Good here is in reference to the average crash statistics.

Most drivers are safer than the average, because you can’t go below 0 and some people are really bad.

ryandrake 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I know someone who's been at fault in at least 12+ car accidents, and she keeps driving (as someone else put it you almost have to drive in the USA). There are colossally bad drivers out there and we don't yet have a viable system for keeping them off the road.

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GrinningFool 2 hours ago | parent [-]

How is she able to get insurance coverage?

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nradov 13 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Most US states have some sort of assigned risk pool which makes minimum coverage available to even the worst drivers, as long as they still have a valid license. (I'm not claiming that this is necessarily a good public policy, just pointing out that it exists.)

https://insurify.com/car-insurance/knowledge/assigned-risk-a...

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BugsJustFindMe 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

1) What makes you think she has insurance coverage?

2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actuarial_science

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GrinningFool an hour ago | parent [-]

With that many accidents, I'd assume bankruptcy if she didn't.

re: 2) yes that was the point. She'd have to be paying multiple thousands in an assigned-risk pool policy with that record of at-faults.

	▲	phainopepla2 30 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		An estimated 1 in 6 drivers in Los Angeles don't have insurance. I know at least a dozen people who have been hit by uninsured drivers, and that's not counting hit and runs, who probably are also mostly uninsured. The victim's own insurance will pay if they have uninsured motorist coverage (you'd be a fool not to have it, living in LA at least), but there is basically no punishment for the uninsured driver, assuming a fender-bender. The police won't do anything. The insurance companies don't think it's worth their time to try to squeeze out something from someone who probably has almost nothing anyway.
	▲	jakzurr 31 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Unfortunately, if you make (or are born with) enough resources, you might skate for quite a while. Eventually you might get a lot of fines and even some jail time, but afterwards, some people just take their chances and drive anyway.

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saalweachter an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It looks like the median/mode is 1-2 car accidents (50% of drivers), and the average is 3-4. 25% of drivers have no accidents (as far as insurance companies are concerned, ie, no claims or police reports).

I'm curious how this looks with various ways of normalizing for amount driven; is that no-accident crowd the quartile of drivers who don't drive very much? The biggest factor in being in the opposite group (the 10% of drivers with 50% of accidents) is "drive all the time, commercially or otherwise".

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BugsJustFindMe 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You cannot measure driver goodness (skill and vigilance) by looking at crash statistics, because crashes are definitively circumstantial. Most very clearly bad/dangerous/unskilled/unvigilant operations of automobiles do not lead to crashes.