"1 in 25 Americans being born will not make it to their 40th birthday."
Wow. Actually impressed with the analysis backing this up. If you read the entire thread, he actually covers nearly every correlating factor I could think of.
And it's pretty clearly drugs, guns, suicide, and cars. (The cardio health one doesn't seem as strong).
The one that is crazy to me is the uptick in driving fatalities. Cars are an order of magnitude safer than they used to be and we were trending towards 0. An entire generation has to be that much more reckless than before to make that kind of a dent.
Cars are getting so big that people can’t drive them.
An indescribably sad statistic: In the US, a parent drives over and kills their kid in the driveway every other day [1].
All the guns also cause -a bunch of— some small kids to kill their siblings every year.
> Cars are getting so big that people can’t drive them.
While controversial because car companies in the US intentionally chose to market large SUVs to the public, there is some evidence that smaller vehicles are safer and that auto manufacturers have doubled down on unsafe vehicles. Why this is the case, isn’t exactly known, but one of the theories is that bad drivers will get behind bigger cars and take more risks.
I’ve driven both large SUVs and smaller subcompacts, and I can talk at length on the pros and cons. However, as a driver, I can tell you that smaller cars are often bullied by larger cars, and this gives weight to the idea that people driving larger vehicles take larger risks, resulting in greater danger to the driver and to other cars and pedestrians.
There’s also the mistaken perception by older generations that smaller cars are inherently more dangerous; this was once true, and everyone can point to disastrously unsafe compact cars in the 1970s and 1980s. But due to modern technology and safety enhancements, this probably hasn’t been true for the last two decades or more. This older, erroneous belief continues to underlie why people choose larger vehicles today.
I've noticed that certain types of large vehicles attract drivers (or create false confidence) in bad driving and aggressive driving habits.
It is appears that the driver of the large SUV or pickup believes they have right of way over smaller cars, pedestrians and cyclists.
A "get out of my way" attitude.
I love small cars, not to mention cycling and walking.
It concerns me that the shift of cars parked at the parking lot has dramatically changed over the past 20 years.
Walking from the car to the shop is like carpark gauntlet, you need to be increasingly ready to dodge giant vehicles reversing with disregard to their surroundings.
Surveys have found that people driving large SUVs and trucks like them for reasons including, it makes them feel powerful, and it makes them feel important. These were high on the list, even.
It's a negative spiral. More people get bigger cars now because well there are more bigger cars on the road now. That and the convenience of an SUV is unbeatable for people with families - like baby seats or ease of getting in and out and so on. When I bought my car almost a decade ago, it felt reasonably sized. Now it looks puny on the road.
Minivans are in many ways more practical than SUV for families just as many seats easier access back row of seat tons of leg room better millage. and while suvs perform better in head on collisions van are safer in most other as the suvs are more top heavy and likely to tip. Vans just have a stigma as the soccer mom vehicle despite all those soccer moms having moved to suvs to get away from it.
Perceived convenience for people with families. Actual convenience is a joke because they’re horrifically impractical compared to an estate (station wagon in the USA).
No victim blaming. Smaller cars are more dangerous given an accident is already occurring between multiple cars.
Choosing a car to be in an accident, a bigger car is a solid choice. Of course, that skips over being in an accident at all. It also skips over any concern for others -- but so many people view that hypothetical accident as clearly the other person's fault, so may as well go with the big car.
All being equal, no it’s not. However, SUVs get their “safety” by killing the drivers of smaller vehicles. Two SUVs colliding is more dangerous for both than, say, two Ford Fiestas colliding.
And that’s to say nothing of what happens when the person being hit is a pedestrian or cyclist.
> Smaller cars are more dangerous given an accident is already occurring between multiple cars.
Again, you're victim blaming here. The small car is not causing the danger. T-shirts are not more dangerous than guns just because someone firing a gun randomly into a crowd is less likely to get hurt than someone in the crowd wearing a t-shirt.
Still not victim blaming, go back and read the whole thing again.
Which car is safer if you're choosing a car to be in? big or small? The bigger is safer and the smaller is more dangerous (to be in), in a multi-car accident.
