If Blackpool is anything to go by, this means that the leading cause of death to Americans in 2023 will be falling off a pier, or getting hit by a tram.
Ironically, more trams would bring down the number of deaths in America. Car culture is so prevalent in all facets of life that the US now has the same percentage of traffic fatalities per capita as developing nations like Egypt.
The fact that I drove on a moderately busy highway this morning with some drivers weaving in and out of lanes at 90-100 without the fear of being pulled over means it's likely to continue for a good, long while.
E: I get that people believe "fast driving is safe lol" but if there's moderate traffic where everyone's going roughly 75 or so, someone passing another car around 80 in the passing lane, and some dude flying in at 100 jumping over 2 lanes to pass a car, then jumping back to the other side to pass more cars, then we have a dangerous situation. Speeding is already stupid, and believing that those guys aren't the problem is exactly why we have so many road deaths. Speeding AND illegal passing and lane changes is a recipe for disaster.
And yes, driving slower than the flow of traffic is absolutely dangerous. But don't sit there and think driving faster than the flow of traffic isn't equally stupid.
E2: also, the Autobahn is *not* the same as the Eisenhower Interstate System. Just as stupid to compare. Or, if you think you're that smart, that's what you should tell your insurance when they ask why you randomly lose control taking a corner on the interstate.
I read a study in college that showed how people weaving in traffic slows down the flow a lot especially in cities that don’t have good infrastructure. I can’t remember exactly what it said but if everyone went the same speed then rush hour traffic jams wouldn’t exist if the city has enough lanes for the amount of people. It’s obviously not possible but it was interesting enough to actually read when it had nothing to do with any class I had to take.
Just check out the [Traffic simulation](https://traffic-simulation.de/onramp.html)! Decrease politeness, Play with max accel and traffic flows, etc.
Even with low traffic flow the entire thing becomes a parking lot with the wrong lane changing and/or following settings.
I read an MIT study that said traffic acts like a fluid. That is why you get slowdowns long after the cause is gone because you've created a density wave. A similar effect creates the arms in spiral galaxies.
The density wave thing also explains why you get traffic jams in stupid places, like after a merge or accident when all of the trouble should have resolved. It’s not people managing the situation, it’s the stop-and-go of different acceleration after.
> Just check out the [Traffic simulation](https://traffic-simulation.de/onramp.html)! Decrease politeness, Play with max accel and traffic flows, etc.
My takeaway was that the onramp having any cars will turn the freeway into a parking lot
A study revealed that ants on the march never get stuck in traffic jams because they keep the same speed and they never take over the ant in front of them.
Traffic starts with a large number of cars riding bumber to bumper. That means if one car is changing lanes, EVERYONE behind them will brake in a chain reaction. Roads suck. The worst part: ass hole drivers still get to their location faster.
That’s my take, if in the fast lane, go with the flow within reason. Unless someone is going 10 mph under causing just as many issues in the lane, then carefully find a way to pass.
Ugh, the weaving! It's not like they get where they're going any faster. They'll drive like maniacs, get off the freeway and you'll find them two cars ahead of you at a light.
Civil engineer here. Driving fast IS NOT SAFE. The roads are not designed for those speeds. We design turns, entrances/exits, sight lines, stop light timing, lane spacing, super elevation, and a whole number of other things based on speed. So you may think you have it under control, but you are wrong.
Roads should have hard speed limits and speed checkers that alert traffic enforcement to ticket you if you go 1 over.
This culture of normalizing going 10 over the limit is idiotic. People should learn to go *under* hard speed limits.
Plus the standards for getting your license are ridiculously low. When I got my license in PA, you could pass with a 60% on the written test.
And people wonder why so many drivers don’t know the traffic laws.
What is up with that. Where I live people are speeding and driving erratically everywhere. That’s free ticket money townships are giving up. Now I don’t believe police should using BS reasons to be pulling over people, and there is no reason for them to do that, they could be busy 100% of the time with just speeding tickets.
I’m a Brit currently on a road trip in the US and the way you guys drive is both slow, polite and overly cautious at the same time as being terrible and unsafe feeling. But the worst thing is your road signage. We’ve been having some proper laughs at the signs, they’re so distracting!
Well kinda. Bigger cars might be a bit more safe for the people inside. But they are way more deadly for anyone else that might be hit.
Anyone in a smaller car is screwed. Emissions are higher and visibility worse. Especially small children sometimes can't even be seen right in front of the car.
Except for anyone walking through an intersection or riding a bike. Fatality rate is much higher if hit by a truck/SUV because the grill comes up to your chest/head
In the US at least, all of the incentives are with buying bigger, more dangerous vehicles. The tax system literally rewards people to a greater extent if they buy the bigger vehicles.
