America has the world’s safest air travel but sucks at car safety | Hacker News Reader

America has the world’s safest air travel but sucks at car safety

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34 pointskitkat_new48 comments

The chart in the article is deaths per capita. Deaths per mile driven would be more relevant. Americans drive much more than people in the other countries mentioned (https://internationalcomparisons.org/environmental/transport...), a large part (but not all) of the discrepancy is due to that.

It's a shame this is flagged. It's an interesting challenge for the US to reduce road deaths. Perhaps ome state could lead the way there, or even one city, and show what can be achieved and at what cost to redesign roads.

> America has the world’s safest air travel but sucks so bad at car safety

Yes, because any moron is allowed to drive.

Everybody deserves freedom of movement regardless of how smart you think they are.

At every driver's ed they teach you that driving is a privilege, not a right.

You are free to take the bus or ride a bike if one is incapable of driving safely. The rest of society isn't forced to suffer.

There are too many parts of the continent with zero bus transit where distances between any two points make bicycling infeasible. In those places the alternative to driving is not traveling at all. Until those can be equalized then yes I do consider driving a right even for the people you look down upon.

So should everyone be allowed to fly whatever plane they want in whatever airspace they want because there are parts to the country where even cars aren't a viable means of transportation?

I'm obviously talking about populated places.

Yes, me too. There are towns in Alaska with no roads in or out.

> There are too many parts of the continent with zero bus transit where distances between any two points make bicycling infeasible. In those places the alternative to driving is not traveling at all.

Or having someone competent drive you. There isn’t a right to travel anywhere in the world at the speed of your choosing – someone who is unwilling to drive responsibly shouldn’t be allowed to endanger everyone else because they don’t want to find a ride.

You're talking about what people should be allowed to do, which is not what I'm talking about.

I'm explaining why the safety of driving vs flying are so different. And the reason is that any moron is allowed to drive.

The article mentions badly designed roads and badly designed cars/SUVs when comparing with the other countries, but nobody talks about the standards regarding examinations and awarding driver's licenses to people.

Maybe the countries with lower road fatalities have higher examination standards and don't hand licenses out like flyers or take your license away much easier the moment you mess up.

American driver standards are a joke. My driving test didn't even include parallel parking.

You can get away without knowing how to parallel park in probably 99% (not being hyperbolic) of the country just fine. Even when I lived in LA, you could easily find parking that doesn't require parallel parking. I'm far more concerned about the folks who can't deal with backing out of "normal" parking spaces.

Considering that something like 4% of the country lives in the city limits of NYC, Chicago, Philly, SF, DC or Boston (ok not everyone within those cities has a driver's license, but you get the point) not to mention the considerably larger fraction in the metro areas, that's probably only true if you're taking about area.

But yes, obviously someone with a driver's license should know how to safely back out of a parking spot without hitting pedestrians, other cars or cyclists.

Maybe. But also consider that far fewer people in NYC and SF have a vehicle that they commute with than the national average. Fewer than half of NYC residents own a vehicle. Slightly more than half of SF residents own a car.

Sure, but that even people who don't own cars (I am one...) usually know how to drive and occasionally do so and must then park them...

If you have very limited time, it makes sense not to include it. Failing at parallel parking usually just means a low speed collision with another car.

It also means significant amounts of congestion in urban areas and has ripple effects. I’ve seen more than a few collisions caused by someone trying to get out of the way of a helpless parallel parker.

More broadly, though, someone who can’t parallel park effectively can’t handle their vehicle well. That manifests in many other ways.

I didn't say it wasn't a problem. What I said was: "If you have very limited time, it makes sense not to include it.".

Minor accidents and congestion are not a big deal compared to potentially lethal accidents.

My position is that you need to make time. Simply passing bad drivers shifts a greater cost to everyone else – the time saved skipping 10 minutes on the test is going to be a fraction of what that driver costs everyone else the first time they drive downtown.

I didn’t even put my car in reverse for my California test.

I failed my UK test once at 17 and passed at 26 but only just.

I wonder what the reason for this is. Anyone with a pulse can get a US license. I’ve gotten a California license and a UK one.

I passed the California one when I was 16 (which was an absolute joke) and proceeded to get into multiple close call collisions and got pulled over by the police with a threat of reckless driving.

In comparison I failed my UK test twice with 20 years of experience driving in the US. It was much tougher to pass. You have to know the rules well and be comfortable driving the test car.

I just wanted to commend you on an unusual level of insight: most people think they've always been an above-average driver.

> I wonder what the reason for this is

Consider how difficult life is for people who aren’t able to get a driver’s license. US society is not set up for non-drivers.

But the point is not to reject good amount of people. It's to make sure they learn the rules.

Amusingly I almost failed my US test after passing the UK test a couple of months earlier (I figured I should learn to drive before moving to the US.)

