Cars have been pervasive for over a century and virtually none of the actual improvements in safety have come from "hoping humans do better".
Improvements to signage and traffic controls, cracking down on reckless and intoxicated driving and the massive campaign to get people to actually wear their seat-belts (listed in no particular order) seem to fall solidly in the "make humans do better" category.
>> Cars have been pervasive for over a century and virtually none of the actual improvements in safety have come from "hoping humans do better".
> Improvements to signage and traffic controls, cracking down on reckless and intoxicated driving and the massive campaign to get people to actually wear their seat-belts (listed in no particular order) seem to fall solidly in the "make humans do better" category.
None of those things actually involve "making humans do better [at driving]. They either involve implementing technical solutions or preventing humans in certain conditions from driving at all.
I disagree, they facilitate (signs, markings), persuade (public awareness campaigns) and incentivize (DUI penalties) "doing better". Arguably road design, markings and signage are a technical solution but the humans involved are heeding them of their own free will. It's not like an airbag that goes off based on certain criteria regardless of how you feel about the matter.
I disagree, given how standards for getting a driver's license are different between countries and getting more and more tighter.
In the US, unless things are different from TV, you can get trained by someone else with a license in a regular car and do an exam.
Over here, you need a driving instructor in an adapted car (dual controls), and depending on how well you pick it up, spend anywhere between 15 and 50 (or sometimes more) hours practicing driving and traffic rules. There's a written / theoretical exam you have to study for (traffic rules), then a practical exam with an examiner.
In my case, it cost me about €2500 in lessons to get my driver's license. Then I spent another €1500 or so on top of that to get my motorcycle driver's license, where there's even more emphasis on personal safety and safe driving.
With that in mind, I'm confident in my claim that Dutch drivers are better than American ones.
Be cautious about believing TV drama is realistic. States I’m familiar with require 30 hours of licensed classroom instruction and 6 hours of licensed driving instruction beyond the training via a parent or other adult.
In any case, no amount of training seems to stop people from using their phone while driving.
IMHO, the problem has more to do with the entitlement around driving. People don't view it as a privilege.
What's not clear is the difficulty of the test. Class based training, I'm not a fan. Only 6 hours of actual driving seems very minimal. Learning through another: they'll likely pick up bad habits.
> They have friends who took classes and still failed the exam multiple times.
That's good. Here it's a practical exam that often takes various tried to get. Plus theoretical one. It includes loads of things. Not just knowledge, but also e.g. judgement about safety. So in case something is unsafe the answer isn't "yes, it is legal", but more of a "there's a hazard".
From my perspective it's more difficult to unlearn a bad habit than to leach it properly (and immediately address something) right from the start. And it's great that some are good drivers, but I'm more concerned with the amount of bad drivers passing their "skill" to someone else.
Large parts of the US have little to no public transit, and can only be accessed via car. You can't say driving isn't an entitlement and then arrange your infrastructure in such a way as to require driving.
You can't legislate, or law your way out of a basic contradiction in your society, so we end up in a middle ground where nobody is happy.
For another example of a basic contradiction - we allow and encourage people to drive intoxicated (After all, bars have parking lots, and do not enforce that every group have a designated driver), but not too intoxicated, and not in a manner that is too unlucky. The bar between the two is either an objective test from a breathalyzer device (a test that you can't take until you are pulled over - and one sets the bar too low for many people, in my opinion), or a fully subjective test of 'did you get into an auto accident, while sitting at 0.05 BAC'?
It's difficult to view it as a privilege in a society that, over the past 70 years, was deliberately constructed with the expectation that everyone drives.
The process was getting it was doing a multiple-choice quiz, followed by 20 minutes of paid 'instruction' as I drove around the neighborhood... And then a 'test' that repeated the exact same route. I 'passed' with a score of 83/100.
In contrast, I failed the test four times, while taking it in BC, and because it would have to be scheduled 3 months in advance, eventually gave up on it.
I am glad that the test-taker feels confident that after I stumble-assed my way through driving 20 and 25 mph on empty residential streets, I am now capable of safely driving on freeways.
