[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > To compare driving fatalities of the USA with other countries on a per capita > basis is worthless. There needs to be consideration of the higher > miles/person > driven in a year.
This is true. It wouldn't surprize me in the least to find out that Americans drive more miles/person/year than anywhere else on Earth. > To hop in a car and drive for eight hours to visit someone would > be unheard of in most other countries, but is fairly common in the USA. There are a number of reasons for this. The first is the absence of any real intercity mass transit except for airlines. Our long distance passenger rail system, except for a very few areas, was very effectively killed off in the last half of the 20th century. Long distance Busses do exist, but in most places they're considered strictly low class, and relegated to carying people who can't afford to go by airline. And then there are the airlines. Since Deregulation, note the capital "D", there are a lot of smaller communities that airlines just don't serve anymore. In any event, with all of the security procedures one must go through in order to fly in the post-9/11 world, it may actually be faster to drive than to fly, depending on the distance involved. And even if one does fly, if you're going to an area that is not served by a good mass-transit system, there's the problem of "How am I going to get around once I'm there?" > The > twelve lanes of traffic on the NJ TP into and out of NYC is not seen in many > other countries. The beltway of Washington, D.C., is at least five lanes in > each direction. And, so on. The speeds traveled on these roads is around 75 > mph regardless of posted speeds. So...you have a lot of congestion plus high > speeds. Have you ever seen the Autobahn around Frankfurt or Munich? > Seatbelt laws and helmet laws have been in place in the USA for years with > the > exception of a few states. They could be more strongly enforced, but they are > there. Indeed. But while they do exist, they are under constant attack from various groups. There are some who claim that wearing a helmet on a motorcycle is actually unsafe because it "restricts your vision". What a load. If it restricts your vision then you need to buy a better helmet. > The bigger problem than seatbelts and helmets is alcohol and other drugs. A > very high percentage of single vehicle accidents involves someone under the > influence. A high percentage of all accidents involves at least one of the > drivers being under the influence. Around half, IIRC. > There are continuous attempts to curb this, > with varying degrees of success. Indeed. Every time we turn around somebody is screaming "There ought to be a law!" And our politicians, being politicians, have to appear to be doing something, so they happily go out and make some damned law, until we're now bound around with them. > Part of the problem is again the structure of > our communities. For example, in many areas in Europe one can go out with > buddies and walk about to a multitude of bars/discos, etc., and not need to > get about except by walking or using mass-transit. I remember when I was living in Ansbach, Germany, there was this little Irish pub around the corner from the Hauptbahnhof in Nurnberg, and my apartment was stumbling distance from the Bahnhof in Ansbach. At that time the rail system was running a DM15 weekend special for up to 5 people, so I made that trip a lot on the weekends. > In the States, in many > areas it is very difficult to do anything without driving. So...there are > attempts to get people to designate a driver who remains sober while everyone > else has a party. This tends not to be very successful. That depends entirely on the responsibility of the one designated as the driver. Many areas also have "toxicabs" which will drive people home at no charge when they've gotten too drunk to drive themselves. > Finally, there is a trade off between well engineered roads and possible > traffic speeds. And...speed kills in more ways than one. Um... Well, yes, but. It isn't the speed that kills. It's the sudden stop. > In Saudi Arabia, I read > that it had or has the highest per capita fatality rate. Well...fairly good > roads and people driving at 100 mph all the time. If one loses a tire at 100 > mph/161 kph, there is a good chance it will be the last time. The answer here is "it depends". Mostly it depends on the skill of the driver in controlling the situation. If the driver freaks out then the results are going to be bad. It also depends on the safety equipment in the car. If drivers don't cheap out on the safety equipment then even horrific crashes are survivable, many times without too much injury. But if the safety equipment is neglected, or the maintenance of it is neglected, then the results will be similarly bad. I've lost a tire at high speed on the highway twice, and I'm still here. > Another thing is a higher number of accidents by either very young drivers or > very old drivers. Many states in the USA allow driving at 16 and with minimum > instruction. From my experience in Spain, which I assume pertains to much of > the rest of Europe, where my daughter is coming up on eighteen, the minimum > age is 18, and she has to take formal instruction in a driving school and > pass > a fairly rigorous written examination and driving test. To my knowledge, no > state in the USA requires driving school. One can learn any old way and take > the test. The tests in the USA tend to be very simple compared to what I have > seen in Spain. Also, in Spain, older drivers have to retest and demonstrate > that they have not become too impaired by health reasons to drive safely. I'll agree here. In Germany the requirements