I like comparisons, especially ones based on proportions. Why?Because they’re fun!
But they’re more than just fun. Comparisons are an essential way of making sense of the world, while proportions help you figure out if there are any elephants in the room, metaphorically speaking. To put it another way, comparisons through proportions give you a quick and accurate way of understanding whether certain figures (e.g., the number of miles driven annually by the average adult or the number of people killed per 100,000 due to road traffic) are larger or smaller than you’d expect them to be when crosschecked with other countries.
These comparisons teach us things. In many cases, they underscore how important simple behavioral changes (such as driving less or at slower speeds or on safer roads) can add up to the tune of thousands of lives saved–or lost–per year. At a very personal level, they can give us the tools to help us make it home to our loved ones each night.
We do many things right. But we’ve still got a ways to go
It’s important to be able to learn from our neighbors, because there are a great many things we do in the United States that, while better than they are in a great many poor countries, are far worse than how things are done in a great many rich countries. We can learn from Sweden about how long kids actually benefit from rear-facing. We can learn from the UK about how important it is to limit our annual miles. We can learn from Iceland about how few deaths we actually need to accept per capita if we make safe driving and community-oriented living national level priorities. We need fewer heros and more Vision Zeroes.
We need to be able to learn from each other to improve.
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Drivers in Norway are safer than those in the US. Let’s unpack why.
This is part of an ongoing series in lessons on international perspectives in driving safety and culture. My goal is to shed light for American audiences on how the leading countries in auto safety (as measured by the lowest death rates per capita) manage the complex and dangerous relationship between human beings, our environments, and our automobiles.
I’ve written before about how Norwegian roads are among the safest on the planet and about how children in Norway are less likely to die due to traffic than children in virtually any other country on the planet. Today’s article focuses on some factors that tie into why drivers are less likely to be involved in fatal crashes in Norway than in the United States. To put it simply, Norwegian drivers are, on average, safer drivers than Americans. I wanted to find out why, so I learned about the process behind becoming a legal driver on Norwegian roads. The short of it is that by the time a licensed Norwegian driver gets behind the wheel for the first time, s/he has received far better training and is required to behave far more responsibly as a lifelong driver than the equivalent American driver. Let’s look into the how and why together.
1. Norwegian teens don’t drive until they turn 18
To get a category B driver’s license in Norway, which is necessary for driving a car, you need to be at least 18 years old. This is two years longer than in most states in the United States (with the exception of New Jersey, which doesn’t offer an intermediate license until 17, and South Dakota, which allows 14-year-olds to obtain licenses), which gives teenagers two more years to gain crucial cognitive maturity and supervised driving experience.
The provision of additional time for development and practice is particularly key when one notes that, in the United States, 16-19-year-olds have the highest rates of fatal crash involvement per mile for all drivers below the age of 80. Within that subset, 16-17-year-olds have nearly twice the rate of fatal crash involvement per mile as 18-19-year-olds. Norway bypasses the highest risk years by restricting eligibility for driving multi-ton vehicles until drivers are at least 18.
2. Norwegian driver’s education classes are among the most detailed on the planet
Driver’s education in Norway can be divided into three steps: taking the mandatory (and optional) courses, passing the theoretical test, and finally, passing the practical test. The coursework can be divided into four stages: basic traffic knowledge, basic driving skills, road traffic skills, and long-distance training.
In stage 1, you’re required to take courses on first aid and night driving. If you’re under 25, you also need to take a basic traffic course. The basic traffic course is 10 hours long, and the first aid course is 4 hours long and includes training on how to administer basic first aid and effectively convey information to first responders and emergency personnel. You also deal with a simulated crash scene involving crash test dummies. The night driving course is 3 hours long and involves an actual nighttime driving demonstration to illustrate the hazards drivers can encounter during night driving. Before you take any of this, you will typically also take a 45 minute driving assessment so the driving instructor at your driving school can assess your training level and determine whether you’d be likely to pass the practical test with only the mandatory courses or whether you’d also benefit from the optional courses.
In stage 2, you focus on basic driving techniques, including steering, braking, vehicle positioning, and parking. However, you also learn to locate basic parts of the car, including how to open the hood, check and apply wiper fluid, and more. To advance from stage 2 to 3, you need approval from your driving instructor, which comes after a 45-minute driving lesson and a self-assessment you conduct in concert with instructor feedback.
