What's Wrong With This Video: At Even Vaguely Legal Highway Speeds Edition

Increased driver training is probably the area where the US can most improve its traffic accident/fatality rate, but it won't be cheap or simple to implement. Effective driver training is expensive, but many of its benefits will last a lifetime. Some of the more perishable skills (skid control, throttle steer, emergency braking and collision avoidance) will fade quickly on suburban streets, but stability control technology makes these situations much more survivable for drivers of ordinary skill. If the US will never go in for full Euro-style training and licensing (and I doubt we will), I think that graduated licenses for new drivers are a tentative step in the right direction. Combine them with annual testing for all drivers over 70 (to gently cull out the legally blind blue-hairs) and we'd all be safer.

@no_slushbox: Active safety is anything that helps people avoid accidents and passive safety is anything that helps people survive them. That's one set of definitions in common use. Another, also valid and in common use, has "active safety" referring to those devices and systems — such as manual seat belts — that require the vehicle occupant's involvement in order to function, while "passive safety" refers to those devices and systems — such as air bags or automatic seat belts — which do not require the vehicle occupant's involvement. Still another valid and common set of definitions centres around the nature of the device or system itself, as for example an active head restraint (which moves by itself in the early stages of a crash to an optimal position to protect the occupant). That direct ambiguity is why the definitions you seem to favour are not generally favoured by those who study these matters. Rather, the unambiguous terms crash avoidance, crashworthiness, and postcrash survivability have currency. They mean exactly what they look like they mean, and nothing else. You're certainly entitled to your preferences and guesses, and I suppose you're welcome to think the precise definitions are stupid or whatever, but that does not change their existence and preference amongst traffic safety professionals, nor does it make me somehow "dishonest" for pointing them out to you. The country with the lowest rate, Britain, is at 7.5 deaths per billion KM Yep. And guess what? They use the Euro vehicle regs, not the U.S. regs. the US is at 9.4 deaths per billion KM. Germany is at 11.1, Japan is at 12.7, France is at 13.6 deaths per billion KM (a 45 percent higher death rate than the US), and Belgium is at 16.3. http://www.scienceservingsociety.com/m/data/USrank.htm Indeed. Those countries are all worse than the U.S. No debate there. And there are nine countries doing better than the U.S. Eight of them require Euro-reg cars. If American-market cars were the safest in the world, as you claim, it's reasonable to expect the U.S. would be higher (better) on the ranked list. Canada provides an ad-hoc control for driver factors, since U.S. and Canadian vehicle regs and road conditions are substantially identical (remember, the vast majority of Canadians live within 200km of the U.S. border) but compared to Americans', Canadians' behavioural patterns and cultural norms are considerably more European; witness the present and historical seatbelt-usage figures for the two countries. Canada is higher (better) on the ranked list, which confirms the point we agree on — that driver factors are a key influence on roadway safety — but Canada is also not at the top (best position) of the list. However, it's interesting to see that Canada's rate is identical to that of Australia; Canada uses American-spec vehicles, while Australia uses Euro-spec vehicles. The roadway geometry and diversity of driving conditions is much more comparable between North America and Australia than between North America and Europe, so that particular equality of death rate suggests American-spec cars do not necessarily give better safety performance than rest-of-world (Euro-reg) cars. for people to ride in, the US market has the safest cars in the world. So you keep saying, without any support for the asertion. Repeating it doesn't constitute support. That the US has such a low death rate per billion KM travelled (within 2 of the best country) There is indeed a relatively narrow spread of safety performance results among the top ten countries, but that's not particularly germane to the discussion except to undermine your insistence that American-spec cars are substantially safer than rest-of-world cars.

"And people think that they are safe in their big ol’ trucks." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvfaD85NO-Y&feature=related Yeah, I'd MUCH rather be in this than the popcan that this thread was about... or any other 4 banger Toylet.