My whole post was on the rationalization of the choice of size of car. Language matters, as you say. It is about people not choosing the smaller car and not being the victim due to driving a smaller car.
Yes, the escalation of size causes problems in aggregate, but not the point of what I wrote.
The small car is safer to be in. The person with the small car is causing less danger.
You are participating in the victim blaming and the arms race by conflating the externalisation of risk with safety. And there is no need to aggregate to see the effect. It is present in every individual case.
The person in the big car is not being safer, they are being more dangerous and more selfish. Just because they perceive that their selfishness is exceeding the added danger (something not borne out by the stats) does not justify it. Acknowledging the framing of the auto industry is making the problem worse.
>Everyone thinks they are a better driver than they are and the only way they'll end up in an accident is if someone else hits them.
I hear this a lot and wonder how true it is because I personally think i am a horrible driver and can't wait until actually safe fully self driving cars take away my need to drive. on the other had a drive a small car and want a smaller one despite sharing the roads with behemoth raised 4x4 pickups that seem to be inexplicably popular.
Given the explanations I've been given for why demonstration videos of general purpose vision-based robots are still often sped up x4 or more (despite Tesla and Spot), I have to assume it's at least a few years away yet, but that's not never.
My unscientific pet theory is that poorly built/zoned neighborhoods and cities, designed as if every human needs to drive a giant car at all times, are to blame more
Neighborhoods are built slower than cars are, and the increase in car size has outpaced construction. Sure we should fix our neighborhoods, but they're not the main reason behind increasing car sizes.
In Germany, the car tax includes the type of car and is adapted based on the accident rate for this type. Basically, you know ahead of time that you will pay more if you buy a car type that is often driven by reckless drivers.
> I’ve driven both large SUVs and smaller subcompacts, and I can talk at length on the pros and cons.
One thing I find genuinely surprising is that the Renault Zoes we have as pool cars at work have got far bigger blind spots and far worse visibility than my 25-year-old Range Rover.
And, in turn, although that Range Rover is described as an SUV (it's not especially sporty, it's a top-heavy three tonne army truck with nicer seats), it's the same length and width as most "normal" family saloons. It's got a much smaller footprint on the road than some large 5-seaters like a Tesla Model S.
Bigger vehicles by volume are safer, as there is more space for crumple zones. Bigger vehicles by mass are more dangerous, as there is more momentum and kinetic energy involved in a collision.
Bigger vehicles by volume are taller vehicles, they impact pedestrians closer to the vital organs in the upper torso and head. Pedestrians are also more likely to be swallowed / run over by cars with higher ride heights.
> Pedestrians are also more likely to be swallowed / run over by cars with higher ride heights.
It would be very interesting to see more studies on this. Where I am, the car of choice is a lifted truck that I don’t think has been accounted for with regards to pedestrian safety.
Americans spend a lot of time in their vehicles. Big vehicles are simply more comfortable and practical on a daily basis, at least outside of a few dense cities. If you're going to be stuck in traffic then might as well have some space to stretch out instead of being squeezed into a compact car. Safety is less of a concern for most buyers.
You can argue that this is irrational based on handling or fuel economy or whatever. But for better or worse buyers prefer size and comfort.
I’m around 195cm. There is plenty of space. I can fit very comfortably into most vehicles (passenger planes excluded).
Outside of leg and elbow room, what can you even do with that extra space when stuck in a traffic jam?
Before the plague forced pervasive WFH, this was every Friday when a bunch of us would pick somewhere for lunch and all pile into the fewest cars needed.
A long time ago I worked in an office like that. I usually biked to commute, so when we had one more person going than cars going to lunch, I just biked to the restaurant as well. Otherwise, I rode in someone's car. Still, none of the drivers did this "daily". Neither this nor sibling comment describe a "daily" situation. If you need a big sedan once a month and big SUV twice a year, just rent at those times and drive something more practical the rest of the year.
>All the guns also cause a bunch of small kids to kill their siblings every year.
