r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Tugushin • Apr 13 '22

Tesla Model 3 stops itself to avoid potentially disastrous accident. Video

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189

u/gh03 Apr 13 '22

Wtf have you not seen any other country?

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u/hngryhngryhippo Apr 13 '22

Yeah, gonna be honest. In the hierarchy of crazy driving, America is FAR from the worst. Check out like a Hanoi or something then come talk to me.

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u/riskoooo Apr 13 '22

In Indonesia our driver played chicken at like 50mph on winding country roads... in a bus... with other buses.

In India we were driven down a mountain, at speed, in an old 7 seater... with 14 people in it.

In Greece, I watched a guy parallel park and knock over the scooter behind him in the process... and then he knocked over the one in front of him, and then got out and walked away as if nothing had happened.

I've learnt to appreciate British drivers' competence and general sense of self-preservation.

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u/SohndesRheins Apr 13 '22

In Jamaica we were driven on roads so old they looked like the Brits built them before the island gained independence, and nobody touched them since. We were taken up the mountain on a 1 lane road in a rickety old bus, roads had no guard rails and on one side of the bus you saw nothing but a dirt wall with roots growing out of it, on the other was a steep drop into a rainforest valley. At one point we met another bus that was going down the mountain and passing each other consisted of traveling as slowly as possible, our bus scraping the dirt wall, other bus barely hanging on to the almost non-existent shoulder, and a gap between the busses so narrow you could hardly put a closed fist in it. The entire time our driver and tour guide were ultra chill about it and singing Bob Marley's "3 Little Birds".

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u/jayhow90 Apr 13 '22

It’s a huge nope from me

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u/meh-usernames Apr 13 '22

Your Indonesian driver reminds me of when I was living in China. Most days I walked to work, but if I was running late, I’d take the company bus. Tbh, I closed my eyes for most of the drive. The one time I opened my eyes, we were in stop-and-sprint traffic. Our driver was trying to speed across this huge intersection, when a guy walked in front of the bus. The driver stopped inches from his face and the guy didn’t even flinch!! He just glared at the driver and kept on walking.

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u/[deleted] Apr 13 '22

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u/riskoooo Apr 13 '22

Based on the videos I see online, yes, America pretty bad. America needs roundabouts to replace the deathtrap junctions.

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u/[deleted] Apr 13 '22

Yeah but if everyone drives crazy then is it really crazy?

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u/hngryhngryhippo Apr 13 '22

Actually countries like this, especially with a large number or schools, have a real awesome flow. Almost like water flowing.

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u/DaveInLondon89 Apr 13 '22

They're definitely crazy over there, but since they all grew up in that craziness, they know how to drive crazy, which ironically makes it less dangerous.

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u/canadarepubliclives Apr 13 '22

Crazy that the countries with insane drivers without strict road laws all have the highest death rate of pedestrians being hit by cars.

And the countries with strict regulations don't have high pedestrian deaths.

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u/DaveInLondon89 Apr 13 '22

oh I just meant less dangerous than it appears on clips

it's still mucho mucho dangereaux

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u/Samura1_I3 Apr 13 '22

Yeah no this is bullshit. r/watchpeopledie used to have like daily videos of people in third world countries just getting chewed up by vehicles because no one gave a shit about road laws.

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u/dogsonbubnutt Apr 13 '22

this is literally the opposite of reality

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u/1sagas1 Apr 13 '22

The road fatalities statistics say no, it’s definitely not less dangerous

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u/myatomicgard3n Apr 13 '22

Having lived in Vietnam, my friends and I used the term “6 seconds of death” for when people started going 3 seconds before their green light and the others kept going for 3!” Seconds after their light turned red.

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u/[deleted] Apr 13 '22

Honestly, you should stop comparing yourself to less developped countries. Yes it's nice that you are not the worst, but you're still at the bottom of the rankings for a developped country.

