> Ironically, bigger and safer cars make both the driver and the roads a lot less safe as the prisoners dilemma means everyone loses. [6][7]

You can have safer cars, like cars with emergency braking, without having bigger cars. Americans have just been severely been marketed to to make horrible financial and social decisions on cars: how many people do you see buying giant SUVs the moment they have a kid and save zero dollar for their college? Absurd.

The prisoner’s dilemma I believe refers to the fact that bigger cars often total smaller ones, so others are now forced to adapt by buying a bigger car, which increases the number of big cars, which then creates a cycle.

> bigger cars often total smaller ones

And if you have the misfortune of getting hit by a bigger car while not being in a car yourself, you are likely to be critically injured, permanently disabled, or dead. The way to adapt is to drive more, or avoid places with motor traffic. All of these add to the risk and economic cost.

can't cheat the inelastic collision math

Part of the reason is we underfund infrastructure: for roads and public transport.

E.g., we constantly tax road users to "fund" other schemes and infrastructure (but even those ending needing even more money magically)

Example: https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/bridge-toll-hik...

That's a wild take considering how much general (not user) revenues are shoveled into projects for cars.

> That's a wild take considering how much general (not user) revenues are shoveled into projects for cars.

Source?

https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

Federal spending on transportation is just at 2% compared to Social Security (15%), Medicare (12%), Income Security (14%), etc.

That 2% includes spending on all forms of transportation.

Do we complain users of other modes of transport or social goods benefit from taxes? Why single out cars?

What is wild is that these arguments only consider gas tax and forget DMV fees, sales taxes on cars, tolls, etc.

US - build roads everywhere whether it makes sense or not.

US - build houses such that every individual needs a car.

US - build everything far away from each other so that each road gets a ton of mileage.

......

Also US - ours roads are crumbling and underfunded !

An obese man who eats 10000 calories a day will feel underfed if they don't get all 10000. But the lack of food is hardly the problem....

Which part of the very large country would you move all the people to, in order to achieve the density required to reduce the need for roads?

80% of our population lives in 3% of the land area. So no need to move anybody.

https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2017/08/rural-america....

1. 3% of the 4th largest country is still a lot of area, almost the size of many European countries (and those still have a lot of roads for rural transport last time I checked)

2. The other 20% don't matter?

The US still has terrible public transport and densification in cities well suited for it.

SF, Atlanta and Seattle grew rapidly in the last few decades. None of them have taken advantage of this demand to build transit or transit suitable housing. Instead, new sprawling suburbs are the only form of infrastructure that gets funded. All while the central arterial roads (101, 280, i5, i90 etc) get more and more crowded.

Existing dense cities also have subpar public transit. The NYC metro area falls short of metro areas of Tokyo, Paris or London. Boston, Philly, DC and Miami can't make it to the leaderboard when compared to any peer European city of similar density. Not even going to mention China whose tier 2 cities embarrass tier 1 American cities.

> The other 20% don't matter?

Only as much as rural areas anywhere in the world. Just because you have to use cars in rural areas, doesn't mean there should be a red carpet highway dropping cars to the middle of Manhattan. These are different worlds. Changing 1 doesn't affect the other.

Perfect, lets build a train track or bus route to every house! In your world, do disabled folks, children, elderly not exist?

> An obese man who eats 10000 calories a day will feel underfed if they don't get all 10000. But the lack of food is hardly the problem....

Great insight and source of data. Let me also provide some data.

https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

Federal spending on transportation is just at 2% compared to Social Security (15%), Medicare (12%), Income Security (14%), etc.

That 2% includes spending on all forms of transportation.

Random thought:

> But, 5x the traffic accident and fatality rate of other comparable developed countries

Are there actually other comparable countries in terms of the quantity of roads and the car & driving culture of the US?

I don’t know nor experienced of another country (developed or not) where a majority of people have cars and where road-trips are a thing. Most places live more densely and have fantastic public transit.

Maybe the quantity of accidents reflects what actually happens with car culture at scale.

> Are there actually other comparable countries in terms of the quantity of roads and the car & driving culture of the US?

Just north of the border in Canada?

> While U.S. road deaths rose 19 percent between 2010 and 2020, the Canadian figure fell at almost the same pace. That means that around 118 in every million Americans died in a crash in 2020, 2.5 times more than the 46 of every million Canadians who died in the same year.

* https://www.carscoops.com/2022/07/why-do-canadian-traffic-de...

> While US road deaths are skyrocketing (including the fastest increase on record in 2021), virtually all other developed countries have seen a decline. In France, for example, traffic fatalities are now just a third of the US per capita rate. As Urban Institute researcher Yonah Freemark recently told me, 30 years ago the streets of France were more dangerous than those in the US, but “today the average French person is 40% safer than the average American.”