No they don't, unless you're going to quibble about what a bunch is. Numbers that seem to show lots of deaths to "kids" pretty much always include age ranges old enough to include gang members.
Numbers that seem to show lots of deaths to "kids" pretty much always include age ranges old enough to include gang members.
So what if they were? It's pretty damn sad for a person young enough to be considered a child to die from gun violence regardless of who they were! A sad societal failure on top of our failure to set them up with life circumstances that made them unlikely to fall in with a gang.
That'll be very very difficult. Even very restrictive weapon ownership countries like Netherlands and Sweden have a big violent gang problem. And a policy as strict as they have is just totally unthinkable in the political reality of the US.
So a policy stricter than the US can have isn't enough to solve this problem. That's why it's better to aim at reducing accidental underage gun deaths which is much more achievable.
Don’t know about Sweden but the Netherlands does not have a “big violent gang problem”.
It has a problem with a few small and very violent gangs that occasionally gun down people in broad daylight, in the middle of the street, completely disregarding the safety of the people around them, which is bad but nothing like the gang problems in the US or Latin America.
It's so bizarre that America is the only country in the world that seems to face these kinds of problems.
As a Canadian who grew up in a household with a dozen firearms, I never once touched those firearms, and hardly ever saw them until I was taken to the range by my father and taught how to use them.
America is the only first world country to border South and Central America, which is the region of the world with a homicide rate orders of magnitude above any other. It is no surprise violence spills over due to proximity.
France have a border with South American countries, and is facing illegal incursion from Brazilian gangs in it's territory (and an army guy died for it last year if I remember correctly), still the gun violence in Guyana is pretty low (lower than Marseille). Not an excuse.
> America is the only first world country to border South and Central America
The United States has one border with a central America country (Mexico). Please show on the map where it has a border with any south American country?
I'm very interested in this border between South America and the US. most maps seem to be hiding it.
also, fun fact, when your government spends a hundred years assisting coups of democratic or socialist governments, those counties are going to have a lot of political instability.
…but it’s also worth pointing out that murder rates are also a lot lower than the US in other developed countries that don’t have Scandinavian levels of welfare transfers.
The other developed countries still have much lower income differences between rich and poor than the US though. I think this is a bigger contributor to US crime levels than its gun policy.
Also, I don't understand the focus on murder rates. Compare all violent crime at least.
A multi-pronged approach that involves reducing the amount of guns in American is a surefire way to reduce access to guns by children, both in gangs and out.
Statistically speaking, suicide is the #1 cause of gun death in the US, gang activity is #2.
School shootings are far down the list. They get a lot of attention but don't account for a large proportion of deaths.
Of course, that any of these deaths occur is tragic, which is why the most sensible solution is repeal of the Second Amendment and implementation of a nationwide, federal license requirement to purchase or own a firearm. 120-day grace period. License each gun, turn them in, or go to jail.
Let the gangs resort to cutting each other like Japanese gangs.
That doesn't require a repeal of the second amendment. That just requires a willingness to interpret the full text of the amendment, instead of focusing only on the last four words.
School shootings are far down the list as far as fatalities go. But that's a poor way to measure the impact of school shootings. The trauma inflicted by each of these events goes way beyond the number of children killed. Everyone who has heard actual gunshots in their own school building feels life-changing trauma.
When a kid in the US says "I'm scared to go to school," you can't tell them they have nothing to be scared of. You can tell them "It's not likely to happen at your school today." That's small comfort.
The full text of the amendment is pretty clear that "a well-regulated militia" depends upon "the right of the people to keep and bear arms", it does not limit that right. In order to train farmers and craftsmen into an effective reserve fighting force, they have to have weapons of their own they can practice with. Times have changed, obviously, and civil society no longer depends on citizen firearm ownership. You can put together a Supreme Court to overturn Heller and other decisions on this issue, but constitutional scholars are likely to consider it rickety jurisprudence.
Repealing the 2nd would be a full-throated declaration that wielding weaponry is a privilege, not a right.
We should probably repeal and replace the First Amendment while we're at it, and tie up some loose ends like Citizens United and the inability of U.S. governments to criminally punish hate speech.