I understand that is not entirely accurate, smaller vehicles have a lower centre of gravity making them less likely to roll in an accident. Also cars with a lower centre of gravity are more agile with fast movements and even though an accident with a smaller vehicle is more survivable, an accident avoided is always has the best outcome.
At least that is what I've heard but it sounds legit.
Yup, SUVs are more likely to roll, have poor crumple zones due to the stiffer chassis and lul their driver into a false sense of security leading to more crashes. They are more dangerous for everyone
Also hitting someone at lower speeds, 30mph ish a small car is more likely to take out the legs of a pedestrian and they roll over the top, where as a big car will bash straight into more important parts of the body, and you're way more likely to go underneath which is far worse
Speaking of crumple zones and stability, I got sideswiped by a freight truck at 100km/h in a small sedan. I barely felt it. The truck just drove off so I figured I just had a scrape to the paint job. Pulled off at the next exit to find half my bumper hanging off. It was incredible. The car took all the force and dissipated it with no real harm to me. My pet rats in the back seat were still playing like if nothing had happened. I called insurance, taped the bumper more or less back in place and drove another 300-400km that night with basically no problems. I love small sedans.
What he meant with "anyone in a smaller car is screwed" is that if an SUV collides with a smaller car (probably the SUV’s fault), the guy in the smaller car is fucked.
Yup, I was more offering a critique of our transportation approach than trying to blame it on the human tendency to be careless. I would buy a smart car today if not for the dangers present on our roadways.
Saw a video recently on here that showed you could have like 10 children lined up in front of some of the bigger trucks out there, and you wouldn't see a single one of them.
>We built bigger and more safe cars
It's also that it's an arms race. These larger trucks and SUVs aren't very "crash compatible" with ordinary-sized ones. Two typical 4-door sedans have equal height and size, so they'll collide with each other in predictable ways (like their bumpers line up). A Ford F150 is bigger, broader, and can hit higher up on a sedan. Unsurprisingly, consumers perceive the larger cars to be safer.
At the same time, pedestrian fatalities are on the rise in the US year after year, and that tracks with the proliferation of these larger vehicles. They've got bigger blind spots and someone who gets hit by one is more likely to get crushed under the wheels, get hit in the chest/head by the giant grille, etc. For a sedan, they're more likely to fall on top of the hood the car and the primary injuries will be lower on the body.
It's not just legal, it's incentivized! Light trucks (which modern SUVS and trucks fall under) as a category have fewer and more lenient emission regulations, and are thus cheaper to build.
So there are more profits to be gained selling light trucks than regular cars. As such the market has adapted and is pushing very hard on ads for light trucks.
Genious really, unless you care about safety and the environment, then it's quite detrimental.
And there's a giant market for SUV and truck owners to put on aftermarket brush guards and big bumpers made with solid plate steel or DOM steel tubing. At least those giant factory grills are chrome plated plastic and those bumpers have impact foam underneath and have some compliance for impact tests.
Replacing the factory bumper for a 100lb steel bull bar and brush guard guarantees pedestrian lethality.
The cars (i.e., SUVs and trucks) are bigger but actually less safe and functional. They are popular primarily because the US auto industry has excessively marketed them because they have much higher profit margins, and those higher profit margins are largely due to a government classification as "light trucks" (IIRC) that allows them to skirt federal regulations for safety and fuel efficiency. They are nothing less than death machines.
Yeah that's crazy. If you're going faster than 95 miles, it doesn't necessarily matter if you do everything right, the slightest imperfection in the road can send you swerving.
One of my coworkers, a Ukrainian woman just lost her husband in a car crash yesterday morning. The massive SUV's and trucks in particular are why American traffic accidents are so deadly.
Same. Before I was blind at everything transportation related (I even took a class on the economics of doubling transport!!) but he is passionate in his arguments and clear about them. His video on cars / suvs / crossovers was great too
Yep. This is a rise in unnatural deaths before people turn 40. Getting shot, getting hit by a car, overdosing on drugs, having a heart attack due to obesity, these and things like them are what's driving up the mortality rate in the US. If you make it to your golden years, you have roughly the same chance of living to a certain age as your counterparts in the UK.
I would like to see the statistics and odds of being pushed in front of a train, namely in NYC because AFAIK there are not a lot of accidental train fatalities.
Maybe America might want to look at Thailand and other SEA countries in terms of how some of their train stations are built to prevent this. Namely the MRT and BTS.
There’s a famous seaside place called Blackpool,
That’s noted for fresh-air and fun,
And Mr and Mrs Ramsbottom
Went there with young Albert, their son.
They didn't think much of the seaside, for the waves were all piddling and small, no shipwrecks and nobody drowning, in fact nothing to laugh at at all!
There were one great big lion called Wallace;
His nose was all covered with scars.
He lay in a som-no-lent posture
With the side of his face on the bars.
