Increased speed limits on Oklahoma interstates

[kalvado]

MS and AL have poor driver behaviors, I've been cut off by people when no traffic is present, seen plenty of blown red lights, and never seen a turn signal. They lack proper funding to maintain their infrastructure to good conditions, and Mississippi has virtually no highway patrol so people are speeding all the time (not that I've had any problems with it).

There is a ton of supposingly great drivers on this forum who advocate cutting off people on an empty road under "keep right no matter what" mantra.

[Plutonic Panda]

MS and AL have poor driver behaviors, I've been cut off by people when no traffic is present, seen plenty of blown red lights, and never seen a turn signal. They lack proper funding to maintain their infrastructure to good conditions, and Mississippi has virtually no highway patrol so people are speeding all the time (not that I've had any problems with it).

There is a ton of supposingly great drivers on this forum who advocate cutting off people on an empty road under "keep right no matter what" mantra.

??

[hotdogPi]

Jake, do you have any life experience in farm country?  Ten-year-olds drive ten-ton grain trucks in order to help the family farm.  I went to junior high school with kids who drove their own cars to school.  How, exactly, do you think someone who lives on a farm down 15 miles of dirt and gravel roads is going to get to town, except by car?

If it's absolutely necessary, try to ride with another car going the same way (this worked better before COVID, obviously).

[Rothman]

There are probably much lower hanging fruit to pick if it comes to safety. Of course, punitive measures and bashing neighbors are much dearer to many people than technical risk analysis - but do you realize that, for example, NY and WA are pretty much on par with Germany (and better than Japan) in terms of fatalities per mile traveled?
Low hanging fruit, IMHO, are (improving) alcohol and no-seatbelt related deaths; and if you look at the map - states with mandatory safety inspections tend to be better off than those without inspection. For one, north east as a region seems to have more inspections and less fatalities. I wonder if those are related? 
There may be more complex underlying links - like being able to afford (and maintain) a safer vehicle may be difficult in wast rural stretches; but this is definitely not something that can be fixed by higher fees.

I'm more used to fatalities per 100,000 people, as there is far more data available (per miles/kilometres travelled is harder to come by -- where do you get your data?). Places like NY, NJ, and DC likely do well because there are more people who don't drive in these areas.

Per 100,000 people (per the NSC and roadskillmap.com), WA (8.9) and MN (8.7) compares strongly to Belarus (8.9); NY's rate of 5.4 is slightly better than France (5.5) (!!!); then there are states like MS (23.6) and AL (21.8), which are slightly worse than Nigeria (21.4). OK (17.9) is about the same as Russia (18).

States that are above or at the US average of 12.4 include: WA, OR, CA, NV, UT, CO, MN, IA, WI, MI, IL, OH, VA, MD, DE, NJ, NY (highest in USA), CT, MA, VT, NH, and ME.

Fatalities per 100,000 people is flawed. It gives worse numbers than it should to places where many cars pass through without stopping (such as the states of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Delaware).

^This.  Although the measuring of vehicle miles travelled is an estimation, it is a more informative statistic than merely dividing amongst the general population. Vehicle miles traveled gets at the driving population and driving frequency.

[kphoger]

Jake, do you have any life experience in farm country?  Ten-year-olds drive ten-ton grain trucks in order to help the family farm.  I went to junior high school with kids who drove their own cars to school.  How, exactly, do you think someone who lives on a farm down 15 miles of dirt and gravel roads is going to get to town, except by car?

If it's absolutely necessary, try to ride with another car going the same way (this worked better before COVID, obviously).

I'm talking about roads with AADT countable on two hands...

[kalvado]

MS and AL have poor driver behaviors, I've been cut off by people when no traffic is present, seen plenty of blown red lights, and never seen a turn signal. They lack proper funding to maintain their infrastructure to good conditions, and Mississippi has virtually no highway patrol so people are speeding all the time (not that I've had any problems with it).

There is a ton of supposingly great drivers on this forum who advocate cutting off people on an empty road under "keep right no matter what" mantra.

??

There was a pretty long thread on "keep right". My take home message is that some people are religious about that,  including moving to right lane within 10 feet after passing. Moreover, that was seen as normal by many people here. 

[SoonerCowboy]

Well, the only thing New Mexico has that could be considered an "arm" is the southern tip of Hidalgo County, which would make the "armpit" somewhere west of Columbus, NM...

