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Comment by marble-drink | Hacker News Reader

Cars don't kill anywhere near as many people in Europe, though. The US is an outlier when it comes to first-world countries.

Still, I would like it if the power was taken back from from cars on the road. Cars should be a third-class road user, below bicycles and pedestrians.

My idea for improving driver quality is to do what pilots do. Before you are even allowed behind the wheel of a car you must have proven experience using the road on a non-motorised vehicle like a bicycle. Then you can apply for a small car. After some experience with that you can apply for a large car if you need to. It's insane that we let kids drive cars before they've even learnt how to use road.

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> Cars don't kill anywhere near as many people in Europe, though. The US is an outlier when it comes to first-world countries

Do you have some data for this assertion? The US actually has a pretty low fatality rate per mile driven. Although, anything above zero isn't acceptable to some people...

> It's insane that we let kids drive cars before they've even learnt how to use road.

We don't, at least in the US. You have to go through "Driver's Training" first in order to get a Learner's Permit. This training teaches all the road laws, best practices, scenario training, and how things work. Then you get your permit and are allowed to practice only with a licensed driver in the passenger seat.

> We don't, at least in the US. You have to go through "Driver's Training" first in order to get a Learner's Permit. This training teaches all the road laws, best practices, scenario training, and how things work. Then you get your permit and are allowed to practice only with a licensed driver in the passenger seat.

that's how it works in many places. OP was probably talking about letting people <18 years old drive.

> You have to go through "Driver's Training" first in order to get a Learner's Permit.

Not in my state. Here, there is no prerequisite to get your learner's permit. However, completing driver's ed is a high school graduation requirement.

> Not in my state. Here, there is no prerequisite to get your learner's permit.

And

> However, completing driver's ed is a high school graduation requirement.

Is the same thing.

Just your state decided to standardize what was taught, instead of letting private companies also offer it. For what it's worth, in California we have both.

It's not the same thing. You can still get your learner's permit even if you don't complete high school or the driver's ed graduation requirement.

That sounds like a special provision rather than the norm - there isn't a high percentage of youth not graduating from high school in the US.

> Do you have some data for this assertion? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

Of the countries with data for fatalities per billion vehicle-km (not that many), the US (at 7.3) is equal to Belgium, lower than Czech Republic (11.5) and high than the 13 other European countries. In addition, counting fatalities per distance travelled will make driving less look like it has no safety benefits even though fewer people actually die. If we look at fatalities per capita instead (to attempt to adjust for country size, but not policies and behaviour) the US rate is 33% higher than Europe, more than twice as high as Canada and most of Western Europe and 4.5x Norway.

Compared to its peers, the US really doesn't have a low fatality rate.

Isn't that what learner's permits are? In my state, you need a minimum of I believe 40 hours of driving with an over-21 adult that they sign off on, then completing a driving class with an instructor, and over however many sessions they judge your driving, and after that you get your license. In my experience the student drivers were the ones staying strictly to the speed limit, always using indicators, etc. When I first started driving I was hyper-focused on not breaking the rules, paying attention to the road. The ones who are the worst are the people who think they know how to drive well, so they are on their phone or half-asleep while driving.

You need to look no further than sports cars in the 70's. American companies concentrated on straight-line performance for our seriously long and pretty straight roads. But dodging things is one of the reasons you have to go somewhere other than straight ahead.

Meanwhile you had British roadsters with literally 0 body roll on corners because the CoG is below the top of the axle.

Petrol is more expensive and it seems that owning a car is less of a requirement in Europe than the US. Most major cities in the US that are exclusively designed around the availability of automobile transport. People live in the suburbs and commute in, and it is prohibitively expensive to live in non-car commuting distance.

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