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I was thinking about this the other day. I think when I checked last the US death toll was about 3 times that of Sweden. This is all good. The swedish governme
by bjorns 12y ago
I was thinking about this the other day. I think when I checked last the US death toll was about 3 times that of Sweden.
This is all good. The swedish government has been spending ridiculous amounts of money building away death in traffic.
But, I suspect the americans probably drive a lot more than the average swede. I think if you change the death toll from per-person to per-driver the numbers will change and if you change it to per-driven-mile I'm not sure there will be a difference any more. Anyone know if there are numbers on this? Can't be impossible to produce. Maybe you can estimate using national gas consumption?
edit: Found it, turns out: nope. https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar4.htm https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar4.htm
- WildUtah 12y agothrowaway2424 makes a fine point. Road deaths are a result of bad driving, bad conditions, bad infrastructure, bad licensure, bad regulation and enforcement, and high rates of driving. Those are all related. The USA has chosen to require almost everyone to drive long distances with low density zoning, poor public transit, and extremely high parking mandates on private landowners. If another country has lower fatalities mostly because the government doesn't make them drive as much, that is a result of public policy, just as the high rate of driving in the USA is. Also, the USA has extensive investments in road safety, probably more than any other nation. Modern freeway safety design standards to enable high speed driving without as many fatalities originates in the USA and close to US$100 billion each year is spent on high speed roads and improvements. Also, the USA invests extensively in the world's best trauma surgery corps. The level of fatalities on the roads would probably be double what it is with merely typical first world medicine. Emergency trauma surgery to fight gunshot and car crash deaths is one of the few fields of medical care where the USA far exceeds world standards.
- ensignavenger 12y agoBut by looking at how the numbers compare using different denominators, we can shed some light on the cause. By looking at deaths/distance we can determine if distance driven is the cause, or if it is another factor. (Obviously, it is a combination of factors, but that is beside the point.)
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- r00fus 12y agoDriving is not an end in and of itself (statistically speaking). It's a means. It'd be like measuring ad success rate by ad size instead of clicks.
- ArkyBeagle 12y agoDriving in the United States is a means of converting gasoline into square feet of living space. We have close to taxation of Ricardian land rents, but probably not enough. Even if it's not absolutely true, Georgist land rents taxation is very interesting nonetheless.
- thrownaway2424 12y agoWhy should miles be the denominator? What if Americans just drive around pointlessly because their built environment requires it? Does that lower the impact of traffic deaths? Urban form and the external cost of transportation are inextricably linked. You can't say that of course it's safer in Sweden because they drive less, because it's safer in Sweden _because_ they drive less! That's the point!
- genmon 12y agoWikipedia has a list of countries by traffic-related death rate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-re... Road fatalities per 1 billion vehicle-km (factors out the distance driven): USA is 7.6; Sweden is 3.7. I'm in the UK, we're 2.6. Road fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants per year (a decent measure of "how likely I am to know someone who has died on the road"): USA is 11.6; Sweden is 3; UK is 2.7.