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As an aside, the U.S got roughly twice the number of fatal crash than the E.U [1][2], despite the E.U having ~100 millions more people. There is a clear need t

• SoftTalker 1y ago
  EU has much higher training and licensing requirements in general. In the US a 15 year old can get a learner's permit and start driving (with an adult) the same day. They can be licensed to drive on their own at 16 by passing a fairly cursory written exam and a short road test. No formal/classroom instruction is required.
  • AlexandrB 1y ago
    Roughly the same in Canada. I wish we had more stringent testing, including periodic re-testing (especially over 60).
    • MaKey 1y ago
      For Germany there is even a subreddit about old people crashing into things: https://www.reddit.com/r/RentnerfahreninDinge/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RentnerfahreninDinge/ Sadly it will be next to impossible to implement re-testing at a certain age as old people are the majority of the voters.
  • mh- 1y ago
    Like everything in the US, those rules vary by state, and this is incorrect for at least those that I'm familiar with.
    • vel0city 1y ago
      Yeah, but if I get a license in a state with weak licensing requirements and move to your state that actually puts some small restrictions I continue being a licensed driver.
      • mh- 1y ago
        This is true. I moved from a weaker state to a stronger one and had to retake the full written test; no new classroom or behind-the-wheel training of course.
  • ThatMedicIsASpy 1y ago
    The cost of getting a drivers license has increased a lot in Germany. 2500-3500€ isn't uncommon today.
    • StrandedKitty 1y ago
      Here in the NL I'd say it's at least €3600 if you have zero experience. This is my estimation for both theory & practical parts based on my own experience, current rates, and what little statistics I could find. Often much more if you fail and have to take more lessons.
  • lumost 1y ago
    Raising requirements in the US is prohibitive due to the lack of options individuals have when they cannot drive. A 16 year old often needs, or wants to work for an income. Owning a car is often a job requirement due to the distances involved in american cities. Getting a job within walking distance is often a non-option due to availability of employers, and biking is of limited safety profile depending on the area. If the only way to get to your job is through a state highway - driving may be the only safe method.
    • vel0city 1y ago
      > Raising requirements in the US is prohibitive due to the lack of options individuals have when they cannot drive We'll suddenly have a lot more voters clamoring for alternative transportation systems if we actually bother taking away people's driving privileges when they shouldn't be on the road
      • gretch 1y ago
        Pretty sure those new voters just reinstate their ability to drive again.
  • gizmo686 1y ago
    Lisence requirements vary by state. Here in Maryland, you need 30 classroom hours and 60 hours behind the wheel before before getting a provisional license.
    • SoftTalker 1y ago
      We have no classroom requirement, the new driver just needs to pass the written test, which covers basic traffic rules and signs, and a short (maybe 20 minutes) driving test with an examiner. This basically amounts to a few blocks out and back near the DMV office. As long as you stay in the correct lanes, don't speed, stop at stop signs, and use turn signals, you will almost certainly pass. There is a requirement for some number of supervised hours behind the wheel but it's entirely self-reported on the honor system.
• mschuster91 1y ago
  Possible causes for this include the prevalence of really large SUVs, which make it physically much more difficult to even see pedestrians - especially children. Another part is truck design. Same reason: American trucks have elongated noses for the engine, whereas European trucks have the driver sitting directly above the engine. On top of that, European countries have much more strict testing requirements on vehicles. Basically, every 2-4 years you have to have your vehicle inspected for roadworthiness - foundational stuff such as structural rust, worn-down tires or brakes gets caught much, much earlier than in the US.
  • nemomarx 1y ago
    To be fair to the US, various states have yearly inspections that include undercarriage rusting and other issues. It's a factor but I think less important than the truck part.
• mystified5016 1y ago
  Police no longer feel the need to do their jobs, and Americans in general have just lost any sense of empathy or even awareness of other people. But also we have a serious problem where taking away someone's license to drive is to sentence them to poverty if not homelessness and starvation. We don't have decent public transit and there are very few jobs within walking distance of most residential areas. Those jobs that do exist don't pay a living wage because pegging minimum wage to inflation or even the poverty line is "communism" and an "attack on businesses". Our problems with car fatalities is really only one small symptom of the ongoing collapse of American society.
  • sokoloff 1y ago
    My objection to raising minimum wage too high is that it makes it illegal for people with modest skills and abilities to earn a living unless they can find an employer to dress up charity as a job. I know people who would struggle to create $100 of value for an employer per day. I would rather they be allowed to hold a job at $80/day than to have minimum wage set above the value they are able to create.
    • eggsome 1y ago
      In Australia there is a scheme to pay lower wages to people with disabilities (lowest is approx $3 per hour). Seems to work well for people who would otherwise not be able to participate in the workforce. https://www.fairwork.gov.au/pay-and-wages/minimum-wages/employees-with-disability-pay-rates https://www.fairwork.gov.au/pay-and-wages/minimum-wages/empl...
  • dqv 1y ago
    > But also we have a serious problem where taking away someone's license to drive is to sentence them to poverty if not homelessness and starvation. This is why I always get uncomfortable about people saying things like "seniors should not be allowed to drive". They get the part about it being a safety risk, but then the suggestion of increasing the availability of public transit is, like you say, "communism" and "an attack on businesses". Just today, I communistically attacked a business by walking to it, which communistically saved a parking spot for someone who would have a hard time walking there, necessitating them driving. In all seriousness, the freedom of walking and being able to interact with the environment outweighs the "freedom" of going long distances in a vehicle. I have this weird optimism about the decline you are talking about: that somehow a new, more thoughtful, culture will arise from the ashes. One that is less concerned with monetary profit and more concerned with social profit. It does suck that there will be so much suffering and still no guarantee that any such culture arises, but I do have a tendency to smoke hopium until I am comatose.