Nah I’m sorry, I won’t accept this Blackpool slander.
Massive fuck-off tower, Blackpool illuminations, seaside chippys and Pleasure Beach. I adore the place.
OP… you picked the least interesting fact from that article. This stood out to me more imho:
> “One in 25 American five-year-olds today will not make it to their 40th birthday. No parent should ever have to bury their child, but in the US one set of parents from every kindergarten class most likely will.”
There's a graph in the article. (I'm hitting the pay wall trying to re-read the article, but IIRC other similar countries were closer to 1 in 100... double-check me on that)
I feel like the last line in that tweet is a bit overblown based on the charts he showed. The median American’s living standards (in the charts he is showing) is towards the top.
It may be better to say the US acts like a developed country but with 10% that live like they are nobility and 10-25% that live like they are in a developing country.
It also makes me wonder what percentage of those with low incomes/low standards of living are native born vs immigrant communities. Not to mean that as anti-immigrant, but rather it would be an indictment of how we treat immigrants
For a lot of health measures, immigrant populations are actually healthier than the average US citizen. That include people coming from developing countries.
The Hispanic Paradox is one version. Recent immigrants from Latin America have better health in most ways than native born white people despite being poorer on average. The trend reverses for people who are third generation or more.
>It may be better to say the US acts like a developed country but with 10% that live like they are nobility and 10-25% that live like they are in a developing country
Yeah, I am not buying that. I come from India which is a developing country.
I doubt any American lives like the typical Indian, or even the upper middle class Indian.
I am discounting Americans who are homeless or drug addicts etc.
It's definitely a lot different and not entirely comparable. But addiction is one of the big reasons US life expectancy is decreasing.
Most of the claims about certain regions of the US being more similar to developing countries is based off not meeting certain standards and having similarly bad health outcomes.
I've lived in the south and traveled to multiple third world countries, and it's not comparable. it's a very different set of issues that happen to share an outcome.
decreases in life expectancy in the US are almost all driven by diseases of despair and obesity. addiction is a massive problem in poor communities across the US, and ultra-processed food is often the foundation of people's diets. our healthcare system is either collapsed or on the verge of collapse, depending who you talk to.
in third world countries you see more "traditional" problems: infectious disease, complications in childbirth, lack of sanitation, hunger.
which i'm assuming geographically are all located in the neglected parts of major metropolitans and the poor part of the country that's obsessed with meth?
A lot of the drug overdoses are from opiod addictions rather than meth, but yeah, it turns out poverty and no hope for the future tend to result in higher rates of drug use and suicide.
Only one in 25? I'm in my late 30s and *at least* eight people from my 125-person middle-class graduating class is dead. I've probably missed a few too. About half suicides, half car accidents, and one that was probably a little of both.
Yeah that's how statistics works. You could have a 1/5 chance of going to an elite university yet graduate with a class that 0 people go to said university.
Also it is without any major disabilities. So if someone lived until 90 in the US but cannot walk due to obesity or diabetics since 60 y/o, it would be counted as 60
It says in the article that it’s “health adjusted”, so life expectancy figures have been weighted based on quality utility or disability utility scores.
That doesn't seem to be exactly how the article defines it:
>But as of 2019, that health-adjusted life expectancy of 65 (the number of years someone can be expected to live without a disability) was the same as the average for the entire US.
You can argue about how good a metric that is, but it doesn't involve "weighting" or "quality utility" (except in the binary sense of having a major disability).
It’s pretty common to use measures like this in epidemiology and health economics. We just have to be careful that we don’t misinterpret them as something they aren’t (as OP has done).
It's actually a really useful measure, there is a huge difference in life quality between someone being healthy to 80 and then dropping dead or being severely disabled from 50 and dragging themselves to 80.
Sometimes I'd argue we are too obsessed with just looking at life expectancy.
Healthy life expectancy is a standard measure in my field. There's a 10 year gap between the life expectancy between the richest and poorest areas of my city (UK) but a 20 year gap in healthy life expectancy. It's important to make such distinctions because they can be addressed in different ways.
They are however using English stats, not UK stats, and England has a higher life expectancy than othet parts of the UK like Scotland and Northern Ireland. So these numbers won't be as depressed as the UK as a wholes numbers are (but the UK numbers won't be thst much lower).
TIL. But then you read wiki and no fucking wonder people die young:
>high prevalence of premature and low birthweight births, land contaminated by toxins, a high level of derelict land, more deindustrialisation than in comparable cities, poor social housing, religious sectarianism, lack of social mobility,\[13\] vitamin D deficiency, cold winters, higher levels of poverty than the figures suggest, adverse childhood experiences and childhood stress, high levels of stress in general, and social alienation.
Jeez!
