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Comment by cmckn | Hacker News Reader

1,500 for a drivers license?? I had no idea. It cost me about $30 USD to get my first license in Alabama. Washington state does taxation differently so I think it was about $120. You learn something new every day!

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Mandatory driving school and a much harder exam.

When I lived there I was able to swap my home country drivers license for a German one and bypass the whole system. I will say that German’s drive very well, and the training and gatekeeping go a long way to explaining how the Autobahn’s unlimited speed limits function so well.

> It cost me about $30 USD to get my first license in Alabama. Washington state does taxation differently so I think it was about $120.

What does that actually cover? Just the administrative things you do at the DMV or driving school / exams / etc?

Germany is probably like France, which means that the 1500 covers driving school + exam + actual licence.

You need to have a certain number of driving school hours (22 I think?) to be able to sit the practical exam.

Driving school wasn’t required, though you can take a “driver’s ed” class in high school to skip the exams at the DMV (you take them as part of the class). The exams are free (IIRC), you just have to pay to get the license when you pass. You only have to pass a written exam to get your “permit” (limited license). You need a certain amount of hours of driving to get a full license; but these aren’t really tracked. You just need a guardian (if you’re under 18) or a license holder to sign an affidavit saying you drove the hours. I definitely hadn’t actually driven the number of required hours when I turned 16 and my mom signed off on it.

It varies widely by state, of course; I started driving in Alabama when I was 15. I just recently had to pay WA to transfer my license from Colorado, I guess that was just administrative fees.

> Driving school wasn’t required

I think the difference might be in the difficulty of the test. Here in the UK driving lessons aren't required, but most people wouldn't pass the test without them (and most drivers wouldn't pass the test now if they had to sit it again).

which basically means those tests are not required to be sufficient at safe driving, since most drivers drive safely(enough) without being able to pass those tests.

Additionally, i would love to compare car accidents stats for countries with strict rules/very liberal rules and no rules at all(like most third world countries with high level of corruption)

Last time I checked, the US was quite far behind Germany in terms of road safety. Having driven in both (and far more dangerous ones), I'd say that there's a noticeable, but not outrageous difference. It largely depends on the state though.

AFAIK, a German drivers' license requires 5 substantial tests (4 seasons plus bad weather) ... while one in USA is little more than 10 minutes of "can you not crash into things at low speed".

When I sat for mine going on two decades ago, by far the scariest part was parallel parking. Which really says something - if you base it off of what is emphasized on the test, apparently we care more about "are you going to ding someone's car when parking" than "can you handle a motor vehicle at speed in dangerous conditions."

You can actually get a German driver's license within 2 weeks if you sign up for a crash course. You have to listen to 14 theory lessons (90 minutes each), pass a computer test about them, do at least 12 45 minute long practical lessons (5 outside the city, 4 on highways, 3 at night), and some optional lessons inside the city (which you actually need more but aren't mandatory).

In the end you have to pass a 45 minute driving test where the instructor tells you where to drive to (mostly through the city), asks you questions about car maintenance and safety, makes you parallel park, and do emergency break tests.

In the US, it's extremely common for driving lessons to be provided by secondary schools.

As somebody who missed out on that, I ended up paying around $400 as an adult for 6 hours of private lessons (yes, that was it), plus a $60 fee for the driver's license and a $9 fee for the driving test.

Is it? Where I went to High School they stopped offering drivers education in the 1980s, for budget reasons. Everyone now takes private drivers training courses, or just learns from their parents.

> As somebody who missed out on that, I ended up paying around $400 as an adult for 6 hours of private lessons (yes, that was it), plus a $60 fee for the driver's license and a $9 fee for the driving test.

Never happened for me either. A few years ago I payed a similar amount for a handful of very short courses that didn’t leave me confident enough to take the test. The consequences are big degradation of QoL. Now looking at probably 1 or 2 grand for significantly longer courses which I’m not even sure will be enough, along with the fact that these sort of places are not compatible with a working adults schedule.

If you include driving lessons, the full package can easily go for 3-4000 EUR in Sweden.

Woah! I guess having a drivers license is more necessary in most of the US, so they’re more easily obtained? That’s wild.

"so" as in implies? No, someone made an explicit choice to compromise the education in favor of accessibility and it has caused tons of issues.

I mean if you don't have a drivers license in usa you practically can't buy groceries nor have a job unlike in most other countries.

The licenses are absolutely required in the more sparsely populated areas in Europe, going without license is only possible in major metropolitan areas.

Europe just places a relatively high bar for driving skills. You do see the outcome in road safety and much more orderly driving behaviour (with the usual caveat that Europe is diverse and this applies more to some regions than some others yadda yadda).

Omg this is just a ridiculous statement. Germany != Europe.

I've driven in many countries and Italy had more than an equal share of near death experiences.

I was hoping my caveat would cover exactly this. The parent comments were talking about Germany and Sweden, and I can promise they are not the only countries with decent driving.

Yep. The US is a much nicer place to drive than Italy, particularly Sicily. The craziest one was Azerbaijan. The drivers there are straight up murderous.

Different ideas about safety mostly. The US has 2x the death rate per km driven compared to Sweden.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

The US has much larger cars so this drives fatalities up in accidents too.

Really? An accident between two large cars is generally safer than one between two small cars.

Source: https://www.iihs.org/topics/vehicle-size-and-weight

It may make collision between cars safer, but it makes collision with non-cars deadlier for the people outside the car.

The general trend for pedestrian and cycling deaths is up in the US, because increasingly popular SUVs and crossovers strike a person higher on the body, and also are more likely to push a person under the car towards the wheels or forward where they’ll be run over again, rather than over the hood.

https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/new-study-suggests-todays-s...

I don't disagree with you, and I'm not sure why you think I do?

Err in frontal collisions, maybe? But in pretty much every other case, having something with more kinetic energy will product more harm - it's physics after all. You don't see cyclists killing each others' a lot after all.

Having driven in both the US and Europe, I think it's also worth pointing out that it's easier to drive and understand the road system in the US. In Europe they occasionally have some bizarre rules and tourists just end up going slowly straight through and hoping for the best. In the US, pretty much any moron can get on the interstate or even drive around Atlanta or a big city like that.

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