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The article ignores the single biggest reason Americans are likelier than Swedes to die on the roads, which is simply that Americans drive more. The death rate

by pash 12y ago

The article ignores the single biggest reason Americans are likelier than Swedes to die on the roads, which is simply that Americans drive more. The death rate is nearly four times higher per capita in the United States, but only twice as high per mile driven [0]. (In fact, in America, the last few decades' worth of safety improvements to cars have been almost entirely offset by an increase in miles driven; despite their much safer cars, Americans are only slightly less likely to die driving today than they were in 1990 [1].) The bigger mystery is why Americans are now far likelier to die in their cars than Europeans even after you control for the time they spend in them. That didn't use to be the case. Until the mid-1990s, Sweden (like almost every other country [2]) had a higher rate of traffic fatalities per mile driven than did the United States. Those rates have declined markedly all around the world, but much less in the United States than elsewhere. My guess is that the divergence comes down to diverging patterns of living. Over the last few decades, American cities have sprawled all over the landscape, so Americans not only drive more, but their road infrastructure is built to facilitate daily travel at high speeds over long distances. A great many Americans drive 30+ highway miles each day between their suburban homes and city offices, but that sort of commute is rare elsewhere. 0. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-re... 1. http://www.planetizen.com/node/68200 http://www.planetizen.com/node/68200 2. See, e.g., statistics showing that fatalities per vehicle mile were lower in the United State than in many European countries in 1991, https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/hs93/Sec7.pdf https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/hs93/Sec7.pdf [PDF; see page 4]

