Comment by xnorswap
3 hours ago
I thought the UK ranked well, I didn't realise it ranked that well.
Maybe there's something to be said for left-hand driving, I see Japan ranks very highly too. ;)
The real reason is I guess we take road safety seriously, we have strict drink-driving laws, and our driving test is genuinely difficult to pass.
I seem to remember road safety also featuring prominently throughout the primary national curriculum.
And of course, our infamous safety adverts that you never quite forget, such as: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKHY69AFstE
Is this written in jest, or is there something more serious behind it? Off the top of my head, I cannot think of an obvious reason why "road handedness" (left vs right) would matter for road safety. Could it something about more people are right-handed so there is some 2nd order safety effect that I am overlooking?
Yes, it was in jest.
The US is just a big place. We drive a lot. Average annual mileage is about 13k vs 7k in the UK.
The USA don’t do very well on the deaths per km metric either.