Comment by DrThunder | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DrThunder | Hacker News Reader

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Huh?

"First, two young people have their lives taken when car drivers crash into them. It’s astounding to me that Americans accept this constant death and destruction as part of a transportation system."

Are there countries that don't have car crashes? Please list them, I'm sure everyone would like to know how they've prevented this.

"Second, one person takes a pretty irrational interest in the success of a student with a 1.6 GPA and gives them some basic confidence and support they had apparently never received from the education system. That struggling student is now a medical doctor and the first person in their family to graduate from college."

This is an indictment on the American system how? It seems like the opposite to me. Is your stance that no one should ever have to struggle? You believe regardless of success in secondary education everyone should just be sent to medical school? You do realize that EVERY country that provides "free" higher education has pretty stringent requirements to get in. In the US, anyone that has the money, wants to take out a loan, or does well in school can go to college. All that would happen if everyone though the way you do, is that you would just dilute the pool of applicants and you'd still have people that didn't get successful jobs. You're already seeing this with the federal loans letting everyone into college in the US.

It's obvious you just hate the US, but at least come up with some logical stances for the reasons. You failed miserably at describing any legitimate reason for your staunch hatred.

> Are there countries that don't have car crashes?

For pedestrian deaths, there's been a decoupling between the US and the rest of the developed world in recent years.

https://www.vox.com/culture/23496462/crisis-american-roads-p...

"The pandemic years weren’t outliers, though. Pedestrian fatalities have been on the rise for more than a decade. Increasingly, the United States stands alone, with an overall traffic fatality rate that’s 50 percent higher than comparable nations in Western Europe, Canada, Japan, and Australia. According to the Urban Institute, Americans are now almost three times more likely to die in a car crash than their counterparts in France."

Before you blame cell phones, note that other countries also have cell phones.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/27/upshot/road-deaths-pedest...

It's pretty obvious for anyone who has traveled and driven in other countries that drivers in the US are utterly terrible. We have effectively no licensing standards, and effectively no enforcement of basic safe driving practices. The only thing that's generally enforced in the US is speed limits, and this is only done for revenue purposes, especially since most speed limits in the US are set artificially low to help local authorities meet their budget.

It's both possible that the US is uniquely worse and that the same sort of unfair and senseless outcomes are not only possible but happen in other countries. The fact the US is worse doesn't actually change the point of the person you're responding to.

I could write a much better indictment of driving in the US than pointing to a single random occurrence and actually talk about the completely fucked way people drive here on a daily basis. That said, the same basic reason why things are the way they are won't change for the outcome of my screed, as it is a simple matter that the US is so heavily car-centric as a society that it is impossible for the average person to participate in daily life without driving and therefore it's seen as unnecessarily punitive to restrict people's driving privileges except in the most egregious circumstances (and often not even then). We'd have to massively change the attitude towards cars in the US to effectively change anything about our current situation to make it possible to enforce reasonable standards of driving skill.

I think US's car fatality problem stems from the "driving classes" you take at 16 for one day to become a driver. You don't really learn to deal with all possible scenarios doing 3 left turns and parking. There's 2 other big reasons the roads are unsafe due to the states just not taking care of their own roads. The other reason is the popularity of bigger SUVs and trucks. 90% of big vehicle owners feel safer due to the weight of their vehicle as if they truly intend to total anyone else's vehicle that they hit. When I was in Europe I noticed cars are a lot more popular than SUVs or trucks. Getting in an accident with 2 cars is a lot less destructive than a 4,000 lb car hitting a 6,000 lb truck or SUV.

Regarding car accidents, the US does have a higher rate of deaths per 100k inhabitants [0] than most other countries of similar development. I imagine that's largely because of the lack of public transport and therefore increased number of miles driven by US inhabitants (as well as lower population density perhaps).

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

Edit: a better data source here: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.STA.TRAF.P5

The U.S. has nearly triple the automotive fatality rate of other western nations. With the large vehicle preferences common in the U.S. this may be as much of an idictment on consumer taste as the transportation laws. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

I think the commenter wasn't remarking on the availability of higher education, but that that public education had failed to prepare this person and apparently a whole community for higher education. He didn't know a single person who attended class after high school and the high school curriculum was so weak that he was failing out of community college.

> but that that public education had failed to prepare this person and apparently a whole community for higher education. He didn't know a single person who attended class after high school and the high school curriculum was so weak that he was failing out of community college.

Our education system is failing, but it's failing because it's not an education system, it's a system to monitor and contain young people for some set hours per day so their parents can theoretically work, regardless of their behavior or outcomes. The education in this country has huge cultural and community disparities that almost perfectly correlate w/ wealth disparities, racial disparities, and family life disparities. Most of these things are symptoms rather than causes, but they're symptoms that accelerate a negative feedback loop. The causes are pretty straightforward, but intractable: 1. Lack of cultural and racial integration in broader society 2. The failure of families (as a concept) in America, with this failure more heavily concentrated in lower class households with a racially disparate distribution.

"Western Nations"

You do realize the US doesn't have the public transport of massive cities in western Europe right?

Maybe think a bit and you'll realize that Americans have to drive more to get places.

Regardless, the crashes have nothing to do specifically with the way America has implemented anything.

"but that that public education had failed to prepare this person and apparently a whole community for higher education"

The comment was specifically about how the US has done it badly. Not everyone needs to be prepared for higher education. Countries like Germany that have "free" higher ed decide that certain kids will go intro trades early on. Are you going to flag Germany as not preparing a whole demographic of kids for "higher ed" ?

I don’t hate the US. I love living here. I think fewer of its citizens should die in car crashes and that more should be able to achieve their full career potential.

Regarding free college, I think a good system would have high standards for graduation and low penalties for failure. This is the system currently afforded to rich people in the US, who can afford multiple tries at good schools without being saddled with lifelong debt. We should extend this ability to more people. I love Americans, they have enormous potential, but so many of them get shunted off to unsatisfying, low productivity careers because a few bad circumstances or choices push them off the very narrow golden path

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