hobbes78 12y ago
Europeans and americans may have diverging patterns of living, but sleeping in suburban areas and working in city centres isn't one of those patterns, as it's becoming the norm everywhere...
- flexie 12y ago
  Few or no European suburbs are as vast as your American suburbs (think Houston, Atlanta or the Bay area). In my home country (Denmark) young families now tend to stay in city centers rather than moving to suburbs so the trend is reverse. Also, European cities generally have much better public transportation such as really decent busses, trolley busses, light rails, subways, trains, and trams. Finally, I suspect a mile driven by 30-60 year olds are generally safer than a mile driven by teenagers. Europe has older population and few teenage drivers.
  - spdustin 12y ago
    Living in the Chicago area for most of my adult life, but visiting Houston frequently, I find myself longing for the long access roads / frontage roads that are prevalent around the Houston loop. It's a nice buffer between long-haul highways and shorter-haul-but-not-quite-local roads.
  - ZenoArrow 12y ago
    There are certainly Europeans that engage in long commutes. In the UK, many people who work in London commute from outside, sometimes multiple hours each way, but you're right, public transport is widely used, those aforementioned London commuters tend to rely on trains. Perhaps London is a special case because it's so expensive to live there, but in general it's easy to get around the country on trains.
- pash 12y ago
  There is a big difference in commuting patterns, which is the difference I noted. Even comparing only suburbanite Americans to suburbanite Europeans, the Americans are likelier to drive, and when they drive, they drive farther and faster. See, e.g., a study comparing commuting habits of American workers with their British and Irish counterparts [0]. Aside from the more well known differences, the study points out that the average commuting speed is over 45mph in the United States compared to under 30mph in Ireland. Typical European cities and suburbs are not like typical American cities and suburbs. 0. http://abstracts.aetransport.org/paper/download/id/4040 http://abstracts.aetransport.org/paper/download/id/4040 [PDF]
  - darklajid 12y ago
    I commented elsewhere in this thread: Americans drive .. faster? So I commuted (I tend to work from home) today, 31th of December, about 90km to the office of my company. Vmax was 200km/h. Tires are cleared up to 210, car can go ~230, but the weather wasn't nice and it's winter. I don't think that you can bring up 'fast driving' on the US side of things, if you want to compare yourself to Europe. What am I missing? France allows 130km/h. What's the limit (or what's the average speed over the limit, if you refer to that) for you?
    - spdustin 12y ago
      On most major highways near cities, it's 55 mi/h / 88 km/h. Average speed of experienced drivers in light traffic would be about 15% higher.
      - darklajid 12y ago
        Thanks. I always fail to understand the word 'highways'[1]. I _think_ Autobahn, and compare it with that in my post. Sweden, according to the infallible Wikipedia, seems to have a speed limit on their version of the highway/Autobahn of 110km/h, in exceptional cases 120km/h. So I still think the GP is wrong, at least in terms of 'driving faster'. 1: I'm unsure what constitutes a highway, what is the difference (if there's any) to an interstate and .. what you'd call the 'normal' roads between cities.
- jarek 12y ago
  I'm currently in Kraków. Only really crap suburb osiedla don't have a tram or a major bus loop for heading into city centre...
  - expr_ 12y ago
    (I'm not sure what you're trying to say, but) City centre is not the only location to which one may be heading. I live in the capital of my country, and I save three quarters of an hour of my daily commute with a car – and I hear people saying the capital is the only place where public transport really ”works”.
- aragot 12y ago
  When talking about climate change, Jean Marc Jancovici (our local Al Gore) never fails to mention urban architecture takes time to reorganize. Given your petrol is so cheap (low tax and high foreign... let's not say it), US builds cities accordingly. In France, taxes more than double the petrol price [1], so you only see suburban designs in very rich places (namely, Sophia-Antipolis). Those areas where cars are mandatory are not kind to lower-income people, and the voting is accordingly very right-wing. So the first step we should take for climate change is to organize our cities so that public transport is useful, where we can walk to work. In this matter, US has no chance of improving if they keep low taxes per gallon. [1] http://www.connaissancedesenergies.org/fiche-pedagogique/structuration-des-prix-de-l-essence-et-du-gazole-france http://www.connaissancedesenergies.org/fiche-pedagogique/str... (French, with charts)
thirsteh 12y ago
As someone who's lived in Sweden and now America: The vast majority of Swedes drive small sedans/station wagons, not 4WD trucks. Ironically most Americans I ask about their unnecessarily large trucks cite safety as the reason they're not in a smaller car, while a significantly smaller portion actually got their truck to be able to pull others out of ditches, drive in rough terrain, etc. If I had to guess, I'd say there being more metal involved is a significant factor in the number of deaths. Two other possible reasons: 1. Manufacturers popular in Scandinavia, like Volvo and now Tesla, make much safer cars than their competition, and 2. It is ridiculously easy to get a driver's license in America compared to Europe. If you measured "graduates'" driving ability out of the gate, I'm sure Europe would come out on top. (Though, American roads being much larger and safer in general might compensate for this. I'm not sure what the article is talking about when it implies Swedish roads are safer -- they're a mess compared to America's in that respect.)
- jplahn 12y ago
  I would agree that getting a license in the US is significantly easier than in Europe. I'm American, but I lived in Scotland for 7 years and go my first drivers license there. I was told the pass rate was around 40%, which may or may not have been the truth. It was about a 45 minute test. Fast forward a few years to when I returned to the US for college and my drivers test was about 5 minutes long and an absolute joke. As for the last point about American roads being larger and safer, I'm not sure the second part is true. They are definitely larger, but there's been research done to indicate that larger != safer. I'll try to dig up the article, but I'd tend to agree with the sentiment. I've seen significantly more accidents on large laned freeways in America with a 55 mph speed limit than skinny backroads in Scotland with a 60 mph speed limit, even with adjusting for the larger amount of traffic on the American freeways.
  - thirsteh 12y ago
    I guess it's possible that small and curved multi-directional roads are safer than larger, mostly one-directional roads (or in a grid system) simply because they force you to pay attention.
  - 12y ago
boomzilla 12y ago
You are assuming that the total miles driving is linear correlated with number of accidents, which is probably not a valid assumption. I don't have the data, but intuitively there would be more accident later on in a long trip. I know for sure that I am a much better driver in the morning commute to work than in the one back home after a long day.
- ars 12y ago
  It is actually correlated. But not miles, but rather hours. To the point that people joke that the best way to reduce traffic deaths is to increase the speed limit, since that means people will be on the road for less time.
  - akgerber 12y ago
    This is of course only remotely possible on limited access highways, because there are squishy human beings that are easily killed by large speed differentials on urban and suburban streets.
- pash 12y ago
  The link [1] cited in my post above includes a chart showing fatalities per mile driven plotted against fatalities per capita for a dozen countries. The relationship looks pretty linear.
- vacri 12y ago
  It's an indicator of road use. Contrary to what the article says, Sweden doesn't have the safest roads per capita - the Vatican City has fewer road deaths. It has a few streets that get driven on, so it gets to play as well. Of course, claiming the Vatican-as-best in this kind of analysis is silly, because barely any driving is done there; the roads aren't really used heavily. Road-miles driven per capita shows up this kind of light or heavy use.
IndianAstronaut 12y ago
>The bigger mystery is why Americans are now far likelier to die in their cars than Europeans even after you control for the time they spend in them. >A great many Americans drive 30+ highway miles each day between their suburban homes and city offices Seems like the answer is right there. People get exhausted on the road. Closing your eyes for 2 seconds is disastrous.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Add congestion, higher speed limits, more high-powered cars, and on and on.
  - darklajid 12y ago
    Higher speed limits?? (German, confused)
    - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
      Its not all about highways
  - seanp2k2 12y ago
    Also road rage, lack of practical public transit options, the slap-on-the-wrist of most traffic offenses compared to other countries where it's much easier to lose your license / much more expensive to obtain a license in the first place, the lackadaisical attitude toward safety, especially w.r.t. Intoxicated operation, etc etc.
    - IndianAstronaut 12y ago
      Problem is that if you lose your license in the US, it could put you out of a job and make it very hard to find another one.
      - detaro 12y ago
        People have jobs that require them to drive cars in other countries, too ;)

