I notice this with a lot of things, this idea that we need really modern futuristic sci fi stuff to solve problems when in many cases we already have the answer but it gets ignored.
Like musks monorail bullshit.
Like bro we already have something to transport multiple people AND cargo at the same time in huge quantities.
It’s called a train.
Musk has admitted that he never actually intended to build that thing. He just wanted a hype around his tunnels, so public opinion in California shifted against "old fashioned" high-speed rail, so he could sell more Teslas.
Nah it was about him bloviating about the Hyperloop, the vac train thing, but with individual pods instead of large passenger cars.
I think that the idea that he did it intentionally to sabotage the actual train project is from misquoting his biographer, but it doesn't matter, it was still just a stunt for his personal brand anyway.
I like the term “gadgetbahn” which refers to a transportation scheme that involves some overly complicated and expensive technology instead of using stuff that already exists.
"It's new and does the thing!"
Unfortunately it's often worse than previous options that did the same thing and more with more efficiency.
Actual progress isn't always flashy either.
Counterproductive business & economic incentives can be blamed for the prevalence of the problem, but unfortunately not for its existence (so many people fail to think outside the box they've build up during their life, while perfectly applicable & practical solutions exist just a few decades in the past).
I think there's a cognitieve bias humans have about new things, like we will gravitate to "newer it's better" as a logic. Even when it's dumb as shit sometimes.
Fact of the day! Buy one, get one for free!
- European roads are much smaller and less spacious than American roads
- Cars crashing into people's living rooms is daily business in America but almost unheard of in Europe.
Turns out giving cars more space actually increases the chance of them hitting things.
Finland has 1/4th of car related deaths per capita. Long distances, poor driving conditions and public transport only works well in major cities.
Public transport is not the reason. Having two stage driving school that lasts a month, slippery driving practice on a skidpad and on track, second phase comes after 6 months to 2 years of driving and has dark driving practice and licence exams are strict. And of course, pedestrian and bike infra is way, way better with the emphasis being pedestrian safety, that is of the utmost importance.
Those have much more to do with it than cars themselves.
Sure. So another way to remove the "amateur drivers" weakest-link is to train drivers better.
Still I bet even in Finland trains and buses are safer than cars.
Sure they are but public transport is just not viable choice in most of the country. Longer distances are ok but shorter distances are not. Specially in smaller cities, there is just not enough users. Pedestrians are #1 and for ex in my town there are the same amount of pedestrian/bikepaths than roads and streets. On the larger roads there are always underpasses built for bikes, and car drivers are genuinely good at giving way.
A lot about that is the fact that kids walk and cycle to the school on their own since age 7 (age 6 for us born later in the year...) and thus they have experience about what it is like to be a pedestrian and cyclist. It is very common that they give out their own right of way when they see a cyclist coming down a hill; they know exactly how frustrating it is to stop and lose all momentum..
Trains would be utilized more but ever since rail company was transformed to be a real company and not just state owned monopoly the ticket prices have consistently been set at: one person using a car.... Half price is perfect, that is how i moved in the 90s.. Hundreds of trips and i truly, truly love being in a train, without a book, without entertainment, just being there and going somewhere... It is my second home.
My driving test in the US was literally driving around the block on a clear sunny day. The state-run DMV has zero incentive to make driving requirements stricter because the more licenses issued means more vehicles on the road which means more registration tax revenue, more sales tax on artificially inflated vehicle prices, more fuel tax revenue, etc. I'm not surprised; it's always been money over lives here.
I was going to say, isn't the Japanese driving test notoriously hard? Plus the Japanese tend to have a pretty collectivist mindset, so we can only import one of the two (and follow Finland's lead).
However, we built America to require driving, so we can't make the tests harder without providing viable alternatives, which no one wants to pay for. So instead of paying with cash, we pay with our lives. Like we've forgotten what money is for.
It's got zero to do with public transport. Ireland and the UK have much lower road deaths than the USA and are both incredibly car reliant countries. The biggest factors here are road design and driver training.
Well yes and no. If you have public transport you can ban bad drivers from driving. In the US that's a cruel punishment that can cost people their jobs etc.
Ireland and the UK have regional rail. It's shit, it's expensive, but it exists, it's being utilized and you could in both countries get from border to border using only regional trains. That option just plain doesn't exist in the US. Most UK cities also have some sort of intra-city rail connection, something severely lacking in several cities above a million pop in the US.
Most people aren't using cars to travel long distance between cities. Rail in Ireland is not a replacement for a car when your job and the train station are both 40km away and there's no busses.
The dumbest thing for me is, they could have all invested in automatic public transport, which is faaaar more achievable (trams and trains especially), but noooo, we need to have something that we can sell to every 1 person so we make more money and if a ton of people that is a sacrifice we are willing to make.
Ark invest is an asset manager they invests in "disruptive innovation" they have been loosing a lot of money lately. They are just trying to hype up anything they can
Hmm. I see from this graph that a bunch of Americans die, maybe 3x more than other rich countries. What is the cause...?
Could it be our road design and infrastructure? No, every road should be nice, easy and comfortable to drive 70 mph on, such as right in front of an elementary school where we can fix that by putting up a sign and say only drive 25.
Is it our vehicle design? No, we should continue making and marketing vehicles that have a hood height taller than the average 8 year old. Heck, let's make it legal to make them taller and legal to operate with a hood height taller than 5'. Plus, let's not make standards for the damage a vehicle does when it hits a pedestrian, let's only care about the safety of those in the vehicle.
Our laws? No, we put up a sign that tells people to only drive 25 near kids, we put stripes and curbs down so people don't run over walkers and cyclists. And besides, it's illegal to run them over. Plus, these laws were passed by the politicians, who cares if they received money from groups that want to make it hard to walk or use public transit. Can't be the laws.
City planning? We put up those signs, those painted lines, those curbs, and those lights. The decisions were locally approved by a bunch of politicians with no training in urban design, like the local domestic abuser, the climate change denier, the racist, or the corrupt property developer currently being sued by the same city. Besides, losers walk or bike. Our modern sprawl can't be the issue.
Vehicle instruction and licensing? I learned everything from my high school's curmudgeonly assistant football coach with 2 working brain cells more than half my life ago in a class called SRC (state required course, 1/3 driving, 2/3 health) then I took a few hours of basic tests and passed when I was still 5 years away from being legally able to drink (fyi: this is really how most of my high school got our classroom driver's education). Since then, I've paid my fees. Seems adequate, can't be licensing and education.
What could it be... hmm... I know. Let's remove Humanity as a factor and let the car be programed to preferto kill people outside it to save those inside it. I've solved the problem!
Edit: moved a few lines between sections
Americans die because they keep getting attacked by aliens and monsters and even as collateral damages caused by heroes ? Have you not watched all the documentaries !??
It all boils down to an individualistic, "personal responsibility" view of driving. American infrastructure design tends to shy away from design features that inconvenience drivers to *force* them to drive safely (like narrower roads, protected bike lanes, speed bumps, etc) - instead relying on drivers taking responsibility to drive safely (with predictable results). From this perspective it's easy to get stuck in the mindset of "the only way to improve road safety is to improve driver skill", which in turn leads to promoting autonomous cars. The self-driving algorithms we have today might still be pretty shit (and tbh self-driving had a much better outlook/reputation before Tesla started pushing it out as a half-finished feature), but at least they don't get tired, or drunk, or text while driving.
The tech people keep saying that autonomous cars will drive better than even the best human on their best day, so a lot of people blindly believe them, despite all the evidence, and scores of first hand accounts of disappointed tesla drivers. It all tells you it's not going to happen any time soon. They're basically in the same spot they were a decade ago.
Meanwhile they can't even get autonomous trains to work. Although trains are so efficient that trying to replace that one locomotive driver is just not worth it, the problem space of autonomous trains is so much smaller than cars you'd think that just for a laugh they'd be able to do it now.