> We should probably repeal and replace the First Amendment while we're at it, and tie up some loose ends like Citizens United and the inability of U.S. governments to criminally punish hate speech.
I am not a gun nut, and have little interest in owning/shooting guns. I've done it, and found it boring. But my defense of the 2nd Amendment is based on the domino theory that if the 2nd can be ignored, there goes the First and every other "inconvenient" right enshrined in the Constitution. The First is the most important of all those Rights.
Thanks for illustrating I am right that the First would be put on the chopping block right after the Second.
There's still freedom of speech in countries with stricter gun laws.
Also in my country prostitution and abortions are legal. So stricter gun laws don't always lead to other restrictions.
There are countries freer than the USA where the government reserves the right to severely restrict speech and even criminalize some forms of political speech, if it serves the public interest. If you express Nazi views in Germany, for instance, you go to jail. Guess what -- Germany hasn't had to deal with a Nazi problem significant enough to turn into a real political movement in nearly 80 years. The USA, by contrast, had a near miss with Hitler 2 actually occupying the White House.
Sorry, but the first amendment, as currently formulated, really needs to go. It should be replaced with a formulation of freedom expression that better balances individual freedom with the public interest according to modern political standards.
In fact, given the problems with corruption in the American system and first-past-the-post voting leading to money-driven, rather than truly democratic, politics, the entire constitution probably needs to be rethought. No less of an American political thinker than Justice Ginsburg has opined that the US constitution is no longer, in the current era, a model for good governance. This should happen in a civilized fashion with a convention and ratification much like the current constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation, but it nonetheless needs to happen.
> There are countries freer than the USA where the government reserves the right to severely restrict speech and even criminalize some forms of political speech
No, there aren't.
> the first amendment, as currently formulated, really needs to go
That's the first thing the Nazis did, as well as Mussolini, and every other repressive government. Without free speech, the rest of your rights go down the drain.
If Ginsburg advocated getting rid of free speech, I'd like to see a cite from you about that.
When Ginsburg was interviewed on Al-Hayat TV in 2012 about where the new Egyptian government should look for inspiration, she cited the South African constitution, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the European Council on Human Rights positively and said "I would not look to the U.S. Constitution" as a model for establishing a new state:
On the matter of free speech, note that the South African and Canadian constitutions, and the ECHR, all protect freedom of expression exclude hate speech as protected speech. It is VERY much in line with modern statecraft to do so, and the doctrinaire approach of the First Amendment (only established in 1969, by the way, before which the USA implemented speech restrictions not dissimilar from those seen elsewhere) is the outlier here. Also note that getting rid of the First Amendment is not getting rid of freedom of expression.
Granted, her position was not even as radical as mine, which is that we must rethink the constitution from the ground up and implement a new form of government more resistant to corruption, again drawing from examples of more modern statecraft -- a multiparty parliamentary system, for instance. All she was saying was that new governments should look elsewhere for a template.
Ginsburg's views that the U.S. constitution is the supreme law of the land, and must be hewed closely to and not played fast and loose with for as long as it is active, were congruent with mine.
Remember, the Constitution was crafted by men of their time, and they explicitly stated it was not a suicide pact and that future generations were fully allowed to amend it should they find the desire. We can probably find a compromise that greatly reduces gun violence, if only compromise could be made.
Since the second amendment doesn’t specify what arms I have the right to bear does that mean I should be allowed to wander down to my local gun store to pick up a surface to air missile so that I can shoot down an airliner? Of course not, that would be insane. So why not put similar limits on automatic weapons that can mow down an auditorium full of kids?
What is that based on? The only people I hear even talk much about 'gangs' is conservative propgandists trying to demonize black and brown people and cities. I'm not saying no gangs exist, but they aren't really an issue (unless you define 'gang' as any association of >1 person
> the most sensible solution is repeal of the Second Amendment and implementation of a nationwide, federal license requirement to purchase or own a firearm. 120-day grace period. License each gun, turn them in, or go to jail.
It's a politicized judiciary. For centuries, nobody interpreted the 2nd Amendment the way the conservative judges do now, but when the Federalist Society intentionally politicized the judiciary, this is what happened.
