Our driving test standards are also high, having spoken with US colleagues, much higher than state-side (although I imagine that varies from state to state).
The theory test you must pass before taking your practical also now includes a hazard perception test - you are shown multiple videos and must click when you first perceive a hazard - the earlier you click after the hazard presents the higher your score - but if you just click randomly you get a zero.
Some of them are tricky - for instance, one I remember is a van coming from a side road at too fast a speed, but you can only first see this hazard forming in a reflection of a shop window.
I live in the US in a town with particularly bad drivers. I know I know, everyone's area has the worst drivers. But I've lived in dozen cities across the US so have some frame of reference. The sad thing is, it's a small town with what -should- be little traffic.
It's one of those places there will only be 2 other cars in sight, but they're driving side by side and 10 under the speed limit. And for some reason, everyone seems to just hold down their brake pedal at all times so you can never tell when they're actually slowing. I presume they're driving an automatic with two feet and keep just enough pressure to trigger the brakelights. And everyone, even the Kia Rios, drives in the opposite lane before turning so they can swing wide like a semi. I could go on and on but I digress.
Anyways, it had been an enigma to me for the last few years since I moved here, until one day I was asked to take a lady to her driving test. Sure, why not.
The entirety of the 5 minute road test was turning out right onto a sparsely populated 2 lane highway, driving anxiously at 35 in a 55 for a mile or so, then turning around and coming back. Passed. Suddenly, everything made more sense to me.
And I'm sure this isn't probably even the easiest test nationally, just one I became familiar with recently.
Wow - if it's a driving test that lets you drive anywhere in the States, then you'd think it'd be a national standard with set manoeuvres and situations to cover.
Can confirm that 6 right turns from getting into the car, comprising a single trip around the block was the full extent of my San Jose, CA driving test.
I left the DMV office significantly more scared of my fellow drivers than I had arrived…
I took my test nearly 25 years ago, and this was present then -- for the avoidance of doubt, the UK test has always been very thorough, though not quite as thorough as those in places like Finland where apparently they have skid pans and similar!
Makes sense that Finland has such things though, when the roads are covered in snow and ice for a lot of the year.
Though this year we did good in our capital: "Helsinki has not recorded a single traffic fatality in the past 12 months, city and police officials confirmed this week."
Seems like we were either side of a threshold - I took mine ~35 years ago and the only "theory" test was the examiner asking me three basic questions after the practical test, like "what can lead to skidding" to which the answer was "rapid acceleration, steering or braking". The theory side of things hardly existed essentially.
Same in Norway. Skid pans and also motorway driving. The course also includes a piece where the instructor picks a place an hour's drive away and tells the student to get there and demonstrate that they can not only drive under instruction but also plan their own route and react properly to challenges along the way.
Interestingly, I saw data from a road safety programme for young people that showed skid pan training actually made young men less safe not more, because they became even more overconfident about their ability to “react quickly” if bad things happened. Turns out that a bit of humility and slowing down are the main skills needed to avoid accidents!
> having spoken with US colleagues, much higher than state-side (although I imagine that varies from state to state).
You know, it does vary but relative to any other developed country it's pitiful in every state. The reality is we just hand out driver's licenses to whomever.
Then you get the two wheeled side of the fence. You can do a one day compulsory basic training course and convince a trainer you know what you're doing, then drive on the road with everyone on a 125cc motorcycle (or 50cc at 16 years old), and then repeat the CBT every two years to keep on the road. It's only if you go for the full license that you need to study for theory as a prerequisite, so long as you keep out of trouble.
You make it sound like motorbike riders are practically unregulated, but in a sense it's the opposite.
A few decades ago, 125cc bikes were mostly for learners practising before taking their test. But successive governments have made it harder and harder to get a full license - so loads of riders just stay on learner bikes forever.
So the status quo is, in a sense, the result of very strict regulation.
I did my CBT a few months ago after driving for 30 years. It was harder than I assumed it would be. But what scared me the most was the 18 year old who did his at the same time, never driven on the road before. The phrase organ donor seemed appropriate, as mcarbre as it sounds.
This is probably a huge factor for sure. Both the UK theory and practical tests are somewhat tricky, at least compared to those in places like the US. Many people will fail them the first time around, and a fair few will fail them multiple times.
The official statistics have a rate of about 40-60% for these tests:
It's closer to a school exam in terms of difficulty, rather than the quick drive around a parking lot that it seems a lot of places have.