by pash 12y ago

hobbes78 12y ago

Europeans and americans may have diverging patterns of living, but sleeping in suburban areas and working in city centres isn't one of those patterns, as it's becoming the norm everywhere...

flexie 12y ago
Few or no European suburbs are as vast as your American suburbs (think Houston, Atlanta or the Bay area). In my home country (Denmark) young families now tend to stay in city centers rather than moving to suburbs so the trend is reverse. Also, European cities generally have much better public transportation such as really decent busses, trolley busses, light rails, subways, trains, and trams. Finally, I suspect a mile driven by 30-60 year olds are generally safer than a mile driven by teenagers. Europe has older population and few teenage drivers.
- spdustin 12y ago
  Living in the Chicago area for most of my adult life, but visiting Houston frequently, I find myself longing for the long access roads / frontage roads that are prevalent around the Houston loop. It's a nice buffer between long-haul highways and shorter-haul-but-not-quite-local roads.
- ZenoArrow 12y ago
  There are certainly Europeans that engage in long commutes. In the UK, many people who work in London commute from outside, sometimes multiple hours each way, but you're right, public transport is widely used, those aforementioned London commuters tend to rely on trains. Perhaps London is a special case because it's so expensive to live there, but in general it's easy to get around the country on trains.
pash 12y ago
There is a big difference in commuting patterns, which is the difference I noted. Even comparing only suburbanite Americans to suburbanite Europeans, the Americans are likelier to drive, and when they drive, they drive farther and faster. See, e.g., a study comparing commuting habits of American workers with their British and Irish counterparts [0]. Aside from the more well known differences, the study points out that the average commuting speed is over 45mph in the United States compared to under 30mph in Ireland. Typical European cities and suburbs are not like typical American cities and suburbs. 0. http://abstracts.aetransport.org/paper/download/id/4040 http://abstracts.aetransport.org/paper/download/id/4040 [PDF]
- darklajid 12y ago
  I commented elsewhere in this thread: Americans drive .. faster? So I commuted (I tend to work from home) today, 31th of December, about 90km to the office of my company. Vmax was 200km/h. Tires are cleared up to 210, car can go ~230, but the weather wasn't nice and it's winter. I don't think that you can bring up 'fast driving' on the US side of things, if you want to compare yourself to Europe. What am I missing? France allows 130km/h. What's the limit (or what's the average speed over the limit, if you refer to that) for you?
  - spdustin 12y ago
    On most major highways near cities, it's 55 mi/h / 88 km/h. Average speed of experienced drivers in light traffic would be about 15% higher.
    - darklajid 12y ago
      Thanks. I always fail to understand the word 'highways'[1]. I _think_ Autobahn, and compare it with that in my post. Sweden, according to the infallible Wikipedia, seems to have a speed limit on their version of the highway/Autobahn of 110km/h, in exceptional cases 120km/h. So I still think the GP is wrong, at least in terms of 'driving faster'. 1: I'm unsure what constitutes a highway, what is the difference (if there's any) to an interstate and .. what you'd call the 'normal' roads between cities.
jarek 12y ago
I'm currently in Kraków. Only really crap suburb osiedla don't have a tram or a major bus loop for heading into city centre...
- expr_ 12y ago
  (I'm not sure what you're trying to say, but) City centre is not the only location to which one may be heading. I live in the capital of my country, and I save three quarters of an hour of my daily commute with a car – and I hear people saying the capital is the only place where public transport really ”works”.
aragot 12y ago
When talking about climate change, Jean Marc Jancovici (our local Al Gore) never fails to mention urban architecture takes time to reorganize. Given your petrol is so cheap (low tax and high foreign... let's not say it), US builds cities accordingly. In France, taxes more than double the petrol price [1], so you only see suburban designs in very rich places (namely, Sophia-Antipolis). Those areas where cars are mandatory are not kind to lower-income people, and the voting is accordingly very right-wing. So the first step we should take for climate change is to organize our cities so that public transport is useful, where we can walk to work. In this matter, US has no chance of improving if they keep low taxes per gallon. [1] http://www.connaissancedesenergies.org/fiche-pedagogique/structuration-des-prix-de-l-essence-et-du-gazole-france http://www.connaissancedesenergies.org/fiche-pedagogique/str... (French, with charts)