In the UK I was taught to inch out slowly while making a turn at a junction to see traffic while in the US you must stop completely behind the line.

Fortunately as the US test only requires driving around the block I didn’t lose enough points to fail. The examiner said it was pretty common for people who learnt to drive in other countries.

Iowa recently (2021) passed a bill allowing parents to teach their children to drive instead of requiring an instructor led class. I can't wait to see the results of allowing people who cannot navigate a roundabout to be responsible for teaching their children how to drive.

https://www.kcrg.com/2021/05/10/bill-redefining-drivers-educ...

They used to require instructors? I didn't realize any states did. Do any other states require them?

That law (https://www.legis.iowa.gov/legislation/BillBook?ba=SF546&ga=...) appears to only apply to minors.

Other states definitely require formal education for teenagers to get their licenses. I'm not sure if any require it for adults.

Yep. I wasn't clear about that in my post. Now a 14 year old's parents can "teach" them to drive so they can work their meat packing plant job for a six hour shift on school nights. And don't worry about kids getting injured working dangerous jobs for long hours after school. The state decided to give companies indemnity from child worker injuries!

This isn't a purely american thing, the swedish system largely relies on a mix of instructor-led classes and parent-led "homework". Although there are a bunch of safeguards in place: the amateur instructor must have had a license in good standing for N years, must have taken a special instructor's course recently, and must have a license to instruct that specific student.

It does end up with a bunch of weird legal quirks though (for example: DUI laws apply to the amateur instructor but not the student).

There are also separate car signs for professional vs amateur instructors.

I think this is more common than you think.

For instance, I've lived in two provinces in Canada and neither required official instruction.

Hell, to get your learners you don't even have to have your parent teach you anything. There is an app nowadays that teachers you to pass the written exam (which is multiple-choice anyways, and kind of a joke)

Then you can drive a car as long as you have a licensed adult > 25 years old in the front passenger seat.

My nephew recently got his learners at 15, with a written test only, then drove his mom home.

How's that for lax?

I had to take driver's ed in high school (in Nevada), but that was all theory and no behind the wheel instruction. My parents had to sign some thing saying I had at least 50 hours of practice.

It's speed cameras. You'll learn to respect the speed limit pretty quickly after your first fine for breaking it by a whopping 7 kilometers- after correction.

> You'll learn to respect the speed limit pretty quickly

Many parts of the autobahn in Germany have no speed limits and they're not seeing more accidents than, say, in France (and France highways have limits at typically 130 km/h // 80 mph). There are definitely less deaths on german limitless autobahns than on highways in the US.

FWIW if you keep only highway deaths in Europe and remove friday/saturday nights and drunk drivers, there are hardly any fatalities on highways.

Something something about kinetic energy and cars all driving in the same direction.

Speed on highways really doesn't kill much. As simple as that.

I moved to Maryland from the UK. I was shocked by the standard of the driving test. Literally just going around the block and doing a reverse bay parking. In fact whilst driving the instructor asked me what the speed limit was on two separate occasions and I answered incorrectly both times! Still passed somehow. This would probably be an immediate fail in the UK.

Also cameras. Not sure about other countries but UK as cameras for EVERYTHING. Speed cameras, average speed cameras, box junction cameras, bus lane cameras, smart motorway cameras, low traffic neighbourhood cameras. When I moved back to the UK from MD I got hit with about 3 tickets in the first few weeks. Definitely changes the way you drive.

Lacking rail networks in the US must play a role in putting more people (and trucks) on the road and increasing severity of crashes

That's funny you say that because the US has one of it not the largest freight networks in the world

It's funny that you mention freight, because that's completely irrelevant for people traveling.

You could not be more wrong. Research the history of of the Class I railroads and they all had prestigious passenger service that became too unprofitable to run thanks to dwindling ridership and the cancelation of the USPS contracts in 1964. Their rolling stock was turned over to Amtrak at its formation in 1971.

Can you explain how this is relevant to modern traffic fatality statistics?

Today's main line rails are mostly in the same places they were back when they hosted passenger service.

Which are now used for freight and instead people mostly move in cars, which are prone to crashing

Meaning that it’s a matter of priorities and we could just have passenger trains again if we really wanted to. Personally I think freedom of movement is such a public good that it’s wrong to require they be run for profit. Warren Buffet can afford a few holes in the freight timetable.

The old passenger lines you reference:

- don't solve intracity travel.

- likely are not optimised for the flow of people today.

- likely are not constructed for the high speeds which make intercity travel attractive via rail.

I'm not sure why historical relevance is being talked about. Rail in the US failed to keep pace and has become largely irrelevant despite appearing that it could stand to benefit even more from modernized passenger rail because of often large distances between popular destinations.

It is pretty irrelevant for this discussion except as a criticism of infrastructure.

I'm pretty sure OP is talking about intra-city light commuter rail, aka public transit infrastructure, not inter-city freight rail.

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