So people seem a lot more prepared than in many other places, since they actually have to be able to spot hazards and do driving maneuvers to get their license in the first place.
It covers some, lets say non-beginner situations that are pretty real and can make a difference between OK situation and multiple fatalities crash. A junior driver can still kill people as easily as anybody else, standards should be high.
And you should certainly drive in other countries, namely much worse and much better than yours (presumably US), they are both out there.
Driving in the UK can be quite a shock when you're used to the roads in the Netherlands. The speed at which people navigate roundabouts can feel terrifying, and the maximum speed in the countryside is something else. Going *60 mph* on narrow roads with limited visibility is just crazy. The locals just speed by. I guess it's just what you're used to.
You're not supposed to drive 60mph on those tiny roads.
Why are they 60mph? Well, the symbol they display doesn't say 60mph, it's basically just a slash symbol - it should be read "National Limit Applies" or perhaps "Derestricted" and it so happens that the law in the UK says that if there's no other rule in place that limit is 60mph and on these tiny roads nobody has put in place a more specific limit so that's the law.
[If there is carriageway separation, e.g. a larger road on which traffic flowing in the opposite direction isn't sharing the same tarmac, this global rule says 70mph, but no tiny roads have multiple carriageways, actually sometimes it feels like there's barely room for one let alone two]
However, just because there isn't a lower limit doesn't mean it's appropriate to drive at 60mph and people who do are generally maniacs. Where I grew up there are lots of these roads, steep, winding, narrow tracks paved in the 19th or 20th centuries for access to a farm here or a cottage there, and maintained by the public. You absolutely might turn a corner and find an entire flock of sheep in the road going "Baa!". If you're doing 60mph after you've killed a bunch of sheep and the bodies start smashing through your windscreen you're probably dead. Sheep don't have lights, don't know about jaywalking laws (which Britain doesn't have anyway) and aren't smart enough to have considered this risk, they're just there and now you're dead. So you drive at maybe 30-40mph on the straight parts, slower on curves and always pay a lot of attention 'cos things can go very bad, very quickly.
Roundabouts are a bit different. The UK has a lot of what are called "mini roundabouts". As a pedestrian, or perhaps on a bicycle these do just look like they're small roundabouts, too small for the island in the middle to have any purpose so it's just paint. But in a vehicle it's apparent that the island can't exist because you'd crash into it, perhaps not in a Mini but certainly in a bin truck or a bus. The mini roundabout isn't a roundabout except in the sense that the same rules apply as if it was, which means if I can see you can't enter before I do then I know you mustn't enter, I have right of way, which means I needn't slow down - you won't be in my way, you're not entering.
It's probably worth noting you can be charged with a driving offence if you're driving 60mph down a country road even if it's technically national speed limit.
Just because legally you can drive at 60 doesn't mean you're legally allowed to drive recklessly. National speed limit is basically, "you're permitted to drive as fast as you like so long as you do so in a safe manner".
> You're not supposed to drive 60mph on those tiny roads.
You are supposed to drive 60mph where appropriate, e.g. on straight stretches with good visibility and no junctions. It's very possible to fail your driving test for not going fast enough on a single carriageway.
The same is true in the US. Most (all?) states have state-wide speed limit "defaults" for town/city roads (i.e. 25 mph), highways and rural roads (i.e. 55 mph) and freeways (i.e. 70mph).
Instead of having a speed limit sign after each and every intersection, they're placed periodically. If you enter a road and there's no sign, that's the speed limit. If there's a different speed limit than the default, and you cross through an intersection and there's not another sign after it, that means the speed limit reverted to the default.
It can be a bit confusing (MN has 35 in city roads, WI 25) but also handy (wide open plains states often have much much higher freeway speeds).
Having just come back from visiting the in-laws in Gloucestershire (American raised on American roads), it took me a minute to comprehend the national speed limit rule. Nonetheless, I don’t think the rule matters much.
What matters more is the far stricter driver licensing and “Scarlet L” (my words) that the learners have to display.
That and the fact that it is bloody impossible to conduct 2 way traffic down country roads thanks to all the hedgerows and so everyone is extra careful and courteous (usually).
I hate driving on these roads. I just refuse to drive a speed where I can’t stop if there’s someone in the road on a blind corner - call me an idiot and beep your horn at me if you want.
