Why do you guys suck so bad?

Same reason you suck so bad at logic.

Well, I said victim of violent crime, not murder ;)

Yes and I already addressed that and pointed out why it was a disingenuous point ;)

Speaking of which, you're almost twice as likely to be murdered in London than to be killed by a car. You people have funny priorities.

You really struggle with numbers, don't you?

Murders over the last year in London: 104--116 depending on where you draw the boundary
Road deaths per year in London in 2024 110.

Last I checked, 110 wasn't a factor of 2 larger than 110, but perhaps that's just "ethnocentric bullshit".

If we wanted that culture- we'd have it.

Ah you know that meme of the guy completely stacking it and then claiming "I meant to do that"...?

Would you please decide if you don't have murder roads or if it's the culture you want to have murder roads. It can't be both.

The most dangerous state in the US for pedestrians is fucking New Mexico. It's not because of stroads.

It's hard to stop when drunk, driving on two emergency spares (somehow) and have a ristra hanging from the rear view mirror blocking your view.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.forbes.com%2Fsites%2Ft...

New Mexico the deadliest state for pedestrians. Reason: poor design of roads. And the main cited reason in the research this article is about is mixing high and low speed features on one road. Which means it's stroads.

Are stroads a good idea, or bad?

Bad.

Who knows- who's to say.

No one knows! Feelings are better than facts. You can't measure anything ever because it might upset people, so let's just throw our hands up and claim we don't know!

They are (a) dangerous, (b) expensive and (c) inefficient at moving traffic and (d) generate more traffic than other designs.

Here's a fun fact: in countries with safe roads (i.e. Western Europe), during covid the roads got even safer per km since there were fewer cars. In America, the easing congestion finally allowed people to actually make use of the high speed features of stroads which are normally out of use due to their inefficiency and so the roads got more dangerous per km driven.

There's arguments in either direction,

there are not.

but no strong evidence.

There is large amount of strong evidence.

But you've still got to decide: are your roads not a piece of shit or are you from a culture that prefers it? You kind of seem to want it to be both...

Probably the most likely answer is the roads are poorly designed and most people simply don't realise there are better alternatives.

I see- your arbitrary line is better than my arbitrary line.

Yeah? I mean if you're trying to see if your country is doing well or badly then you are best of comparing it to countries that are in some way comparable. Compared to much of western Europe, yeah the UK is doing decently well in this regard. Not the best, but pretty highly ranked.

That seems reasonable. Our infrastructure ought to be much better than an ex Soviet state with a fraction of the gdp per capita. The only point of making such a comparison is to know if you've fucked up really hard.

Let's just look at it this way- you're more likely to be a victim of a violent crime walking in London than you are be killed by a car in the US as a pedestrian.

A good part of that is because the US has made itself so astonishingly hostile to pedestrians that everyone drives if they can. And speaking of which:

London has 116 murders from a population of 15 million. The US has 41000 road deaths from a population of 340e6. So you're 15 times as likely to die on the roads in America as you are likely to be murdered in London. But if you insist on just pedestrians that was just 7500, meaning you're only 3x as likely to die as a pedestrian in America as you are to be murdered in London.

Yeah yeah I know you said violent crime not murder. But you're comparing pedestrian fatalities to non fatal injuries in order to make America look less like a poor ex Soviet state in this regard. It would be much more reasonably to compare pedestrian wounding and death to all violent crime including murder. But that way America would still look bad so...

Yeah so despite you trying to pain London as murder streets it's still 3-15x safer than simply being on the roads in America. I reckon I'll take my chances in London.

No, I'm saying that all things being relative, the UK has murder roads compared to several countries in the EU as well.

I get what you're saying and I'm saying it's a specious argument. The UK is one of the best in western Europe and indeed the world. Better places exist, but it's ranked very high. The US is substantially worse than the entire EU, and much much worse than western Europe.

Rationalize that all you want, but the US is not very good in this regard.

Anyway I dispute your "2x" numbers.

That the US was 2x worse than "Europe". As I said you had to cherry pick very heavily.

I have already pointed out that you selectively chose Western Europe,

Americaaaaaaa fuckkk yeaaaah!

America has always been grouped with "the west". Which typically included western Europe. It's a pretty normal grouping. And even if you pick the whole EU 27, the US is still twice as bad. But you're better than Belarus!