> Cars are getting so big that people can’t drive them
and likewise, people are getting so big they can't drive their cars...
in Texas, police officers in some municipalities have requested that their vehicles be modified to elevate the steering wheel...they literally cannot jam their stomachs between the seat and the wheel, and if they push the seat back far enough they cannot reach the pedals
>"1 in 25 Americans being born will not make it to their 40th birthday."
>(The cardio health one doesn't seem as strong).
Here's a bit of an anecdote, but I bet my family isn't alone in this type of story... my cousin died from cardiac arrest at age 45. Keeping the story here brief - he was a high-income business owner who got into a tough spot in his marriage and business, found himself without health insurance when he had a medical episode. Knew something was wrong and would likely bankrupt him - and we think that's why he didn't follow up with his doctor and was dead two weeks later. Congenital issue, could have been easily resolved - but without health insurance it was probably a death sentence either physically or financially.
Now, this was just as the ACA was coming into play - but I'd argue it's moot. The ACA was well-intentioned, but has not actually improved the insurance or care situation for the majority of Americans. I need a surgery at present that won't be covered by my insurance to any meaningful degree, and being in rural America my care options are limited. So I'll live with regular pain because the system doesn't work. And I hear stories like this in my social circles weekly.
JFYI, the ACA did have a large impact on the health insurance coverage through expanding medicaid. The percentage uninsured was halved from 18.4% to 9.1-9.8% (in states which expanded medicaid. In nonexpansion states, the uninsured percentage went from 22.7% to 17.1-19%).
I hear you about the health care situation though. Health insurance is definitely not the same thing as health care.
My buddy separated his shoulder snowboarding when he was 22, but had no health insurance because he was working at the ski resort for something like $6/hr (US Ski Resorts are legally allowed to pay below minimum wage... go figure).
So he never went to the Doctor, because he couldn't afford it. He's 41 now, and that shoulder impacts almost every day of his life.
I never understand why you guys put up with this. The French are burning Paris to the ground because their retirement age got put up 2 years. But America puts up with the most outrageous hardship with barely a whimper.
> I never understand why you guys put up with this
Oh, I'm not American, and actually I was there as a 22 year old Australian and was horrified. The idea that people in a Developed country didn't have access to a doctor was shocking - I'd never seen that before, and simply didn't understand. I thought everyone could just go to the doctor when they needed to.
> For plans purchased through employers the sky is the limit
Almost everyone with insurance has a maximum out of pocket limit now. It's possible to have a grandfathered employer health plan, but they'd have to have been running it since 2010 without substantial changes since then, including in benefits or cost increases. There are very few employer health insurance plans that would have met that criteria, and even fewer who tried to.
They also have to directly inform you that you're on a grandfathered plan, so it should not be a mystery to those who somehow are.
> Almost everyone with insurance has a maximum out of pocket limit now.
"maximum out of pocket" does not mean what any normal person would interpret it to mean. More than one year I have had to pay way more than the "maximum out of pocket".
The insurance company gets to decide unilaterally how much of what you pay out of pocket is credited toward their tally of what you supposedly paid out of pocket. In several years I've paid a lot more out of pocket than what the insurance statement credits me for having paid.
Why? Can you give me an example here, particularly as it relates to a medically necessary surgery or procedure? Or does it come down to difference in interpretation of what is medically necessary?
I don't have a specific example handy, it's been a few years.
How it works is that blue shield (with employers I've typically always had blue shield in California) sends a statement saying your doctor visit cost $XXXX, blue shield will pay $YYY and this will credit $ZZZ towards your annual out of pocket total.
But $XXXX - $YYY > $ZZZ, so what I actually had to pay to the doctor was more than blue shield credits me for having paid. So at the end of the year what I've actually had to pay has been well above the so-called "out of pocket maximum".
It doesn't happen most years (to me), but has happened on multiple years.
Based on the providers contract with Blue Shield, you should not be liable for anything beyond what they consider to be your out of pocket cost. If they requested more, you could have just refused to pay it, and get your insurance involved if they pushed back.