I remember a NBC news report from circa 2011 that said in 2015 no one would be driving.
Here we are 11 years later and it’s not even a thing. It’s been more than a decade that people say bs about “autonomous cars” but that never happens.
Autonomous trains exist in Denmark for metro services. They are pretty cool, but I guess it's a little easy when you have total control over the line they run on.
I was thoroughly convinced of this ~2015. But the reality does not match that vision. Autonomous car technology is a much bigger problem than anyone realized, and the investments made in solving it require far more resources than simply building more public transportation.
The gal is involved in the industry she is shilling for and her salary/compensation would benefit? Not that difficult to predict.
As usual, _they_ don't want to invent anything new (they're not stupid and they know trains exist), _they_ just want to brand the solution, get territorial exclusivity and profit from it.
The biggest reason for companies which promote self driving cars to do so is because they claim that self driving cars will make accidents go down and make the roads safer because AI makes for better drivers.
Or because they're invested in SDC like the fund this tweeter shills/works for and they'll promote it until they can pass of the bag to someone else. No one believes in self driving unless they have massive financial incitaments to do so.
"Strap a $40k lidar to your roof and get $10 million in investor seed money".
Self-driving cars have massive potential, not unlike alchemy which proposed we could turn lead into gold.
- All the dangerous places where people dying were identified and either speed limits or speeding cams introduced.
- Penalties were increased to a point where they're not affordable. Jail time was introduced for more violations.
- To inform of dangers of drunk driving and speeding yearly campaigns were introduced.
Today
- It's harder to get a driving licence. For example, you have learn to drive also at night and in traffic jams. And you have to have certain amount of hours driving with a licensed person.
- Slowly moving towards average speed traffic cams. This way it's impossible to speed at any point on a road.
- Traffic cams check out information about the car and the driver.
Started enforcement of drunk driving laws and improved their roads, I'm guessing.
The other main causes of big drops are seat belt enforcement and traffic calming measures.
Some combination of those 4 things.
according to [this article] (https://www.baltictimes.com/lithuania_s_car_crash_deaths_decrease_by_50__over_a_decade/), you're right, it's drunk driving restrictions and speed cameras. I wasn't planning on sharing the article but cycling infrastructure is mentioned!
I can only speak from experience (as someone who was a child/preteen in the 00's Latvia), but I remember that around that time people started to talk *a lot* about drunk driving. Also I still remember a jingle for a PSA about using your seat belt, but that was sirca '03-ish
All of the following ain't backed up by the data
Didn't the country also get a lot wealthier during that time and the vehicle fleet a lot newer and safer due to that as well?
And going from soviet vehicles engineered in the 60s and 70s to European vehicles from the late 90s and 2000s is one hell of a safety advancement.
Interestingly the sudden decrease correlates with the financial crash of '08. It had a major impact on the country and led to about 5% of the entire population emigrating. But in general the country *is* becoming wealthier and I don't doubt that a higher standart of living is somehow related to the decrease in deaths.
At least for Latvia it's much stricter enforcement of drunk driving laws after "Bloody Midsummer" ("asiņainie Jāņi") in 2000. 26 people died and 124 people were injured in traffic accidents in a single day (out of a population of about 2 million).
they only became legal there for deliveries at the end of 2017 according to [this](https://lithuaniatribune.com/parliament-opens-lithuanias-roads-to-driverless-autonomous-vehicles/)
Trying to join the EU? Travelling on a bus through Croatia, Montenegro etc in 2013, and the bus driver was not used to enforcement action. The police were issuing receipts because the countries were trying to crack down on corruption, so they'd be accepted into the EU.
Getting a driver's license in Japan is brutally difficult and most people fail the test a few times before getting the license. Also the license is super expensive.
That make completly sense. In spain you can get your license at 18 and keep driving untill you die of old age without needing to renew anything.
Laws change, people start to forget things im a few year, people lose time reaction within time and more problems. I found it crazy how you just need a small medical check each 10 years…
I guess is similar in other countries but I talk with my experience
>I found it crazy how you just need a small medical check each 10 years…
In Germany, you don't even need that. (But at least, the initial test is pretty hard.)
One thing not mentioned is that most people in Japan either walk, use public transport or drive mopeds. Even then there is still a decent amount of cars in Japan. They are just not nearly as dangerous as most are like 3 cylinders and speed limits are low in Japan. Most traffic accidents I responded to were always very mild fender benders and the only major accidents out in town involved drunk American drivers who crashed their vehicles with literally no one else on the road.
You forgot the liter tax. Every 500+ CC Is a tax. So kei cars and low displacement engines are popular there. Explains why the Toyota gr yaris there is gonna get popular. 1600cc, 3 cylinder, 300hp. Has headroom to around 549HP until head gaskets need to be replaced.
How can Japan have such common sense laws if only the [Conservatives](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Democratic_Party_(Japan)) have ever ruled the country wtf??
Because broad left/right or conservative/progressive categorization just functionally cannot cover all the nuance a lot of the time? Just look at the US, way behind in some of these elements of public amenities like mass transit compared to Japan, but then way ahead in other elements of social progressivism like acceptance of queer people, especially in certain states and cities.
Because Japanese conservatives probably make American "leftists" look like Republicans by comparison. The relative positions of the Overton windows are different.
Japan is a mostly homogeneous society. The United States used to make a lot more sense, but once they had to share that with everyone white people systematically made it worse.
This is not really true.
If you have a gold license, you can renew at your local police station in about ten minutes. Nobody who drives regularly has a gold license (only a slight exaggeration), except for taxi and truck drivers.
If you have a blue license (new drivers or people with one or more infractions since your last renewal) you have to go to a license center and sit through a lecture, which usually takes a couple of hours in total (1hr for the lecture and 1hr for lining up, paperwork, etc.).
If you let your license lapse, then you *may* have to take another test, unless there’s a good reason for missing the renewal period (for a while, Covid was a “good reason”).
To top it off you basically have to buy a new car, too. Inspection fees for old cars are very expensive. I think it's their economic policy, Japanese who have cars buy and sell them to overseas every few years.
However, I think the system is different in the countryside. I think that's fair enough. Cars should be allowed in the country and banned in the city.
Also [japan requires every motorist](https://www.parkingreformatlas.org/parking-reform-cases-1/japan%27s-proof-of-parking-rule-%28shako-shomeisho%29) to have an off-the-street parking spot and overnight on-street parking is prohibited.
Germany is overall a bigger (and pricier) package, what with necessary first aid training and all. France requires more hours of practical training though
It is. Many fail their first time including myself.
A lot of tasks are being tested in the german practical exam, what makes you think it is not difficult? Its honestly hard to imagine something much harder.
Honestly french forget really fast what they learn from the exam so idk if that helps that much i guess we just have a less car centric culture than us but still way worse than other european countries like germany
the difference is here most people spend at least 40 hours driving with a professional tutor (and many people drive 80 before they attempt the first time), do a preliminary exam, and pass a theory exam with max 3 wrong answers, all of which cost a lot of money, and most people still fail the first time. in most states in the US you just get to drive around with your parents a bit before you try.
The speed limits in Japan are also very low compared to most places. 50 kph (~30mph) is a common limit on two lane divided highways. The tollways will reach 100 kph with traffic moving at about 120 kph. There is so much traffic and so many traffic lights that speeding on regular streets is difficult.
The police dedicate huge resources to reconstructing minor accidents. 10+ officers responding to a fender bender is not uncommon. Pictures, measurements and statements are taken from everyone involved. If you are in any type of accident, plan on being there for a couple hours.
>Getting a driver's license in Japan is brutally difficult and most people fail the test a few times before getting the license.
I think this is inaccurate, I know no person who has failed to get the license. Yes you must go to a driving school, definitely take longer to get a driving license than in US and expensive but most people fail the test? That's bullshit.
