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TylerE 2 hours ago

Why lie? If you have a valid point, make it. Don't pull made up stats out of your ass.

The US isn't close to being the highest per traffic fatality rate in the western hemisphere.

I count 14 countries higher.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

▲ xnorswap an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I thought the UK ranked well, I didn't realise it ranked that well.

Maybe there's something to be said for left-hand driving, I see Japan ranks very highly too. ;)

The real reason is I guess we take road safety seriously, we have strict drink-driving laws, and our driving test is genuinely difficult to pass.

I seem to remember road safety also featuring prominently throughout the primary national curriculum.

And of course, our infamous safety adverts that you never quite forget, such as: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKHY69AFstE

▲ throwaway2037 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

    > Maybe there's something to be said for left-hand driving

Is this written in jest, or is there something more serious behind it? Off the top of my head, I cannot think of an obvious reason why "road handedness" (left vs right) would matter for road safety. Could it something about more people are right-handed so there is some 2nd order safety effect that I am overlooking?

▲ TylerE an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

The US is just a big place. We drive a lot. Average annual mileage is about 13k vs 7k in the UK.

	▲	adrianN an hour ago \| parent [-]
		The USA don’t do very well on the deaths per km metric either.

▲ DharmaPolice 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

When people say "western" they often don't mean "western hemisphere" but the "first world". So Peru wouldn't be "western" by this definition but Australia might be.

	▲	throwaway2037 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah, HN just loves the term "The West" / "Western", which weirdly includes Australia and New Zealand, but excludes Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. (What about South Africa? Unsure.) To me, it is better to say something like "G7-like" (or OECD) nations, because that includes all highly developed nations.

▲ TulliusCicero an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> The US isn't close to being the highest per traffic fatality rate in the western hemisphere.

Is this a serious comment? Is that actually what you think they meant by "Western"? When people talk about Russia vs "the West", do you also think they mean Russia vs the Western hemisphere?