for the driver lisence are similar to the requirements I had to meet to get my Pilot's lisence here in the US. But here we encounter one of those political problems. Many, if not most, Americans tend to think of driving as a "right". Part of the whole freedom of movement thing. For this reason legislation to restrict driving priveleges, or increase lisencing requirements, or anything which might make getting the lisence more expensive, such as requiring formal driver training, is politically unpopular. Depending on the state, the elderly in particular are a POWERFUL political group. While making the initial lisence more expensive or more difficult for young people to get is politically unpopular, doing anything to restrict the ability of the elderly to drive themselves around is political suicide. > So, the stats need to be adjusted for miles driven/year/person. Indeed. Don't you just _love_ statistics. > There needs to > be consideration for the condition of the roads, and speeds at which drivers > drive. Definitely. And we need for the roads to be designed by engineers instead of politicians. > There needs to be changes in the way people relax with meaningful > alternatives so people won't tend to drive under the influence - for example, > greater availability of mass transit, more taxi and limousine services. Well, yes, there needs to be more availability of mass transit, but deeper than that, there needs to be the will to use it. One can't exist without the other. And for decades in the American Car Culture mass transit has been the transportation of people who can't afford cars. > There > needs to be better driver's education and consideration to raising the > minimum > driving age. It is a multi-factorial problem. Regardless of comparisons with > other countries, much can still be done to cut this death rate in all > countries. Indeed, much can be done. But doing it requires the political will to do it. And in the end, there's only just so much you can do to protect people from themselves. [snip] > I am constantly amazed that some Americans claim that it >>"violates their constitutional rights" if legislation is brought in that >>enforces seat-belts/helmets and allows random breath testing. Using >>the above figures, it could be argued that nearly half of the people >>killed on US roads could be EASILY saved. You're not the only one amazed by it. What's more amazing is some of the arguments that are brought against these laws. A couple of years ago Florida's helmet law was declared "unconstitutionally vague", because while it required motorcycle drivers to wear "proper headgear" it never defined what "proper headgear" meant. And there hasn't been the political will to rewrite and reenact the helmet law here even though deaths in motorcycle accidents doubled. >> To take it a step further, there is a large financial cost >>associated with a person dying in a vehicle crash, but there is a >>much larger cost associated with those people who survive the crash >>but suffer some form if incapacitation, or even a long rehabilitation >>period. If a person is permanently injured in a car crash and in turn >>needs life long care, then the costs are huge. I would guess that it >>would cost at least $50,000 per year to look after said injured person >>and if they happen to live for 40 years in this state, that's $2M >>straight away. Also it is worth remembering that for every death on >>the roads, there are a lot of accidents which are severe, resulting is >>no deaths but long term injury. This is why insurance was invented. In most states drivers are required to cary a minimum of insurance in order to maintain their driving priveleges. I don't have to like it, and I don't, but I can certainly understand it. The big problem with this is that the insurance industry has drivers over a barrel, and they know it. And with the financial disorder in the insurance industry, premiums have gone through the roof. But even the insurance industry agrees with you about safety equipment. There are a number of insurance companies that stopped writing policies for the state of Florida when the helmet law was struck down. >> So where does that leave us? Australia has a death rate on >>the roads that is constantly, except for a one year "blip". trending >>down whilst from my reading of the article, seems to be trending up. Whether the fatality rate is trending up or down depends entirely on who is interpreting the statistics. From my reading of the situation, there are more total fatalities simply because there are more drivers than ever on the roads, but as a percentage of all accidents fatalities have been trending down for quite some time, particularly as older cars with inadequate safety equipment meet their end of life and are removed from the fleet. >>Isn't it time that the US took some action on these simple to >>introduce measures and stopped both the carnage and cost instead >>of waiting for "Robby the Robot" to drive them around ? Again, there is the issue of the political will to do it. I, for one, would like to see Florida's helmet law reenacted, and enforcement of the seatbelt law strengthened, as well as formal driver training requirements for initial lisencing, and increased retesting requirements for elderly drivers. I would like this not for purely altruistic reasons, after all, stupidity is supposed to be fatal, but largely for selfish reasons. All of this would probably make my insurance rates go down. Not that I expect to ever see it happen. AP ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Get A Free Psychic Reading! Your Online Answer To Life's Important Questions. http://us.click.yahoo.com/O10svD/Me7FAA/AG3JAA/FGYolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