That was the part I was thinking, but just never heard it referred to that name before. 

[I-55]

MS and AL have poor driver behaviors, I've been cut off by people when no traffic is present, seen plenty of blown red lights, and never seen a turn signal. They lack proper funding to maintain their infrastructure to good conditions, and Mississippi has virtually no highway patrol so people are speeding all the time (not that I've had any problems with it).

There is a ton of supposingly great drivers on this forum who advocate cutting off people on an empty road under "keep right no matter what" mantra.

??

There was a pretty long thread on "keep right". My take home message is that some people are religious about that,  including moving to right lane within 10 feet after passing. Moreover, that was seen as normal by many people here.

I'm talking about people close enough that cut me off close enough that I can read the radio station they're listening to through the back window. I get keeping right, but if nobody else is there leave some room.

[jakeroot]

Fatalities per 100,000 people is flawed. It gives worse numbers than it should to places where many cars pass through without stopping (such as the states of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Delaware).

^This.  Although the measuring of vehicle miles travelled is an estimation, it is a more informative statistic than merely dividing amongst the general population. Vehicle miles traveled gets at the driving population and driving frequency.

I agree that 'fatalities per 100,000' isn't perfect (it's not flawed), but it's the best we can do if we want to compare different countries. Vehicle miles/kilometres travelled data is hard to come by. The oft-referenced List of countries by traffic-related death rate Wikipedia article has entries for all countries under the "per 100,000 people" column, but only a handful for "per 1 billion vehicle-km" since although we know the number of fatalities in each country and its population to calculate the former, not every country has those distance driven estimations to also calculate the latter.

Though I agree it isn't perfect, you still see the same countries coming out on top: the top five relative to vehicle-km are Norway, Switzerland, the UK, Sweden, and Ireland. The top five relative to per 100,000 are (ignoring the statistical outliers of Monaco, Micronesia, and Kiribati) are Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Ireland, and the UK. In that same list, the US is third from last (ahead of the Czech Republic and Mexico by healthy margins).

These are my takeaways considering everything:

(1) the US is not as dangerous when you consider how much we drive, but we are still behind most first-world countries even though we drive more than anyone else by a huge margin.

(2) countries with higher rates of public transport use seem to fair better, regardless of the preferred statistic. Though I have no idea why exactly, this could be due to fewer miles driven overall due to more compact geographic settings; less inexperienced drivers on the road due to availability of other options; or, perhaps a higher cost of driving (due to things like fuel prices, registration costs, license procurement fees, etc) leading drivers to exercise greater caution than if driving were a cheaper option.

Looking seriously at the US, we have a potentially fatal combination: driving is very cheap, so we can do it all the time without really thinking about it; many communities are connected only by car, making it the only realistic option for most people; and, things are spread out, so when we do drive, it can be for a very long time.

The US has a very apathetic approach to driving: it is simply something that must be done, at all costs. Therefore we must do what we can to improve accessibility to this mode of transport, and we should design our cities accordingly. We don't really care how many people die on the roads, since, by and large, it's the only way to get around. That's, frankly, pretty sad.

[jakeroot]

There seems to be a connection between poorer countries and automobile crashes. This is especially evident around the African continent, where there seems to be widespread corruption around drivers licence procurement, where a test is not necessarily a "requirement" with the right connections. This leads to a large number of uneducated drivers behind the road, driving because they have little other choice. Some of these countries, like the Congo, Nigeria, and Cameroon have hiddeous fatality rates, far worse than the US.

I knew a man who did mission work in west Africa for many years.  He jokes that, in Ghana, you could send your pet dog out with some money in its mouth, and an hour later it would come back with a driver's license.

Although I know you're only joking, this does seem to prove how important testing is: countries with little to no testing infrastructure have very dangerous roads, whereas countries with very sophisticated testing infrastructure (many EU countries) have relatively safe roads. And it's not black and white: the US has testing infrastructure with little-to-no corruption, but we still have rather high fatality rates.

Jake, do you have any life experience in farm country?  Ten-year-olds drive ten-ton grain trucks in order to help the family farm.  I went to junior high school with kids who drove their own cars to school.  How, exactly, do you think someone who lives on a farm down 15 miles of dirt and gravel roads is going to get to town, except by car?