In stage 3, you focus on road traffic, in terms of navigating environments with numerous other vehicles while processing signs and other road information. There are 3 required hours of driving a closed course safety circuit, 3 hours of driving in a 2-lane road, and a 45 minute guidance class again with approval required for advancement. Within stage 3, you also will get slippery road training on the closed circuit. Within this training, you’ll drive on roads coated with oil and water to provide you with exposure to low-traction conditions. Once again, with instructor approval after your 45 minute driving lesson, you’ll be able to advance to stage 4.
In stage 4, you focus on final training before the theoretical and practice tests. There are 13 required hours that are a mixture of driving and theory (class time). No other stages involve class time besides parts of stage 1. The theoretical course presents risky driving situations and means of avoiding or mitigating them. Next comes a 5 hour long-distance driving course, during which you’ll spend up to 5 hours driving under supervision; you also get to practice emergency procedures you’d use if your car malfunctioned. Finally, you have a tour planning course where you need to plan (and then drive) an efficient route to get from point A to B (both selected by the trainer).
The theoretical test is 45 questions long and requires a 85% score (38 questions correct) to pass. If you fail, you need to wait for 2 weeks before you retake it. From then, you have 3 years to pass the practical test. The practical test includes a vehicular safety check, actual driving, and parking after the drive. You learn if you pass at the end of the test. If you fail, you need to wait for 4 weeks before retaking it and take additional courses in between.
In comparison, in the United States, the rules for driver’s licensure vary considerably from state to state due to federalism. However, applicants generally must complete some sort of driver’s training before completing a theoretical and then practical test. The requirements for training may be waived for drivers above a certain age (e.g., 18).
3. It can cost up to $4,000 to obtain a Norwegian driver’s license
In Norway, it’s not unusual to need to spend up to 30,000 NOK (~$4,000 USD) from start to finish in the process of becoming a licensed driver. When you consider the sheer number of mandatory and optional courses you might end up taking on the way to licensure, it’s not surprising. The goal behind the process isn’t simply to extract money from citizens, but to put them through a gauntlet that results in far better competence for beginning drivers there than that in drivers throughout most of the rest of the world.
In comparison, in the United States, it typically doesn’t take more than around $25 to obtain a permit and license, as the US doesn’t consistently require license candidates take professional driving courses, as is the case in Norway and numerous countries around the world. Some states (e.g., Maryland) require a minimal amount of coursework (e.g., 30 hours of class time and 6 hours of driving time), and prices for such courses can reach into the low-to-mid hundreds, which is overpriced for the pittance of hours actually spent driving.
While there is something undeniably democratic about making driver’s licenses essentially free, as they are in most parts of the United States, it does come at a cost, in that it invariably leads to far less trained drivers obtaining their licenses. Of course, each country could fully fund detailed and professional driver’s education (especially countries as rich as the United States and Norway), but it appears far more common to either offer free bare-bones universal training (as is the case in the United States through the public high school system) or expensive private professional training (as is the case in Norway). The Norwegian approach results in far fewer people driving, but it also does result in a significantly safer population behind the wheel, because you can’t just buy your way into a license–you need to do a lot of supervised driving along the way.
4. Every newly licensed driver faces a 2 year probationary period in Norway
It doesn’t matter if you’re 18 or 80; if you’ve passed all the tests, paid all the fees, and become a licensed driver for the first time in Norway, you’re considered to be on probation. It’s called a trial license, and it lasts for 2 years. During this period, it’s literally twice as easy to lose your license as it is when you aren’t in the probationary period.
Norway features a point system, where the accumulation of 8 points in 3 years leads to a temporary revocation of your driving license. Most traffic tickets result in an automatic 2 points. However, if you’re on a trial license, points are doubled. In other words, two traffic tickets in your first two years of driving means a revoked license. The revocation period is typically six months long. However, if it occurs during a trial license, you’ll need to take all of your tests again–both the theoretical (written) tests and the practical (driving) ones. And you don’t get to take them again until after your suspension ends, which means there’s no fast-forwarding the process.
In the US, new and young drivers typically face various forms of probation upon license acquisition, but once again, the details can vary considerably from one state to the next.
Why is the US so much more freewheeling about driving compared to Norway?