> It might seem easy to dismiss transportation comparisons between the US and France, a country smaller than the state of Texas where many streets were designed centuries before the automobile arrived. But what about looking at a North American cousin — Canada, a sprawling, car-oriented nation whose cities are comparably young and similarly configured?

* https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-01/why-canad...

Canada has more deaths per mile driven at 5.1, than the US at 1.5.

https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatalit...

Your other comment about “accidents and deaths per mile driven.” is likely the right metric of the idea I was trying to convey!

Canada is 5.1 deaths per billion km.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic...

USA is 1.5 deaths per 100 million miles from your link. That's about 9.3 deaths per billion km.

Other comparable countries would be Australia and New Zealand which have 5.2 and 7.2 deaths per billion km respectively.

USA is still well behind on that metric.

The entirety of Canada has the population similar to that of California -- a single US state. Probably has the road miles equivalent of the western United States.

Other countries are comparable in being rich and having safe cars. I don’t know what your experience abroad was like but plenty of developed countries do not have sufficient infrastructure for people to avoid cars. In Western Europe, for example you’ll find car ownership is high except for the cities where it is not necessary, much like you’ll find that car ownership is high in America outside of (central) New York and a few other places.[1]

One big difference is Americans tend to drive bigger heavier cars that perform poorly in collisions. I am not confident about other differences (rates of texting, drink driving, road design, etc). A commonly made claim is that Americans drive more. This is true[2] but I don’t think the degree is high enough to explain the difference, though there are lots of things one could say are lost in that data.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicle...

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1013213/passenger-kilome... (remember to divide by population) or https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar4.htm (very old!)

Pedantic point. Central New York, is the area around Syracuse, NY. I think you mean Manhattan + Bronx + downtown Brooklyn in New York City when you say (Central) New York.

There was a recent story about how big trucks in the US don't have basic safety features seen in say Europe like stopping cars from ending up under them.

One problem is that alternate transportation services are not profitable, and if they're not profitable, people don't think it should exist.

But that's just short-sighted thinking. If you ensure every drunk person has a ride home, that alone would save millions in costs caused by drunk driver accidents.

We don't do public transit in the US, even where it makes sense.

Even where we do, we don't. For example, the trains in Salt Lake City stop running an hour or two before bars close.

--

It's also with mentioning that speed limits are their own problem: they are a baldfaced lie that pits believers against disbelievers; endangering everyone in the process. The reality of speed limits put into practice accomplish nothing except to violently clot traffic flow. Drivers who aren't convinced to slow down are vilified, while the system itself continues, perpetually immune to the blame it deserves.

We can do better, but only if we are willing to recognize the issues present in the system itself, instead of blaming human disobedience in a country that celebrates it.

It's not actually a prisoner's dilemma, that's a very specific game theory thought experiment that almost never happens in real life. I guess you could call it an arms race.

One way it’s closer to the prisoner’s dilemma than an arms race is that everyone would be safer (the ostensible point of larger vehicles) whereas in an arms race if your goal is victory you don’t care that everyone is safer if you all give up your guns — the point is exactly to harm your enemy without them harming you.

You can’t looks at accidents and deaths per capita, you need to look at accidents and deaths per mile driven.

The US is actually pretty good at 1.5 versus UK (5.3), Denmark (7.2), France (5.8).

https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatalit...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic...

The right metric is traffic deaths per capita, because that means so-and-so many families are have lost a relative in a car crash. If you use traffic deaths per mile driven you begin to excuse excessive commutes when what you want to do lower fatalities.

If you spend more time driving, of course you're risking more.

If no-one left their house, there would be less casualties for many outdoor activities.

You have to account for per-mile.

Reducing the risk per mile driven would reduce deaths, but so would reducing miles driven. More public transportation would achieve that.

Higher-density housing wouldn't be the worst idea, especially higher-density housing near light railway when combined with public parks. The suburban paradises are plainly incompatible with public transport.

By that same logic we could avoid surgery deaths by not doing surgery.

But then you're ignoring the benefit.

The correct analogy: avoid surgery with preventative healthcare and lifestyle changes.

How do you call this paradox where mortality increases at a hospital because simple cases are diverted to outpatient clinic and only the severe cases are seen at the inpatient facility?

Adverse selection.

By that reasoning, traffic safety is increased by moving the bar from downtown to 30 minutes down the road when in fact it should be at the corner, so people can walk and leave the car at home. Good to have the misconception cleared up.

Sure, but no-one was arguing that.

Let's all start a fund to build bars closer?

Congrats on that break-through.

I disagree. Per Capita is the right metric. Per mile doesn't equalize everyone because we have to drive so much than everyone else to get around. When talking about social costs, per Capita makes the most sense.

You're comparing numbers in different units.

USA is in deaths per 100 million miles. The rest are in deaths per billion km. USA is 9.3 deaths per billion km if you do the conversion.