Well, I grew up in a public school district that, per the McKinney Vento Act, must provide bus service to all children. So I assume you either went to school before this, or went to school with people who just didn't want to take the bus. Slightly higher vehicle operating costs may deter the latter a bit.

My father grew up on a farm, and the first 'vehicle' I ever operated was my grandfather's 2001 John Deere utility tractor with a Yanmar diesel. I know farm life isn't amazing, but I also know that not everyone who lives on a farm is living paycheck to paycheck. I also know this country could be doing more than we are to combat fatality rates, as I've attempted to address in my post above, and this does not necessarily need to start by making it harder for rural Oklahomans to get to work.

[Rothman]

Fatalities per 100,000 people is flawed. It gives worse numbers than it should to places where many cars pass through without stopping (such as the states of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Delaware).

^This.  Although the measuring of vehicle miles travelled is an estimation, it is a more informative statistic than merely dividing amongst the general population. Vehicle miles traveled gets at the driving population and driving frequency.

I agree that 'fatalities per 100,000' isn't perfect (it's not flawed), but it's the best we can do if we want to compare different countries. Vehicle miles/kilometres travelled data is hard to come by. The oft-referenced List of countries by traffic-related death rate Wikipedia article has entries for all countries under the "per 100,000 people" column, but only a handful for "per 1 billion vehicle-km" since although we know the number of fatalities in each country and its population to calculate the former, not every country has those distance driven estimations to also calculate the latter.

Though I agree it isn't perfect, you still see the same countries coming out on top: the top five relative to vehicle-km are Norway, Switzerland, the UK, Sweden, and Ireland. The top five relative to per 100,000 are (ignoring the statistical outliers of Monaco, Micronesia, and Kiribati) are Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Ireland, and the UK. In that same list, the US is third from last (ahead of the Czech Republic and Mexico by healthy margins).

These are my takeaways considering everything:

(1) the US is not as dangerous when you consider how much we drive, but we are still behind most first-world countries even though we drive more than anyone else by a huge margin.

(2) countries with higher rates of public transport use seem to fair better, regardless of the preferred statistic. Though I have no idea why exactly, this could be due to fewer miles driven overall due to more compact geographic settings; less inexperienced drivers on the road due to availability of other options; or, perhaps a higher cost of driving (due to things like fuel prices, registration costs, license procurement fees, etc) leading drivers to exercise greater caution than if driving were a cheaper option.

Looking seriously at the US, we have a potentially fatal combination: driving is very cheap, so we can do it all the time without really thinking about it; many communities are connected only by car, making it the only realistic option for most people; and, things are spread out, so when we do drive, it can be for a very long time.

The US has a very apathetic approach to driving: it is simply something that must be done, at all costs. Therefore we must do what we can to improve accessibility to this mode of transport, and we should design our cities accordingly. We don't really care how many people die on the roads, since, by and large, it's the only way to get around. That's, frankly, pretty sad.

You're implying that if driving were more expensive that our fatalities would go down.  You're back to keeping the poor off the roads.

Of course, given BMW drivers' reputations, your assumptions may not play out as you'd think.

[kalvado]

These are my takeaways considering everything:

(1) the US is not as dangerous when you consider how much we drive, but we are still behind most first-world countries even though we drive more than anyone else by a huge margin.

(2) countries with higher rates of public transport use seem to fair better, regardless of the preferred statistic. Though I have no idea why exactly, this could be due to fewer miles driven overall due to more compact geographic settings; less inexperienced drivers on the road due to availability of other options; or, perhaps a higher cost of driving (due to things like fuel prices, registration costs, license procurement fees, etc) leading drivers to exercise greater caution than if driving were a cheaper option.

Looking seriously at the US, we have a potentially fatal combination: driving is very cheap, so we can do it all the time without really thinking about it; many communities are connected only by car, making it the only realistic option for most people; and, things are spread out, so when we do drive, it can be for a very long time.

The US has a very apathetic approach to driving: it is simply something that must be done, at all costs. Therefore we must do what we can to improve accessibility to this mode of transport, and we should design our cities accordingly. We don't really care how many people die on the roads, since, by and large, it's the only way to get around. That's, frankly, pretty sad.

