Tl;dr
USA:
- Terrible drivers
- Big ass trucks
- Minor punishments
- No sidewalks
- Texting while driving
Europe:
- Reasonably decent drivers
- Moderately big vehicles
- More or less severe punishments (still too low)
- Sidewalks everywhere
- Texting while driving
Road design also matters. European roads with heavy pedestrian traffic are often too narrow for speeding or have obstacles. American roads often look like a high way and only the signaling may suggest otherwise.
Is there any evidence that Europeans are better drivers than Americans? I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’ve just never seen any kind of data about that.
Also I’m not sure where you got the idea that the US doesn’t have sidewalks.
Well I did some checking. Lots of what Google says nowadays in the first answers is hallucination though so feel free to correct if you know better.
But “in a vast majority of states” as long as you’re over 18, all you need to do is walk into a DMV and pass a “knowledge test” and a vision test. Then you get a learner’s permit. Sure, you’re not allowed to drive solo with one, but the supervisor just needs to be an adult with a license (and “capable of driving the vehicle” ie “sober and alert” but eh drunk driving laws in the US are a whole other mess, damn Murica just give your cops breathalysers. here they sell disposable ones at every register in supermarkets).
In most states you can get that at 16 afaik.
Here in Finland, when I went to driving school, it lasted weeks. You have to sit theory lessons, risk lessons, and then do driving with an instructor for a dozen hours or so and then you get to go take a driving test and if you pass, you’ll get a license.
In the US they usually don’t even require parallel parking.
I had to parallel park in a steep hill and then hill start from there while not stalling the engine.
And after that, you get your phase 1 driving license. It gets taken away easier for fines, you can have like 2 in a year or 3 in 2 years iirc. I mean, you can’t. You can have 1 in a year or 2 in 2 years but 2 in one year or 3 in two years iirc and you get your license revoked and have to do a driving test all over again.
Then when you’ve had your phase 1 license for at least 1.5 years and have completed both night driving training and slippery driving training (you get taken to a rally track with hills and bends and it’s all covered in either water and ice or in the summer soap and oil and water) then you can have your permanent license.
So you know, by the idea that more training and higher requirements and harder to pass driving tests would mean better drivers unless there’s a maaaasssive disparity in the populations and Americans are just naturally so much better drivers that they compensate for the difference training makes. Which… they aren’t, let’s be honest.
Oh and most cars are manual. I feel like saying that a majority of Americans wouldn’t even know how to drive a manual probably isn’t a controversial statement, right? You’re allowed to go through driving school with automats but then you won’t be allowed to drive manual cars.
Also, several different classes of vehicles and licences. At 15 you get M class, for moped or “moped-cars” (fucking rich kids, pappa betalar) at 16 you can get a A1, that’s bikes up to 125cc and 11kw, then at 18 you can go for B which is regular cars, and nowadays I think only C1, but I did C. That’s heavy good vehicles, large “semitrucks”. C1 is smaller, lighter, semitrucks, they sort of split the class for some reason.
Most of the American “trucks” the insane sized pickups would probably C1 if not C.
If you want trailers then you have to also do E for them, and that’s for each (but not bikes obvs) so for instance you can have ABEC which would allow you to drive a large trailer behind a regular car, but not a massive one behind a semitruck. (You can have a small one with C, just like you can have a small regular trailer or a camper with B if their mass is low enough). But to have full semitruck+trailer you’d need CE. Then there’s also D which is buses. So you could have ABECEDE. (My dad had that I think.) A1 upgrades to a and A with “driving experience” which is just counted in years since you got the license, even if you didn’t drive for that time. So if you drive A1 license at 16 you get a-license at 18 and A at 20. Lowercase a is bikes up to 600cc and 25kw (but people often remove the limits from it being 25, but will be very costly if you get caught, for insurance).
TLDR the requirements for a driving license in the US are about the same as for a moped license here in Finland, and the requirements for a Commercial Driving License in the US are about the same as those here for a regular license.
Sooo… yeah. I think we can infer.
Also, there’s these:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0386111211000033
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12544-014-0131-7
Also I’m not sure where you got the idea that the US doesn’t have sidewalks.
I think they mean “curbs” actually. Or curbed sidewalks in general. And even if they don’t, I’ve heard from lots of Americans how simply some places aren’t walkable. As in there is literally no sidewalk, and you can’t step off the road, as there’s no “right to roam” in the US so someone could technically just shoot you for trespassing in the worst case, forcing you to practically walk on the road, which is being driven by massive and unsafe SUVs. SUV’s which wouldn’t care about most European curbs probably, having such large tires. But most average sized cars do.