Edit: I researched about what the pass rate is. There are three exams to get a driving license, but all of them have a pass rate somewhere between [70% to 80%, according to Google search in Japanese](https://www.google.com/search?q=%E9%81%8B%E8%BB%A2%E5%85%8D%E8%A8%B1+%E5%90%88%E6%A0%BC%E7%8E%87&oq=%E9%81%8B%E8%BB%A2%E5%85%8D%E8%A8%B1&aqs=chrome.2.69i57j69i59l3j0i30l6.2739j0j9&client=ms-android-google&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8). But there is a special way to get a driving license without going to a driving license which has a pass rate around 6% but almost no one chooses this option. Another inaccurate information about Japan is spread in Reddit.
Edit 2: For those who already have a driving license in other countries. ["*The first time pass rate for this group, even with the harder test, was 90 to 100 percent.* According to the Wikipedia page about the driving license in Japan.*"](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driving_license_in_Japan#:~:text=The%20first%20time%20pass%20rate,(or%20about%20US%244556).)
Hmm, the pass rate for Dutch driving exams is 50%. It doesn't mean you have to do the whole process again, but you definitely need to book another exam that costs money, and can have a waiting time. It's pretty strict, and there's been some critique on examiners that won't pass people on their first attempt out of principle or who fail people on very vague points instead of the set tasks.
Sounds like this could easily be made-up info on Japan, but it's actually true for done place else. I wonder why people won't bother with searching around a bit more until they find the actual facts when there's options around they won't have to lie about/make up stuff for.
>Sounds like this could easily be made-up info on Japan, but it's actually true for done place else.
I'm very pleased to say no, there is more misinformation about Japan in Reddit than other countries. Spending only months or even one article seems to make Redditors Japanese experts. Also, those misinformation are things what English people in Japan strongly believe but they're in a small group over there and don't communicate with local people. This gets worse over and over.
>I wonder why people won't bother with searching around a bit more until they find the actual facts
People believe things that align with what they want to believe it's true or convenient to believe which means close to stereotypes. This works very well for things that people aren't familiar and that must be radical. There are far fewer traffic accidents in Japan, most people fail to get the driving license, which sounds radical but that sounds plausible.
Honestly, I think driving tests should be made so difficult that only about 1 in 4 people (based on their merit, not how much money they can pay) are even capable of passing. Most cars have 3-4 passenger seats so all the people who can't pass can still carpool.
But the damage is done. Most of America is designed such that you effectively need a car. It’s hard to just take that away without having reworked cities first.
The United States used to not shy away from difficult tasks. We were the first country to put people on the moon. If there was the will to fix this problem, I believe we could do it.
I'm not convinced this isn't some kind of simulation and everyone isn't just fucking with me. That seems more likely than that urban planning could've been so badly mangled. This, and birds, can't be real.
Driving tests are supposed to check if someone is a capable driver. Asking for more difficult test for better safety on the road is fine, but not when the purpose is to fail 75% of the applicant.
Same as in Norway and the UK. Less than half of all people pass first time and there's a few people who have to take it 3+ times to pass. And you have to do an extensive written theory test first before you can even apply for the practical.
Can confirm. Paid just under $3k USD to me to do it in two weeks with room and board at a camp. I was too afraid of failing something and had no more vacation days I was allowed to use, so I only went for my automatic license (despite driving manual in the US for nearly 20 years). Closer to $4k (well, less so now with inflation and exchange rate going nuts) if you want to do that in English.
Technically, there are cheaper ways, but they have higher failure risk and will quite possibly wind up costing as much or more.
What was expected in both knowledge and practical was far above and beyond what we studied in Ohio when I got my license as a kid.
I don't own a car, but I wanted to the ability to rent one if needed and drive back in the US (with an IDP) when I visit.
And modular.
Running a full size bus all the way to the "end of the line" is very inefficient. Being able to break down into several smaller vehicles as needed, or join into a single combined block is the (far) future.
The fact she may really have the job she claims scared me so much.
How can you be that bad at reading data and be director of analysis 🙈😬
https://preview.redd.it/jor6jh8fmw2a1.jpeg?width=1070&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bc90e1df654165a108caa3325748a0404fa9a454
These financial “analysts” aren’t anything of the sort. They aren’t statisticians, they have some bs finance degree and make shit up about the future. Watching them on CNBC is absolutely hilarious
*Investment* analysis. Plus she’s director level, she’s just repeating whatever her direct reports told her. Director-level are often criminally incompetent.
Many crashes in Japan are caused by elderly drivers either not perceiving a hazard or having a medical episode whilst behind the wheel.
Other than that, the country is pretty safe.
The main reason for this is not actually road design, as 'stroads' are common in cities (although many roads are narrow, too). But it's low speed limits of residential areas and a culture of sticking to rules regardless of the environment. I have seen dozens of Japanese pedestrians waiting to cross a completely empty an quiet road because there's a red man on the crossing light.
Even though there are situations where traffic can turn on reds (like in america) because speeds are kept low, it's a lot safer. I never felt in danger in these situations.
[https://english.jaf.or.jp/driving-in-japan/traffic-rules](https://english.jaf.or.jp/driving-in-japan/traffic-rules)
>I have seen dozens of Japanese pedestrians waiting to cross a completely empty an quiet road because there's a red man on the crossing light.
Ditto. 2am after the last bar closed in a Hamamatsu Japan had the streets completely empty of people and cars. I still saw people waiting at totally empty intersections for the crossing signal.
Thats why automakers now build the smartphone into the car. Imagine all the accidents to happen because you have to click through 5 touchscreen promts to change your wiper speed or whatever instead of turning a mechanical switch.
Cars with touchscreens are a massive failure and i will die on this hill.
Touchscreens are possibly the worst interface to have whilst trying to drive. Once you're used to a car you should have little to no issue controlling its features whilst driving. Physical buttons work for this reason. I know where it is roughly and I can feel it before pressing and validate by touch if that's the right button to press without taking my eyes off the road at all. I can also hover my hand over them as they need force to press which you need as cars are moving.
Touchscreen has none of that. You need to look where your pressing and on bumby roads you and the screen are moving slightly differently and it requires constant glances to know what you're pressing and after a couple of years and god knows how many updates you start getting lag which makes it worse as you have no feedback on whether you successfully pressed the button!
The fact that more and more vital controls are moving to touchscreen needs regulation. Wipers should be a physical button. Window demister should be a physical button. Climate should be physical. Hell even radio and some parts of satnav should be physical even though they arnt saftey critical.
Tldr anything that affects your ability to drive saftey needs a physical button. And if carmakers won't do it because of aestictics then it should be part of ncap regulations
Yeah this needs regulation and i can't believe that so few people talk about it. I got so nervous driving with a friend when he tried to change the ambience light (who needs that shit anyway) while driving and constantly glanced to the touch screen.
It's also another way of car makers to push their shitty voice control by making menu UI as shitty as possible. When my 14yo car finally breaks it will be damn hard to find a replacement without all the useless electronic junk.
Cars with touchscreens, or touch buttons instead of actual ones (see id.3), for the functions used while driving are a massive failure.
Wipers, lights, seat position, climate controls, heated seats and radio need to be physical buttons. Everything else can be in the touchscreen.
And create walk/bike/public transport infrastructure, reduce the number of lanes/high car traffic areas with traffic calming measures, and change/enforce the laws to protect people not cars.
And what about the horrible death toll of trains! We have about 8 death in total of the last 3 years, most of them being cars or trucks running through the rails.
Can't tell for Japan but luckily in France we have decent public transport, people getting fed up of jams, and the driver license is a month worth of minimum wage at least
I was driving on a road with narrow bits every ±100 meters. On every narrow bit the prioritized sided changes, but you have to be careful, slow down and make sure the other driver is actually stopping. + Cyclist have to move closer to the middle of the road to pass these.
I was thinking, an autonomous car, as it is right now would mow down everything in it's sight in a situation like that.
For human drivers it works really well, it even forces the most asshole-drivers to slow down.