• hyperpape 1y ago
  I can't speak to every European country, but Portugal also has a lot fewer stop signs and traffic lights than the US (roundabouts are one reason, but there are multiple four-way intersections on my street that would have stop signs in the US). Given the way American streets are set up, rigorously enforcing stop signs is probably beneficial, but I think other factors about how streets are arranged and how people drive are more important.
  • ryantgtg 1y ago
    People in the US drive with their phones in their faces. Is that an issue in Portugal?
• lawlessone 1y ago
  I'm just speculating. But people in US in general drive a lot further for everything. Most of shops i visit , other family members, my job , parks etc are all within about 5km of me. The longest drive i do to visit a family member is 90km, every few months. Anytime i've visited the US even going to the nearest shop seemed like a very long drive. So if all other things are equal, theres just more opportunity for accidents.
  • ryandrake 1y ago
    Yes, this is why any statistics about driving that are meant to be compared across cultures need to have "distance driven" somewhere in the denominator.
    • pj_mukh 1y ago
      Yea, I don't know I disagree. The denominator should always be just be population. I don't want to use sprawl as some sort of justification for more deaths per capita. Sprawl should be reduced and/or mitigated somehow.
      • accrual 1y ago
        I agree with the parent that distance driven should be in the equation. If there's a certain risk percentage associated with driving as a whole, then it's almost certainly somehow bound to distance driven. For example, the risk of a car crash should be near zero if the distance driven is also zero. But even in the safest of vehicles, driving 100KM, 1,000KM, or 10,000KM+ each are going to have higher rates of accidents assuming real-life road conditions. In the US, on average, people need to travel further to get to their destinations, and so on average I'd expect car accident and death statistics to likewise be higher. I'm very in favor of reducing urban sprawl, utilizing public transit, etc., but in present state the US has vast quantities of existing road networks which can't be consolidated or mitigated overnight, so the next best way to improve those statistics would be improving traffic controls, vehicles, safety features, etc.
        • 1y ago
• thinkingtoilet 1y ago
  I wonder if the size of the cars matter. Two Honda Fits crashing into each other is going to be different than a Honda Fit and a Ford 150.
• trod1234 1y ago
  Fatalities are horrible to the people involved, and in many cases the people responsible for such are punished. This is about saving a fractional percent of people while backdooring the technologies as a surrogate for control of everyone else. The error in agreeing to automatic enforcement lay in the indirect failures that naturally follow within centrally structured systems, when those automatic systems stop working correctly, or worse selectively work; the world will be worse off than not having the solution in place at all. There are dramatically more risks of this becoming a component of a panopticon prison in a fascist state, something the US is degrading into right now with the slow erosion; and stress fractures to our rule of law, it might very well suddenly fail overnight. What impact will these solutions have in breeding discontent if everyone has the boot of the government on their neck every time they roll through an empty stop-sign where no one is there..., or worse when they did stop and the AI mis-categorized it as a rolling stop. What feedback systems correct a faulty running system? Government and government apparatus have trouble getting sufficient benefits to legitimate welfare recipients, what makes you think they'll do this any better? Competency is not a common trait for government workers. Who do you think will be most impacted, the people with less awareness, or the people with more awareness. Lower IQ/cognitive speed vs. Higher IQ/cognitive speed. Would this result in an evolutionary filter against intelligence? Would these dramatic changes drive the intelligent people which society rests upon (dependently so), so crazy that they end themselves, don't have children, or end their children and themselves? Is there any hope for a future under such repressive and stagnant systems. No there isn't. Intelligent thought is largely based in cognitive speed, and multiplied by education. There are some very educated people who are not necessarily sufficiently intelligent to stand in for these people. Their words and ideas often cause more harm, the more complex the system becomes. The moment you rest an argument on do it for the dead people, or do it for the children, which is what %, you dismiss all the failures of the proposed system. Those failures still occur, those harms still happen, and the type of people you have left are less capable of adapting, or rather become enraged with each additional reminder that they are not people, they are slaves or animals. A nation becomes strong only as a result of its strong people in unity. When you make people necessarily dependent on the imagined detriment of what could happen, prevent them from acting, and do this at the expense of what is actually happening, you get a weak fragile complacent brittle people who break and are parasitically dependent on a pool of people that shrinks to nothing. These detrimental characteristics spread over time both laterally among people but also generationally, and eventually circumstances occur where your people simply cannot adapt to what the environment requires as needed, and in that existential threat you face oblivion as a species, extinction. Complacency, and a blindness or reactance to the risks, breed delusion which takes root spreading to those that remain, as a contagion. The moment you think you can make people better by treating them like animals or slaves, or prisoners, is the inflection point towards your people's ultimate destruction; although it may be many years between. Every person is dependent on every other person indirectly, and some carry more than others. How do you suppose such camera's of an all seeing eye will change the populace for the worse, might it make them more animalistic, ugly, violent... just as Sauron did as described by Tolkien, and much of the basis for Tolkien's works is based on the bible. The only way to win a game of thermonuclear war is to not play the game. The same can be said about a lot of decisions which pigeonhole your future into a box without a future.
• lemoncookiechip 1y ago
  This is speculation on my part: I assume US citizens tend to drive more short distances within cities to get to places, like shopping, while many EU cities are walk-able. Cities and city entrances have the largest concentration of people and accidents.