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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   21897 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 14, 2024

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What does the more granular data about who is dying suggest?

More young male drivers dead by their own (drunk / high / speeding / stupid) hand might hint at a different cause to more pedestrians dead, or more people dead in vehicular collisions.

There are cultural differences, but one of the lowest rates of any major nation isn’t in an extremely homogenous country but in Britain (a third of the US rate per mile travelled). Homogenous Eastern European countries do worse, as do the Southern Europeans.

Speed limits are actually higher than the US, too, (70 vs 60) so I wonder why British drivers are so much safer.

My guess would be that a much smaller percentage of brits are doing 2 hour commutes on highways every fucking day of their lives. At one point you just start driving in autopilot and doing shit like sneaking in a quick text in if that's an everyday thing.

Also hot take but I've driven in 15 different US states as a tourist. But I'm a car guy so I notice this shit. Not a single American who isn't from New Jersey knows how to drive to save their life. Most of them don't even hold the steering wheel right, they do this hunched over 2-10 position thing. Don't get me started on the left lane hogging or taking hours to switch lanes. All unsafe driving practices. New Jersey drivers are good though, average speed of 85 in the I95 around philly, and things just moving along smoothly, I love it.

Every region has its own driving culture. NJ may suit you, but I find driving there to be absolutely miserable.

Among regions with aggressive drivers, I much prefer Boston. They are aggressive, but in a precise, pointed way rather than what I perceived to be the raw hooliganism of New Jersey.

The fact that NJ has fewer traffic deaths than other areas is probably more due to the fact that they've eliminated unprotected left turns than any particular skill of their drivers.

Not a single American who isn't from New Jersey knows how to drive to save their life. Most of them don't even hold the steering wheel right, they do this hunched over 2-10 position thing.

In joisey do they have one hand at 12 and the other out the window?

The reputation of New Jersey drivers in Philly is absymal. My wife always checks if someone driving badly has Jersey plates and then will announce that Jersey srivers are the worst in the world.

Having said that Philly drivers are themselves pretty terrible from what I can see.

New Jersey drivers are not bad. They are some of the best in the US. They manage to drive much faster under much more hectic conditions than most of the country and still have some of the lowest road accident rates, that is by definition what better driving is.

Well, unless aggressive driving is part of why the conditions are so hectic in the first place.

One measure of better driving is certainly road traffic accident rate, but thats not the only measure. How quickly on average do you travel? If everyone was zipper merging more politely rather than forcing in at the last second would everyones drive be smoother/faster?

Philly drivers are aggressive, and I think the road situation would be better overall if they were less so. I don't drive too much in Jersey myself and I don't look out for Jersey plates either so I am certainly open to Jersey drivers not being as bad as claimed.

For my money there are a couple of things almost all American drivers seem to be terrible at, zipper merging and roundabouts. Near universally awful as far as I can tell.

The US drivers tests do seem to be significantly easier than the UK (though it does vary by state of course). Delaware's is so simple I am convinced a 10 yo could pass it.

Not a single American who isn't from New Jersey knows how to drive to save their life.

That's because in New Jersey, driving to save your life is the only way you make it to next week. If you do the sleepy Pennsylvania driver thing, you're going to get hit by someone running a red light. If you hog the left lane you're going to be VERY uncomfortable as the other drivers zoom around you with not much margin. If you take hours to switch lanes people will pass you in the partial lane on both sides. NJ has a reputation for aggressive drivers, and it is deserved. Only place I've driven where you can be sitting at a red light with traffic in front of you and the driver behind you will be on the horn, apparently expecting you to go through.

You are kind of proving my point. That most Americans drive like grandmas (that too ones that don't know basic highway etiquette). All these things you are saying are how it should be! There are things to do and places to be.

New Jersey drivers are "aggressive" but the traffic actually moves! No matter how much of a warzone navigating a full 3-lane highway where the average speed is 85 MPH is, it takes more skill to do that and make it to next week than do whatever the fuck PA or CT drivers are doing. I'm from Dubai where the drivers are 2-3x more aggressive and unpredictbile than NJ drivers, so I felt right at home in NJ and found any other state infuriating to drive in.

Forget about the aggression though, using the left lane for passing (or atleast moving when you see a car approaching you at 95 MPH from the back), not taking hours to switch lanes, not braking randomly in a fucking highway, are all things much less common in most of Europe than America.

Running red lights is bad, actually.

