National driving policies

[j44ke]

[BBB]

Or…

[sk_tle]

Driving on dual (or more) carriageways (ie two or more lanes going in the same direction) is safer than single carriageways (ie a single lane going in one direction, with a corresponding single lane going in the other, or practically speaking most roads outside of freeways et al), but people do struggle with keeping left (remembering I am in Australia). It is infuriating when someone buzzes along the right hand over-taking lane doing say 95kmph (and the road is limited to 100kmph). Alternatively, you overtake only to have some bozo come up behind you well over the speed limit and get miffed that you are overtaking, just not as fast as them, only to tailgate to prove how miffed they are. They will in 99.9% of cases be a male driver too. Driving in the right hand lane when not overtaking is a traffic offence. Tailgating is a more serious offence.

That said, most sensible and sane drivers stay to the left and more or less stick to the speed limit.

Having driven in various parts of Europe, including through small towns, up narrow mountain roads and along multi-lane highways, in my experience the Italians are pretty bad drivers. They are just impatient. Why do they need to get where they are going in such a hurry? The only thing I can think of is mama's favourite pasta sauce gives them the runs. Hence they are all speeding towards the nearest toilet. The French on the other hand were fine. Sure some people drove fast on the highways, but they are now where near as impatient as the Italians.

A look at death rates per 100,000 head of population reveals:

Australia: 4.54 (as of 2022).
France: 4.98 (as of 2022).
Italy: 5.35 (as of 2022).
USA: 12.84 (as of 2022).

The USA figure makes j44ke's point about being safer in Europe.

The slightly higher death rate in Italy compared to France makes my point about the impact of Mama's favourite pasta sauce on Italian bowels.

Hence...drive in France instead of Italy.

I can't speak about every country but I think the death rate in France vs USA is in part related to training, sense of entitlement and drugs (legal or not, many do affect your capcity to drive if you read the instructions) In USA, and I believe this also applies to North America in general [1], people basically receive a driving license after what I would call a joke of a driving test. And in the case of USA, teenagers receive a driving license. In France, you take a number of hours studying the road rules, pass a theorical test, then take a minimum of 30 hours of driving lessons and then are allowed to pass a test to get the license at 18 or older. You don't feel like you have the right to drive. You earn the right to drive. And through the points system you can lose it quite quickly if you get caught not complying with the rules. Then have to earn it back by going to safety courses and workshops.

Additionnally, because it lowers your insurance rate, a lot of young drivers do what we call "conduite accompagnée" which is about passing the theorical driving rules test at 16, 30hours of driving lessons with a pro instructor, then drive a minimum of 3000km with their parent or legal guardian until the age of 18 before passing the actual driving test. In my case I took 3 additional driving lessons with a pro in order to make sure I got feedback before passing the test and have not taken any bad habit already. By 18 with a fresh driving license I was still 18y old stupid, but I already had a fair bit of experience on the road.

How many of you guys had been teached by an instructor for almost one hour doing emergency braking before passing your driving license? How many of those that did it had to do emergency braking from 90kph to 0 with the 2 right wheels in the dirt/grass and 2 left wheel on pavement to learn how to come quickly to a stop while avoiding locking the wheels and maintainig the car straight? Granted not every driving school do that and my own experience might not be representative of all french drivers but my instructor made sure I was able to react as safely as possible in many kind of situations. And it definitely served me on the road.

[1] my partner is Mexican and she hot her driving license on a simulator, while forgetting to put her seatbelt on, with only a single driving lesson on actual road.

[sk_tle]

All in all this thread is a great allegory of US foreign policy. US white male not grasping the cultural and custom differences of the other countries and trying to enforce his own policy on their sovereign territories. Have I just been trolled at?

I still like you holliscx XOXOXOXO

[Bob Ross]

How many of you guys had been teached by an instructor for almost one hour doing emergency braking before passing your driving license? How many of those that did it had to do emergency braking from 90kph to 0 with the 2 right wheels in the dirt/grass and 2 left wheel on pavement to learn how to come quickly to a stop while avoiding locking the wheels and maintainig the car straight? Granted not every driving school do that and my own experience might not be representative of all french drivers but my instructor made sure I was able to react as safely as possible in many kind of situations. And it definitely served me on the road.

Wow. Yeah, no, never did anything quite like that in my driver's ed classes. I did learn how to not make the car bounce & jerk when slowing from 2mph to 0mph, but I'm pretty sure that was more about passenger comfort than "safety" :)

fwiw, I also learned an incredibly simple and foolproof way to parallel park, a lesson which goes through my head verbatim every time I pull off that stunt (followed by a smug self-congratulatory virtual pat on the back).

iirc we spent a lot of time working on Situational Awareness -- to hopefully keep out of unsafe situations -- rather than How To Get Out Of Unsafe Situations once you find yourself in them. Maybe that was overly-optimistic on the part of the lesson plan?

[cny rider]

All in all this thread is a great allegory of US foreign policy. US white male not grasping the cultural and custom differences of the other countries and trying to enforce his own policy on their sovereign territories. Have I just been trolled at?

I still like you holliscx XOXOXOXO

To put it more bluntly: “If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you're the asshole.”