Good that we agree on (1). Moreover, with more driving and similar per-mile rates, US drivers must be better than their counterparts in countries with great testing as in US people have to drive in unfavorable conditions - sick, tired, etc.
As for (2)... We may agree on too much driving, but the punitive approach you suggest is not going to work. Punitive approaches rarely, if ever, work at all. Moreover, long driving commutes from suburbs are an established part of social contract, if you will; changing that without giving a clear alternative and wide consensus is a no-go. Same can be said about many hot issues, actually.
With all that... Lets test if you truly believe in what you say and willing to put your money where your mouth is. As far as I understand, you live in the area with pretty good public transportation anyway... Would you surrender your license to make your point really sound? If not - conclusion is that you are just trying to excersize your priveledged status and make others pay...

[kphoger]

Jake, do you have any life experience in farm country?  Ten-year-olds drive ten-ton grain trucks in order to help the family farm.  I went to junior high school with kids who drove their own cars to school.  How, exactly, do you think someone who lives on a farm down 15 miles of dirt and gravel roads is going to get to town, except by car?

Well, I grew up in a public school district that, per the McKinney Vento Act, must provide bus service to all children. So I assume you either went to school before this, or went to school with people who just didn't want to take the bus. Slightly higher vehicle operating costs may deter the latter a bit.

My father grew up on a farm, and the first 'vehicle' I ever operated was my grandfather's 2001 John Deere utility tractor with a Yanmar diesel. I know farm life isn't amazing, but I also know that not everyone who lives on a farm is living paycheck to paycheck. I also know this country could be doing more than we are to combat fatality rates, as I've attempted to address in my post above, and this does not necessarily need to start by making it harder for rural Oklahomans to get to work.

Where I grew up, school buses only ran unpaved roads on fair-weather days.  On rainy and snowy days, students on unpaved roads did not have the option to ride the school bus.  Outside of a two-mile radius around town, there were a grand total of two paved roads in the entire school district–the two state highways.

[jakeroot]

You're implying that if driving were more expensive that our fatalities would go down.  You're back to keeping the poor off the roads.

Well, if your implication is that our roads are currently a socialist construct where fatality rate is irrelevant, I feel you're missing the bigger picture.

Our current system already disproportionately effects those with lower educations (and thus usually lower incomes), as it naturally does in every country: poor people drive crappier cars, live in areas with more dangerous roads, and drive more due to longer distances between work and home. Unless your suggestion is "give poor people really nice self-driving cars", the only realistic option is to make driving less appealing across the board by improving our cities and alternative transport networks (pick any...they're all safer than driving). We can start by helping poorer people live closer to where they work, for one.

[jakeroot]

Where I grew up, school buses only ran unpaved roads on fair-weather days.  On rainy and snowy days, students on unpaved roads did not have the option to ride the school bus.  Outside of a two-mile radius around town, there were a grand total of two paved roads in the entire school district–the two state highways.

I'm glad things have changed. No wonder people drove themselves back when you were in school.

The days of "uphill in the snow both ways" are long gone with modern laws and very comprehensive school bus route systems.

[kphoger]

Where I grew up, school buses only ran unpaved roads on fair-weather days.  On rainy and snowy days, students on unpaved roads did not have the option to ride the school bus.  Outside of a two-mile radius around town, there were a grand total of two paved roads in the entire school district–the two state highways.

I'm glad things have changed. No wonder people drove themselves back when you were in school.

The days of "uphill in the snow both ways" are long gone with modern laws and very comprehensive school bus route systems.

Who said things have changed?  I was in high school during the late 90s.

[jakeroot]

Good that we agree on (1). Moreover, with more driving and similar per-mile rates, US drivers must be better than their counterparts in countries with great testing as in US people have to drive in unfavorable conditions - sick, tired, etc.

Not exactly what I had in mind. I feel these unfavorable conditions are ticking time bombs, not something to be proud of.

As for (2)... We may agree on too much driving, but the punitive approach you suggest is not going to work. Punitive approaches rarely, if ever, work at all. Moreover, long driving commutes from suburbs are an established part of social contract, if you will; changing that without giving a clear alternative and wide consensus is a no-go. Same can be said about many hot issues, actually.
With all that... Lets test if you truly believe in what you say and willing to put your money where your mouth is. As far as I understand, you live in the area with pretty good public transportation anyway... Would you surrender your license to make your point really sound? If not - conclusion is that you are just trying to excersize your priveledged status and make others pay...