Lots of cities don’t have sidewalks or dont have very many. Tulsa is a good example.
The sidewalks thing I have personal anecdotal evidence for. I have lived in MANY areas, including my current city, where there are very few sidewalks outside the main street.
There’s that, and statistics like
Metric:European Union (Avg)/United States
Road deaths per million people: ca. 44 / ca. 125–150
Driver Training: Rigorous & Expensive/Relatively easy/basic
Primary Safety Focus:Systemic (Traffic Calming)/Personal (Vehicle Size/Safety)
Casual observer here but i noticed a significant drop in cars in europe. People walk or mass transit. I’m sure there are stats for it but in a city where walking is 1st, people just pay attention more. Americans… will drive 2 blocks to the store and need to text BFF Jane about the latest tictok
Imfrastructure is the biggest factor. Car dependency makes for a lot of idiot drivers.
Do the phones have guns…?
I wonder what the deaths per pedestrian mile stat is for America vs the rest of the world. I would expect it it be even more terrifying. Ouside cities I am used to pedestrians being an extremely rare sight unless in a parking lot.
Probably because those massive gender affirming trucks are death machines for pedestrians
Probably no one single cause. Bigger vehicles. Wider roads. More driving centric. Less give a shit about other people.
People DO get killed because of phone usage in other countries. It is a huge issue. There’s now even special cameras here for fining people that call. Unfortunately many people text and drive. I constantly see people look down their laps while driving.
Lots of good reasons here on laws and larger vehicles in the US. One thing that seems to be missing:
Wider streets & roads, prevalence of stroads => faster driving speeds => more pedestrian deaths.
A lot of cities in Europe are much safer by design because of narrow streets that force drivers to slow down. Europe also has more real roads as opposed to stroads which are pervasive in the U.S.
Well european roads are mostly narrower because they were build 600 years ago
I thought big trucks and SUVs were doing it - at least that’s what a different headline said.
SUVs don’t kill people, but phones apparently do
So a good guy with an SUV can stop a bad guy with a phone? I think im getting it
Since it’s a US-only phenomenon, looking at vehicle types popular in the US seems like a good starting place, but that assumes phone use affects people’s awareness of their surroundings uniformly - I would want to confirm that by ruling out cultural differences between countries.
Big Trucks and SUVs are much deadlier than proper cars in case of accidents. Pedestrian infrastructure does not exist in most parts of the US or is very dangerous to use and those parts of the US that do are often unaffordable for regular people to live in. People also do not expect pedestrians even if there is infrastructure of that kind. Roads in the US are designed to maximise the danger to pedestrians even if there is pedestrian infrastructure because of car first regulations …
We have pedestrian friendly infrastructure and we don’t drive penis size compensating trucks. Cars close to pedestrians are forced to go slow and if they would swivel off the road, the curbs and other stuff like trees are there to stop cars before they hit anyone, or force the wheels away from the sidewalks to steer the car back on the road. So even when people are dumb enough to be on their phone, the risk of a fatal accident with a pedestrian is limited. Giant trucks just ram over and through everything, splashing any pedestrian in their path. Especially if there aren’t any sidewalks and cars are allowed to drive really fast. Contrary to the US we actually value human lives so we built our cities to be safe for bikes and pedestrians.
and cars are allowed to drive really fast
That was stated very plainly here. Cars are getting bigger and heavier. And pedestrians being killed equals weight of car multiplied with speed. Weight up, so speed down. Small roads everywhere now 30kph/20mph.
All fair points and true, but those trucks are still a sizable minority on the road. I think the infrastructure and low speeds are the main reasons
Include SUVs in your computation and rerun the numbers. Yes, the big fuck off trucks are still a minority, but they push everything bigger the bigger they get. And bigger is the only thing they’re getting.
I drive a MINI, bought it in 2018. Then, I was comfortably in the majority of car sizes (new minis are comfortable hatchbacks). Now, there’s maybe 10% of cars that I’m comparable to, everything else has windows with bottoms that are at or above my roofline.