A favorite past-time back in the day was driving at night from pub to pub along the 'back roads' (B-roads specifically in the UK) as fast as 'possible'. There were typically no street lights, however lights from other vehicles showed up alerting you to any possible danger. It was fun at the time, but i wouldn't do it now .. lol ..
Right, there were no street lights where I grew up because street lights cost money and the people where I lived were rich partly because they paid few taxes, so no money for street lights. I happened to move to a city when it wasn't yet concerned about the environmental impact or cost, so I went from "Of course the main road doesn't have lights, what are we made of money?" to "Of course jogging tracks in the city parks have 24/7 street lighting. what if you wanted to go jogging at midnight, you can't jog in the dark!". Today those tracks don't have lighting 'cos there's no money and the wildlife hates it but thirty years ago, sure.
However some back roads aren't even B roads, the classification keeps going through C and D but it's local numbering, the numbers are just for local maintenance crews - so a C-1234 could be duplicated a few miles away in another local government territory and that would be confusing for drivers so they won't write C-1234 on a sign, they'll just say what's in that direction or maybe a local name for the road.
That’s great just so long as your county roads doesn’t have any dog walkers or wildlife like deer.
The best case scenario then, is that you write off your car with a deer shaped hole in the front. The worst case scenario is you have a death on your conscience for the rest of your life.
I went to a wedding in Devon recently, friend of my wife’s whose family are all farmers and her brother was joking that it’d be fine to drive back drunk because the car would just bounce off the hedgerows…
As I suspected, poisoning most likely includes drug overdose. They have this comment about the 2023 data:
> #1: Poisoning: 100,304 deaths
> Largely due to the opioid epidemic affecting millions of people in the United States
You can see more recent data than 2004 in their interactive charts. It is interesting to see that deaths from road accidents has much reduced for teenagers and young adults, compared to the rest of the population.
Putting in roundabouts as a default so many years ago (as described in the article) makes a huge difference the the road infrastructure in the UK. They take up a lot more space, but the lack of stop-start traffic light intersections makes a completely changes how people move around. Bigger, more complex roundabouts do have traffic lights, but straight-up road intersections with traffic lights are the exception.
Yes, and the footnote also says that "this metric is age-standardized". I did not easily find an explanation of what that means, which made me distrustful of the data.
Fortunately, good old Wikipedia has what we are both looking for:
Not sure I completely agree (if the definition of vehicles is cars). That disregards miles travelled by cyclists and pedestrians etc. If 10% of the population switched from driving to cycling to work but the death numbers stayed the same, that metric would go up but really nothing would have changed, either mortality wise or in terms of number of people using the roads.
This would introduce a bias towards countries that are large and have extensive motorway networks. They would appear safer than countries that have a smaller portion of motorway miles.
> If we look at the number of deaths per billion miles driven, we see that motorways are roughly four times safer than urban roads, and more than five times safer than rural roads. This is not specific to the UK: among 24 OECD countries, approximately 5% of road deaths occurred on motorways.5 In almost all countries, it was less than 10%.
I prefer the death per people metric as I am more interested in how likely I am to receive some bad news than some metric based on distance.
Both measures have bias, the "per people" metric doesn't take into account when people are actually driving while the "per kilometer" metric puts too much emphasis on long distance driving, which is usually done on motorways where it is the safest. Maybe the best metric would be "per time spent on the road, including as a pedestrian on the sidewalk", but I guess it is harder to estimate.
Possibly even per trip? I'm confident my bicycle trips to the supermarket in the Netherlands is safer than a trip to Walmart in the US by car, but I spend way fewer kilometres doing the same job. That only makes it even safer, but I think is discounted in per-KM statistics?
Rural roads are far more dangerous than urban roads per mile. Higher speeds (whether by limit or driver disregard), worse infrastructure, and less police and hospitals means that the crashes that do happen are far more likely to kill.
We put white crosses on the verge, one for every dead person in an accident. I drive past many crosses every time I run to the grocery store. So...not very safe in MT.
I wonder if there will be a reversal in pedestrian deaths with the rise in larger cars. I live in a large UK city and it is mad the number of SUVs you see driving around.
Yes, I really have a hard time understanding that trend.
More than just the overall sizes of the cars (and they are big) it's those very high, flat fronts. That surely must be bad for visibility and bad for fuel efficiency at speed. I can only imagine people like that style because it looks more like a car and less like a minivan, which is what those enormous SUVs really are.
