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Comment by kenjackson | Hacker News Reader

I never thought quite as broadly as the author, but what he says is consistent with one thing I observed -- driving and pedestrian behavior.

In China drivers and pedestrians are both better and worse than those in the US. I found drivers and pedestrians both to be much more aware and had more agency about what they needed to to be safe.

Whereas in the US we assume a lot more that the rules of the road are going to be followed, and they are. In China you shouldn't assume that a given rule of the road is going to be adhered to, especially if there is any indication that it might not be (if that makes sense).

This results in the US looking a lot more ordered on the streets. But it also results in some situations in the US where it seems like people are brain dead. I personally prefer the US in this regard, but I was also raised in it.

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The downside to China's way is that driving is A LOT slower because you have to assume no one is following the rules. I've been a passenger in China where there were multiple near misses but was averted because the actual driving speed is low. This is the same in many areas of life and industry: if you can safely assume everyone follows some standard, you can optimize but arriving at that set of rule and rule following behavior takes time. China is very much in the "move fast break stuff (sometimes literally)" phase.

Having driven in both countries, I totally agree, with one slight caveat.

In the past, I had the opinion that due to individualism versus collectivism, US drivers tend to take things a lot more personally.

If you accidentally cut someone off or honk at them, US drivers feel it's a direct assault on them. I've witnessed and even personally encountered some scary road rage in the US, but never in China.

However, after finally having the chance to drive in New York, I realize that it's actually a city versus suburban driver/pedestrian culture.

I was quite amazed by how driving in New York City was so similar to driving in a Chinese city. Where it's more of a "dance" between cars, pedestrians, and other vehicles like bikes.

> I was quite amazed by how driving in New York City was so similar to driving in a Chinese city. Where it's more of a "dance" between cars, pedestrians, and other vehicles like bikes.

My experience tells me that is just a matter of scale and goes for a lot of "willingness to get confrontational". When $THE_SITUATION happens once every month you can initiate a fight or at least threaten, when that happens 4 times a day, you either stop or will be stopped.

I experienced a similar disparity when I visited India. From a western perspective, it was very chaotic, with no obvious rules and no real consistent system.

Everything just sort of flowed around everything else, there was a cacophony of honking and shouting and cars/bikes just wedging in themselves where they wanted to go.

As someone from northern Europe, all of this just didn't make sense to me.

Yet somehow, I did not witness a single crash during the week I was there, not even a minor love tap.

Of course this is completely anecdotal, and I know India has a very high road fatality rate. But there is some reason to the chaos. When the infrastructure is lacking, people are surprisingly good at adapting and making things work on the fly.

Personally, I prefer the rules and predictability of western traffic, but it does tend to break down and confuse people when someone starts blatantly disregarding the rules. Indian/Chinese traffic is more adaptable, in a way.

Raised in China here --- still largely prefer driving + walking on US roads.

I've lived in both and I definitely prefer walking on Chinese roads.

Most US drivers, except for those in New York, are largely unaware of pedestrians, bikes, and motorcycles. I find it much more dangerous to ride a motorcycle in the US because so many drivers don't expect it and do things like turning right without looking behind them.

However, I do generally prefer driving in the US. The only issue I have is with the police. I'm much more scared of getting pulled over by a cop in the US due to some minor infraction, e.g. having a broke tail light, than I am of Chinese cops.

The world is not down to China and the US. How about walking on French or German roads? How about cycling on a Dutch or Danish road? People there are rule abiding, very much so compared to China, and at the same time respect pedestrian and cyclists. The problem in the US is the quasi universal car dependency.

A kid chasing a ball out into a crowded street is more likely to survive in China Han the USA. They aren’t expecting it in the USA, they are expecting everything in China, and the more orderly traffic in the USA causes it to move faster and hence be more dangerous if something exceptional happens.

> A kid chasing a ball out into a crowded street is more likely to survive in China Han the USA.

That sounds nice but the fact is more people per 100,000 are killed in China than the US.

Yes, there aren’t many kids chasing balls in the states anymore.

They’re too busy chasing Pokémon. Well, I’m Japan at least

Probably more people die by playing Pokemon go, ie chasing Pokemon than balls these day.

How droll, but of course a completely meaningless/content free comment. A more useful one: it's very easy to get traffic accident and fatality rates statistics. [1]

China has about 2X per-capita road fatalities, and almost 10X per-vehicle fatalities as the US.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

Again, a lot of weird stuff happens on the road in China that doesn’t happen in the states. Everyone is on high alert when on the road (pedestrian and drivers) because they have to be.

Someone doing X being more likely to survive in China than the USA doesn’t mean the USA will have a higher fatality rate (since people just don’t do X there).

This is pretty silly. Illinois drivers ed makes a point of teaching about the "ball bounces into the street, dumb kid is sure to abruptly follow" scenario, and both of my kids ran into exactly that scenario as I taught them to drive on the streets around our house. Kids chase balls into the streets all the time.

I'm curious about how you might have ever planned to back this weird argument up with evidence. Is there some secret repository of kids-playing-with-balls evidence that you were waiting to bust out? Or were you just going to try to first-principles it?

I’ve seen a lot of weird stuff on the road in China, very close to the proverbial kid chasing a ball into the street (though it might be some farmer chasing a goat, pig, or chicken). Anecdotally, I’ve never seen something similar happen in the states.

It just doesn’t happen in the USA, people aren’t prepared for it, which is well enough since the fatality rate is still low. It will happen in China if you spend a few week there.

I also noticed this when I visited China. Drivers and pedestrians seemed much more aware, presumably out of necessity. Interestingly the road toll in China looks to be X10 worse than in the US from this wiki page, so make of that what you will. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

In Hangzhou, China, you would find the drivers to behave much nicer to pedestrians. The local police would fine the drivers otherwise.

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