Saw this very sad story on the news :
Driver in Monroe High School prom night crash hospitalized to deal with trauma
Driver in Monroe High School prom night crash hospitalized to deal with trauma
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Fatal Model S accident
- Thread starter docherf
- Start date
Damn sad story. Always, always, always wear your seatbelts. The only person who died in this accident was not wearing one and was thrown through the windshield. Parents might also consider engaging chill or valet modes if they’re letting their kids drive the car.
ElectricTundra
P85D AP1
I don't think accident is the correct term. This appears likely the result of deliberate bad decisions on the part of the driver to drive too fast and not pay proper attention. U.S. drivers kill 40,000 people every year. We have the highest rate of road fatalities of all developed countries. A person in the U.S. is 4 - 5 times as likely to be killed by someone driving a car as someone in the U.K., Sweden, Netherlands, etc.
At a macro level we can blame U.S. traffic engineers who design roads differently than engineers elsewhere. Engineers in Europe assume that drivers will make bad decisions and they design roads accordingly to enforce safer driving. U.S. traffic engineers design roads for much higher speeds and then say that drivers need to take responsibility for obeying the rules, paying attention and driving safely.
A young girl is dead. Who is responsible?
At a macro level we can blame U.S. traffic engineers who design roads differently than engineers elsewhere. Engineers in Europe assume that drivers will make bad decisions and they design roads accordingly to enforce safer driving. U.S. traffic engineers design roads for much higher speeds and then say that drivers need to take responsibility for obeying the rules, paying attention and driving safely.
A young girl is dead. Who is responsible?
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Sounds like fake news. Wikipedia puts it at 2X and Europeans have far fewer motorways and vast distances to cross.
ElectricTundra
P85D AP1
First, our having twice as many deaths as Europe would be OK? Seriously? US is about 2x the EU deaths, but is that what we should aim for? Average? (though average would be much better than current).
Some quick stats (fatalities / 100k population):
U.S. 11.1
Switzerland 2.7
Sweden 2.8
Netherlands 3.1
UK 2.9
Denmark 3.4
Esme Es Mejor
Member
Fatalities per 100k population is a terrible measure of road safety. Fatalities per million vehicle miles traveled makes much more sense & tells a very different story.
In areas of the US that are as urbanized as the UK, France, and Germany, the fatality rates are very similar, and sometimes lower. Our fatality rate is much higher in rural areas, but even there, it’s similar to rural areas of Europe. Overall, our fatality rate is about the same as Belgium or Italy.
So, more Americans die on the road, but it isn’t because our roads are less safe. It’s because we’re less urbanized than Europe— so we drive more miles at higher speeds.
whitex
Well-Known Member
What is it per 100k population per miles driven? People in EU drive less, hence less of a chance to die in a car.
Ps> having lived there, I do agree that they prepare their drivers better (harder to get a license) but still, the stats should reflect the amount of driving people do.
Esme Es Mejor
Member
NeverFollow
Active Member
Don't the development of airbags was designed to protect people not wearing seat belt?
Otherwise, frontal airbags don't provide too much additional protection if you wear a seat belt.
Even-though air bags deploy only for particular impact location and direction.
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Nope, airbags are designed to work in conjunction with seat belts.
Watch a slow motion crash with test dummies wearing seatbelts and airbags deploying. Then you’ll understand why airbags are meant to work “with” seatbelts.
Helmuth
Member
And it’s to easy to get the drivers license in the US.
ElectricTundra
P85D AP1
Fatalities per mile driven is a measure of road design, not the danger of a transportation system. However, it looks like this (/ 1 billion km traveled):
US: 7.3
Sweden: 3.5
UK: 3.5
Switzerland: 3.5
Norway: 4.1
Netherlands 4.2
IIRC, all OECD countries: 6.2
US: 7.3
Sweden: 3.5
UK: 3.5
Switzerland: 3.5
Norway: 4.1
Netherlands 4.2
IIRC, all OECD countries: 6.2
Esme Es Mejor
Member
Comparing the US with the safest countries in Europe, rather than all of Europe, is cherry-picking.
The safest states in the US are comparable to the safest countries in Europe. Massachusetts has a rate of 3.8, right in the middle of the safest countries in Europe. Minnesota is safer than Norway or Finland.
Even the most dangerous state in the US— Montana— is safer than the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Croatia. It’s 4x safer than Russia.
Overall, it looks to me like the U.S. is slightly more dangerous than Europe, but the difference is nowhere near as big as your numbers suggest.
.jg.
Member
Massachusetts has a really high population density (over twice that of the UK) and something like 80% of miles travelled in city/urban areas, which dramatically redcues traffic fatalities. I would have thought that few Americans would want to compare their country with relatively poor countries from the former Soviet Union.
In the UK, I doubt that any insurance company would be prepared to provide even the minimum third party insurance for any 17 year old to drive a Tesla or a similar high performance car. Insurance for young drivers (17 - 25) is incredibly expensive here - for a 17 year old, insurance premiums average over £2000 per annum - most of those being for cheap small cars. Some insurers require young drivers to have GPS logging devices and observe night time curfews.
whitex
Well-Known Member
Insurance for young people in most parts of the US is similar. In the end, remember that actuaries determine the rates based on risk. No insurance company is going to lose money, so if insurance is in fact cheaper for young people somewhere, that means the statistics justify it.
This is only partly true. The two biggest auto insurers in the US (State Farm & GEICO) both had combined ratios over 100 last year. So both companies lost money writing auto insurance policies. They made money on their investments, and it was enough to more than offset the actual losses on the insurance business.
Airbags + seatbelts = safety, this is true, but they weren't designed to be together necessarily. The DeLorean, for example, was going to have airbags but not seatbelts as standard equipment originally. This was back in the early 80s when people were talking about "getting thrown clear" of an accident as if that was some kind of preferable thing though, but it does highlight how the 2 safety devices have converged even though they were not originally designed to exist together.
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