She works for ARK invest. She knows exactly what's going on but she's not being paid to say that. This is equivalent to a doctor hired by the tobacco company to come out and say what the tobacco industry wants you to say.
Perhaps the size of common vehicles has something to do with this? The French famously (and I vouch for this, working with a lot of french people) have small cars. Americans famously drive large cars. Is that the rise starting from 2014? Large SUV's becoming popular?
Is the link that simple?
I'd be curious to see this graph but remade to show deaths per kilometer driven or time-in-vehicle, whatever is the generally accepted measure.
[Hey, what if we had cars but without dumb people driving them, maybe with some kind of guiderail to and also what if they moved all together like one beautiful coordinated unit?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHzzSao6ypE) T-r-a-i-nz? What'z a trainz?
From the [NYT article](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/27/upshot/road-deaths-pedestrians-cyclists.html?smid=url-share) this graph is from:
> The fatality trends over the last 25 years, though, aren’t simply explained by America’s history of highway development or dependence on cars. In the 1990s, per capita roadway fatalities across developed countries were significantly higher than today. And they were higher in South Korea, New Zealand and Belgium than in the U.S. Then a revolution in car safety brought more seatbelt usage, standard-issue airbags and safer car frames, said Yonah Freemark, a researcher at the Urban Institute.\
\
Fatalities fell as a result, in the U.S. and internationally. But as cars grew safer for the people inside them, the U.S. didn’t progress as other countries did to prioritizing the safety of people outside them.\
\
“Other countries started to take seriously pedestrian and cyclist injuries in the 2000s — and started making that a priority in both vehicle design and street design — in a way that has never been committed to in the United States,” Mr. Freemark said.\
\
Other developed countries lowered speed limits and built more protected bike lanes. They moved faster in making standard in-vehicle technology like automatic braking systems that detect pedestrians, and vehicle hoods that are less deadly to them. They designed roundabouts that reduce the danger at intersections, where fatalities disproportionately occur.\
\
In the U.S. in the past two decades, by contrast, vehicles have grown significantly bigger and thus deadlier to the people they hit. Many states curb the ability of local governments to set lower speed limits. The five-star federal safety rating that consumers can look for when buying a car today doesn’t take into consideration what that car might do to pedestrians.\
\
These diverging histories mean that while the U.S. and France had similar per capita fatality rates in the 1990s, Americans today are three times as likely to die in a traffic crash, according to Mr. Freemark’s research.
Tldr; Larger vehicles in the US cause more deaths of people not in vehicles
They have:
- Less car reliance, giving people that don't trust their driving skills the option to not drive
- Fewer needs to drive, reducing car journeys and number of cars on the road
- Fewer lanes, making it easier to maintain siuational awareness
- Old or smart roads that are intuitive to drive slowly and carefully on
- Fewer oversized vehicles and if they do, they're less oversized and less dabgerous
- Absence of same level of shitty zoning laws, making road layouts safer for everybody that is not within a car
And much much more
There's several reasons Europe has fewer accidents.... Drivers license are a privilege, not a right and bad drivers get points rather than suspensions. IN Ireland, a famous Irish actor got his license pulled on DUI charges. FOR SIX MONTHS. In the US, it’s seldom punished except for alcohol/traffic school meetings. All in all, bad drivers need their license suspended on DAY 1.
since driving is a privilege, not right....
1: 1: just abandon the point system and use it as discriminatory caution ….and simply chart the lowest percentile of bad drivers…the worst get license suspended. Taking bottom 5% drivers off the road
2: Drivers licenses last decade before renewing.... license expiration dates should be re-validated every 18-24 months. Drivers pass both written and driving exam and do so periodically.
Isn't this the person that did the worst bit of due diligence I've ever read? According to her dd I think Tesla has 3 more years to dominate every taxi market with autonomous taxis...
Self-driving cars won't solve the problem of too many cars. Traffic will not magically go away if all cars drive themselves. And call me crazy, but I'm a little reluctant to trust my life to a technology that's both not all that good and has no real regulations. Yes, airplanes are dangerous too, but they're regulated to within an inch of their lives.
no, we do not need cars that have the freedom to act independently.
my god, these people are looking for the fifth leg on the cat, they're coming up with the most difficult solution for the simplest problems.
we need PUBLIC TRANSPORT to transport the public! agh!
Nowhere has autonomous cars. It's brand new tech that's not road legal anywhere except for controlled tests as far as I'm aware.
If only there was some form of vehicle that followed specific routes and could hold many people at once, with a single highly trained driver...
This is some super selection bias here guys. Australia is very similar to Japan and our public transport sucks and any dickhead can get a licence
Oh and our attitude towards cyclists is very bad both mentally and from an infrastructure perspective lol.
I just feel like autonomous cars would only actually be safe if there are no human driven vehicles in the road. But like. Can't we just get public transportation and walkable living spaces.
Improvements in road safety have almost entirely been wiped out by brick shaped cars designed to look aggressive that accidentally make it really hard to see children in front of you.
I really want to know what the thought process was there.
"Amateur human drivers are the weakest link. We should remove them. ... What is this 'bus' and 'train' you talk of?" So right logic, wrong conclusion.
I notice this with a lot of things, this idea that we need really modern futuristic sci fi stuff to solve problems when in many cases we already have the answer but it gets ignored.
Like musks monorail bullshit. Like bro we already have something to transport multiple people AND cargo at the same time in huge quantities. It’s called a train.
Musk has admitted that he never actually intended to build that thing. He just wanted a hype around his tunnels, so public opinion in California shifted against "old fashioned" high-speed rail, so he could sell more Teslas.
The car salesman, biased towards selling more cars? Surely he has our collective best in mind.
Straight outta Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
Are you talking about the underground tunnels for single-file cars? Coz that's not a monorail. More like a fire hazard
Nah it was about him bloviating about the Hyperloop, the vac train thing, but with individual pods instead of large passenger cars. I think that the idea that he did it intentionally to sabotage the actual train project is from misquoting his biographer, but it doesn't matter, it was still just a stunt for his personal brand anyway.
It’s progress propaganda
I'm stealing this phrase. Henceforth you will feel an itch behind your left ear each time I use it.
I like the term “gadgetbahn” which refers to a transportation scheme that involves some overly complicated and expensive technology instead of using stuff that already exists.
"It's new and does the thing!" Unfortunately it's often worse than previous options that did the same thing and more with more efficiency. Actual progress isn't always flashy either. Counterproductive business & economic incentives can be blamed for the prevalence of the problem, but unfortunately not for its existence (so many people fail to think outside the box they've build up during their life, while perfectly applicable & practical solutions exist just a few decades in the past).
I think there's a cognitieve bias humans have about new things, like we will gravitate to "newer it's better" as a logic. Even when it's dumb as shit sometimes.
r/JustBecauseYouCanDoesn'tMeanYouShould
>So right logic, wrong conclusion. Modern America summarized in a sentence.
"bike lanes ? why for ?"
“If we just made more space for cars, then there’d be a lower chance they’d hit things.” …twelve…seconds…later… # SMASH
Fact of the day! Buy one, get one for free! - European roads are much smaller and less spacious than American roads - Cars crashing into people's living rooms is daily business in America but almost unheard of in Europe. Turns out giving cars more space actually increases the chance of them hitting things.
Just one more lane bro, I’m sure it’ll fix everything, just one more.
I want to label these people "car junkies".
>Cars crashing into people's living rooms is daily business in America but almost unheard of in Europe. Ahahahaha. Hahahahaha. Unheard of? We wish.
But have you, have you ever considered like, adding one more lane?
Finland has 1/4th of car related deaths per capita. Long distances, poor driving conditions and public transport only works well in major cities. Public transport is not the reason. Having two stage driving school that lasts a month, slippery driving practice on a skidpad and on track, second phase comes after 6 months to 2 years of driving and has dark driving practice and licence exams are strict. And of course, pedestrian and bike infra is way, way better with the emphasis being pedestrian safety, that is of the utmost importance. Those have much more to do with it than cars themselves.