The market (either producers or consumers or both) don't seem to care about visibility. If you sit in a 20 year old car vs a brand new car, visibility is clearly better in the 20 year old car; if you go back to a 40 year car, it's even better. I've got an 81 VW Vanagon, the visibility is really good: cabover [1] means there's no hood in front, clear vertical windows and no safety features makes it easy to see out in every direction. Terrible side mirror attachments are a negative, but I'm putting aftermarket windows that promise to hold position after adjustment.
[1] It's not really a cabover, the engine is in the rear. but the front seats are slightly in front of the front axle, and the windshield is at the front of the vehicle. Some contemporaries were really cab-over, like the Toyota Van (aka TownAce) although that has a sloped front which reduces drag and visibility.
Perversely they're higher partially because of pedestrian safety. More space between the engine and the bonnet and hinges that extend that space when a force is applied to the front of the car to cushion the impact. Euro NCAP has a whole category for pedestrian safety to test exactly these features.
Do you have Individual Vehicle Approval? It’s shocking how many gigantic Dodge Rams (which do not meet EU safety rules) are driving around the Netherlands. One killed a 23 year old cyclist a few weeks ago.
Meanwhile, there's a group (mostly in Britain) that sometimes lets the air out of the tyres of inappropriate vehicles [1] and sometimes drills holes in them [2].
From [3], "My mother is in palliative care and I came to the car to go to her, but because of your vicious act, I am stuck trying to reinflate my tyres!" — I have no sympathy whatsoever. She bought the 'car', she can call a taxi if the journey is urgent.
We have IVA in the UK but it is mostly used to import Japanese cars at the moment because you only need a few modifications to most cars (fog lights, indicators) and the Yen is weak at the moment so a lot of people are importing cars like the Suzuki Jimny which meet our standards but aren't sold due to Europe wide emissions regulations. You would have to do a lot more to an American car because the safety standards are different so it isn't an attractive option unless you really want a specific vehicle at any cost.
Don't worry, our dear leaders are already hard at work giving up their people's safety and ensuring we bend over backwards to appease the US. Such vehicles will be able to drive in the EU with no hurdles.
Probably mitigated by the fact that the most popular SUVs in the UK are effectively just tall hatchbacks. People think Range Rovers but the bestsellers are like Kia Sportage and Ford Puma.
I dont see why. Like outside of specifically seppo produced coal wagons, the bigger cars\trucks\suvs are shipping with all safety features by default. I have 360 degree cameras at slow speed, sensors that go off if theres a loose branch within a meter of the car. I have more faith in my big car than I did with my older hatchback which only had a reversing cam.
Because bigger cars carry more energy, have poorer driver visibility, and are more likely to result in pedestrians going under the vehicle due to higher bonnet lines.
Big cars make drivers feel safer. But the stats are quite clear, they kill more pedestrians, and, ironically, are more likely to kill their drivers due their roll over risk.
The safety features might help, but they’re just compensating for all the additional risk bigger vehicles bring. You simply can’t beat physics.
Is the rise in SUVs about (displaying/increasing) social status? I am curious why people in the UK "need" SUVs. In many areas of the US, having a huge car is about social status.
Poor driving skills rather than social status. But who of those brilliant folks would admit that even to themselves. Also suvs are not some expensive car category, you can find dirt cheap (and crappy as suvs in general anyway are) ones.
Finally something positive about the UK. Usually the crowd will come in with pitchforks swinging everytime there is something about UK housing or politics going wrong.
As somebody who has driven in a few places around the World, I would say that overall the standard of driving and safety is remarkably high in the UK given that the road layouts are often quite confusing (we have roads in use today from Roman, Saxon, Norman, Medieval, Tudor and more modern phases of development, so it can get confusing), and the level of signage around some confusing layouts is much lower than, say, California.
This is because the rules are more complex, but actually get a license is, too. There are plenty of bad drivers, there are still idiots who drink/take drugs/use their mobile phones while driving, but it's way, way less than in some other parts of the World. And the rules of the road are broadly followed in terms of lane discipline and right of way in a way that they aren't in much of Europe or elsewhere.
I sometimes wish that we had clearer lane signage in some parts of the road network, like that seen in the US, but overall, once you get it, it's all very straightforward.
I've lived in the UK for over 15 years now and I still can't get over people's general allergy for using indicators. And I know the test and training specifically tell you that you must use indicators when changing lanes and turning, but if I had a penny for every time I see someone on the motorway changing lanes without indicating I'd make a very good middle class salary from that alone.