The problem I have with your first paragraph is that "clear alternative and wide consensus" is not something that's realistically achievable. There is no clear consensus beyond "less driving exposes people to less dangerous situations, thus we need to reduce how much we drive". New Yorkers are statistically very safe because the vast majority don't have to drive to work. That's not ignoring the dangers of driving, but rather elevating the importance of "anything but driving".

Living in an area with public transportation is actually an important metric when it comes to driving safety: if the area is dense enough to support a public transit network, it's likely dense enough to have lower driving distances with less exposures to the inherent dangers of driving. If someone wants to live in a city and drive, I'm fine with that, because the distances they do drive are likely substantially lower than someone in "the country" or "the suburbs", with lower speeds to boot.

As an example: 14 people died on Seattle streets in 2018, compared to 546 across the state. Seattle has 9.8% of the state's population, but only 2.5% of the fatalities. Maybe this is due to the average Seattle driver being very well educated. Maybe its due to less driving in the city. Maybe it's due to poorer people having alternative options more readily available. Maybe.....the list goes on.

[jakeroot]

I'm glad things have changed. No wonder people drove themselves back when you were in school.

The days of "uphill in the snow both ways" are long gone with modern laws and very comprehensive school bus route systems.

Who said things have changed?  I was in high school during the late 90s.

There may be some states that did not fully implement the law as I originally understood it. In Washington State, the McKinney Vento act generally requires that school districts provide transportation to all students until they graduate high school or turn 18. The original idea was to ensure homeless and disabled students were able to reach school, but in practice, it just means that all students in a school district receive bus transportation. Though, moving out of district does not guarantee transportation to that district unless the students actually meet the rules under the McKinney Vento act (namely, financial hardship).

Regardless of the current situation, the best way to improve access to education is not to make driving cheaper, but to improve our school bus system. If there are still districts where not all children are within a mile of a bus stop (or a similar metric), that needs to be rectified.

[kalvado]

Good that we agree on (1). Moreover, with more driving and similar per-mile rates, US drivers must be better than their counterparts in countries with great testing as in US people have to drive in unfavorable conditions - sick, tired, etc.

Not exactly what I had in mind. I feel these unfavorable conditions are ticking time bombs, not something to be proud of.

As for (2)... We may agree on too much driving, but the punitive approach you suggest is not going to work. Punitive approaches rarely, if ever, work at all. Moreover, long driving commutes from suburbs are an established part of social contract, if you will; changing that without giving a clear alternative and wide consensus is a no-go. Same can be said about many hot issues, actually.
With all that... Lets test if you truly believe in what you say and willing to put your money where your mouth is. As far as I understand, you live in the area with pretty good public transportation anyway... Would you surrender your license to make your point really sound? If not - conclusion is that you are just trying to excersize your priveledged status and make others pay...

The problem I have with your first paragraph is that "clear alternative and wide consensus" is not something that's realistically achievable. There is no clear consensus beyond "less driving exposes people to less dangerous situations, thus we need to reduce how much we drive". New Yorkers are statistically very safe because the vast majority don't have to drive to work. That's not ignoring the dangers of driving, but rather elevating the importance of "anything but driving".

Living in an area with public transportation is actually an important metric when it comes to driving safety: if the area is dense enough to support a public transit network, it's likely dense enough to have lower driving distances with less exposures to the inherent dangers of driving. If someone wants to live in a city and drive, I'm fine with that, because the distances they do drive are likely substantially lower than someone in "the country" or "the suburbs", with lower speeds to boot.

As an example: 14 people died on Seattle streets in 2018, compared to 546 across the state. Seattle has 9.8% of the state's population, but only 2.5% of the fatalities. Maybe this is due to the average Seattle driver being very well educated. Maybe its due to less driving in the city. Maybe it's due to poorer people having alternative options more readily available. Maybe.....the list goes on.

And why reducing those fatalities via less driving is a goal of its own? There is a certain mortality from appendicitis surgery, for example, but that is not the reason to reduce those surgeries.
Sane here - you are targeting a very intermediate process, a part of how people make their living,  without a clear idea where you're going in a global scale. Modifying travel practices are a better way of putting it, but what are the alternatives to driving and new approaches to consider? Do you suggest that less driving in the rural areas is a good thing - what is a bigger plan after those restrictions get implemented? Abandoning rural areas and enduring food (lumber, mineral resources) shortage? Restricting off-farm travel for non-farm related purposes, such as school  and side jobs?
Everything has a price - and the question is if solution would be worse than the problem.

