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The USA has a 5x higher death rate than Sweden [1]. At ~45k deaths per year in the USA, I don’t understand how this isn’t a higher priority on everyone’s mind.

by ricw 2y ago

The USA has a 5x higher death rate than Sweden [1]. At ~45k deaths per year in the USA, I don’t understand how this isn’t a higher priority on everyone’s mind. Americas roads are terrible, both from a design as a well as from a maintenance perspective. Often worse than a third world country. This could be done quite easily. [1] 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...

occz 2y ago
I've personally observed a wide-spread refusal to admit that there's a problem that can be addressed when seeing the topic online before. Absurd as it may be.
freitzkriesler2 2y ago
Could it be that America has 335 million people living there versus Sweden's 10.4 million ? It's almost like population density changes how many deaths per year happen! Maybe there's a statistical tool that normalizes the population scale between the two so you can compare like for like.
- alistairSH 2y ago
  Almost like you didn’t bother to check the source. The US rate is 5-6x worse per 100k residents. And 2.5x worse adjusts for miles driven. The US has failed miserably at road safety.
  - freitzkriesler2 2y ago
    Just because the bad data and the right data tell the same story doesn't preclude the fact that the original post can and does lead to bad assumptions in many other examples. I expect better from the otherwise number accurate crowd here. The level of butthurt in down d00ts and replies is telling.
    - alistairSH 2y ago
      The post was not incorrect. There were two separate figures cited -the rate and then a gross figure. You wrongly took them to be closely related. Your error, not the OP’s.
- ellen364 2y ago
  The stats in the link say that the annual “traffic-related death rate” is 12.9 deaths per 100,000 people in the USA and 2.2 per 100,000 people in Sweden. It’s the death rate that’s (more than) 5x higher in the USA, not the death count. That’s around 45,000 deaths compared to around 225 deaths.
silverquiet 2y ago
I don’t think I really remember a time when American Exceptionalism wasn’t really just a sort of toxic nihilism. At some point it seems to have gone from believing we could do anything if we put in the effort to believing that all the pathologies of our society are unsolvable. Guns, homelessness, access to healthcare; the despair creeps in everywhere.
tzs 2y ago
That's the death rate per person, which is not really a good measure of how safe the roads are. Better is the death rate per km. The US drives about 62 times as many km as Sweden does, and has a population about 32 times as big as Sweden, which means the US death rate per person would be expected to be about 1.9 times that of Sweden if the roads were equally safe. With that correction the US is about 2.6 times as deadly as Sweden rather than 5 times as deadly. Note: the above numbers are somewhat fuzzy, because when I Googled for population and driving and death data the results weren't always for the same year.
- xracy 2y ago
  I feel like there are probably diminishing returns on picking your best metric... Like, does it matter if the number is 5x as deadly or 2.5x as deadly when you consider that not adjusted for population we have a ton of traffic deaths in the US? The priority is to not kill as many people with cars. We just convince ourselves that it's reasonable to have a baseline number of deaths based on how big our population is for some reason. It's not better if we're expanding that definition to arbitrarily include some quantity of driving. If driving is causing more deaths, we should probably be trying to limit the amount of driving we do.

by ricw 2y ago

occz 2y ago

I've personally observed a wide-spread refusal to admit that there's a problem that can be addressed when seeing the topic online before. Absurd as it may be.

freitzkriesler2 2y ago

Could it be that America has 335 million people living there versus Sweden's 10.4 million ? It's almost like population density changes how many deaths per year happen! Maybe there's a statistical tool that normalizes the population scale between the two so you can compare like for like.

alistairSH 2y ago
Almost like you didn’t bother to check the source. The US rate is 5-6x worse per 100k residents. And 2.5x worse adjusts for miles driven. The US has failed miserably at road safety.
- freitzkriesler2 2y ago
  Just because the bad data and the right data tell the same story doesn't preclude the fact that the original post can and does lead to bad assumptions in many other examples. I expect better from the otherwise number accurate crowd here. The level of butthurt in down d00ts and replies is telling.
  - alistairSH 2y ago
    The post was not incorrect. There were two separate figures cited -the rate and then a gross figure. You wrongly took them to be closely related. Your error, not the OP’s.
ellen364 2y ago
The stats in the link say that the annual “traffic-related death rate” is 12.9 deaths per 100,000 people in the USA and 2.2 per 100,000 people in Sweden. It’s the death rate that’s (more than) 5x higher in the USA, not the death count. That’s around 45,000 deaths compared to around 225 deaths.

silverquiet 2y ago

I don’t think I really remember a time when American Exceptionalism wasn’t really just a sort of toxic nihilism. At some point it seems to have gone from believing we could do anything if we put in the effort to believing that all the pathologies of our society are unsolvable. Guns, homelessness, access to healthcare; the despair creeps in everywhere.

tzs 2y ago

That's the death rate per person, which is not really a good measure of how safe the roads are. Better is the death rate per km. The US drives about 62 times as many km as Sweden does, and has a population about 32 times as big as Sweden, which means the US death rate per person would be expected to be about 1.9 times that of Sweden if the roads were equally safe. With that correction the US is about 2.6 times as deadly as Sweden rather than 5 times as deadly. Note: the above numbers are somewhat fuzzy, because when I Googled for population and driving and death data the results weren't always for the same year.

xracy 2y ago
I feel like there are probably diminishing returns on picking your best metric... Like, does it matter if the number is 5x as deadly or 2.5x as deadly when you consider that not adjusted for population we have a ton of traffic deaths in the US? The priority is to not kill as many people with cars. We just convince ourselves that it's reasonable to have a baseline number of deaths based on how big our population is for some reason. It's not better if we're expanding that definition to arbitrarily include some quantity of driving. If driving is causing more deaths, we should probably be trying to limit the amount of driving we do.