This is for strictly mildly interesting material. If it's too interesting, it doesn't belong. If it's not interesting, it doesn't belong.
This is obviously an objective criteria, so the mods are always right. Or maybe mildly right? Ahh.. what do we know?
Just post some stuff and don't spam.
Taken from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBPkI3CCY8o
Ok, noted: New York is almost on par with civilized regions.
That might be skewed as most of their population are in New York City, and more than half of the city doesn't even own a car.
That's pretty much the point of the chart. Better public infrastructure decrease the deaths from cars.
I understand this is largely due to Americans wanting to get drunk like everyone else but also having to drive everywhere.
And gigantic motor vehicles.
And terrible roads and/or regulations? I can't help but notice the worst offenders are conservative areas and those usually are neglectful.
And lack of pedestrian infrastructure, and..., and... We can go on and on at how baked into the cake these deaths are in the car cult.
The transportation departments of red states just funnel the monies to corrupt buddies and nothing gets fixed even though there is perpetual road work being (performatively) done.
There are so many dumb regulations and circumstances that functionally push people to giant vehicles.
For instance: I replaced my 2016 VW golf base model with an electric F150 this year for a multitude of reasons. I got a refund from insurance (with the same coverage). None of this makes sense except that I'm less likely to be injured by other motorists in my 3.5ton truck. I found this depressing.
Thought it would be interesting to compare with EU, they published an article in 2023 (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?oldid=630784) with the following data. This graph uses a number per 1 million inhabitants so divide by 10 to compare it.
As far as I know Finland has the world's strictest driving licence, so I'm actually surprised to see it posting worse statistics than Sweden here.
Sweden went insane with road security in the nineties (nollvisionen?) so maybe that's why.
Sweden is as expected. 200-something fatalities for 10 million people. Norway stands out😃
It got me thinking about definitions, though. For Sweden every death during transportation is counted (including busses, heavy trucks and single accidents with a bike), while the definition my 2 minute googling found for Canada said deaths resulting from accidents involving automobiles.
The stats are normalised for per 1 million inhabitants are they not?
But your second point is definitely very good. I imagine getting consistent fully comparable numbers from all the various countries isn't easy.
America is more in the middle of the road when you look at the whole globe, and don’t just select a few counties with lower death rates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate
Africa is currently the reigning champ for vehicle related deaths.
I think it’s fair to compare like with like. Many African countries have poor infrastructure, inadequate enforcement of traffic laws, rapid urbanization, unsafe vehicles, and limited emergency medical services. Its easy for a Western country to look better compared to that, but is it a fair comparison?
Well, if you're comparing the US south, it might be fitting.
That’s not fair. Blue state tax pays have paid for some really nice infrastructure down there.
The Netherlands has 4.19
The Netherlands is close in size to Maryland, and close in the number of inhabitants as New York. Also half of the traffic is cars and half is bicycles. It's pretty insane how bad Mississippi is.
I tried looking into why Mississippi was so far worse. Mostly just finding people self report texting and driving more there, infrastructure is shitty, enforcement is shitty, DUIs are high they recently just upped the civil fine of texting while driving from $25 to $100.
For fun I looked to see what Mississippi would be like if it was its own country, and do to GDP it was compared to Morocco and Kenya.
Car Deaths per 100,000
Mississippi: 26 Morocco: 17.29 Kenya: 28
Kenya is 4x as dense as Mississippi is though, so still hard to say Mississippi is safer than Kenya. It's just numbers
tried googling it also and prompted "which state is easiest to get drivers license?" and one answer was "probably washington, you dont have to parallel park there, just attempt it" and it told me everything I need to know about the safety of US roads
That's a good amount of states, at least 10 I'm sure. Parallel parking in the U.S. is rare. I remember my mother telling me in her late 50s she had never done it since her driving test back in 77. I used to do it when I'd go into cities but it is rare to find anywhere that requires it. Some vehicles are also so big here that if someone parallel parks a truck 5cm off the curb cars will have to drive into oncoming traffic to go around them. Thankfully places are starting to crack down on that.
didnt even think about too wide cars using parallel parking in cities. I mean we have the occassional F150 in Munic downtown blocking all trams and traffic because they can't fit europoor parking lots, but it's always a spectacle and the owners are more often than not scolded for driving these into crowded spaces where they clearly dont fit. But if this occurance was daily, I bet our cities would only build parking houses too instead of parallels
Most places I have lived in the U.S. have plazas, giant parking lots, with stores that loop around 2 sides into a corner for the most part. They aren't designed to be walked to. Bicycling to them is often tough as well. The mom and pops shops are mostly dead, so groceries, appliances, movies, whatever it is you are looking for are in Walmart, Target, Bestbuy, and other failing stores like Macy's, Dillard's, JCPenney, etc. all resteraunts are either surrounded by a parking lot, or in a plaza. Fast food is everywhere, and neighborhoods are miles from stores. The jurisdictions don't allow commercial propertys near many neighborhoods. Slowly we are seeing more mix, but it's a last 10 year change that I have noticed.
Yet, Washington has one of the lowest rates on this scale. Maybe it's because you have to go to driving school if you want a license before 18?
the local driving schools (plural, there are a bunch) use the park nearby to teach parallel parking. I don't think the avg driver in WA parks any worse than texas, illinois, virginia, ca or ny state. YMMV there are outstanding assholes everywhere, but I do have the privilege of a large number of places lived / driven.
Saudi Arabia, WTF?
Took a closer look to see if I was surprised by any correlation about poverty, and browsed away with the belief that the south is still a shithole... which might still correlate with poverty. I think kansas/oregon is the first entry that wouldn't be 'south.'
Drinkin' beers an' drivin' yer trukk is a highly traditional pastime in the US deep south. Typically done in the middle of the night, in my experience, for the maximum probability of contacting the local wildlife or making friends at high speed with a tree.
New Jersey is too low. Serious doubts about the validity of this table.
It's comparing against total population, not driving population, so any amount of mass transit will greatly reduce this number
Probably not. The state has been implementing Vision Zero as a statewide program along with several cities.
The two major highways have lower than average accidents due to design.
One of the state's signature traffic configurations, the Jersey Jughandle, eliminates left turn movements on older highways, a major source of accidents.
SOUTH CAROLINA #2!!!! 🥳🥳🎉🎊🎉🎉🎊🍻🥳🎉🎉🪅
Where are Idaho, Wyoming and Montana?
There are only 36 states represented here by my count. It says "major" states, whatever that means. But 14 in total are missing either because of their smaller populations, or because their fatality rate is low enough that they would fall off the right hand side of the chart and thus wouldn't fit the "America Drivers Bad" narrative quietly being implied, here.
Edit: I looked up the numbers for my state in the same year (and no, I'm not telling the public which one). We would be at 1.2 on this chart if my math is correct, which is well below even the shortest bar for Victoria, there.
I decided to look and found that this metric is almost always measured by vehicle distance travelled rather than by population. Basically the graph OP shared is useless and meant to support a narrative, as you stated.
I'd like to see the % of trucks vs cars for each location.