[kphoger]

There is no clear consensus beyond "less driving exposes people to less dangerous situations, thus we need to reduce how much we drive".

Is there really consensus on that?  I notice that there are about 40,000 to 50,000 cyclist injuries per year in the USA.  That number would certainly increase if we increased how many people cycle to work instead of driving.  Fatality rate for cycling is about 1 fatality per 65 injuries.  If my calculations are correct, that's higher than for vehicles–which is about 1 fatality per 80 injuries.

I'm glad things have changed. No wonder people drove themselves back when you were in school.

The days of "uphill in the snow both ways" are long gone with modern laws and very comprehensive school bus route systems.

Who said things have changed?  I was in high school during the late 90s.

There may be some states that did not fully implement the law as I originally understood it. In Washington State, the McKinney Vento act generally requires that school districts provide transportation to all students until they graduate high school or turn 18. The original idea was to ensure homeless and disabled students were able to reach school, but in practice, it just means that all students in a school district receive bus transportation. Though, moving out of district does not guarantee transportation to that district unless the students actually meet the rules under the McKinney Vento act (namely, financial hardship).

Regardless of the current situation, the best way to improve access to education is not to make driving cheaper, but to improve our school bus system. If there are still districts where not all children are within a mile of a bus stop (or a similar metric), that needs to be rectified.

Even if you somehow solve the issue of children from the country into town for school, you still haven't gotten them to their high school job, to church activities, to social activities with friends, extracurricular school-sponsored activities, etc, etc.

For example, take my friend who lived approximately 20 miles from town–only about 14 of which were paved–and who was on the high school scholastic bowl team with me.  We would get home from an out-of-town meet at, say, 7 pm.  How would he get home if he couldn't drive?  If you suggest that his parents should have picked him up, then you just multiplied his own two-way commute into his parents' four-way errand–assuming their schedule was free to run him back and forth to begin with.  Total number of miles driven, doubled.

And why reducing those fatalities via less driving is a goal of its own? There is a certain mortality from appendicitis surgery, for example, but that is not the reason to reduce those surgeries.

Sane here - you are targeting a very intermediate process, a part of how people make their living,  without a clear idea where you're going in a global scale. Modifying travel practices are a better way of putting it, but what are the alternatives to driving and new approaches to consider? Do you suggest that less driving in the rural areas is a good thing - what is a bigger plan after those restrictions get implemented? Abandoning rural areas and enduring food (lumber, mineral resources) shortage? Restricting off-farm travel for non-farm related purposes, such as school  and side jobs?

Everything has a price - and the question is if solution would be worse than the problem.

Well put.

When I was in high school, for example, I drove 30 miles one-way every week to the community college to take piano lessons.  One year, I drove that same 30-mile one-way trip once a week to play percussion in their orchestra.  If driving had been less accessible to me, jakeroot then what would your solution have been?

[jakeroot]

And why reducing those fatalities via less driving is a goal of its own? There is a certain mortality from appendicitis surgery, for example, but that is not the reason to reduce those surgeries.

Well, if you want to use that analogy: Europe has lower mortality rates from appendicitis surgery. The surgeries go on, but the chance of surviving them is higher outside the US.

Sane here - you are targeting a very intermediate process, a part of how people make their living,  without a clear idea where you're going in a global scale. Modifying travel practices are a better way of putting it, but what are the alternatives to driving and new approaches to consider? Do you suggest that less driving in the rural areas is a good thing - what is a bigger plan after those restrictions get implemented? Abandoning rural areas and enduring food (lumber, mineral resources) shortage? Restricting off-farm travel for non-farm related purposes, such as school  and side jobs?

Everything has a price - and the question is if solution would be worse than the problem.

Well put.

When I was in high school, for example, I drove 30 miles one-way every week to the community college to take piano lessons.  One year, I drove that same 30-mile one-way trip once a week to play percussion in their orchestra.  If driving had been less accessible to me, jakeroot then what would your solution have been?

