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Comment by FatalLogic | Hacker News Reader

Up to 80% of drivers rated themselves as 'above average' in a survey [0]

And there have been similar results in other surveys

[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3730094/

I laughed at that statistic the first time I read it, but it isn’t ridiculous. 80% of drivers consider themselves better than what they think of as the average (mean) driver, not average (mode) driver. Same for most surveys. People see how bad the worst is, how good the best is, and then place themselves somewhere above the middle of that range.

It could also mean that 80% of people are better than average according to their preferred metric of good driving but that everyone has a different metric.

And that noone grades themselves on their absolute worst distracted behavior. Whereas what you see/notice in traffic are of other drivers experiencing just that.

The majority of drivers are good drivers - most of the time.

Ratings: 1 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9

Average Rating: 8.2

% Below Average: 10%

% Above Average: 90%

Driving skills are literally to be normally distributed, which this distribution is not.

Disagree, the first driver might get in 1 accident every million miles and the other drivers one every 9 million, objectively 9 times better.

Also, there is a magnifying effect. Every one of those "9" drivers will notice the "1" driver. They'll talk amongst themselves about the terrible drivers they've seen, never knowing they are all talking about the same high-visibility driver. But if one of those "9" drivers is actually a "10", the others could drive alongside them all day long and never even notice, because the "10" driver never did anything to call attention to themselves.

Conclusion: "Most drivers [that I notice] suck."

s/literally/likely

People seem to be very bad with subjective averages. Just like 80% of men on OkCupid were rated by women to be below average.

That could very well mean that mostly the below-average men are creating accounts on OkCupid, though.

Could be. But men rated women very closely to a normal distribution which makes it not impossible but unlikely.

Selection bias in a survey. Bad drivers do not spend much time on road, do not own vehicle, do not have an insurance on their name, do not even have a valid driving license...

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