Source of the chart - Plane vs. car safety: America has the world’s safest air travel but is so bad at car safety - Vox
Three tweet thread…
A key reason is Americans love BIG HEAVY vehicles. “The average weight of a new vehicle sold in the United States last year was a whopping 4,329 pounds.” You get hit by one of these monsters as a pedestrian, cyclist, you die.
I am flabbergasted by the gap between Canada and the US. Canada is only marginally less carbrained than the US, there must be something really fucked happening with urban planning or enforcement or something for there to be that kind of difference.
That was my first thought too. I reckon maybe we have fewer death machine pickups, but nope, Ford F series and other chudmobiles also happen to be the top selling vehicles here too
I would hunch it may have something to do with a generally less aggressive population, more respect for speed limits, probably more reasonable speed limits overall, but I’m just spit-balling here because the USA fatality rate is almost three times higher. What the fuck? That is a massive difference.
I asked ChatGPT and it gave a little more context, but I’m not quite satisfied with that lacklustre explanation tbh.
I think speed limits are a little lower on average. Definitely surprised at the size of the difference as well though
The limits are pretty similar
As a Canadian living in America, I definitely feel like Americans are just way more aggressive and individualist in general which carries over to their driving
I thought that was odd, too. I’ve driven in both countries and they’re very similar. Public transit is poor or unavailable for many outside of city cores and there’s mad suburban sprawl. And the most aggressive drivers I’ve seen would actually be in Montreal.
I wonder if it could be cultural differences overall? Or maybe how much of Canada’s population is so concentrated in just a couple of cities? Apart from the 401, most Canadian highways didn’t feel nearly as backed as American ones, too. I’ve driven around San Francisco and Atlanta and they were both super packed highways with exit ramps constantly backed up for hundreds of meters. In Canada, the 401 is really the only highway I see that. As bad as inner city traffic can get, that’s much lower speed.
But yeah, it’s really hard to think of actual differences between the two. While the two countries do have overall cultural differences, I did not perceive a huge difference in driver selfishness or speeding. Contrary to internet memes, Canadians are usually very selfish drivers, too. Canada also is obsessed with oversized trucks. Ontario is the epitome of “just one more lane will fix all our problems” and train service is constantly underfunded (though I guess at least we do have the Go trains and buses, which seems to be more than can be said about many US metro areas).
