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Comment by ptr | Hacker News Reader

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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