The US is also quite a bit larger than most other countries. Adding up all the car accidents in the European union AND dividing them by the amount of miles driven annually might get one closer to a real comparison.
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Who invited Milton to the party?
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It would be a bit more complicated than that. Population density in Europe is higher than the USA (eg UK is almost 8x that of USA, Netherlands is about 12.5x higher than USA)
Yep, and that also is likely to cause the annual miles driven per person to be a lot lower for Europeans.
Here, I am very likely put in 800 miles of driving from Friday to Sunday, And, because I would be visiting relatives, I would be doing the same when I come to Salzburg.
But that is definitely not a normal weekend of driving for the Austrian residents.
Its not as simple as that, it also depends on road design. In my country road design incorporates many safety features that you might miss at first glance. So even if there are more cars closer together it doesn't mean collisions are more likely. For example US lanes are extremely wide even inside cities. This invites drivers to drive faster. Which in turn makes accidents more likely to happen. But in Europe we use many traffic calming methods to stop that from happening.
But of course it also doesn't help you don't really need to be able to drive to get a driver's license in the US.
Old_School_Brad
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And that accidents in closer traffic in general have a lot less energy so less risk of causing harm. This isn't just rough, "back-of-the-napkin" statistics.
US has got 6.9 fatalities per billion vehicle km. Where I live : 3.0
List of countries by traffic-related death rate - Wikipedia
The low death count from hurricanes is testimony to successful evacuations, I suppose. The economic damage should not be ignored, however. As for traffic deaths, I find the Florida annual car accident death count of about 3500 extremely surprising. The Netherlands, with some 18 million inhabitants (Florida has 22 million), has about 700 traffic deaths a year, the majority of whom are cyclists and pedestrians. What is happening? Is it the high proportion of big pickup trucks and SUVs? Monster trucks like the Dodge Ram have been banned in Europe because they are lethal to other road users (there is a legal loophole so some still get through). Florida like numbers is what we had in the 1960s, with cars without modern safety provisions, no speed limits on highways, no serious enforcement of drink driving laws and dangerous roads. What is happening?
In the Netherlands annual mileage per car is about 12000 km and in the US it is just over 13000 miles, so about 1.7 times more. That still does not explain most of the difference, unless Florida is hugely different from the rest of the USA. And interestingly Canada is roughly similar to the safer European countries.
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Old_School_Brad
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Well, it's two vastly different places.
Road design, speed limits and enforcement difference, driving culture, alcohol and drug use and enforcement, weather conditions.
Not to mention the infamous "Florida man,# who seems to embody reckless behavior that most certainly would be the main cause of all..
The US really is a bit of an outlier among developed countries with rather higher fatalities per billion kms, and it looks as if Florida may be worse than the US average.US has got 6.9 fatalities per billion vehicle km. Where I live : 3.0
List of countries by traffic-related death rate - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
I believe reflected in the millions of miles we have in the high speed highway system across the US.US has got 6.9 fatalities per billion vehicle km. Where I live : 3.0
List of countries by traffic-related death rate - Wikipedia
Almost everywhere you wish to go, a good part of the trip can be navigated at 65 mph or better.
Florida's numbers are reflected in the average age of drivers here, a high number of which are 65 and over.
Plus the fact that many are in tourist mode, constantly looking for or at something other than the road.
I spent 60 years riding motorcycles in and around metropolitan Chicago, but riding in FL is a whole new game. LOL
And so do we. In fact, our highway fatality figure is quite a bit lower than for other roads.
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But Europeans drive a lot less, making collisions less likely.
There is a lot to it to actually compare it.
Because the same metrics re not used.
Even with an alcohol related accident.
In many cases what can happen here (and what bin of the statistic they put the accident in) just depends on who handles it.:
If I was at someone's home & became too drunk to drive and a non-alcohol drinking person offered me a ride home, which I accepted.
Then someone (who was not drinking alcohol) ran a red light and hit our car (let's say that there were no personal injuries but there was enough damage to the vehicles that the police came, [then, even though I was only a passenger and not a driver]), the accident would likely (but no necessarily) go into the "alcohol related" statistic for accident because one person that was a non-driver (as far as the accident was concerned), but was in one of the cars, had been drinking.
Thus skewing the "alcohol related" statistic toward worse than it really is.
This is likely due to the work of NGO's who have a vested interest in "getting more funding" for work against "drunk driving" agenda.
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But the table gave fatalities per billion kms, so corrected for this difference. And the difference is large. Don't ask me for an explanation, because I don't have one, but also don't try to argue away the difference. The fatality rate is more than four times higher per person, and almost three times higher per mile. In fact, such didefrences can also be observed within Europe. The Eastern European countries have far higher fatality rates than Western European countries, Belgium excepted. France is also a bit higher. To me, this suggests alcohol may indeed play a role, but that would demand more information. I accept that there can be over or under registration of alcohol as a contributing cause, but I don't think there can be much under let alone over registration of fatalities.
If I could get back to the weather for second?
A couple of things struck me about these two hurricanes that hit Florida.
The first is how accurately their development and tracks were determined by the meteorologists. They hit almost exactly where they were predicted to. The second is that no matter how accurate the forecasts were, the behavior of these storms was still wildly unpredictable i.e. the catastrophic flooding in the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Georgia from Helene, and the deadly tornadoes suddenly spawned by Milton, both of which happened hundreds of miles away from landfall of the center of the storm.
How do you deal with something you can't anticipate?
A couple of things struck me about these two hurricanes that hit Florida.
The first is how accurately their development and tracks were determined by the meteorologists. They hit almost exactly where they were predicted to. The second is that no matter how accurate the forecasts were, the behavior of these storms was still wildly unpredictable i.e. the catastrophic flooding in the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Georgia from Helene, and the deadly tornadoes suddenly spawned by Milton, both of which happened hundreds of miles away from landfall of the center of the storm.
How do you deal with something you can't anticipate?
But where you live is just a small part of the EU and the average driver puts no where near the miles on a vehicle as we do here in South Carolina, so it is like comparing apples to orangutans.US has got 6.9 fatalities per billion vehicle km. Where I live : 3.0
List of countries by traffic-related death rate - Wikipedia
I average a 120 miles (193 Kilometers) a day (split over 3 vehicles [2 at home and one work vehicle]). 1/3 of that is in dense traffic with the work owned vehicle.
The other 2 thirds are me traveling to other places to ride bikes, go ride roller coasters, go caving, boating, etc. (or just to go to a German restaurant [the closest of which is 100 miles from here]) but the traffic would be much lighter (and the average speeds much higher but with much less chance of an accident).
A true comparison would be quite difficult.
The numbers were per billion miles travelled, so it is immaterial if people drive more or less than in other countries. The difference is striking and is not easily explained, and so is the difference between Canada and the US. Within Europe fatality rate is clearly correlated with levels of income and developement, and the same is true globally. Geography may well be less important: the Norwegian figures are closely comparable to the Dutch ones, even if landcape and population density represent obvious opposites.
These are very unstable systems indeed, and becoming more so.
Petrushka
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I’m going to make a wild guess that in the last hundred years, more European neighborhoods have been wiped off the map than Florida neighborhoods.
Edit: maybe in the last three years.
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