Labs that don't have a clear medical justification are probably easy to end up paying for out of pocket without getting the amount counted against the out of pocket insurance limit.
Would expect that to be clearly delineated on the bills though.
Something happened during the initial stages of the pandemic. People lost their absolute minds and aggressive and reckless driving got way, way worst than I've ever seen.
Hell, about an hour ago a cop tailgated me while I was going 15 over the limit, wove through traffic to cut me off, run a red light, then damn near ran another driver off the road. No lights, no emergency, just an asshole. This is the behavior you have to expect from all drivers now.
At least two or three times a week I have a close call that would wreck my car or seriously hurt someone, and I pretty much only drive up and down the one road between my house and the office, it's a 5 mile drive.
There's something very deeply wrong in American society, and I don't see things improving any time soon.
I thought people in the US drove like insane idiots long before the pandemic. Weaving in and out of lanes, excessive speeding, road rage over the slightest inconvenience and, the dumbest one to me because it is virtually effortless, failure to use turn signals. It's very easy to drive safely but a good chunk of divers seem to outright refuse.
Having said that, the data backs you up. 7% increase in per capita road fatalities in 2020. Then a 10.5% increase on top of that in 2021!
Why signal your intentions to your opponent like a chump? They'll just use that information against you to block you from changing lanes, or to duck into a parking lot row ahead of you in a crowded parking lot and steal that empty spot. /s
I've found that drivers vary tremendously in the US. The best average drivers I've been around were in the California Bay Area. Oregon drivers are generally out of it (left lane freeway camping always started the moment I crossed from CA into OR), and only moderately angry. Arizona had wildly incompetent "snow birds" in the winter and insanely aggressive road raging locals in the summer. I've heard that Boston and New Jersey are like Mad Max with potholes.
Driving like idiots compounded by lack of traffic enforcement as police budgets and staffing decline. I just moved away from a pretty decently sized city, and the police there didn't do any traffic enforcement at all. Not enough manpower to cover traffic and crime.
it's not that they don't have the resources, it's that police would rather racially profile people and only perform a traffic stop if they think they can illegally force a search to find or plant drugs.
>There's something very deeply wrong in American society, and I don't see things improving any time soon.
Any hypothesis as to what it is? I think it is a lack of community. We've become transactional and virtual/online communities are not sufficient.
In terms of driving I think it got a lot worse during the pandemic because with the lack of daily commuter traffic allowed people to drive faster and hence more recklessly.
All day long, every day, the news media attempts to gin up more wars. They foster ignorance, fear, and hatred. Foreign leaders who haven't been in the news for years are made the primary focus overnight, just because that's where we're supposed to bomb next. Not all of us can even imagine why we should fight people in other hemispheres who've never done anything to us, so our fear and hatred lands closer to home. That's a big reason we have such tyrannical prison sentences.
If we didn't have a gigantic military that spends over a trillion dollars a year on the purchase of armaments, our armaments manufacturers would have less money to make our news media insane.
I've noticed the post pandemic crazy driving anecdotally as well and it's alarming. Lots more tailgating, lane changing where they almost clip you and driving really fast while passing on the right.
I think defensive driving is becoming more important as well and I worry far more about driving at night, as people get more erratic, than I used to.
>Something happened during the initial stages of the pandemic. People lost their absolute minds and aggressive and reckless driving got way, way worst than I've ever seen.
That's easy enough. People who were socially minded stayed home; people with an individualistic attitude ignored recommendations. You hear similar stories from people working in customer service - the average quality of the person they had to deal with plummeted.
What's a bit peculiar is that, according to you, road culture has not recovered.
Keep in mind that while we had cell phones for a while, it’s only within the past 10 years that the whole “distraction economy” became a thing, so while people may have used phones to communicate back in the day, nowadays they might be using the phones even more just to attend to those distractions.
That's a good point, although the phone usage could have a multiplier effect and cause proportionally more trouble in the US due to the bigger cars and more-car-oriented environment.