I think the number of large trucks on the road is very dependent on location. I’m in the Deep South, and they are everywhere. I’m actually one of only two people at my job who don’t have a giant truck. The other is my boss. Coincidentally, we are also the only two women who work here. She’s got an older minivan, and my car is 15 years old. Oh wait, one guy drives his girlfriend’s Jeep. I forgot about him.
It’s a combination. And even though those trucks might be a minority on the road in the US, the percentage of those monstrosities is still more compared to in europe. Over here they are a rarity. I bet if you compare those percentages to the percentages of accidents with fatalities that you see a similarity.
Yeah I’m pretty sure this is why https://vger.to/lemmy.today/post/55397665
Maybe, but it’s probably a lot more to do with infrastructure. European drivers are used to pedestrians being everywhere, North American’s aren’t.
It would be interesting to see a comparison between cities and rural locations.
Screenshot for compatibility reasons on fedi. So that it’s loud and fucking clear
https://lemmy.today/post/55397665
I wonder why voyager does this?
I’m on Voyager, for me the both links open properly
Settings > General > Other > Share Links
I’m not sure what you mean. I don’t use voyager, and find it to be off putting that voyager would share a link in such a way that is essentially an ad for itself.
I shared the direct link for the rest of us 🙂 it doesn’t seem that ! is needed anymore.
They are telling Voyager users how to modify that setting. We have options, but apparently the default is a Voyager specific link.
Interesting choice by Voyager. But it is nice that there are apps available for fediverse users who want them!
While Voyager is a nice app, that’s offputting for me as well. Just changed it! Glad I didn’t share a link yet.
Thanks! I didn’t realize we could change that.
Sorry to be like this, but what is this link?
I get redircted outside of my Lemmy App (because it is a 3rd party URL) and then get advertised a Lemmy client, which I don’t even like, only for its page to only show a preview and in order to actually view the linked post I have to open the original WebUI of the Lemmy instance linked on the advertising page of voyager?
And it got the balls to tell me that its the best experience?
What the fuck Voyager??
I think @Zarxrax@lemmy.world is using the rich text editor, this is a bug already fixed in the latest version. Voyager is supposed to unwrap vger.to links on paste.
seems to be an issue on your end:
also on voyager and it’s working as expected!
click link > opens post within voyager
maybe a settings issue or a bug?
Voyager made this website and probably added these URLs as supported links.
I am not on voyager, but on thunder and it does not work, since there links are not the standard share link. I tested using normal links in a comment and it works there.
So while in theory Thunder could add support for these Links, I really just whished that Voyager would stop advertising themselves whenever somebody shares a link with their client.
The actions of Voyager seem malicious; no other Lemmy (or mastodon client) that I know of does not directly link to the post in question and rather just advertises itself like an adfly page.
It’s a bug already fixed, vger.to links should always unwrap on paste into a comment or post!
oh, sry, i read that wrong!
yes, that’s a voyager link, although that should probably open in the browser version by default, since voyager, afaik, does have a web version…
fyi: it’s not malice, there’s actually a good reason for generating these links!
it’s so different instances can be shared through the same home instance, i.e.: so i can share a link from feddit.org with someone on lemmy.world, and they can still access it within the same client, through their own home instance without requiring a new login, etc.
it’s a limitation of lemmy and voyager offers a workaround ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That makes way more sense. I would question it, since my client (Thunder) manages the same without requiring to rewrite the URL.
Kind of?
It’s not just that the outside of the vehicles are big.
The inside is too, so a lot of people can barely see over the dash on the best of days, so glancing down at a phone means taking their eyes fully off the road. In a sedan they’d at least maintain a periphery view of the road, which allows for unconscious sight and reactions.
Like how “daredevil blindness” is real and some people are blind but will duck if you throw a wrench at their head.
The A pillars (the pillar between the windshield and driver/passenger door window) have gotten so massive due to airbag requirements that it blocks a significant view angle. It used to be that they were an inch wide.
I’d rather have the airbag and have to move my head a bit to see than not have the bags. Surely driving instructors teach students that it is a blindspot of a sort and that you should keep it in mind, no?
I’ll agree that its a good component to have. I couldn’t say about driving instructors, for me that was about 25 years ago when I was driving a car from the early 90s that had the thinner pillars. I keep my head on a swivel while driving, but just as easily I’ve had a car or pedestrian pop up that I don’t see right off the bat in that blind spot, especially turning at an intersection.