Look, you guys are throwing very specific scenarios at me that obviously I'm not going to have a response for:

* what if I live 20 miles from the nearest paved road?
* are we going to totally abandon rural areas?
* how do children get to their youth jobs?
* etc

I don't know these answers. But then, I wonder, where did I say, or even imply, that I would want to make it impossible for these things to occur? This entire discussion started with me pointing out some correlation between countries with more expensive licensing programs and driver safety. Thus, I proposed the idea that perhaps the US could consider more comprehensive driver training programs that, being more comprehensive, would cost more money than schooling right now. It's not an ideal situation for those who face regular financial hardship, but it's hard to increase the cost of anything without inadvertently affecting the poor. Driving, a privilege, is no different.

Surprisingly, hardly any of you seem to care about how many people die on American roads. Does this not alarm anyone else? Because compared to other first-world nations, we are not doing well. As I said before, it just seems to be accepted because we designed our cities around the car. That is, simply, very sad.

I notice that there are about 40,000 to 50,000 cyclist injuries per year in the USA.  That number would certainly increase if we increased how many people cycle to work instead of driving.  Fatality rate for cycling is about 1 fatality per 65 injuries.  If my calculations are correct, that's higher than for vehicles–which is about 1 fatality per 80 injuries.

The vast majority of those deaths are caused by cars, not other bikes. An increase in cycling rates and a drop in driving would not result in an increase of cycling fatalities.

[kalvado]

And why reducing those fatalities via less driving is a goal of its own? There is a certain mortality from appendicitis surgery, for example, but that is not the reason to reduce those surgeries.

Well, if you want to use that analogy: Europe has lower mortality rates from appendicitis surgery. The surgeries go on, but the chance of surviving them is higher outside the US.

Sane here - you are targeting a very intermediate process, a part of how people make their living,  without a clear idea where you're going in a global scale. Modifying travel practices are a better way of putting it, but what are the alternatives to driving and new approaches to consider? Do you suggest that less driving in the rural areas is a good thing - what is a bigger plan after those restrictions get implemented? Abandoning rural areas and enduring food (lumber, mineral resources) shortage? Restricting off-farm travel for non-farm related purposes, such as school  and side jobs?

Everything has a price - and the question is if solution would be worse than the problem.

Well put.

When I was in high school, for example, I drove 30 miles one-way every week to the community college to take piano lessons.  One year, I drove that same 30-mile one-way trip once a week to play percussion in their orchestra.  If driving had been less accessible to me, jakeroot then what would your solution have been?

Look, you guys are throwing very specific scenarios at me that obviously I'm not going to have a response for:

* what if I live 20 miles from the nearest paved road?
* are we going to totally abandon rural areas?
* how do children get to their youth jobs?
* etc

I don't know these answers. But then, I wonder, where did I say, or even imply, that I would want to make it impossible for these things to occur? This entire discussion started with me pointing out some correlation between countries with more expensive licensing programs and driver safety. Thus, I proposed the idea that perhaps the US could consider more comprehensive driver training programs that, being more comprehensive, would cost more money than schooling right now. It's not an ideal situation for those who face regular financial hardship, but it's hard to increase the cost of anything without inadvertently affecting the poor. Driving, a privilege, is no different.

Surprisingly, hardly any of you seem to care about how many people die on American roads. Does this not alarm anyone else? Because compared to other first-world nations, we are not doing well. As I said before, it just seems to be accepted because we designed our cities around the car. That is, simply, very sad.

I notice that there are about 40,000 to 50,000 cyclist injuries per year in the USA.  That number would certainly increase if we increased how many people cycle to work instead of driving.  Fatality rate for cycling is about 1 fatality per 65 injuries.  If my calculations are correct, that's higher than for vehicles–which is about 1 fatality per 80 injuries.

The vast majority of those deaths are caused by cars, not other bikes. An increase in cycling rates and a drop in driving would not result in an increase of cycling fatalities.

Well, and you should by now notice that US northeast with coastal megapoises has traffic death rates similar to the blue banana - when using proper metrics. Which should give you a hint that license price may be not so relevant.
Then we try to show you that a non-insignificant part of US population, especially in areas of highest road fatalities, is not in the position to afford higher charges but often is in desperate need of transportation. You still bravely insist, to put it bluntly, that they will be better off starving to death than risking a crash.  Which is a great idea, except that those sentenced to starvation tend to disagree.