A Ford F150 is most dangerous to small pedestrians (i.e. your kids or the kids of those you visit) in the driveway which you can't see over your hood due to its size.
Plus, modern US trucks are as big (if not as heavy) as WW2 tanks. Photos taken from the infamous DailyMail, but they look correct to me, that is [1] and [2]
> Cars are an order of magnitude safer than they used to be and we were trending towards 0.
This isn’t true for the US, cars are actually more dangerous due to the prevalence of SUVs that skirt safety regulations by being sold as light trucks.
In the US cars likely kill more people through lack of exercise than through accidents.
The UK has small compact towns and cities with street layouts designed in the horse and buggy days that force people to get out of their car and walk around the shops - there are very very few if any drive-thru businesses and only the big newer supermarkets have dedicated parking lots.
Which are omnipresent all over the world but I don't believe the uptick in traffic fatalities is (at least in Australia they were considerably lower in 2020-21 due to covid lockdowns. Mind you we also have very strict laws and stiff fines for mobile phone usage while in control of a vehicle, even if it's idling in traffic or, yes, in a drive-thru lane - technically it's illegal to use your phone to pay in that scenario, unless you switch the engine off first).
(Just checked, and while there was a slight increase in 2022, road fatalities are still very much trending downward in Aus. Fairly sure we have similar levels of mobile phone usage. We've also seen a surge in average car size, though the sort of massive pickup trucks that seem common in the US are thankfully relatively rare here, despite the popularity of "utes")
It’s the phones. I have to drive my kids regularly 45 minutes to school on a highway with very high accident rates. It is people staring at their phones approaching dangerous parts of the road with lots of sudden stops and interchanges.
A sudden secondary effect - legal pot is leading to many more stoned drivers where I live (NJ).
>Cars are an order of magnitude safer than they used to be and we were trending towards 0. An entire generation has to be that much more reckless than before to make that kind of a dent.
Jevons Paradox perhaps; you make the cars safer, so people feel more empowered to drive recklessly.
Drivers in the US just seem incredibly aggressive to me. I remember crossing some street in downtown Pittsburgh, and a car coming towards me. The guy was clearly seeing me, and accelerating instead of slowing down. I jumped forwards and survived.
American people seem aggressive in general, and I say that as one. I didn't realize how bad it was until I finally went on a vacation overseas. I don't know if it's something in the water or what.
As a counterpoint I’m an Australian living in the Bay Area and drivers here are more considerate than back home. In law abiding Melbourne where I grew up, drivers will happy run you over if you’re jay walking because they supposedly have right of way.
Ive lived around the country and the driving culture varies significantly from region to region. East Coast cities are the worst, whereas I find Seattle, where I live now, very east going. Having moved from the east coast, it shocked me to see drivers just stop for pedestrians, even outside of marked off crosswalks. Try that in NY and you’re dead.
I saw the same thing in Europe, southern Italy was very chaotic roads compared to Northern Italy.
I haven't been nearly killed by a German driver yet, and on purpose, and German drivers had many more opportunities to do so than American ones. But yeah, my impressions are of course only anecdotal, but then again, 100% verified from my perspective.
Autobahn-driving can definitely be nerve-wracking if you're not used to it, being flashed to change lanes when you're already doing over 150 k/h is quite disconcerting to say the least! But there is at least a system to it, and on regular roads Germans seem to drive pretty sensibly.
> Phones exist everywhere. Why would Americans be more affected?
Because with advent of SUVs you can't actually see most of the things that you normally would see through your car window. Because SUVs are bigger people believe they are safer, they are deathtraps on wheels for everyone involved. Also because they are bigger drivers believe they can bully everyone else on the street or just don't pay any attention to what is going outside.
Wow. Actually impressed with the analysis backing this up. If you read the entire thread, he actually covers nearly every correlating factor I could think of.
And it's pretty clearly drugs, guns, suicide, and cars. (The cardio health one doesn't seem as strong).
The one that is crazy to me is the uptick in driving fatalities. Cars are an order of magnitude safer than they used to be and we were trending towards 0. An entire generation has to be that much more reckless than before to make that kind of a dent.