thirsteh 12y ago

As someone who's lived in Sweden and now America: The vast majority of Swedes drive small sedans/station wagons, not 4WD trucks. Ironically most Americans I ask about their unnecessarily large trucks cite safety as the reason they're not in a smaller car, while a significantly smaller portion actually got their truck to be able to pull others out of ditches, drive in rough terrain, etc. If I had to guess, I'd say there being more metal involved is a significant factor in the number of deaths. Two other possible reasons: 1. Manufacturers popular in Scandinavia, like Volvo and now Tesla, make much safer cars than their competition, and 2. It is ridiculously easy to get a driver's license in America compared to Europe. If you measured "graduates'" driving ability out of the gate, I'm sure Europe would come out on top. (Though, American roads being much larger and safer in general might compensate for this. I'm not sure what the article is talking about when it implies Swedish roads are safer -- they're a mess compared to America's in that respect.)

jplahn 12y ago
I would agree that getting a license in the US is significantly easier than in Europe. I'm American, but I lived in Scotland for 7 years and go my first drivers license there. I was told the pass rate was around 40%, which may or may not have been the truth. It was about a 45 minute test. Fast forward a few years to when I returned to the US for college and my drivers test was about 5 minutes long and an absolute joke. As for the last point about American roads being larger and safer, I'm not sure the second part is true. They are definitely larger, but there's been research done to indicate that larger != safer. I'll try to dig up the article, but I'd tend to agree with the sentiment. I've seen significantly more accidents on large laned freeways in America with a 55 mph speed limit than skinny backroads in Scotland with a 60 mph speed limit, even with adjusting for the larger amount of traffic on the American freeways.
- thirsteh 12y ago
  I guess it's possible that small and curved multi-directional roads are safer than larger, mostly one-directional roads (or in a grid system) simply because they force you to pay attention.
- 12y ago

boomzilla 12y ago

You are assuming that the total miles driving is linear correlated with number of accidents, which is probably not a valid assumption. I don't have the data, but intuitively there would be more accident later on in a long trip. I know for sure that I am a much better driver in the morning commute to work than in the one back home after a long day.

ars 12y ago
It is actually correlated. But not miles, but rather hours. To the point that people joke that the best way to reduce traffic deaths is to increase the speed limit, since that means people will be on the road for less time.
- akgerber 12y ago
  This is of course only remotely possible on limited access highways, because there are squishy human beings that are easily killed by large speed differentials on urban and suburban streets.
pash 12y ago
The link [1] cited in my post above includes a chart showing fatalities per mile driven plotted against fatalities per capita for a dozen countries. The relationship looks pretty linear.
vacri 12y ago
It's an indicator of road use. Contrary to what the article says, Sweden doesn't have the safest roads per capita - the Vatican City has fewer road deaths. It has a few streets that get driven on, so it gets to play as well. Of course, claiming the Vatican-as-best in this kind of analysis is silly, because barely any driving is done there; the roads aren't really used heavily. Road-miles driven per capita shows up this kind of light or heavy use.

IndianAstronaut 12y ago

>The bigger mystery is why Americans are now far likelier to die in their cars than Europeans even after you control for the time they spend in them. >A great many Americans drive 30+ highway miles each day between their suburban homes and city offices Seems like the answer is right there. People get exhausted on the road. Closing your eyes for 2 seconds is disastrous.

JoeAltmaier 12y ago
Add congestion, higher speed limits, more high-powered cars, and on and on.
- darklajid 12y ago
  Higher speed limits?? (German, confused)
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    Its not all about highways
- seanp2k2 12y ago
  Also road rage, lack of practical public transit options, the slap-on-the-wrist of most traffic offenses compared to other countries where it's much easier to lose your license / much more expensive to obtain a license in the first place, the lackadaisical attitude toward safety, especially w.r.t. Intoxicated operation, etc etc.
  - IndianAstronaut 12y ago
    Problem is that if you lose your license in the US, it could put you out of a job and make it very hard to find another one.
    - detaro 12y ago
      People have jobs that require them to drive cars in other countries, too ;)