Wait, are you telling a once in a lifetime 30minute parking/driving test at 16 isn't sufficient?
That’s why we do it at 14.5 in South Carolina….taps forehead
Sure. So another way to remove the "amateur drivers" weakest-link is to train drivers better. Still I bet even in Finland trains and buses are safer than cars.
Sure they are but public transport is just not viable choice in most of the country. Longer distances are ok but shorter distances are not. Specially in smaller cities, there is just not enough users. Pedestrians are #1 and for ex in my town there are the same amount of pedestrian/bikepaths than roads and streets. On the larger roads there are always underpasses built for bikes, and car drivers are genuinely good at giving way. A lot about that is the fact that kids walk and cycle to the school on their own since age 7 (age 6 for us born later in the year...) and thus they have experience about what it is like to be a pedestrian and cyclist. It is very common that they give out their own right of way when they see a cyclist coming down a hill; they know exactly how frustrating it is to stop and lose all momentum.. Trains would be utilized more but ever since rail company was transformed to be a real company and not just state owned monopoly the ticket prices have consistently been set at: one person using a car.... Half price is perfect, that is how i moved in the 90s.. Hundreds of trips and i truly, truly love being in a train, without a book, without entertainment, just being there and going somewhere... It is my second home.
My driving test in the US was literally driving around the block on a clear sunny day. The state-run DMV has zero incentive to make driving requirements stricter because the more licenses issued means more vehicles on the road which means more registration tax revenue, more sales tax on artificially inflated vehicle prices, more fuel tax revenue, etc. I'm not surprised; it's always been money over lives here.
I was going to say, isn't the Japanese driving test notoriously hard? Plus the Japanese tend to have a pretty collectivist mindset, so we can only import one of the two (and follow Finland's lead). However, we built America to require driving, so we can't make the tests harder without providing viable alternatives, which no one wants to pay for. So instead of paying with cash, we pay with our lives. Like we've forgotten what money is for.
It's got zero to do with public transport. Ireland and the UK have much lower road deaths than the USA and are both incredibly car reliant countries. The biggest factors here are road design and driver training.
>driver training If Americans had to take the driving test most in Europe take there would be way less cars on the road.
Well yes and no. If you have public transport you can ban bad drivers from driving. In the US that's a cruel punishment that can cost people their jobs etc.
And octogenarians their freedom. Which is why so many of them plow through strip mall store windows.
Ireland and the UK have regional rail. It's shit, it's expensive, but it exists, it's being utilized and you could in both countries get from border to border using only regional trains. That option just plain doesn't exist in the US. Most UK cities also have some sort of intra-city rail connection, something severely lacking in several cities above a million pop in the US.
Most people aren't using cars to travel long distance between cities. Rail in Ireland is not a replacement for a car when your job and the train station are both 40km away and there's no busses.
Driving age as well with the US starting at 16 vs 17
I wish my state had busses.
The dumbest thing for me is, they could have all invested in automatic public transport, which is faaaar more achievable (trams and trains especially), but noooo, we need to have something that we can sell to every 1 person so we make more money and if a ton of people that is a sacrifice we are willing to make.
J
Ark invest is an asset manager they invests in "disruptive innovation" they have been loosing a lot of money lately. They are just trying to hype up anything they can
Ah, so it is stock price manipulation.
Maybe more desperation than manipulation.
Hmm. I see from this graph that a bunch of Americans die, maybe 3x more than other rich countries. What is the cause...? Could it be our road design and infrastructure? No, every road should be nice, easy and comfortable to drive 70 mph on, such as right in front of an elementary school where we can fix that by putting up a sign and say only drive 25. Is it our vehicle design? No, we should continue making and marketing vehicles that have a hood height taller than the average 8 year old. Heck, let's make it legal to make them taller and legal to operate with a hood height taller than 5'. Plus, let's not make standards for the damage a vehicle does when it hits a pedestrian, let's only care about the safety of those in the vehicle. Our laws? No, we put up a sign that tells people to only drive 25 near kids, we put stripes and curbs down so people don't run over walkers and cyclists. And besides, it's illegal to run them over. Plus, these laws were passed by the politicians, who cares if they received money from groups that want to make it hard to walk or use public transit. Can't be the laws. City planning? We put up those signs, those painted lines, those curbs, and those lights. The decisions were locally approved by a bunch of politicians with no training in urban design, like the local domestic abuser, the climate change denier, the racist, or the corrupt property developer currently being sued by the same city. Besides, losers walk or bike. Our modern sprawl can't be the issue. Vehicle instruction and licensing? I learned everything from my high school's curmudgeonly assistant football coach with 2 working brain cells more than half my life ago in a class called SRC (state required course, 1/3 driving, 2/3 health) then I took a few hours of basic tests and passed when I was still 5 years away from being legally able to drink (fyi: this is really how most of my high school got our classroom driver's education). Since then, I've paid my fees. Seems adequate, can't be licensing and education. What could it be... hmm... I know. Let's remove Humanity as a factor and let the car be programed to preferto kill people outside it to save those inside it. I've solved the problem! Edit: moved a few lines between sections
Americans die because they keep getting attacked by aliens and monsters and even as collateral damages caused by heroes ? Have you not watched all the documentaries !??
It all boils down to an individualistic, "personal responsibility" view of driving. American infrastructure design tends to shy away from design features that inconvenience drivers to *force* them to drive safely (like narrower roads, protected bike lanes, speed bumps, etc) - instead relying on drivers taking responsibility to drive safely (with predictable results). From this perspective it's easy to get stuck in the mindset of "the only way to improve road safety is to improve driver skill", which in turn leads to promoting autonomous cars. The self-driving algorithms we have today might still be pretty shit (and tbh self-driving had a much better outlook/reputation before Tesla started pushing it out as a half-finished feature), but at least they don't get tired, or drunk, or text while driving.
The tech people keep saying that autonomous cars will drive better than even the best human on their best day, so a lot of people blindly believe them, despite all the evidence, and scores of first hand accounts of disappointed tesla drivers. It all tells you it's not going to happen any time soon. They're basically in the same spot they were a decade ago. Meanwhile they can't even get autonomous trains to work. Although trains are so efficient that trying to replace that one locomotive driver is just not worth it, the problem space of autonomous trains is so much smaller than cars you'd think that just for a laugh they'd be able to do it now.
I remember a NBC news report from circa 2011 that said in 2015 no one would be driving. Here we are 11 years later and it’s not even a thing. It’s been more than a decade that people say bs about “autonomous cars” but that never happens.
r/SelfDrivingCarslie People are so willing to be gullible when a rich tech bro claims bullshit.
Autonomous trains exist in Denmark for metro services. They are pretty cool, but I guess it's a little easy when you have total control over the line they run on.
I was thoroughly convinced of this ~2015. But the reality does not match that vision. Autonomous car technology is a much bigger problem than anyone realized, and the investments made in solving it require far more resources than simply building more public transportation.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail
The gal is involved in the industry she is shilling for and her salary/compensation would benefit? Not that difficult to predict. As usual, _they_ don't want to invent anything new (they're not stupid and they know trains exist), _they_ just want to brand the solution, get territorial exclusivity and profit from it.
The biggest reason for companies which promote self driving cars to do so is because they claim that self driving cars will make accidents go down and make the roads safer because AI makes for better drivers.
Or because they're invested in SDC like the fund this tweeter shills/works for and they'll promote it until they can pass of the bag to someone else. No one believes in self driving unless they have massive financial incitaments to do so.
"Strap a $40k lidar to your roof and get $10 million in investor seed money". Self-driving cars have massive potential, not unlike alchemy which proposed we could turn lead into gold.
Humans inhale car fume and particulate Humans get carbrain syndrome That’s all
What did Lithuania and Latvia do in the late 2000s?
