Yeah, the twin pillars of higher taxation and more government will solve the problem!
Big deal. Arthur C. Clarke has a hovercraft.
Okay, let me interject some cites here. First off, men are better drivers than women. Cite. Similar cite.
It would appear that women get into 5.7 accidents per million miles driven, whereas men get into 5.1 accidents per million miles driven. This hardly seems to be the “holocaust” you paint it to be.
Now, onto those death toll figures you want. According to the data, German drivers die more than American ones. Cite (scroll down):
COUNTRY; DEATHS PER 100 MILLION VEHICLE-MILES
(1) Sweden 1.2
(2) United Kingdom 1.4
(3) Finland 1.5
**(4) United States 1.7 **
(5) Netherlands 1.8
(6) Denmark 2.0
(7) Italy 2.2
(8) Japan 2.3
(9) Germany 2.5
(10) France 2.8
(11) Hong Kong 4.0
(12) Portugal 4.0
(13) Poland 8.6
(14) Turkey 21.3
(15) South Korea 35.8
The US appears to be #4 in the world for fewest motor vehicle fatalities. Your OP might go over better in South Korea.
Hey andrewdt85: on a slight hijack, way to clean up your posting and OP’s, mate! I’m really impressed - good on ya!
It was just my way of observing that you were making a somewhat broad claim. I think government administers justice, conducts warfare and builds roads much better than any private firm might. I also think they might do better with health care and housing than the private sector, wrt the poor, based on current conditions.
Hmmm…all I’m seeing is that neither gender is much better than the other. Women are more likely to do other things while driving(I’ve known women who paint their nails while driving), so that could be why rather than lack of skill.
But, no no “holocaust” and I doubt most women will be convinced that they’re somehow worse. .6 doesn’t seem like that big a difference to me.
As for the motor vehicle deaths, other stats have shown that Greece is pretty high up there. Figures. I’ve been there five times and it’s anarchy in that region. Heh.
A lot of things have to be taken into account though, so those stats alone are clearly not enough.
I just think people love to complain about “all the bad drivers” when I just think most people are average at it. Overall, it’s not as bad as people make it out to be.
I love to drive. You’ll remove my steering wheel from my cold, dead fingers, son.
Ellis Dee, thanks for the cites- Jurhael, the data does show that women are not as good at handling their cars.
Basically, women crash .6 times more in a million miles, but men die 3 times as often in a crash. Why do we die three times as often?-
“The investigators determined that about half of the 3.1-fold difference between the sexes’ fatal crash involvement rates was due to the fact that males’ crashes were more severe. Another 40 percent was due to the fact that men, who on average drove many more miles than women, thus had a greater opportunity of being in a crash; and 8 percent because of gender differences in “crash incidence density,” the number of crashes per million person-miles.”
Basically, because
a.) men speed a lot faster and a lot more recklessly
b.) men drive a lot more
So women are indeed not as good at handling their cars, as many of us have observed in our lives. Men are reckless idiots who are on the road more. 
This proof doesn’t give me any satisfaction, it just feels good to belong to a board that allows truth, even when the truth hurts. Thank you, and I really mean that. And fuck you to the rest of our society for not allowing open discussion of this kind of thing because it is offensive.
BTW, could I hijack my thread to ask if someone could explain how the point system operates, in terms of when you get a point (for what offenses)? I live in Virginia; what laws do I have to break to get a point on my record, how many points do you get before your license is whatever, and what offenses (and how many times would you have to commit them) would it take to get your license taken away?
Yikes. If text messaging is bad, I shudder to think what effect being dead has on your driving.
We need to implement a cellphone licensing system with extensive training and difficult testing to make sure that idiots don’t let vehicle operation interfere with safe text-messaging.
I’m not sure tougher driver training would do much. People who need to drive, will.
But the lack of public transport in the US is insane. I live in a city with a population of 160,000, twice that if you include the metropolitan area. My office is close to the center of the city, and live in a large apartment complex in a residential area. I should be able to choose to live car-free - I shouldn’t have to drive if I don’t want to. I shouldn’t have to wait 30 minutes for one of the dozen taxis (or whatever) in the city to show up. I shouldn’t have to walk 15 minutes to get to the nearest bus stop, and wait half an hour for the next bus. It shouldn’t be a 90-mile trip to the nearest train station.
Next time you see a teenager or 90-year old woman driving dangerously and think they shouldn’t be on the road, think: what alternative do they have?!
AMEN. FUCKING PREACH ON!
Seconded.
Last night I went for a two-hour drive to nowhere at all. 100 miles. I didn’t get out of my car once, and at the end I was exactly where I began. It was the best part of my day.
I would literally rather live in Iraq than in an America where the citizens have no choice but to be shuttled around like cattle in government-run buses.
On the flip side, it would be nice if more of us had the option to be shuttled around like cattle in buses of any sort, government-run or not.
However, implementing such a system on a large scale out here in the boonies would be an unmitigated economic loss, whether it used public or private funds.
Not only the U.S. Calgary is damned near a million in population, with an extraordinarily crappy public transit system. A good example of the transit system failing people here is in the industrial areas. The people working there don’t make much money, and therefore need transit more than most, and transit services those areas the worst. If you happen to work an evening or weekend shift, forget about taking transit. And the cost is prohibitive. If my husband and I can drive and park for less than the transit will cost us, why on earth would we take the transit?
People are definitely not encouraged to walk in Calgary, either. The strip malls are particularly un-pedestrian friendly. We very much live in a driving culture in Calgary. Hmm, most of our revenue comes from the oil patch. Wonder if the two are related at all?
This math (from Ellis Dee’s cite) looks suspect to me:
:dubious:
These are rates, not numbers, right? How could men’s driving more miles give them a higher fatality rate? I’m not a mathematician; could someone please explain this?
And while I’m at it:
Have you not heard of Google? I typed in Virginia driving point system, and one of the first results I got was this one. Please: Consider the Dope a resource for when Google fails you. Try to find it yourself, THEN come here.
I don’t like cars because I don’t like throwing myself at the mercy of countless morons, drunken drivers and others. I don’t take it to the extreme, I still ride in other’s cars when convenient and I take the city bus, but I also walk a friggin’ lot.
I agree with the title of the thread just as it is.
I love my car. For the last 11 years, the hydrocarbon burning hunk of metal and rubber has been my freedom. The ability to shut myself into a tiny bubble of reality and go anywhere I want, any time I want. I even enjoy driving in the snow, just taking a ride in the car and admiring the pretty views and the way that the tires on the car grip tight and find their traction even in the worst conditions. My car gets me where I need to go, it protects me from the elements, allows me to go where I want to go, and provides me with many, many miles of enjoyment. It is a part of me. My life without it would be so fundamentally different that it would be uncrecognizable to me. Sometimes I just look at my car and I think ‘Where are we going to go today?’ I know that it doesn’t matter - my car will take me anywhere.
You can have my car, my guns, and my computer when I die, but not a moment sooner.