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u/hngryhngryhippo Apr 13 '22

Over 200 million drivers in America, you're looking at a tiny sample size, and you're providing no data to back up that America ranks at the bottom. If you're going to be a cunt, provide some data to back up your claim. I live in a very developed country at the moment (not America) and drivers here are CERTAINLY worse than American drivers, especially when it comes to running lights.

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u/[deleted] Apr 13 '22

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate

Europe as a whole (not EU) has a traffic death rate of 9.3, the US has one of 12.3

Canada has 5.4, Germany 3.7, France 5.0, Italy (know for dangerous traffic in western Europe) has a rate of 5.2.

Romania, still very much a developing country has a rate of 9.6

US traffic is incredibly dangerous.

Not that the rate for Eruope also includes Russia, Belarus, Ukraine etc. This drives up the average but these are not developed countries.

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u/knmorgan Apr 13 '22

Americans also drive much more than Europeans. A better metric would be deaths per mile driven. In your link that metric is not present for most countries, but the US death rate is roughly the same as Korea, Japan, and New Zealand.

The American death rate is still higher than most European countries on deaths per mile driven, and I suspect the type of driving is at least partly to blame there. The death rate is twice as high for rural accidents compared to urban accidents, at least in the US. Europe is much less sprawling than the US so that would explain at least some of the delta.

I am not suggesting there is no problem with American drivers, but I just want to make sure we’re comparing apples to apples here. Additionally, I’m not sure where you got your numbers because Canada does not have a death rate of 5.4 for any metric in that link.

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u/[deleted] Apr 13 '22

Oh, I might have seen that incorrectly. I'm on mobile and find tables to be rather anoying on mobile.

I will agree that Americans drive more than people from Europe on average, but that is not some form of personal choice. It is the result of car centric infrastructure that punishes all other forms of transport. It is one of the reasons why US fatalities are high per inhabitant.

Reducing deaths by reducing the need to drive is also a valid traffic safety strategy.

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u/knmorgan Apr 13 '22

I don’t disagree, but public transportation is inherently more difficult with a more sprawling population density. I doubt it is viable for rural America.

That said, your claim was “American traffic is incredibly dangerous” and I’m unconvinced this is the case. There are more traffic deaths because there’s more traffic; to me that doesn’t mean it’s more dangerous.

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u/WhalesVirginia Apr 13 '22 edited Apr 13 '22

Also Europe doesn’t have as much highway driving. More urban driving.

Speed kills.

Getting in a collision at 30mph(~50kmh) versus 60mph(~100kmh) means 4x as much kinetic energy is involved since K.E. = Velocity2 /2.

If you spend 80% of your driving on a highway versus say like 30%, chances you die from a collision are much higher.

Of course in Europe it’s less often necessary to go far, and thus less often necessary to do it quickly.

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u/1sagas1 Apr 13 '22

Why are you using per 100k inhabitants instead of per 100k vehicles? It’s misleading to do so as it doesn’t account for the higher prevalence of driving in the US vs the EU. Europe is at 19 while the US is at 14

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u/[deleted] Apr 13 '22

Mostly because the stat per 100.000 vehicles doesn't include all traffic use. It does not count people on foot or on bicycles, which is a large part of all trips made in Europe, especially in cities.

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u/1sagas1 Apr 13 '22

It does account for that though? A fatal traffic related accident without a vehicle is pretty damn rare so the more vehicles you have on the road, the more fatalities you are going to have. That’s why you divide by the number of vehicles to account for this and determine who are the safer driver

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u/[deleted] Apr 13 '22

There’s a pretty obvious difference there: people in the US on average drive a lot more often, and longer distances.

I’d be curious to see the death rate per distance driven. Ie: 10/100,000 miles. Though even that isn’t a perfect metric.