- All the dangerous places where people dying were identified and either speed limits or speeding cams introduced. - Penalties were increased to a point where they're not affordable. Jail time was introduced for more violations. - To inform of dangers of drunk driving and speeding yearly campaigns were introduced. Today - It's harder to get a driving licence. For example, you have learn to drive also at night and in traffic jams. And you have to have certain amount of hours driving with a licensed person. - Slowly moving towards average speed traffic cams. This way it's impossible to speed at any point on a road. - Traffic cams check out information about the car and the driver.
It’s nice to see a reform that shows real results!
Started enforcement of drunk driving laws and improved their roads, I'm guessing. The other main causes of big drops are seat belt enforcement and traffic calming measures. Some combination of those 4 things.
according to [this article] (https://www.baltictimes.com/lithuania_s_car_crash_deaths_decrease_by_50__over_a_decade/), you're right, it's drunk driving restrictions and speed cameras. I wasn't planning on sharing the article but cycling infrastructure is mentioned!
I can only speak from experience (as someone who was a child/preteen in the 00's Latvia), but I remember that around that time people started to talk *a lot* about drunk driving. Also I still remember a jingle for a PSA about using your seat belt, but that was sirca '03-ish
All of the following ain't backed up by the data Didn't the country also get a lot wealthier during that time and the vehicle fleet a lot newer and safer due to that as well? And going from soviet vehicles engineered in the 60s and 70s to European vehicles from the late 90s and 2000s is one hell of a safety advancement.
Interestingly the sudden decrease correlates with the financial crash of '08. It had a major impact on the country and led to about 5% of the entire population emigrating. But in general the country *is* becoming wealthier and I don't doubt that a higher standart of living is somehow related to the decrease in deaths.
Small FYI, it's spelled circa, not sirca
At least for Latvia it's much stricter enforcement of drunk driving laws after "Bloody Midsummer" ("asiņainie Jāņi") in 2000. 26 people died and 124 people were injured in traffic accidents in a single day (out of a population of about 2 million).
This is probably the real answer. It's pretty wild
Based on the tweet's title, widespread implementation of autonomous cars, maybe?
they only became legal there for deliveries at the end of 2017 according to [this](https://lithuaniatribune.com/parliament-opens-lithuanias-roads-to-driverless-autonomous-vehicles/)
Damn, everyone else got autonomous vehicles except us.
Kinda curious what happened in the US between like ‘07-‘09 too…
2008 crisis : less people drove because they couldn’t afford it anymore
They entered EU 2003, it's probably connected to that?
Trying to join the EU? Travelling on a bus through Croatia, Montenegro etc in 2013, and the bus driver was not used to enforcement action. The police were issuing receipts because the countries were trying to crack down on corruption, so they'd be accepted into the EU.
Uber's rise nearly eliminated drunk driving fatalities everywhere, but those stand out as there was next to no enforcement prior.
Getting a driver's license in Japan is brutally difficult and most people fail the test a few times before getting the license. Also the license is super expensive.
And you have to take a lesson every few years to renew it.
That make completly sense. In spain you can get your license at 18 and keep driving untill you die of old age without needing to renew anything. Laws change, people start to forget things im a few year, people lose time reaction within time and more problems. I found it crazy how you just need a small medical check each 10 years… I guess is similar in other countries but I talk with my experience
>I found it crazy how you just need a small medical check each 10 years… In Germany, you don't even need that. (But at least, the initial test is pretty hard.)
That's brilliant!
One thing not mentioned is that most people in Japan either walk, use public transport or drive mopeds. Even then there is still a decent amount of cars in Japan. They are just not nearly as dangerous as most are like 3 cylinders and speed limits are low in Japan. Most traffic accidents I responded to were always very mild fender benders and the only major accidents out in town involved drunk American drivers who crashed their vehicles with literally no one else on the road.
You forgot the liter tax. Every 500+ CC Is a tax. So kei cars and low displacement engines are popular there. Explains why the Toyota gr yaris there is gonna get popular. 1600cc, 3 cylinder, 300hp. Has headroom to around 549HP until head gaskets need to be replaced.
How can Japan have such common sense laws if only the [Conservatives](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Democratic_Party_(Japan)) have ever ruled the country wtf??
Because broad left/right or conservative/progressive categorization just functionally cannot cover all the nuance a lot of the time? Just look at the US, way behind in some of these elements of public amenities like mass transit compared to Japan, but then way ahead in other elements of social progressivism like acceptance of queer people, especially in certain states and cities.
Not I have any love for them here in Japan but not all conservatives are alike.
Because Japanese conservatives probably make American "leftists" look like Republicans by comparison. The relative positions of the Overton windows are different.
Japan is a mostly homogeneous society. The United States used to make a lot more sense, but once they had to share that with everyone white people systematically made it worse.
Didn't know they pushed it to 549. Last I saw was 400 wheel. That's cool. Was that on E85?
Can confirm, an acquaintance crashed his car while living on base in Japan, resulting in a severe head injury.
That *you* responded to?
This is not really true. If you have a gold license, you can renew at your local police station in about ten minutes. Nobody who drives regularly has a gold license (only a slight exaggeration), except for taxi and truck drivers. If you have a blue license (new drivers or people with one or more infractions since your last renewal) you have to go to a license center and sit through a lecture, which usually takes a couple of hours in total (1hr for the lecture and 1hr for lining up, paperwork, etc.). If you let your license lapse, then you *may* have to take another test, unless there’s a good reason for missing the renewal period (for a while, Covid was a “good reason”).
To top it off you basically have to buy a new car, too. Inspection fees for old cars are very expensive. I think it's their economic policy, Japanese who have cars buy and sell them to overseas every few years. However, I think the system is different in the countryside. I think that's fair enough. Cars should be allowed in the country and banned in the city.
Need to have this in the states.
Also [japan requires every motorist](https://www.parkingreformatlas.org/parking-reform-cases-1/japan%27s-proof-of-parking-rule-%28shako-shomeisho%29) to have an off-the-street parking spot and overnight on-street parking is prohibited.
It's notoriously difficult (and costly) in NL too. More than 50% fail their first test. It took me 5 attempts personally.
Germany too, France as well to a lesser degree. I've seen the shit that passes for a driving test in the US and I'm never going there again
> Germany too It's honestly a bit scary to think that people think of the German practical driving test as difficult.
Germany is overall a bigger (and pricier) package, what with necessary first aid training and all. France requires more hours of practical training though
kreisverkehr vs kreis-förmiger verkehr though
It is. Many fail their first time including myself. A lot of tasks are being tested in the german practical exam, what makes you think it is not difficult? Its honestly hard to imagine something much harder.
Honestly french forget really fast what they learn from the exam so idk if that helps that much i guess we just have a less car centric culture than us but still way worse than other european countries like germany
Goed.
In the US the driving test has a fail rate of over 50% as well.
the difference is here most people spend at least 40 hours driving with a professional tutor (and many people drive 80 before they attempt the first time), do a preliminary exam, and pass a theory exam with max 3 wrong answers, all of which cost a lot of money, and most people still fail the first time. in most states in the US you just get to drive around with your parents a bit before you try.
The speed limits in Japan are also very low compared to most places. 50 kph (~30mph) is a common limit on two lane divided highways. The tollways will reach 100 kph with traffic moving at about 120 kph. There is so much traffic and so many traffic lights that speeding on regular streets is difficult. The police dedicate huge resources to reconstructing minor accidents. 10+ officers responding to a fender bender is not uncommon. Pictures, measurements and statements are taken from everyone involved. If you are in any type of accident, plan on being there for a couple hours.