The only way to keep this on a semi-intelligent basis is to look for ways of accomodating these people in other ways, sometimes ideas would be controversial and counterintuitive.  And once there is a decent accomodation, we can talk about increasing license price in Seattle to $10k and single ride ticket to $20 in order to pay for those accomodations. Not the other way around. 

[kphoger]

It's not an ideal situation for those who face regular financial hardship, but it's hard to increase the cost of anything without inadvertently affecting the poor. Driving, a privilege, is no different.

I think what I'm getting at is that, for a very large portion of our nation, driving is not so much a privilege as it is part of the fabric of life.  Driving in most of America is as ingrained in the way of life as supermarkets, cell phones, and the internet.  Driving, for many Americans, is an integral part of their education, employment, and social engagement.

(Bear in mind that I lived for several years without a car.  I was in the Chicago suburbs at the time, where public transit does exist but isn't the greatest.  I got around by combination of public bus, commuter rail, the L, cycling, walking, roller-blading, bumming rides, and hitchhiking.  Even during the brief period when I owned a car up there, I still usually preferred to get around by other means.  (I commonly left my car at home, walked two blocks, and hitched a ride to community college, then either bummed a ride home from a classmate or hitchhiked from the parking lot, for example.)  Later, my wife and I moved to a small town in southern Illinois.  I worked three miles from home, she worked in another county, we had one car, and there was no public transit.  I got around by bicycle and hitchhiking.  All this is to say that I'm no stranger to getting around without a car, even in rural areas.)

Surprisingly, hardly any of you seem to care about how many people die on American roads. Does this not alarm anyone else?

No, we're suggesting that the potential benefit of an enhanced and thus more cost-prohibitive driver education program isn't necessarily worth the negative consequences that would result from it. 

I notice that there are about 40,000 to 50,000 cyclist injuries per year in the USA.  That number would certainly increase if we increased how many people cycle to work instead of driving.  Fatality rate for cycling is about 1 fatality per 65 injuries.  If my calculations are correct, that's higher than for vehicles–which is about 1 fatality per 80 injuries.

The vast majority of those deaths are caused by cars, not other bikes. An increase in cycling rates and a drop in driving would not result in an increase of cycling fatalities.

But there are vastly more drivers than cyclists.  If you moved a certain number of commuters from cars onto bicycles, such that the number of cyclists tripled, then the number of drivers would decrease only slightly.  I'm saying that the number of cyclist injuries and fatalities might still come close to tripling because the difference in number of drivers on the road would be nearly statistically insignificant.

Look, you guys are throwing very specific scenarios at me that obviously I'm not going to have a response for:

* what if I live 20 miles from the nearest paved road?
* are we going to totally abandon rural areas?
* how do children get to their youth jobs?
* etc

I don't know these answers. But then, I wonder, where did I say, or even imply, that I would want to make it impossible for these things to occur?

OK, you didn't say you wanted to make it impossible.  But you are suggesting that driving should be more difficult and expensive to obtain.  Hence, some people who might otherwise drive would not be able to–because the current hurdles are surmountable for them but the new ones would not be.

I obviously gave very specific examples from where I grew up.  But such examples represent normal life for a large part of this nation.  You need to understand that the consequences of what you suggest would negatively impact a lot of people, in ways you perhaps had not considered.

But "are we going to totally abandon rural areas" and "how do children get to their youth jobs" are not "very specific scenarios".  They are general questions to which we haven't seen a real answer.

[kphoger]

So how 'bout them speed limits?

[J N Winkler]

Surprisingly, hardly any of you seem to care about how many people die on American roads. Does this not alarm anyone else?

No, we're suggesting that the potential benefit of an enhanced and thus more cost-prohibitive driver education program isn't necessarily worth the negative consequences that would result from it.

I can't speak for everyone involved in this discussion, of course, but the existence of risk compensation makes me fairly pessimistic about the potential for any given intervention to reduce the road fatality toll, either as an absolute number or as rates based on population or total vehicle-distance driven.  As a result, I--like many other drivers--tend to support measures that allow me to shave my risk at little net increase in inconvenience or out-of-pocket cost, such as changes in vehicle design, upgrades to roadside safety hardware, continued improvement of the highway infrastructure more generally, and so on.  Tightening driver licensing tends to fail on both of those criteria (though there are some measures that can be and in some states have been adopted with relatively little trouble, such as a logbook requirement for learners).