The oddest one are road deaths to me at 4x below cancer, apparently taken for granted at any stage of life, but mostly avoidable with some policy changes.
From [0]
Total Deaths 2016: 2,744,248
Unintended Injuries 2016: 161,374
From [1], a breakdown of those unintended 161,374 injuries above:
Accidental Poisoning and exposure to noxious substances: 58,335
Motor Vehicle: 40,327
Fall: 34,673
Accidental hanging, strangulation, and suffocation: 6,610
Accidental drowning and submersion: 3,786
Accidental exposure to smoke, fire and flames: 2,730
Dividing the 40,327 motor vehicle from the 2,744,248 deaths gets you 1.47%, way less than the 7.68 shown in the interactive chart.
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2017/019.pdf page 1
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr67/nvsr67_05.pdf page 34
It’s pretty effective all said and done.
https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...
https://www.ntsb.gov/news/events/Documents/2017-DCA15SS002-B...
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/12/11/18135976/gun-d...
They're not an inconvenience at all, and I'm not opposed to them in any way. It takes 20 seconds to go through them, and all the officer does is ask you if you've had anything to drink or have used any "wacky tobaccy"[1] recently, shine a flashlight into the car to check for open drinks (and presumably, use his nose too), then let you go.
But then again, I'm a white male, and certain minorities might have worse experiences.
[1] That's a new one that I heard just a few days ago.
Quoting Wikipedia[1],
The minimum sentences are:
For a first offence, a $1000 fine and a 12-month driving prohibition, For a second offence, 30 days of jail and a 24-month driving prohibition, and For a third or subsequent offence, 120 days of jail and a 36-month driving prohibition.
If no one is hurt or killed, and the prosecutor is proceeding by summary conviction, the maximum sentence is 18 months of jail. If no one is hurt or killed, and the prosecutor is proceeding by indictment, the maximum sentence is 5 years of jail.
If another person suffers bodily harm because of the offence, the maximum sentence is 10 years in jail.
If another person is killed because of the offence, the maximum sentence is a life sentence.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impaired_driving_in_Canada#S...
Why not? Which of your rights are they infringing on by doing these routine checks?
It's not like they're free to do anything they want. The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that during a RIDE check, they can only check for sobriety, and any other searches or questioning will result in the charge being dismissed (unless the evidence of a crime is in plain view, like a gun on the dashboard).
Here's a great summary:
R.I.D.E. stands for “Reduce Impaired Driving Everywhere.” It is an Ontario sobriety program that was established in 1977 with the purpose of reducing the number of tragic accidents and injuries resulting from impaired driving. The R.I.D.E. program has a narrow and specific mandate, which is to detect and deter drunk drivers. Conversely, R.I.D.E cannot be a tool for arbitrarily detaining individuals without reasonable grounds and in violation of their rights under the Charter. In fact, there have been many instances of criminal proceedings where charges were dismissed because officers over-stepped their legal mandate in the course of administering a R.I.D.E. check.
The R.I.D.E. program provides police officers with the legal right to perform planned roadside checks to identify and charge drivers who are under the influence of alcohol. The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled in favour of R.I.D.E. as a justification for stopping and checking drivers. In this regard, R.I.D.E. is unique as it gives officers the right to briefly detain and question driver even if there are no grounds or probable cause for believing that a driver is over the legal blood alcohol limit, impaired or has committed any offence. However, while executing the R.I.D.E. program, police are not authorized to perform other criminal investigations or searches, unconnected with the purpose of R.I.D.E. There are many exceptions to this rule, for example, if illegal drugs or other contraband are in plain view in the vehicle.
From https://www.kruselaw.ca/blogpost/the-ride-program-and-your-r.... The whole page explains it all very clearly.
either more cops at night, or an AI/radar camera to alert cops when it sees a car driving erratically.
This is in a midwestern U.S. state.
The laws may or may not be strong in theory, but even if they are strong they are not applied consistently. The courts are failing to protect the public from people who present a clear danger to the public.
This person, for example, is white. I am 100% sure that if he was not white he would be dealt with more harshly (and more appropriately, in this case).
- Start with educating your drivers properly. As a German the US process of acquiring a driver's license looks like thinly-disguised rubber stamping.
- Rethink your roads, signals, and what surrounds them. Use modern techniques that make pedestrians and drivers safer.
The above two should get you from about 7.3 road deaths per billion vehicle kilometers to somewhere in the ballpark of Germany (4.2). Maybe even better than that since some of the planning and signals here still suck...
Finally you're just driving way too much. This becomes obvious when comparing road deaths per 100k inhabitants: just 4.1 in Germany vs 12.4 in the US. Yup, that's a 200% difference. Public transport anyone?
Canada is also doing better on those statistics, but I don't know much about how to acquire Canadian driver's licenses or what their road planning looks like.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...