this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
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[–] [email protected] 67 points 11 months ago (3 children)

“It’s a messy situation, but generally it’s very safe and it works well,”

Reminds me of the traffic situation in eastern Asia. Huge amounts of cars, scooters etc. mostly ignoring any traffic rules. From an outside perspective it looks like there must be thousands of injuries a day but considering the vast amount of individuals it's still pretty safe and efficient.

[–] [email protected] 92 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Traffic deaths in Thailand are 60 per 100.000 vehicles. In the Netherlands is 6. It's 10 times a deadly...

[–] [email protected] 39 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

It's 27 in mississippi, so only about twice as deadly.

Edit, actually, let's revisit the data. You said 60 per 100000 vehicles, if you shift that to population, the data point I used, it becomes 32. Only slightly more deadly than living in the southern US

[–] [email protected] 45 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I think that says a lot about Mississippi

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Its a pretty similar statistic for most rural states.

Consider that the population is lower but the ratio of people driving is much higher. Less cities, more people have to commute 30-60 minutes, etc.

Part of it is poor infrastructure, yeah(the other southern rural states with similar stats track a better record comparatively based on quality of infrastructure by my own personal anecdote of having driven/lived in them), but it's just predominantly the ratio of drivers to non drivers as the key factor.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Florida looks around sweating nervously over lack of guardrails

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Don't forget all the meth

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

That's pretty good!

[–] [email protected] -5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

So 0.6% chance of being a vehicle owner being involved in a fatal accident over a ten year timespan? 0.06% over a single year?

Sounds pretty safe to me.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The injury rate is about 70 times higher though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

The point I’m trying to make is that absolute risk numbers are far more useful than stating relative risk, especially once we get below the average person’s acceptable risk tolerance. Saying “this country is xx times safer than this country” can be misleading.

For example, if we consider a hypothetical country that has 1 traffic death per 100,000 vehicles you could make the statement that, “the Netherlands has 6x more traffic deaths than hypothetical country!” It would make the Netherlands seem like a dangerous place to live, but I’d wager that the vast majority of people would feel perfectly comfortable with the idea of being in traffic in the Netherlands.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

My Dad has experienced traffic like this. He said having strict rules is often worse because you expect others to follow the rules and then they don't, people die. There's a sort of complacency involved with rigid rules.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Complacency and entitlement. Like letting a guy merge into you instead of evading because “well he was supposed to yield!” People will fully crash their car if they think they’re “right”.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

Sounds like you mean South &/or Southeast Asia and not East Asia (or perhaps just Asia in general rather than subdividing)? Within Asia, injury/fatality rates seems to increase as you go westward.