Maybe that’s why the UK have significantly higher traffic death numbers. But another WAG is that in the UK there are often backroads and alternative routes you can take if you’re a pedestrian or bicyclist. In large parts of Norway, and particularly around Surrounded-by-seven-mountains Bergen, there’s often just the one road.
And yet the non-motorway level roads in the UK, from my limited experience, seem to have slower posted speeds than the equivalent road would be in America (and possibly Canada). The speeds do seem appropriate for their total paved width, construction style, curves, and obstructed view level, but the equivalent road in America would be constructed to a higher speed standard. (I’ve never even been to Spain and France but they seem in between England and America from what I’ve seen on Google Street View. Germany’s privacy laws prevent me from taking a virtual road tour there, so I can’t say if they’re even faster than America. I’ve been told that they have fairly normal speeds on their non-Autobahn roads.)
The standard speed on non-motorway roads is 60 mph, not sure how that compares to the wider USA
My recall is that Norway and the UK are pretty much the same when we talk about deaths per million(or billion) km (or miles) driven. Certainly they are in the same ball-park when compared to France, Germany, Spain and most other EU countries.
Not sure where you’re getting your figures from. Both the UK and Norway have amongst the lowest traffic death rates in the world, with Norway at an annual average of 2 per 100k people, and the UK at 2.9 per 100k. (for those at the back, the USA is 12.4 deaths per 100,000, and Germany is 3.7).
Given that in terms of space, the average Norwegian enjoys 66.19sqkm to themselves rather than the UKer having a mere 3.96sqkm, resulting in the UK having vastly busier roads, I’m not sure you can really say that Norway’s roads are safer than the UK’s.
We’re getting a little off topic, of course, but to finish this off, invading North America through the Arctic is impossible. It’s utter lunacy. You’re placing an army a thousand miles from nothing, in a place where there is effectively no transportation infrastructure. A Russian force landing in Paulatuk, Northwest Territory really isn’t any closer to the USA in a practical military sense than they would be in Moscow.
The way Canada is important to the USA defensively is AIRSPACE. That’s why NORAD exists.
City speed limits tend to be 20mph in places where children are running around (eg outside schools), 30mph in built up areas, 40mph in outer suburbs, and 60mph everywhere else (aside from dual carriage ways and motorways, where it’s 70). In my experience, the USA tends to slap 50 mph on roads we’d have at 60.
I think the deaths/billion kilometers driven is the better measure and the most recent figures for Norway is 3.0 and for the UK 3.1.
Compared with USA - 7.3 and Germany 4.2
The Netherlands:
- We are a densely populated industrialized nation AND one of the biggest exporters of food. This works about as well for our environment as you would think. Massive livestock farms don’t belong here. Our farmers are still in denial and they wield outsized lobbying power.
- Somehow our leaders think we need the biggest port (Rotterdam) and airport (Schiphol) possible just to stay on the map. Again; our environment does not agree.
- We are almost as bad as the city of London in enabling tax friendly schemes. This is not something we should encourage. Morally, fiscally it is a race to the bottom.
- Flowers; we seriously have massive infrastructure (bloemenveiling Aalsmeer is the biggest building in m2 in Europe) to put flowers on airplanes. It is one of our biggest exports. Unsustainable & Stupid. It is poisoning our waters & destroying the climate.
This.
And the delusional belief that you can have both “Nie wieder Krieg!” (No To War!) and “Nie wieder Faschismus!” (No To Fascism!) at the same time if the enemy is bent on the opposite. It is the Foreign Policy version of having your cake and eating it and feeling superior and smug for it. It has been muddling German politics since I am aware of politics, probably longer.
When I was with Bell, my monthly bill was often $360 or more. That’s cell phone, internet and a moderate TV package.
After a number of technical screwups with Bell, I threw in the towel after more than a decade and switched to Rogers. My bills these days are closer to $160. The connection isn’t flawless and I don’t love their customer service (I’d heard stories for years of nightmare connectivity issues) but I’m okay so far.
wow! that’s a huge amount.
My phone, fibre broadband and TV comes to a grand total of about £47.
The TV is just the freeview stuff but even so it is 100+ channels
How are 2 and 2.9 not significantly different?
You can say speed limits can’t be singled out as the reason, but it’s wholly irrelevant that some countries are way worse, or that they’re both similar to other European countries.
And that’s how far I care to participate in this tangent, having looked at the numbers and entirely reasonably commented that “maybe” speed limits were relevant to traffic deaths numbers.
At $160 for Rogers, I’m guessing they don’t get many of the specialty channels like Sports or the CTV Sci-Fi channel. Without those add-ons, you get “100 channels”, but it’s really just the same 20 or so channels repeated 5 times.
How about 3.0 and 3.1 in terms of billions of kilometers driven? Is that significant?
With my package, I get a choice of about five specialty channels. Which is fine by me. I watch about two channels for news, I need the Sci-fi channel for Doctor Who (on the ten nights a year that it’s on, lately), and 90% of what I watch is on streaming channels through my Roku anyway.
But yeah, when it comes to telecom stuff, I’m envious of my Brit friends and what they pay.
Isn’t it a saying no one has ever won a war invading Northern Canada in the wintertime? These far fetched scenarios might envision both the ice melting to reveal widespread oil fields and the Russian army being able to do more than drive trucks in a stalled convoy.
We ( well, I ) would be very interesting to hear them, when you get the chance.
Just to address the invasion-of-Canada issue, which seemed to have surfaced following my rant about Canadian defence policy - I do not foresee an invasion (in the “traditional” sense) as a threat. Where we need a solid defence capability is one that is pragmatically responsive to realistic current and potential threats, and not subject to the whims of whatever finance minister is in place.
I should be obvious that:
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Russia can’t be trusted
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China can’t be trusted (eg the two Michaels)
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climate change is real
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the Arctic Ocean is becoming increasingly more navigable as a result of climate change
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in terms of territory we have a huge amount of virtually unsurveilled land extending into the Arctic Ocean with a myriad of smaller islands (saying that CFS Alert is the northern-most settlement in the world doesn’t cut it btw)
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an we have no sovereignty protection up north, with the exception of the Northern Rangers
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we have a first-nations catastrophe, much of which is located in the Arctic
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and from a resource and population density perspective, we have an embarrassment of riches
I don’t believe that anything (post-Russia invading Ukraine) is predictable any longer and though I don’t seriously expect or consider an invasion, we should at least have a credible defence of our own north. If we don’t, we may find ourselves in a situation in which - because we don’t have a credible defence capability - the US is in our north doing our job for us rather than participating as partners.
Or we may find (or there may be already) some mysterious research stations with flags other than Canadian or US doing things in some very isolated locations in the Arctic Archipelago because we just sat back and let it happen.
I agree completely. I would prefer to see a genuinely professional military more independent of politics and more than mere peacekeeping or as an economic vehicle for more fancy equipment, even if this is still badly required.