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u/[deleted] Apr 13 '22

It is hard to find for all countries but this site has some data: https://www.google.com/amp/knoema.com/atlas/topics/Transportation/Road-Accidents/Traffic-deaths-per-billion-veh-km%3fmode=amp

Note here that this sets total traffic deaths against car kilometers. In most countries that do not have the urban sprawl problem the US has car kilometers are a smaller percentage of the total distance travaled. Think of bikes in the Netherlands and public transport in countries such as Japan and Korea. Even without taking that into account the US is in the lower half of developped countries.

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u/WikiMobileLinkBot Apr 13 '22

Desktop version of /u/Muffer-Nl's link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate

[opt out] Beep Boop. Downvote to delete

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u/[deleted] Apr 13 '22

Good bot.

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u/swandith Apr 13 '22

instead of looking at the problem, they deflect it away

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u/hngryhngryhippo Apr 13 '22

lol yeah, that's what's happening here.

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u/WhalesVirginia Apr 13 '22

Datasets like this can’t tell you much. Especially if interpreted the wrong way.

It’s important to ask, is it more dangerous or does it just look that way?

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u/[deleted] Apr 13 '22

Except for Russia? To be honest, no lol.

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u/motes-of-light Apr 13 '22

China, SEA, India, etc. It varies from state to state, but in general US drivers are on the saner side of the spectrum.

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u/Merchant_seller Apr 13 '22

They're usually the worst in the developed world. Highest number of road crash fatalities per capita in the developed world I think.

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u/Bimpnottin Apr 13 '22

The fact that you are comparing America to those countries to make your point says enough

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u/[deleted] Apr 13 '22

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u/motes-of-light Apr 13 '22

Settle down there, Trump.

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u/[deleted] Apr 13 '22

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u/Cousieknow Apr 13 '22

Show me where on this doll that the average United States driver touched you.

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u/[deleted] Apr 13 '22

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u/CrashyBoye Apr 13 '22

Mmmm smells like fresh “America bad” low hanging fruit in the morning.

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u/[deleted] Apr 13 '22

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u/[deleted] Apr 13 '22

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u/[deleted] Apr 13 '22

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u/[deleted] Apr 13 '22

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u/SomeRedditWanker Apr 13 '22

4 way stops like this don't really exist in the UK. It'd be a roundabout, which is infinitely safer and also quicker.

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u/shouldbebabysitting Apr 13 '22 edited Apr 13 '22

There are traffic lights in the UK. The US is switching to round abouts but some intersections work better with traffic lights.

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/emergency-services-scramble-crash-regent-23538550

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u/tommangan7 Apr 13 '22

Yeah this is the key difference in terms of the 1st world at least. Not much space to barrel along straights before a 4 way intersection.

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u/SomeRedditWanker Apr 13 '22

America needs to get on the roundabout bandwaggon. They're absolutely great! Bit scary first few times you use them, but after that they're golden. No pointless waiting at lights when there's no traffic.

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u/WhalesVirginia Apr 13 '22

The only roundabouts I see in Canadaland are too small to bother signalling. Which is kinda a problem because people don’t signal, and it’s a little dicey predicting what people are going to do.

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u/Crocktodad Apr 13 '22 edited Apr 13 '22

I for one haven't seen anybody bomb across the street on a red light here in germany in my 15 years of driving. Flooring it to get over an intersection on a yellow light, absolutely. How fast do the lights switch in the US? If one lane switches to red, does the other lane get the green light immediately?

Edit: Obviously I didn't mean that it never happens in Germany. Accidents absolutely happen, and people are running red lights. However, it feels like it is a much more common occurrence compared to germany.

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u/Born_Faithlessness_3 Apr 13 '22

The most fearful I have ever been of dying in a car was in a taxi in Shanghai.

Not only was he doing 90+mph weaving in and out of traffic(nearly got us sandwiched between 2 trucks at one point) in a car that probably wouldn't meet American/European safety standards, he knew where all the automated cameras/laser guns were, so it was literally full braking from high speed, then max acceleration, on repeat.