The US may be more homogeneous than Europe given its shorter history and mostly common language, but it’s far from some uniform block that you can summarize from what you saw on TV or a tourist visit to New York.
I'm not sure how "more expensive training" eliminates some people texting while driving.
You can do and the other. It's not about eliminating. If someone is great at something that doesn't mean that they're good at teaching that skill. Further, just because someone drove for a long time doesn't mean they're a good driver. Likely they've improved, but it hasn't been checked.
When I got my license I learned about a lot of changes that older drivers weren't aware of.
> But you do that at the cost of making getting a license more difficult, expensive, and exclusive
A country can change their car reliance. It's also strange to focus on the cost of the license, while not checking if better drivers would result in lower costs elsewhere. E.g. reduced accidents (lower insurance), less medical costs, etc.
Not to be bleak, but I doubt this will happen for a long time, if ever, in the US. It -may- happen regionally among a state or two, but good luck getting multiple states to coordinate on a project like this.
We can't even get things like voting centers done properly, so how in the world are we going to implement public transit? There is no incentive for politicians, and I bet the car industry would quickly give them incentives otherwise if they even attempted it.
The US definitely has an overarching philosophy, regardless of differing per-state policies. From my own experience with one of the more restrictive states in the US, all that is required to get a driving license is a written test and a road test once you reach 18 years old. Most people want to get their license before then, so they opt into training classes with an instructor and a car with dual controls. But that isn't required. I don't know how things are in the other more restrictive states, but I'd guess what I said goes for at least 90% of the country.
All you poor schmucks can hoof it.
And the cost is far less than the nearly $3000 you paid.
That seems pretty unsafe from my viewpoint. Just because you can drive doesn't mean you can teach/instruct. I think people here generally do 20 hours of driving with a licensed instructor. There's no minimum I think, it's just that the (practical) exam is expensive so people only do the exam when you think you're good to go. Licensed instructors are also rated on the how often someone successfully passes an exam.
What is this TV source you speak of? 11 o-clock news? Seinfeld?
> Over here, you need a driving instructor in an adapted car (dual controls),
Same.
> ...and depending on how well you pick it up, spend anywhere between 15 and 50 (or sometimes more) hours practicing driving and traffic rules.
Yup. We do that too.
> There's a written / theoretical exam you have to study for (traffic rules), then a practical exam with an examiner.
Again, we do that as well.
> In my case, it cost me about €2500 in lessons to get my driver's license. Then I spent another €1500 or so on top of that to get my motorcycle driver's license, where there's even more emphasis on personal safety and safe driving.
That is a lot of money.
> With that in mind, I'm confident in my claim that Dutch drivers are better than American ones.
The ones on TV or in your imagination?
These are things like a small child that you could previously see on the pavement has disappeared behind an obstruction (so may suddenly step out into the road). Or a football coming across the road from a playing field (a child may run after it). Or a car on a side street going at a speed that is inconsistent with them stopping at the junction.
It seems it's a trend to put more and more laws, red tape and regulations around driving in certain countries, and really around young people in general. All that voted by an aging population (who don't have to submit to the same requirements since their "rights" are grandfathered!) that's increasingly afraid of young people.
That coupled with the out of control unemployment numbers for young adults in the EU and sky high cost of everything makes me wonder what the brain drain situation is in Europe. You meet a lot of young talented and educated Europeans engineers in the Bay Area for instance, are there the same number of Americans ones in Europe?
> Over here, you need a driving instructor in an adapted car (dual controls), and depending on how well you pick it up, spend anywhere between 15 and 50 (or sometimes more) hours practicing driving and traffic rules. There's a written / theoretical exam you have to study for (traffic rules), then a practical exam with an examiner.
> In my case, it cost me about $2500 in lessons to get my driver's license. Then I spent another $1500 or so on top of that to get my motorcycle driver's license, where there's even more emphasis on personal safety and safe driving.
I see how driving schools and bureaucrats in charge of examination might like this guaranteed work. No innovation required, and grandfathered right to licenses issued to older drivers (so good support from an aging population).