Yeah. Some intersections are hard. I go through one daily that has a bike lane with a green light to cross a street while my turn rightinto that street light is also green. That means bikers may be aproaching from behind me at a weird angle, i hate that one. It is a balancing act I guess, safety for the driver and passengers vs visibility. Though nowadays you have all the new tech with sensors and cameras and the car basically yells at you that you’re going to hit something so I guess that is not terrible.
IMO that is sheer incompetence on the part of the traffic engineer who designed it.
I agree, but remaking it is probably too expensive for the town sadly. It has been complained about
Surely driving instructors teach students that it is a blindspot of a sort and that you should keep it in mind, no?
Drivers Ed is a month for a teenager or a handful of lessons…
The only thing I remember from drivers Ed was when another student was told to turn right up ahead, replied “yep” and then just didn’t do it.
When the instructed asked why not, the kid accelerated and said he didn’t want to turn.
Scary as fuck. But everything else I was told decades ago I can’t remember.
And that’s not even getting into how much vehicles have changed in the last couple decades. Especially when the topic involves the continued increase in size in trucks…
You think a boomer remembers what they were told in the 1980s during drivers Ed and will be able to extrapolate the changes to modern vehicles on their own?
Quick edit:
Besides all that, you’re putting a distracted drivers “safety” after hitting a pedestrian in a giant truck over them being able to not hit a pedestrian.
You know what’s safer for a driver? An Abrams tank.
Your line of logic is literally why trucks keep getting bigger and why were in this fucking mess
Different countries i guess. Driving lessons last a while over here, and there is an actual test at the end of it that is very easy to fail. But I understand your point and agree with what you’re saying about the drivers not appreciating the differences between then and now.
Woah, relax. I didn’t mention a thing about careless drivers hitting pedestrians, or trucks. I was just pointing out that airbags overall are good, even if you’re supposed to put a little extra effort while driving.
This is like if someone said smoking crack in an elementary school is bad…
And you said it’s important for people to relax sometimes.
What you said was fine in isolation, just not in the context of the discussion you wandered into and didn’t understand
Ok. I literally responded to the a-pillar comment, but it’s fine. I don’t wnt to engage further, thnks for your insights.
Read the room, son! Like, I’m a nonviolent old lady and even I felt a momentary impulse to throw wrenches at blind people. Lotta lemmings with even more impulsivity than me.
I find it frustrating that the same author wrote both of these articles, published one day apart, but made no connections between them.
Edit: I couldn’t read earlier…
What do you mean? The second sentence mentions their previous article
I have no excuses! Thank you for pointing this out. Not sure what my issue was earlier.
I had thought the same thing. I can only assume the site is farming for clicks.
Oversized designs is definitely a big one, but don’t forget subpar training and verification of said training (take a driving test once and your set for life) and of course just overall poor design.
I’ve got a Lincoln mkx and it can be almost impossible to even see out of the windshield on sunny days due to the angle of the windshield catching massive reflections of the dash (like how the hell did that make it past testing)
Vw tiguan rear view mirror goes lower than my shoulders, blockng half the front view.
Doesn’t mention anything about infrastructure and I’d guess that has a lot to do with it in the US. Very, very few cities are setup with any type of pedestrian traffic or public transport in mind.
True. I remember visiting El Paso a decade ago.
There was a starbucks in viewing distance from the hotel but the only way to get there was by car. The fact that taking a short walk to get my morning coffee was not possible seemed absurd.
And this kept happening. Walking anywhere was just not a thing there.
My hypothesis is that the rise in distracted driving was just as bad in European countries but they have safer infrastructure that limits cars’ speed and otherwise protects pedestrians, and I think that could be tested by looking at the rates of car crashes overall in Europe (if those went up at the same time as the US without a corresponding rise in dead pedestrians I think that’d suggest their infrastructure is the difference)
What in the holy AI slop is that?
I actually took the time to read it. Just to check it out. Wow! It’s kinda hilarious how bad it is. It hits right about every AI stereotype. It even references some redditor 😂
This is pure, lazy bait slop
“Some kind Redditor”
-whew- you weren’t kidding
This doesn’t read like AI to me, it actually does connect its thoughts together and builds an argument narrative
That said, it is really awful human writing that has some cringey phrasing choices and the kind of grammar/sentence structuring I’d expect from a text to speech derived unedited stream of consciousness, I’m just not getting AI vibes off of it
Because we basically drive tanks everywhere on roads designed for incredible speed.
So basically our cars are the main culprit making the side issues worse.