But yes, other than this people do generally drive really safely. I especially like how people mostly keep to the 30mph limit in towns(but then again, people get literally offended when you say you keep to the 20mph limit, like you're some kind of idiot for doing so).
Those not indicating are bad drivers. However, I'm not sure if this is what you mean but when changing lanes on a British Motorway you only need to indicate when pulling out not when pulling in.
Sometimes it can be helpful to do so when pulling in too but it's not a legal requirement since undertaking (except in slow moving traffic) is also ilegal.
As usual the UK is much more flexible, but perhaps also more pragmatic than France: there is no requirement to take any lessons to take the driving test. They don't care. What they care about is your driving.
Now, in practice this means you probably need more than 20 hours with an instructor plus practicing with family to pass the test.
20 hours? You were a quick one, that took me close to 40. Though I never was a very good driver, the car I crashed can attest to that (and thankfully with no corporal damage other than a bruised ego).
iowa requires 30 hours of classroom training if you are under 18 - which almost everyone is when first getting a license. Once you have a licenese anywhere though you just show up. So your classroom time in frace counted in the us
In South Kensington, they spent a fortune trying to use this non-delineated road setup where its not clear quite where the pavements (sidewalks for the USians), and road borders are, and in theory it means everybody just becomes very hyper aware of each other.
The theory goes something like how cycle lanes - just the a white line down the side of the road - can cause drivers to pass much closer to cyclists than they otherwise would without that border there, where a driver might slow and move a few feet out to the side on a single carriageway.
In reality, it's actually kind of anxiety inducing, particularly if you're in a larger crowd (common at this time of year, as Royal Albert Hall where proms season is coming to a close is at one end of this area), because drivers don't really seem to know what is going on.
I suspect it means cars are, on average, slowing down, but I can't find stats on whether its reduced accidents or not. I know it makes me nervous though.
Readit News
The theory test you must pass before taking your practical also now includes a hazard perception test - you are shown multiple videos and must click when you first perceive a hazard - the earlier you click after the hazard presents the higher your score - but if you just click randomly you get a zero.
Some of them are tricky - for instance, one I remember is a van coming from a side road at too fast a speed, but you can only first see this hazard forming in a reflection of a shop window.
It's one of those places there will only be 2 other cars in sight, but they're driving side by side and 10 under the speed limit. And for some reason, everyone seems to just hold down their brake pedal at all times so you can never tell when they're actually slowing. I presume they're driving an automatic with two feet and keep just enough pressure to trigger the brakelights. And everyone, even the Kia Rios, drives in the opposite lane before turning so they can swing wide like a semi. I could go on and on but I digress.
Anyways, it had been an enigma to me for the last few years since I moved here, until one day I was asked to take a lady to her driving test. Sure, why not.
The entirety of the 5 minute road test was turning out right onto a sparsely populated 2 lane highway, driving anxiously at 35 in a 55 for a mile or so, then turning around and coming back. Passed. Suddenly, everything made more sense to me.
And I'm sure this isn't probably even the easiest test nationally, just one I became familiar with recently.
So yeah, we have absolutely no driving standards.
I left the DMV office significantly more scared of my fellow drivers than I had arrived…
I took my test nearly 25 years ago, and this was present then -- for the avoidance of doubt, the UK test has always been very thorough, though not quite as thorough as those in places like Finland where apparently they have skid pans and similar!
Though this year we did good in our capital: "Helsinki has not recorded a single traffic fatality in the past 12 months, city and police officials confirmed this week."
You know, it does vary but relative to any other developed country it's pitiful in every state. The reality is we just hand out driver's licenses to whomever.
A few decades ago, 125cc bikes were mostly for learners practising before taking their test. But successive governments have made it harder and harder to get a full license - so loads of riders just stay on learner bikes forever.
So the status quo is, in a sense, the result of very strict regulation.
The official statistics have a rate of about 40-60% for these tests:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/driving-...
Though it definitely varies by area:
https://www.gocompare.com/motoring/reports-statistics/drivin...
It's closer to a school exam in terms of difficulty, rather than the quick drive around a parking lot that it seems a lot of places have.
So people seem a lot more prepared than in many other places, since they actually have to be able to spot hazards and do driving maneuvers to get their license in the first place.
I kind of assumed every state does this.
It has done for nearly 25 years at this point ;)
And you should certainly drive in other countries, namely much worse and much better than yours (presumably US), they are both out there.