We were comparing death rates without regard for miles driven.

I quoted deaths per km not deaths per capita. A mile of your roads is more dangerous than a mile of roads in Europe. Deal with it.

No, it's an opinion held by a group of people.

Your feelings don't trump facts. I get that facts>feelings is ethnocentric bullshit in your world.

And no, while most stroads exist in the US, most of the US is not stroads in the slightest.

Just about every town I drove through was stroads. Even Santa Fe which has an actually old centre was full of stroads outside.

I think that just about confirms the ethnocentrism.

European quotes a fact: "waaah that's ethnocentric". European points out that the facts come from Americans and Canadians: "waaah that's ethnocentric". You have found a very effective way of blocking your ears to inconvenient facts, I'll grant you that.

Rest well knowing that the US has the traffic system that the US populace wants, and votes for

You voted a sex offende and fraudster into high office. Just because you wanted that doesn't make it a good idea. Likewise you vote for murder roads. Wanting murder roads doesn't make them not mudrer roads.

And the UK is still twice as bad as the Netherlands. You'd have to be just suicidal to walk on those roads! /s

Your argument is it's somehow OK that American has murder roads because one much safer country is worse than another much safer country? I don't get it.

Anyway I dispute your "2x" numbers. I combined https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fw3.unece.org%2FPXWeb%2Fen%2F... with population data and American isn't looking very good. Deaths per million (population from wikipedia):
America: 21.7
Italy: 8.4
Germany: 8.4
Poland: 13.8
France: 5.8
Spain: 6.1
Portugal: 9.3
And since we're on the topic:
UK: 5.3
Netherlands: 2.3

You have to leave western Europe and go to low population countries 1/6 the GDP per capital find anywhere comparably bad to the US. That's not the brag you think it is.

You just aren't going to bend.

Why would I bend away from a rational position? I'm certainly not going to change my position when you attempt to use personal attacks like that as a method of argument.

Per unit of distance is obviously going to be in our favor, as we drive more, at current fatality rates, than you do.

Eh? Deaths per capita would be higher in America all things being equal simply because you drive more. Higher deaths per km means your roads are worse.

objectively?

Yes. Objectively. This has been studied by traffic engineers and is known. Mixing high and low speed is a terrible idea. That's why interstates don't have little side junctions. It's well known this mix is dangerous yet America is mostly stroads.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3F...

This "ethnocentric bullshit" as you say has been studied extensively by your fellow countrymen, and they've come to those conclusions. Antiamerican traitors, I assume, headed right for the HUAC. The Canadians are even worse! They might have the same road design but their nasty flappy heads mean they are just all wrong! Can't believe a word they say. It's all about moose and hockey anyway. Plus Zambonis don't go fast enough to be dangerous, eh?

Look at it this way- for all of your EU mandated safety measures, how on God's Green Earth, are some EU countries over twice as bad as the US?

We're on to poor road design here, which also affects a lot of drivers too. Overall deaths per km:

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...

By "2x as bad" you mean "very slightly better than Belgium" and worse than all other western European countries often by a lot.

And back to pedestrians. I found a chart for the EU27!

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Froad-safety.transport....

Page 7.

Romania (pop 20 million): a little under 2x as bad.
Bulgaria (pop 6.4 million): as bad
Literally all other countries: better.

EU27: 2x better

So by "some" you mean "one". So if you cherry pick the worst part of the EU, it's worse than the American average. The EU is twice as good, and you have the poorer, eastern European countries skewing the numbers up. If you compare to Western Europe only, the place that's more economically similar, holy shitballs your numbers are terrible.

Maybe you'll one day get over the reflexive "America Fuck yeah! U!S!A!! U!S!A!!" attitude at which point you might be surprised to find America is actually not the best at everything.

I was talking about western Europe, but as you say the EU27 is worse than the UK but still better than the US.

As for the US not having murder roads, you might want to look at the general death rate per capita, per unit of distance, however you like it, it's not very good.

You do have cities of a different nature and the different nature is you legislate for horrendous road design which is somehow incredibly expensive, unusually dangerous, hostile to pedestrians, bikes and public transport and tops it off work not being very good at shifting cars.

The design of mixing high speed features (wide, straight, multiple lanes) with mixed use low speed features (lots of intersections, make turnings for shops etc) is objectively poor.