Never said it was a good thing. Not left lane hogging, not braking randomly, not taking eons to switch lanes, Not sleeping on the green light are all good things though

Well you did say "All these things you are saying are how it should be!"

What’s wrong with 2/10? When I went through drivers’ training, that was taught both in the class and in the state-issued handbook as the position least likely to lead to serious injury in the event of an accident due to the way the airbags deploy.

(Actually, the teacher said we should do something closer to 2:30/9:30, but that’s still pretty close.)

Significantly less control than 3/9. Look at any motorsport driver, you will see 3/9 9/10 times.

As for which is safer, I can't really find anything concrete on that.

You may notice that motorsports is very different than regular motoring. Race cars tend to lack airbags, for one.

Do British drivers actually abide by the speed limits? US drivers routinely drive at least ten MPH over.

Everyone everywhere seems to drive 10 over.

What? No they don't. Only a minority of drivers go that fast anywhere I've lived.

Yes they do, in my American coastal experience.

I'm willing to accept "Americans on the coasts routinely speed a lot", but not "Americans routinely speed a lot". The latter isn't true.

I have driven as far west as Las Vegas and as far east as NYC, I don't even know how many multi-day road trips, etc. I have a family member who sets the cruise control to the speed limit and doesn't touch the gas. We can go hours getting passed non-stop while never once catching up to a car ahead of us. Either everyone who isn't speeding is also doing the cruise control at exactly the speed limit thing, or almost nobody is driving at or under the speed limit. I often complain about how dangerous it is because even the 18 wheelers all want to pass us and that shit is risky on a two lane country road.

That says that most Americans speed, which I agree with. What I disagree with is the claim that most Americans are going 10 mph over the speed limit (let alone more).

In my American lifetime of anecdata coastal Americans and Texans very far from any coast love to speed.

And given the distribution of population in the US, I think that's most people. But yes, I've seen reddit threads were posters bafflingly ask questions about why anyone would speed. So someone somewhere thinks the norm is to drive 60 miles per hour on the freeway. Midwest or deep South maybe? Someplace I don't go apparently.

Were those posters possibly people who don't do much interstate driving? My experience is that you're much more likely to find speeding on the interstate than on a non-interstate highway, and more likely to find it on a highway than on local roads. This also applies to the magnitude of the speeding: on a highway, you might be going the limit at 45 along with most of the other drivers, but there'll be a couple cars who go past you at 50, whereas on the interstate the posted limit will be 65 and the speed of traffic as a whole will be between 70 - 75.

Personally speaking, I follow speed limits fairly religiously on non-interstate roads, but am willing to go 5 or so over the speed limit on the interstate, or up to 10 over if the driving conditions are good, everybody else is going at that speed, and the speed limit isn't already something pretty high like 70. I seem to recall that this was a bit of an acquired behavior on my part: when I was younger and most of my driving was local, I would obey the speed limit pretty much everywhere, but then got less strict with my interstate speeds the more I drove on the interstate. So I could see somebody who mostly drives local not realizing how going faster than legal is more common on interstates.

Midwest or deep South maybe?

I've driven in various places in the Midwest, and I don't think I've ever encountered a place where everybody stuck to the speed limit on the interstate. I guess here it would depend on what percentage of people would have to be going faster before this would be considered "the norm". If 20% of drivers are going 5 over, is considered abnormal (because the vast majority of people are going the speed limit), or is it normal (because it's consistently present behavior)?

The average highway speed in light traffic seems likes it’s pretty consistently around 80, which is 5-15 over the speed limit.

Really? People don’t routinely go at least ten over on highways and rural roads where you live? We have vastly different experiences then. In the city where I work, even the timed lights require you to go about five MPH over the speed limit to avoid hitting a red light.

No. Both where I live now (Denver) and where I lived previously (northeast Wisconsin), people going 10 mph over were in the minority. People routinely go 5 over, but not 10 (let alone more).

Every state I have driven in, has had the exact same thing on the freeways, at least 10mph over being the norm. From PA to Kentucky to Florida to Louisiana to Minnesota.

Having said that I have never been to Colorado or Wisconsin so I can't say you are wrong there.

Where I am, 5 over is ubiquitious on city streets and 10 over is common on city freeways where the speed limit is 60, most drivers go 65, and 70 is common during rush hour or among people in the left lane.

Sometimes I think that's bad, then I go to Nearby Big City and drivers ubiquitously go 70 on freeways where the limit is 60, with 75 being somewhat common and 80 not at all unheard of.

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