Why are they 60mph? Well, the symbol they display doesn't say 60mph, it's basically just a slash symbol - it should be read "National Limit Applies" or perhaps "Derestricted" and it so happens that the law in the UK says that if there's no other rule in place that limit is 60mph and on these tiny roads nobody has put in place a more specific limit so that's the law.
[If there is carriageway separation, e.g. a larger road on which traffic flowing in the opposite direction isn't sharing the same tarmac, this global rule says 70mph, but no tiny roads have multiple carriageways, actually sometimes it feels like there's barely room for one let alone two]
However, just because there isn't a lower limit doesn't mean it's appropriate to drive at 60mph and people who do are generally maniacs. Where I grew up there are lots of these roads, steep, winding, narrow tracks paved in the 19th or 20th centuries for access to a farm here or a cottage there, and maintained by the public. You absolutely might turn a corner and find an entire flock of sheep in the road going "Baa!". If you're doing 60mph after you've killed a bunch of sheep and the bodies start smashing through your windscreen you're probably dead. Sheep don't have lights, don't know about jaywalking laws (which Britain doesn't have anyway) and aren't smart enough to have considered this risk, they're just there and now you're dead. So you drive at maybe 30-40mph on the straight parts, slower on curves and always pay a lot of attention 'cos things can go very bad, very quickly.
Roundabouts are a bit different. The UK has a lot of what are called "mini roundabouts". As a pedestrian, or perhaps on a bicycle these do just look like they're small roundabouts, too small for the island in the middle to have any purpose so it's just paint. But in a vehicle it's apparent that the island can't exist because you'd crash into it, perhaps not in a Mini but certainly in a bin truck or a bus. The mini roundabout isn't a roundabout except in the sense that the same rules apply as if it was, which means if I can see you can't enter before I do then I know you mustn't enter, I have right of way, which means I needn't slow down - you won't be in my way, you're not entering.
Just because legally you can drive at 60 doesn't mean you're legally allowed to drive recklessly. National speed limit is basically, "you're permitted to drive as fast as you like so long as you do so in a safe manner".
You are supposed to drive 60mph where appropriate, e.g. on straight stretches with good visibility and no junctions. It's very possible to fail your driving test for not going fast enough on a single carriageway.
Instead of having a speed limit sign after each and every intersection, they're placed periodically. If you enter a road and there's no sign, that's the speed limit. If there's a different speed limit than the default, and you cross through an intersection and there's not another sign after it, that means the speed limit reverted to the default.
It can be a bit confusing (MN has 35 in city roads, WI 25) but also handy (wide open plains states often have much much higher freeway speeds).
What matters more is the far stricter driver licensing and “Scarlet L” (my words) that the learners have to display.
That and the fact that it is bloody impossible to conduct 2 way traffic down country roads thanks to all the hedgerows and so everyone is extra careful and courteous (usually).
However some back roads aren't even B roads, the classification keeps going through C and D but it's local numbering, the numbers are just for local maintenance crews - so a C-1234 could be duplicated a few miles away in another local government territory and that would be confusing for drivers so they won't write C-1234 on a sign, they'll just say what's in that direction or maybe a local name for the road.
The best case scenario then, is that you write off your car with a deer shaped hole in the front. The worst case scenario is you have a death on your conscience for the rest of your life.
When I started driving I preferred the dark for these roads because the lights let you 'see' hazard around a corner.
Headlights were worse then - and I hadn't seen a crash into a deer.
Deleted Comment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
Browsing through this I found:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Accident...
What is up with poisoning in the early 40s?
As I suspected, poisoning most likely includes drug overdose. They have this comment about the 2023 data:
> #1: Poisoning: 100,304 deaths
> Largely due to the opioid epidemic affecting millions of people in the United States
You can see more recent data than 2004 in their interactive charts. It is interesting to see that deaths from road accidents has much reduced for teenagers and young adults, compared to the rest of the population.
One thing that is not being discussed is that cars have become a lot wafer - for both people in the car and for pedestrians they might hit.
Seems to me the latter would be a much better metric for the safety of the physical roads.
Fortunately, good old Wikipedia has what we are both looking for:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...
For me the upshot is that UK still comes out quite good amongst its European peers, but the difference appears to be smaller.