Or alternatively look at it like this, America is richer than almost all European countries and spends far more power capita on roads. Went are they not better, and often so much worse?

Ger a fairphone?

No bloatware, 7 years of updates, unlocked for whatever OS you want, spare parts sold and easy to replace. Tool free battery replacement in less than 10 seconds.

But then again, you did erroneously imply that pedestrians are safer in European streets (absurdly untrue- per-capita death rate for a pedestrian is double the US rate in Europe)

Where on earth have you got your statistics?

Because they don't remotely match any of the ones I'm looking at, especially for my par of Europe (UK).

The USA has murder roads by comparison for drivers and especially pedestrians, and that's even given how few of the latter you have. I mean speaking of which you can get to zero pedestrian deaths by simply banning pedestrians entirely, but that's not really meaningfully safer.

That's kind of crappy. Going from, say, London bridge to Shoreditch, there's a bus every few minutes, and it's pretty quick. Unfortunately going back, the city of London decided that builders of new sky scrapers need more profit at the expense of literally millions of people so every southbound bus is on massive divisions away from dedicated bus routes. What was a 15 minute journey almost as fast as cycling is now slower than walking.

Fuckers.

But generally in London there's loads of buses, they go to useful places and are reasonably frequent, plus come with live GPS tracking so you know when they are coming.

By American standards, SF is a tough drive. By London standards it is not.

Just about every residential street here is wide enough for one car, we have many pedestrians, bikes, buses, the odd tram, white van men, so many road works, areas with no road paint, weird junctions, mini roundabouts, yes level crossings too, a ferry, same so on.

A big part of operating in Europe is that it's harder to have a self driving car when you don't have huge, wide, straight roads with obnoxious anti-pedestrian laws. Thre are no jaywalkers in London, only pedestrians. This is why no one is currently operating in European cities.

And as for who will be first, Waymo is ni a race with the UK's Wayve as to who will start powering self driving cars in London first.

Also Europe in general is famed for stronger regulation, and the roads in the UK and most of Europe are significantly safer than the US. I don't especially want to be run over in the name of progress towards a future that I'm not sure I want.

Well nothing wrong with the bus, in general. Lots wrong with the bus in America. Also parts of London, because FUCK YOU City of London council. Fuck you all you utter shit heads.

The forecasters don't know where you'll be when it matters.

The good ones produce maps, which are basically like rain radar maps extrapolated forwards in time.

Do you really want the TV weather presenter to rattle off rain and temperature and humidity numbers for every block in every city in the whole state you live in?

That's why I use the Met Office app or website in the UK. It's really nice to have very granular forecasting of rain.

If you want to know if you're going to be rained on, go get a radar image map with rain data updated every minute, and work out if the clouds will cross your street at the exact moment when you will be standing on it.

Or use the maps from forecasters who do that for you.

Have you ever been to France as anything other than a tourist visiting central Paris? My last trip was a work one to Le Mans (nothing to do with the cars), another tiny city with a tram system. As soon as you get out of the middle the density decreased.

France, much like the UK and the rest of Europe doesn't consist exclusively of squashed apartments. Here's something to blow your mind: I live in London. I have a house with 3 floors. I have a garden at the back and a small one at the front. And I don't even own a car because between walking, biking and public transport, I simply don't need one.

What?! That's impossible! Europeans are stacked vertically because there's so little space and that's the only way mass transit can work!!!one.

Yes I'm being sarcastic because I find it incredibly stupid when Americans tell me I can't be living how I literally live right now.

Uhm, no. That didn't happen.

Uhm yes it did. It's excusable being ignorant about Europe, provided you are not willfully so. But how are you so ignorant about your own country? Would you like some links?

Again, that didn't happen.

Again, yes it does. If you don't exclusively fit detached homes, then you won't have walkable neighbourhoods because there's nothing to walk to, and they exclude anyone for whom such a home is less suitable. These are the zoning laws in the majority of your country. There are others too. Again would you like to know more?

Unless you force US citizens to selll their homes and all move to extreme urban cities.

Why don't you drop this trope? I know it's a American attitude but things between the two wildest extremes do exist.

Do you folks from EU ever stop to think that we LIKE the way we live over here?

Maybe you should visit Stockholm. I hear the syndromes there are great!