The difference in the driving culture between the two countries is likely due to a variety of reasons. However, one of the most pertinent is the US’ much greater identification with the automobile than that present in Norway. This, of course, is largely due to deliberate collusion between the auto industry and the government in the early 20th century, as our highway systems, grid-based cities, and auto-centric living spaces and spacing didn’t arise by accident (or else they would exist in equal degree throughout fellow rich nations, and they most certainly do not). To put it simply, Americans were programmed to view auto travel as the only reasonable means of travel, and our lives were largely spaced in ways that reinforced this line of thought. As a result, it was necessary to make car access as easy as possible for the average person (this also explains credit access in the US, which is far less regulated than its equivalent in fellow rich countries).
How do we change this culture?
We need to drive less, drive more carefully, and advocate for the return of human-centric (and not auto-centric) living spaces. That means lower speeds, fewer cars, more space for people–pedestrians, children, cyclists, the elderly. It means a lot of changes in the long term. It means alternative transportation options–bicycles, buses, trains. And in relation to auto travel, it means following and advocating Vision Zero principles. Every human has the right to live without fear of dying from auto traffic.
To avoid dying in a head-on collision, avoid driving on roads that look like this.
This is the latest post in a series on the IRTAD report I’ve been reading, Zero Road Deaths and Serious Injuries: Leading a Paradigm Shift to a Safe System. It’s basically a field guide to how countries around the globe have made strides in developing Safe Systems / Vision Zero / Toward Zero approaches, and it’s well worth reading. I’m a fan of the Safe System approach, and have written a number of articles related to the fundamental message that all human lives matter, and none should be–or need to be–lost due to auto crashes. I’ve included a brief listing of recent articles below. If you aren’t familiar with the concept, you’ll want to check them out. If you are, skip below; there’s more information than ever about the importance of avoiding undivided roads when driving.
Isn’t safe driving just about having the newest safety materials in my car?
It’s a common misconception that auto safety is simply a question of buying the newest car possible. While that can help, the truth is that the majority of what affects our survival on the roads has to do with how and where we drive followed by what we drive. A Safe System focuses on all three factors but gives extra importance to the where, because it’s much easier to change than the human behavior, the how, yet can be much more effective, especially with a bit of help from the how and what.
To put it simply, this is my passion. There’s a lot we can do to increase our road safety as individuals, but the biggest changes come from changing the way our society views road safety, and the collective responsibility we have to make our roads safe for everyone. To that end, my most recent article on the topic involves ending the blame game and assuming a more humanistic, cooperative, and ultimately effective approach toward safer roads.
OK, I’m up to speed. What does the report say about driving safety in relation to undivided roads?
On page 92, the report notes:
Divided roads were the most effective factor in avoiding fatalities among vehicle occupants.
Slightly later, on page 92, we read:
An example of a “primary” Safe System treatment [is] a median barrier, as this will virtually eliminate (in over 90% of cases) fatal head-on crashes, while a “supportive” treatment would be a wide centreline with rumble strips that will make them less likely. It is strongly recommended that the primary treatments are employed where possible.”
This is the kind of road you want to drive on whenever possible.
This is significant. We have research suggesting the single most effective way of avoiding vehicle fatalities are to use divided roads, or to not use
undivided roads. What is a divided road? That’s answered within the second quotation; it’s a road system with a median barrier that divides two opposing lanes of traffic. To put it another, more visual way, it’s a road that looks like the one on the left. Divided roads aren’t nearly as visually appealing as undivided ones, but they’re much, much safer. This is also why interstates are traditionally the safest kinds of roads we can drive on per mile, despite featuring the highest speeds–it’s because they’re inherently designed to avoid vehicles crashing into each other at high rates of speed.
What can we do? Do we simply avoid all undivided roads?
In a word, yes! Whenever possible, drive on divided roads. However, it’s not always that simple. Let’s answer the “what can we do?” question with a bit more detail.
If we know divided roads are the most significant factor in reducing vehicle fatalities, what do we do with this information? Well, we can certainly call or write letters to our local, state, and federal departments of transportation. We can advocate for change and point to reports like the IRTAD report above. However, while waiting and advocating for change on larger levels, we can take action on an individual level. This is where change begins. We lower that 35,000 annual fatality figure one saved life at a time.
