison in Europe for that reason. Even places that are quite big (tall) like the Nordics are basically unpopulated in the north so there's nowhere to go.

doubled112 3y ago

That graph didn’t have enough data in the deaths per KM driven column for me. I’m not in the US, but in Ontario, Canada. I think nothing about finishing a day of work, getting in the car and driving 750km to my in-laws (about 8h) through the night. The 401 is busy and unpredictable at the best of times. I’ve always assumed this type of travel wasn’t incredibly common in other places, and that skews the numbers.

throwaway22032 3y ago
Yes, agree.