> If we look at the number of deaths per billion miles driven, we see that motorways are roughly four times safer than urban roads, and more than five times safer than rural roads. This is not specific to the UK: among 24 OECD countries, approximately 5% of road deaths occurred on motorways.5 In almost all countries, it was less than 10%.
Both measures have bias, the "per people" metric doesn't take into account when people are actually driving while the "per kilometer" metric puts too much emphasis on long distance driving, which is usually done on motorways where it is the safest. Maybe the best metric would be "per time spent on the road, including as a pedestrian on the sidewalk", but I guess it is harder to estimate.
Anyways the UK is doing well on both metrics.
[1] https://www.iihs.org/research-areas/fatality-statistics/deta...
More than just the overall sizes of the cars (and they are big) it's those very high, flat fronts. That surely must be bad for visibility and bad for fuel efficiency at speed. I can only imagine people like that style because it looks more like a car and less like a minivan, which is what those enormous SUVs really are.
[1] It's not really a cabover, the engine is in the rear. but the front seats are slightly in front of the front axle, and the windshield is at the front of the vehicle. Some contemporaries were really cab-over, like the Toyota Van (aka TownAce) although that has a sloped front which reduces drag and visibility.
Meanwhile, there's a group (mostly in Britain) that sometimes lets the air out of the tyres of inappropriate vehicles [1] and sometimes drills holes in them [2].
From [3], "My mother is in palliative care and I came to the car to go to her, but because of your vicious act, I am stuck trying to reinflate my tyres!" — I have no sympathy whatsoever. She bought the 'car', she can call a taxi if the journey is urgent.
[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/who-are-the-tyre-extinguishe... / https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/29/tyre-ext...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/07/activist...
[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg67xeqp296o
Fuck me
Big cars make drivers feel safer. But the stats are quite clear, they kill more pedestrians, and, ironically, are more likely to kill their drivers due their roll over risk.
The safety features might help, but they’re just compensating for all the additional risk bigger vehicles bring. You simply can’t beat physics.
Obviously, in an UK town pedestrians and cars should never come in contact, there are pavements, pedestrian crossings, etc.
This is because the rules are more complex, but actually get a license is, too. There are plenty of bad drivers, there are still idiots who drink/take drugs/use their mobile phones while driving, but it's way, way less than in some other parts of the World. And the rules of the road are broadly followed in terms of lane discipline and right of way in a way that they aren't in much of Europe or elsewhere.
I sometimes wish that we had clearer lane signage in some parts of the road network, like that seen in the US, but overall, once you get it, it's all very straightforward.
But yes, other than this people do generally drive really safely. I especially like how people mostly keep to the 30mph limit in towns(but then again, people get literally offended when you say you keep to the 20mph limit, like you're some kind of idiot for doing so).
Sometimes it can be helpful to do so when pulling in too but it's not a legal requirement since undertaking (except in slow moving traffic) is also ilegal.
Getting my license in the US (CA and NJ) required... showing up with my own car.
And in New Jersey, they even forgot to make me take the actual driving test.
Now, in practice this means you probably need more than 20 hours with an instructor plus practicing with family to pass the test.
Minors must:
- Complete a 30 hour driver's education course and 6 hours of driver's training
- Pass a knowledge test with 80% or more questions answered correctly
- Apply for and receive an instruction permit
- Maintain the permit for 6+ months
- Drive with an 25+ year old adult supervising for at least 50 hours (including 10 night hours)
- Pass a behind-the-wheel test
Adults must:
- Pass a knowledge test with 80% or more questions answered correctly
- Apply for and receive an instruction permit
- Maintain the permit for 6+ months
- Drive with an adult supervising for at least 50 hours (including 10 night hours)
- Pass a behind-the-wheel test
Minors have additional restrictions on recently issued licenses.
In South Kensington, they spent a fortune trying to use this non-delineated road setup where its not clear quite where the pavements (sidewalks for the USians), and road borders are, and in theory it means everybody just becomes very hyper aware of each other.
The theory goes something like how cycle lanes - just the a white line down the side of the road - can cause drivers to pass much closer to cyclists than they otherwise would without that border there, where a driver might slow and move a few feet out to the side on a single carriageway.
In reality, it's actually kind of anxiety inducing, particularly if you're in a larger crowd (common at this time of year, as Royal Albert Hall where proms season is coming to a close is at one end of this area), because drivers don't really seem to know what is going on.
I suspect it means cars are, on average, slowing down, but I can't find stats on whether its reduced accidents or not. I know it makes me nervous though.