>Each year cars kill roughly 40,000 people in America—and not just because it is a big place where [people love to drive](https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/11/09/in-praise-of-americas-car-addiction). The country’s roads are nearly twice as dangerous per mile driven as those in the rest of the rich world. Deaths there involving cars have increased over the past decade, despite the introduction of technology meant to make driving safer.
>…
>
In America the first step should be to redesign the road system. In the early 1990s the French were about as likely as Americans to die in a car crash (which worked out as being about twice as likely to die per mile). Now they are three times less likely. Driving in Mississippi is four times as dangerous as in Massachusetts. In both cases the design of roads explains much of the difference.
>It may seem arcane, but the lack of roundabouts in suburban and rural America is a big cause of deaths. Replacing intersections would save thousands of lives a year. The spread of stroads, four-lane highways that sit next to shopping malls, mixing pedestrians and cars turning out into traffic with heavy vehicles travelling at 50mph, is dangerous too. American highway engineers tend to associate wide lanes with safety. In fact, space encourages people to drive faster.
>That points to a second step relevant everywhere: getting people to slow down. Because the energy—and hence destructive power—of a moving vehicle rises with the square of its velocity, finding ways to limit speed has an outsize effect. A good start would be to enforce the laws on speed limits that actually exist. Instead, plenty of American states ban speed cameras. More ambitious (meaning less popular) would be differential speed limits for heavier cars. Imagine the indignity of being overtaken by a Prius as you sit behind the wheel of your Chevy Silverado pickup, because you must travel 5mph more slowly to avoid being fined or losing your driving licence.
ale_93113 on
Basically: make big cars economically unfeasible by putting large taxes on them, reduce road speeds and put roundabouts
All three things Americans hate
This is the logical solution, just like the Australian gun buyback was the logical solution to gun deaths (most of which are suicides, the problem is bigger than school shootings), and as such, the US will implement neither
2 Comments
>Each year cars kill roughly 40,000 people in America—and not just because it is a big place where [people love to drive](https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/11/09/in-praise-of-americas-car-addiction). The country’s roads are nearly twice as dangerous per mile driven as those in the rest of the rich world. Deaths there involving cars have increased over the past decade, despite the introduction of technology meant to make driving safer.
>…
>
In America the first step should be to redesign the road system. In the early 1990s the French were about as likely as Americans to die in a car crash (which worked out as being about twice as likely to die per mile). Now they are three times less likely. Driving in Mississippi is four times as dangerous as in Massachusetts. In both cases the design of roads explains much of the difference.
>It may seem arcane, but the lack of roundabouts in suburban and rural America is a big cause of deaths. Replacing intersections would save thousands of lives a year. The spread of stroads, four-lane highways that sit next to shopping malls, mixing pedestrians and cars turning out into traffic with heavy vehicles travelling at 50mph, is dangerous too. American highway engineers tend to associate wide lanes with safety. In fact, space encourages people to drive faster.
>That points to a second step relevant everywhere: getting people to slow down. Because the energy—and hence destructive power—of a moving vehicle rises with the square of its velocity, finding ways to limit speed has an outsize effect. A good start would be to enforce the laws on speed limits that actually exist. Instead, plenty of American states ban speed cameras. More ambitious (meaning less popular) would be differential speed limits for heavier cars. Imagine the indignity of being overtaken by a Prius as you sit behind the wheel of your Chevy Silverado pickup, because you must travel 5mph more slowly to avoid being fined or losing your driving licence.
Basically: make big cars economically unfeasible by putting large taxes on them, reduce road speeds and put roundabouts
All three things Americans hate
This is the logical solution, just like the Australian gun buyback was the logical solution to gun deaths (most of which are suicides, the problem is bigger than school shootings), and as such, the US will implement neither