We can drive on the kinds of roads we know from research are safest, and avoid undivided roadways whenever possible. I’ve written about this before, and I’ll continue to do so as long as I read or write about stories involving fatalities on undivided roads. These are the quintessential “drifting across the midline” crashes; they’re the ones where one vehicle inadvertently enters the opposing lane of traffic and isn’t stopped until it crashes directly into another vehicle. They are violent and bloody and unnecessary. They can be all but eliminated simply by installing barriers between the lanes. Until that day comes, and these kinds of roads are eliminated or speed limited (remember that Safe System practices dictates a 43 mph limit for undivided roads), your best bet is to avoid them as much as you possibly can. You literally cut your odds of being involved in a fatal head-on crash (which, by the way, is the most frequent fatal multi-vehicle collision) by 90%–almost completely–by avoiding these kinds of roads.
Don’t wait for your state department of transportation to catch up to best practices. Start living them, and spread the word.
Much of the report has to do with paradigm shifts, or the necessary changes we have to undergo as a society in terms of how we perceive road safety in order to create safer environments for all road users. This evening, I found this passage to be a particularly well-written one describing necessary shifts in perspectives on road safety. It’s on page 47 in a section about creating a greater demand for road safety among citizens.
A highly effective way to engage politicians, policy makers and system designers in a debate on a Safe System is to create increased demand for road safety among citizens. The traditional societal view holds that road users bear the main responsibility for road safety hazards. It is they who should be “blamed and shamed” for incidents and measures should focus on correcting their irresponsible behaviour. In contrast, a Safe System is based on the notion that road users are citizens with rights and should be able to take part in road traffic without risking death or serious injury – even if and when they make simple human mistakes. A Safe System also posits that road safety is a shared responsibility, and thus gives citizens the right to demand safe road traffic from society.
Isn’t that just wonderful? And at the same time, completely removed from how most of us view road safety in the United States, and how most discussions regarding road safety are framed? Independence and self-reliance are highly valued traits in US society (as reflected in our lack of universal health insurance, a unique position among fellow rich nations, or our lack of guaranteed maternal leave, a unique position among all but a handful of other countries across the globe). However, the societal importance we place on a lack of reliance on society frequently results in negative consequences for many, many individuals who in aggregate, make up…society.
As a result, when a crash occurs, we look for who is at fault. This is hardly unique to the US, but our conclusions are almost always the same–we blame the end user, the driver. Whether it’s the driver who drove off the road and into a tree or the driver who talked on the cell phone and drove into the opposing lane or the driver who took the turn too fast and rolled the vehicle, there’s always a driver we can blame, and that’s where our crash investigations end. We need to get rid of the bad drivers or at least beat them into becoming better ones. If not for bad drivers, there wouldn’t be collisions, and everyone would be fine.
How else could we examine a crash besides blaming the driver?
While this is an accurate way to look at the problem, it’s not the only way to do so. More importantly, it’s rarely the best way, presuming the goal is to reduce the number of fatalities and serious crashes. The reason why this approach, dubbed “blaming and shaming” in the section above, is ineffective, is because people, by definition, are fallible. Whether the driver leaves the road because he was playing with the radio or because she was trying to avoid a deer or because he was tired or because she was trying to calm her children in the back row, the ultimate point is that the driver is leaving the road.
A Safe System focuses on how to protect the driver, passengers, and anyone else in the vicinity once that road-leaving-event is imminent. That might take the form of a more forgiving shoulder that has a guide-rail that can keep a vehicle from completely leaving the road. It might look like a ditch that has been removed, significantly reducing the risk of a fatal rollover. It might look like a wire fence installed to keep the vehicle away from trees and telephone poles. It might look like a lower speed limit on the road that reduces the likelihood of leaving the road to begin with, or any number of other features. It might be in the vehicle itself, which is equipped with lane-departure warning systems and ESC to help the driver maintain control during emergency maneuvers. Should the driver actually leave the road, it might look like a rapid emergency response service capable of reaching the road within minutes to perform first aid and hospital transport.