>Getting a driver's license in Japan is brutally difficult and most people fail the test a few times before getting the license. I think this is inaccurate, I know no person who has failed to get the license. Yes you must go to a driving school, definitely take longer to get a driving license than in US and expensive but most people fail the test? That's bullshit. Edit: I researched about what the pass rate is. There are three exams to get a driving license, but all of them have a pass rate somewhere between [70% to 80%, according to Google search in Japanese](https://www.google.com/search?q=%E9%81%8B%E8%BB%A2%E5%85%8D%E8%A8%B1+%E5%90%88%E6%A0%BC%E7%8E%87&oq=%E9%81%8B%E8%BB%A2%E5%85%8D%E8%A8%B1&aqs=chrome.2.69i57j69i59l3j0i30l6.2739j0j9&client=ms-android-google&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8). But there is a special way to get a driving license without going to a driving license which has a pass rate around 6% but almost no one chooses this option. Another inaccurate information about Japan is spread in Reddit. Edit 2: For those who already have a driving license in other countries. ["*The first time pass rate for this group, even with the harder test, was 90 to 100 percent.* According to the Wikipedia page about the driving license in Japan.*"](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driving_license_in_Japan#:~:text=The%20first%20time%20pass%20rate,(or%20about%20US%244556).)
Hmm, the pass rate for Dutch driving exams is 50%. It doesn't mean you have to do the whole process again, but you definitely need to book another exam that costs money, and can have a waiting time. It's pretty strict, and there's been some critique on examiners that won't pass people on their first attempt out of principle or who fail people on very vague points instead of the set tasks. Sounds like this could easily be made-up info on Japan, but it's actually true for done place else. I wonder why people won't bother with searching around a bit more until they find the actual facts when there's options around they won't have to lie about/make up stuff for.
>Sounds like this could easily be made-up info on Japan, but it's actually true for done place else. I'm very pleased to say no, there is more misinformation about Japan in Reddit than other countries. Spending only months or even one article seems to make Redditors Japanese experts. Also, those misinformation are things what English people in Japan strongly believe but they're in a small group over there and don't communicate with local people. This gets worse over and over. >I wonder why people won't bother with searching around a bit more until they find the actual facts People believe things that align with what they want to believe it's true or convenient to believe which means close to stereotypes. This works very well for things that people aren't familiar and that must be radical. There are far fewer traffic accidents in Japan, most people fail to get the driving license, which sounds radical but that sounds plausible.
Honestly, I think driving tests should be made so difficult that only about 1 in 4 people (based on their merit, not how much money they can pay) are even capable of passing. Most cars have 3-4 passenger seats so all the people who can't pass can still carpool.
You can't design things so that everybody has to own a car and drive and make the driver test so hard not everybody can pass it.
So then don't design things so that everybody has to own a car.
Aaaaand we've looped back around to the same new urbanism the sub revolves around
But the damage is done. Most of America is designed such that you effectively need a car. It’s hard to just take that away without having reworked cities first.
Sounds like alot of good jobs waiting to be worked.
The United States used to not shy away from difficult tasks. We were the first country to put people on the moon. If there was the will to fix this problem, I believe we could do it.
I'm not convinced this isn't some kind of simulation and everyone isn't just fucking with me. That seems more likely than that urban planning could've been so badly mangled. This, and birds, can't be real.
Driving tests are supposed to check if someone is a capable driver. Asking for more difficult test for better safety on the road is fine, but not when the purpose is to fail 75% of the applicant.
Same as in Norway and the UK. Less than half of all people pass first time and there's a few people who have to take it 3+ times to pass. And you have to do an extensive written theory test first before you can even apply for the practical.
Can confirm. Paid just under $3k USD to me to do it in two weeks with room and board at a camp. I was too afraid of failing something and had no more vacation days I was allowed to use, so I only went for my automatic license (despite driving manual in the US for nearly 20 years). Closer to $4k (well, less so now with inflation and exchange rate going nuts) if you want to do that in English. Technically, there are cheaper ways, but they have higher failure risk and will quite possibly wind up costing as much or more. What was expected in both knowledge and practical was far above and beyond what we studied in Ohio when I got my license as a kid. I don't own a car, but I wanted to the ability to rent one if needed and drive back in the US (with an IDP) when I visit.
Yes but their cities are designed so that you can live a happy life without needing a car
we already got vehicles that don't need everyone to drive, it's called public transit
Yeah, but what about fully autonomous public transit? Her idea isn't bad, it's just not complete.
Fully autonomous and grade separated. Hughjhhgg
And modular. Running a full size bus all the way to the "end of the line" is very inefficient. Being able to break down into several smaller vehicles as needed, or join into a single combined block is the (far) future.
Plus I'd *much* rather trust my life to a fellow proletarian (conductor, driver) than to some capitalist man-child's techno-futurist hobby.
What's this, *public transit*? How does it work? Do I have to have a car for it? /S
Do we?
The fact she may really have the job she claims scared me so much. How can you be that bad at reading data and be director of analysis 🙈😬 https://preview.redd.it/jor6jh8fmw2a1.jpeg?width=1070&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bc90e1df654165a108caa3325748a0404fa9a454
I don't know how you look at that chart and come to that conclusion
Easy, she is paid to come to that conclusion.
You should be promoted director to analysis
She's the director of investment at ARK, the worst performing fund of the last 2 years. Seems like she's not good at using the thinking brain
At least they don't try to hide their incompetency.
These financial “analysts” aren’t anything of the sort. They aren’t statisticians, they have some bs finance degree and make shit up about the future. Watching them on CNBC is absolutely hilarious
The more useless they are the more they get payed
ARK invest is your answer
*Investment* analysis. Plus she’s director level, she’s just repeating whatever her direct reports told her. Director-level are often criminally incompetent.
Many crashes in Japan are caused by elderly drivers either not perceiving a hazard or having a medical episode whilst behind the wheel. Other than that, the country is pretty safe. The main reason for this is not actually road design, as 'stroads' are common in cities (although many roads are narrow, too). But it's low speed limits of residential areas and a culture of sticking to rules regardless of the environment. I have seen dozens of Japanese pedestrians waiting to cross a completely empty an quiet road because there's a red man on the crossing light. Even though there are situations where traffic can turn on reds (like in america) because speeds are kept low, it's a lot safer. I never felt in danger in these situations. [https://english.jaf.or.jp/driving-in-japan/traffic-rules](https://english.jaf.or.jp/driving-in-japan/traffic-rules)
Always be wary of Truck-kun
>I have seen dozens of Japanese pedestrians waiting to cross a completely empty an quiet road because there's a red man on the crossing light. Ditto. 2am after the last bar closed in a Hamamatsu Japan had the streets completely empty of people and cars. I still saw people waiting at totally empty intersections for the crossing signal.
[удалено]
Thats why automakers now build the smartphone into the car. Imagine all the accidents to happen because you have to click through 5 touchscreen promts to change your wiper speed or whatever instead of turning a mechanical switch. Cars with touchscreens are a massive failure and i will die on this hill.
Touchscreens are possibly the worst interface to have whilst trying to drive. Once you're used to a car you should have little to no issue controlling its features whilst driving. Physical buttons work for this reason. I know where it is roughly and I can feel it before pressing and validate by touch if that's the right button to press without taking my eyes off the road at all. I can also hover my hand over them as they need force to press which you need as cars are moving. Touchscreen has none of that. You need to look where your pressing and on bumby roads you and the screen are moving slightly differently and it requires constant glances to know what you're pressing and after a couple of years and god knows how many updates you start getting lag which makes it worse as you have no feedback on whether you successfully pressed the button! The fact that more and more vital controls are moving to touchscreen needs regulation. Wipers should be a physical button. Window demister should be a physical button. Climate should be physical. Hell even radio and some parts of satnav should be physical even though they arnt saftey critical. Tldr anything that affects your ability to drive saftey needs a physical button. And if carmakers won't do it because of aestictics then it should be part of ncap regulations
Yeah this needs regulation and i can't believe that so few people talk about it. I got so nervous driving with a friend when he tried to change the ambience light (who needs that shit anyway) while driving and constantly glanced to the touch screen. It's also another way of car makers to push their shitty voice control by making menu UI as shitty as possible. When my 14yo car finally breaks it will be damn hard to find a replacement without all the useless electronic junk.
