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Comment by k-mcgrady | Hacker News Reader

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k-mcgrady

>> "if you compare US driving fatalities to French ones, there's not much of a difference"

Source for this? There's someone a few comments down claiming that fatalities are much lower than the US.

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According to Wikipedia[0] France has lower figures in every method of counting:

* 4.9/11.6 fatalities per 100k inhabitants per year

* 8.5/13.6 fatalities per 100k vehicles per year

* 6.3/7.6 fatalities per 1B vehicle-km

The two countries get closer for the last figure because the French usually drive shorter distances.

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

The last figure is how safety comparisons are usually done. The first two don't really make any sense to compare for exactly the reason you cite: they spend less time in their cars, so they have less time for their driving skill to be reflected in the fatality rate.

Ideally you'd control for the length of the trip, types of roads they're traveling on, etc, but that data is nearly impossible to come by.

Well yes, but 17% less looks pretty significant to me.

That means about 6000 less dead Americans per year.

I think you'd really also need to normalize by age of the driver. I suspect that younger (under 21, say) drivers are more dangerous in both countries, but that in places where it's expensive and time consuming the licensed drivers will tend to be older.

I don't see why you'd normalize for that. I don't doubt that age is a factor, but surely the effect due to age should actually be counted. For example, different safety standards in cars will result in different fatality rates. That doesn't mean you try to eliminate that from the picture by normalizing for it, that means that the country with better safety standards is actually safer. If a country's roads are safer because they discourage or prevent younger drivers from driving, should not that additional safety count? Taken to an extreme: if a country allows 8-year-olds to drive cars and has a massive road fatality rate because of it, that shouldn't be normalized away when comparing with a country where you can't get a license until 18, right?

So my supposition is that although you're allowed to drive at 18 in France, the burden they place on licensing reduces the number of 18 year olds who actually do so, which has the effect of artificially aging their population of drivers. If you want to know how effective the training is, then you might need to normalize for age to eliminate that effect. If the discussion were about differences in how old you need to be to drive, then I'd agree with you, but the article is about the burdensome regulation around driver training.

If the regulations disproportionately discourage more dangerous demographics from driving, shouldn't that count as a safety improvement just as much as prohibiting them from driving altogether? Burdensome regulations are keeping a large number of dangerous drivers off the road. Shouldn't that be considered a win? (Not necessarily one that outweighs the costs, but in isolation that's a good thing, no?)

I'm not saying it isn't a win, necessarily. I'm saying we don't know if the training is what's causing the win, or if it's just the different demographic. Maybe you could get the exact same effect by either raising the driving age to 21, or keeping the driving age the same but otherwise (through fees and other burdens) discouraging people under 21 from driving. If that were the case (and I have no idea if it is or not), then you'd be unnecessarily costing people time and money, to no good effect.

Fair points, but on the other hand, part of the purpose of training can be to weed out people who are unsuitable for doing whatever you're training for. Maybe there are better ways to do it, but even if rigorous training just weeds out the reckless people and doesn't help the others, I'd still call that an advantage of rigorous training. Of course, it's reasonable to wonder if it helps the others too.

Yep, makes sense. Would be great to know if we could skip the test for people over age X, but maybe just making it expensive for people under that age is a good idea.

Number of vehicles on the road is not the same as miles/hours traveled.

America is much bigger country and people presumably drive much more than in Europe. So naturally vehicle deaths per 100K cars is higher in the US (because more time is spent at risk), irrespective of training/skill level.

US does better off of motorways.

4.0/5.2 fatalities per 1B vehicle-km on motoroways.

12.8/10.7 on non-motorways.

According to: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Road_traffic_safet...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-re...

7.6 per 1 billion km in US against 6.3 per 1 billion km in France. I would say very comparable especially if you consider that more older/younger people drive in US than in France.

regarding your second sentence... 11.6 (US) against 4.9 (France) per 100 000 inhabitants, from the same link.

Yes per 100,000 inhabitants, but to determine driver safety the correct metric is fatalities per x unit of distance driven, which is what the GP was using.

People in the US drive far more often than those in France, you'd expect for driving fatalities.

Meanwhile, 4.3 in the UK, a country demographically similar to France and where it's trivial to get a car and license. This makes me think the process of getting a license plays a big role in fatality rates, but more road quality, layout, better street furniture, signage, etc (which are all notably better in the UK than France).

Not really, The difficulty of getting a license is similar in France and the UK (source : I did both)

Since you've done both, are the parent article and other comments in this thread overemphasizing how difficult it is in France or did I just have a great experience here? I've done the test twice in the UK (auto + manual) - it wasn't arduous, nor did it take long to schedule (I think it was about 3 weeks out) and the computerised test was a case of picking the least stupid answer, unlike the riddles the parent article implies the French have to navigate.

The actual driving test is pretty much the same length and difficulty. (although I did the car test in France and the motorbike test in the UK) The French theory test needs a bit more preparation as more trick questions are asked. Also, the difference is perhaps, as far as I can remember, that French driving school offer more preparation to the theory test than is really required. In other words, they can keep you coming to the classroom until they are sure you will pass the theory...

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