This is a different way of looking at collisions and road safety. The focus in all of these cases is to provide redundancy to a.) reduce the likelihood of a collision occurring, b.) mitigate the severity of an imminent collision, and c.) provide life-saving response services to maximize survivability after the collision occurs. More broadly, the fault isn’t automatically assigned to the road user, should the unfortunate or unthinkable happen. The responsibility is shared among everyone who plays a role in the design of the road, the vehicles that traverse it, and the people within and without those vehicles. The road users are expected to be responsible, yes, but they aren’t expected to be perfect, because, being human, they never will be. They’re given rights–the rights to expect safe roadways and safe vehicles, and the rights to expect to live when they or their loved ones use these roadways.
This is the mentality behind a Safe System / Vision Zero approach. People are valuable, and we need to design systems to protect them, rather than to blame them for being imperfect whenever they inevitably behave like humans.
A few months ago, while perusing my favorite international safety organization, the International Traffic Safety Data and Analysis Group (IRTAD), I came across a recent report titled Zero Road Deaths and Serious Injuries: Leading a Paradigm Shift to a Safe System. It’s 172 pages of Vision Zero talk, which made for excellent evening reading. Within the report and within a section on the efforts various countries had made to raise awareness of the dangers of auto traffic, I came across this series of graphics (on page 46) published by one of the pioneers of Vision Zero, Sweden.
Precipice pictures used in Sweden to communicate inherent road safety risks (credit: IRTAD)
Specifically, the Swedish Transportation Agency, the Swedish equivalent of the NHTSA, sought to show the public in a naturally understandable way how the risks we exposed ourselves to while driving were significant ones, based on the premise that people were inherently more likely to understand the risks of high levels of kinetic energy when applied vertically compared to when applied horizontally.
To put it simply, people naturally understand how dangerous it is to fall from great heights than we get how dangerous it is to crash into obstacles at high speeds. There are likely strong evolutionary reasons related to this that have to do with falling from trees and off cliffs, but whatever the reason, this way of connecting with people seems to have some effect in raising risk awareness.
Survival speeds and Shared Responsibilities
As a reminder, Vision Zero principles are based on the ideas that road systems should be designed in ways that eliminate the risk of death or serious injury from auto use. In contrast to the predominant way of approaching road safety in the US and in most low- and middle-income countries, the risks and responsibilities of road use are not primarily assumed to rest with the end user (e.g., the passenger vehicle occupant, the cyclist, the pedestrian, the child), but are designed to be shared equally across road users, road designers, policy makers, and vehicle manufacturers.
As a result, in the examples above, it’s not simply the responsibility of the car driver to avoid being hit by the truck while navigating the turn, or the pedestrian to avoid being hit by a motor vehicle while crossing the street. In the car/truck example, both drivers should certainly be paying attention, but the truck should be designed in a way that minimizes the risk of injury it poses to others relative to its size, while the car should also be designed to offer as much protection as reasonably possible (e.g., being equipped with a crashworthy structure, seat belts, airbags, etc). Additionally, the roadway, being one that presents a risk of head-on vehicle-vehicle collisions, should have a posted and enforced speed limit no greater than 70 kph, or 43 mph, not 45 or 50 or 55 or even 65 mph as is the case in many rural areas throughout the United States.
In the second example, the zebra crossing should be clearly marked and clearly visible to give pedestrians a clear view of traffic and traffic a clear view of pedestrians. The pedestrian should have the right of way, always, and that right of way should always be defended and enforced. The traffic on that road should not be traveling at any higher than 30 kph, or 18 mph, since it has the potential to come into contact with pedestrians, and the survival rate when hit at under 20 mph is at around 95%. The roadway should be narrow enough to naturally encourage motorized traffic to travel more slowly and cautiously, as well as to make it possible for pedestrians to traverse it without spending exorbitant amounts of time in a highly vulnerable position.
Best practices aren’t secret practices; they’re just ignored ones in the United States
These are just a handful of safety modifications that should be present in two situations highlighted above. How many of them do you find present when you find yourself in either of the above scenarios? Because each factor, when present, reduces the risk of injury or death if and when a collision occurs while also reducing the risks of collisions occurring to begin with. Conversely, each factor, when absent, increases the risk of collision while simultaneously increasing injury and fatality risks should said collisions occur.
Best practice in auto safety isn’t a mystery; we know what should be done. The trick is to convince the people with the power to put best practices into place that it’s worth more to make these changes than it is to accept things the way they are.
35,000 Americans will die this year on the road. You don't have to be one of them. A car seat and car safety blog to promote best practices for families.
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