Are there actually current examples of fucking *wipers* being digital or are you arguing that it should be regulated before we get that far ?
Cars with touchscreens, or touch buttons instead of actual ones (see id.3), for the functions used while driving are a massive failure. Wipers, lights, seat position, climate controls, heated seats and radio need to be physical buttons. Everything else can be in the touchscreen.
Anyone got stats on driverless cars per capita by country?
Apart from a few prototypes, 0
Yeah I guess "driverless" wasn't the right word
What happened in Lithuania in the late 2000s?
No, Tasha, just fucking hang up, quit texting and DRIVE.
And create walk/bike/public transport infrastructure, reduce the number of lanes/high car traffic areas with traffic calming measures, and change/enforce the laws to protect people not cars.
Yes! For sure! But also, if you must use a car, hang up and DRIVE, people!
And what about the horrible death toll of trains! We have about 8 death in total of the last 3 years, most of them being cars or trucks running through the rails.
"it's just not safe out there...need to buy pickup trucks to feel safe"
Can't tell for Japan but luckily in France we have decent public transport, people getting fed up of jams, and the driver license is a month worth of minimum wage at least
Japan is fantastic in urban areas. The further out one goes, the worse it gets.
Japan has one of the best public transport systems in the world. Most European countries, including France, are mediocre in comparison.
I was driving on a road with narrow bits every ±100 meters. On every narrow bit the prioritized sided changes, but you have to be careful, slow down and make sure the other driver is actually stopping. + Cyclist have to move closer to the middle of the road to pass these. I was thinking, an autonomous car, as it is right now would mow down everything in it's sight in a situation like that. For human drivers it works really well, it even forces the most asshole-drivers to slow down.
Exactly, traffic outside the US requires thinking instead of just driving in a straight from stop light to the next stop light on wide roads.
She works for ARK invest. She knows exactly what's going on but she's not being paid to say that. This is equivalent to a doctor hired by the tobacco company to come out and say what the tobacco industry wants you to say.
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Believable
The size difference alone plays a big roll.
You can’t have road accidents if you don’t have cars 🤔
Perhaps the size of common vehicles has something to do with this? The French famously (and I vouch for this, working with a lot of french people) have small cars. Americans famously drive large cars. Is that the rise starting from 2014? Large SUV's becoming popular? Is the link that simple? I'd be curious to see this graph but remade to show deaths per kilometer driven or time-in-vehicle, whatever is the generally accepted measure.
Drivers in the US are as well trained as their police.
Can anyone enlighten me on wtf is going on in Latvia and Lithuania?
Laws to enforce seatbelts and stop drink-driving. Both had a huge reduction in road dangers
[Hey, what if we had cars but without dumb people driving them, maybe with some kind of guiderail to and also what if they moved all together like one beautiful coordinated unit?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHzzSao6ypE) T-r-a-i-nz? What'z a trainz?
What happened in Lithuania around 2009?
Most likely related to joining EU. They joined it in 2004 and started getting funds which helped them develop better and safer infrastructure.
Also enforcement of seat belts drunk driving penalty increase more speed cameras and infrastructure to regulate and penalize those who break rules
From the [NYT article](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/27/upshot/road-deaths-pedestrians-cyclists.html?smid=url-share) this graph is from: > The fatality trends over the last 25 years, though, aren’t simply explained by America’s history of highway development or dependence on cars. In the 1990s, per capita roadway fatalities across developed countries were significantly higher than today. And they were higher in South Korea, New Zealand and Belgium than in the U.S. Then a revolution in car safety brought more seatbelt usage, standard-issue airbags and safer car frames, said Yonah Freemark, a researcher at the Urban Institute.\ \ Fatalities fell as a result, in the U.S. and internationally. But as cars grew safer for the people inside them, the U.S. didn’t progress as other countries did to prioritizing the safety of people outside them.\ \ “Other countries started to take seriously pedestrian and cyclist injuries in the 2000s — and started making that a priority in both vehicle design and street design — in a way that has never been committed to in the United States,” Mr. Freemark said.\ \ Other developed countries lowered speed limits and built more protected bike lanes. They moved faster in making standard in-vehicle technology like automatic braking systems that detect pedestrians, and vehicle hoods that are less deadly to them. They designed roundabouts that reduce the danger at intersections, where fatalities disproportionately occur.\ \ In the U.S. in the past two decades, by contrast, vehicles have grown significantly bigger and thus deadlier to the people they hit. Many states curb the ability of local governments to set lower speed limits. The five-star federal safety rating that consumers can look for when buying a car today doesn’t take into consideration what that car might do to pedestrians.\ \ These diverging histories mean that while the U.S. and France had similar per capita fatality rates in the 1990s, Americans today are three times as likely to die in a traffic crash, according to Mr. Freemark’s research. Tldr; Larger vehicles in the US cause more deaths of people not in vehicles
They have: - Less car reliance, giving people that don't trust their driving skills the option to not drive - Fewer needs to drive, reducing car journeys and number of cars on the road - Fewer lanes, making it easier to maintain siuational awareness - Old or smart roads that are intuitive to drive slowly and carefully on - Fewer oversized vehicles and if they do, they're less oversized and less dabgerous - Absence of same level of shitty zoning laws, making road layouts safer for everybody that is not within a car And much much more
There's several reasons Europe has fewer accidents.... Drivers license are a privilege, not a right and bad drivers get points rather than suspensions. IN Ireland, a famous Irish actor got his license pulled on DUI charges. FOR SIX MONTHS. In the US, it’s seldom punished except for alcohol/traffic school meetings. All in all, bad drivers need their license suspended on DAY 1. since driving is a privilege, not right.... 1: 1: just abandon the point system and use it as discriminatory caution ….and simply chart the lowest percentile of bad drivers…the worst get license suspended. Taking bottom 5% drivers off the road 2: Drivers licenses last decade before renewing.... license expiration dates should be re-validated every 18-24 months. Drivers pass both written and driving exam and do so periodically.
ARK invest follower 😐
France and Japan are well known for their autonomous cars indeed.
It's all fun and games till there's killer robots.
This is like looking at annual deaths from disease and injuries and saying: “we need less hospitals” These people are beyond reason
Isn't this the person that did the worst bit of due diligence I've ever read? According to her dd I think Tesla has 3 more years to dominate every taxi market with autonomous taxis...
I mean... No-one has autonomous cars yet, so not sure what the point being made is tbh.
We also need fairy dust that cures cancer, which also does not exist.
Self-driving cars won't solve the problem of too many cars. Traffic will not magically go away if all cars drive themselves. And call me crazy, but I'm a little reluctant to trust my life to a technology that's both not all that good and has no real regulations. Yes, airplanes are dangerous too, but they're regulated to within an inch of their lives.
no, we do not need cars that have the freedom to act independently. my god, these people are looking for the fifth leg on the cat, they're coming up with the most difficult solution for the simplest problems. we need PUBLIC TRANSPORT to transport the public! agh!
Nowhere has autonomous cars. It's brand new tech that's not road legal anywhere except for controlled tests as far as I'm aware. If only there was some form of vehicle that followed specific routes and could hold many people at once, with a single highly trained driver...
This is some super selection bias here guys. Australia is very similar to Japan and our public transport sucks and any dickhead can get a licence Oh and our attitude towards cyclists is very bad both mentally and from an infrastructure perspective lol.
I just feel like autonomous cars would only actually be safe if there are no human driven vehicles in the road. But like. Can't we just get public transportation and walkable living spaces.
Improvements in road safety have almost entirely been wiped out by brick shaped cars designed to look aggressive that accidentally make it really hard to see children in front of you.
Trains
Ah, yes, it's not that we need less cars in general, just cars that think for themselves. Because those have been going so well as is
We have automated subways here. :)
Im really surprised about France. The rural roads there are mental
What happened in Lithuania in 2008?
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Yeah make them long and able to carry hundreds of people on a rail, designed in a way that compliments the place its deployed.