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Comment by burlesona | Hacker News Reader

Please stop thinking that one can know how “the states” are from a distance. The US is quite large and diverse. I’ve lived in four states and they were each significantly different in terms of legal structures, policies, culture, daily life etc. As an American I would rarely claim to know how things are in “the states.” I only know the parts I’ve lived in, or the few things that are actually federal in nature.

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.

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As someone who has had a driver's license in the US for a very long time, my experience is that--as with many things--one of the main things that makes you a better driver is putting in hours driving. Could you move more of those hours into a supervised learning environment? Probably. But you do that at the cost of making getting a license more difficult, expensive, and exclusive (in an environment where driving is often not an optional thing if someone wants to make a living).

I'm not sure how "more expensive training" eliminates some people texting while driving.

> 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.

It would probably be great if everyone could take a high-end week-long defensive driving course. That's also not very realistic. I'm not sure the typical driver's ed imparts any particularly unique insights that generally responsible adult drivers don't have.

"A country can change their car reliance."

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.

You've got a point in general, but here specifically I don't think OP was wrong.

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.

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