this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
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If everyone followed the law, there would be no problem. The problem is that bad and unsafe driving is normalized in our society.
I feel this places blame directly on the users of the road instead of the designers of the road. People just drive in ways they feel are safe. We could absolutely drive better as a society but realistically the countries with safe driving have designed the roads a lot better than we have. This is likely because America is so damn huge and we have very little federal regulation on what a road needs to be safe. So a road in the US could be gravel or worse, just two tire marks in the grass. A road also could be a 50 mile an hour street with intersections every block or two making them extremely unsafe and inefficient.
Our road design is trash and it's really the root cause.
One thing though is the speed that feels safe for a driver does not always line up for what is safe for other users of the road. Bigger cars make drivers feel safer at the expense of everyone else.
Europe has a way of dealing with that too. Bigger cars aren't road legal. They also make roads more narrow. It's not a driving culture that truly separates Europe and NA. It's that the design of the roads in Europe provided a better driving culture. So the thing that defines the culture is the conditions in which you can communicate.
Heh ye, it's always funny to see Americans (in large vehicles) get stuck on the smol and narrow roads in the west of Ireland.
It's not just the design but also the factany were laid down before cars were a thing so they tend to wind and twist.
Everyone would follow the law if it was enforced consistently. The authorities know that, and enforce it inconsistently so that they can fine people at random. It's a money-making scheme.