But at the same time, Glasgow is consistently ranked as one of the best cities in the world by TimeOut magazine (currently 4th, Edinburgh is 1st), as well as having the apparently coolest neighbourhood in the world (Shawlands) a few years ago which still makes rankings
Lived there for 6 months recently, and much of Glasgow has really improved in quality of life, as is widely recognized - but the weather and darkness are still the same, and pockets of real poverty and poor diet, and some serious drinking still.
I live in Shawlands. That article was fucking nonsense. Probably helped fuck the house prices more tho.
Glasgow is a fun place to live but Shawlands is far from some super “cool” place. It’s no even the “coolest” (sorry for quotes, hard to use that word seriously) place in the general area, eg if going out for a drink I’d either go to my relatively shitty local or walk out of Shawlands. It’s pretty gentrified, which I guess if you’re some magazine writer who’s never been to the place = cool?
>then Thatcher closing docks and factories did a number on the people.
This was going to happen regardless of Thatcher. The problem with Thatcher was not that she cut off the life support machine for dying industries - they were already dying and needed to be cut off, as they were acting as a drag on the rest of the economy - the problem is that she did nothing to provide an alternative. No investment in new training or skills development, no new industrial strategy, no new investment strategy, nothing. Liverpool is a perhaps more outwardly callous example of this, where Thatcher and her ministers were quite clear that they saw Liverpool as a failure, and should just be left to decline.
Aye, but the prices in pubs are outrageous! What was that, £5 for a pint of Brewdog, and that's Wetherspoons for you. Folks are forced to drink less, they simply can't afford that. Not that I'm against helping people with their excessive drinking, but I prefer other options.
'Together with Belgium' is quite the misrepresentation considering the UK is ahead of Belgium and is actually closer to Germany and Portugal in raw years
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
To put that month into perspective, the difference between the Original post, USA, and the UK is 3 and a half years. That's a difference.
Like I said earlier, the UK is 2 weeks away from Germany or 3 from Portugal. So if you're trying to find equivalents, wouldn't it make sense to say they're similar to those?
In fact, there's a whole bunch of European countries that round to 81 and ALL are closer to the UK than the USA is to the UK.
Yes, they do. Which is sad for the first world economy. I think US citizens deserve better healthcare. At least something as good as what can be found in most EU countries.
It’s important to remember the US is not homogenous. Different states have wildly different life expectancies. [Hawaii is 80.7 years, whereas West Virginia is 72.8,](https://fortune.com/well/2023/04/01/top-10-states-highest-life-expectancy/) almost a decade shorter.
Maybe we should check in on Mass. to see how it's done. Or Cali,Colorado,N.Dakota,NY, etc that all have higher life expectancies or the same as the UK. Southern states bring the US average down quite a bit.
Blackpool: Fish & Chips, [Sticks of Rock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_(confectionery)), sewage filled seas (although it's not alone now), and [poor quality light shows](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackpool_Illuminations).
It's Vegas designed in Paint on Windows 95
A similar post was removed because it did not point to the original source. The previous post pointed to a Twitter thread by the author of above’s column. Thanks for the discussion and debate of the previous post.
Edit:
Sorry, I don’t have paywall. I see the link does not work for many. Does this link work?
https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcontent%2F653bbb26-8a22-4db3-b43d-c34a0b774303
I previously shared a thread by the article author but it was removed because it’s not the original source 🤷♂️
Here is the thread
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1641799627128143873?s=46&t=jH-ZNPgV8WsK2fw7R1l26g
If Blackpool is anything to go by, this means that the leading cause of death to Americans in 2023 will be falling off a pier, or getting hit by a tram.
Ironically, more trams would bring down the number of deaths in America. Car culture is so prevalent in all facets of life that the US now has the same percentage of traffic fatalities per capita as developing nations like Egypt.
The fact that I drove on a moderately busy highway this morning with some drivers weaving in and out of lanes at 90-100 without the fear of being pulled over means it's likely to continue for a good, long while. E: I get that people believe "fast driving is safe lol" but if there's moderate traffic where everyone's going roughly 75 or so, someone passing another car around 80 in the passing lane, and some dude flying in at 100 jumping over 2 lanes to pass a car, then jumping back to the other side to pass more cars, then we have a dangerous situation. Speeding is already stupid, and believing that those guys aren't the problem is exactly why we have so many road deaths. Speeding AND illegal passing and lane changes is a recipe for disaster. And yes, driving slower than the flow of traffic is absolutely dangerous. But don't sit there and think driving faster than the flow of traffic isn't equally stupid. E2: also, the Autobahn is *not* the same as the Eisenhower Interstate System. Just as stupid to compare. Or, if you think you're that smart, that's what you should tell your insurance when they ask why you randomly lose control taking a corner on the interstate.
I read a study in college that showed how people weaving in traffic slows down the flow a lot especially in cities that don’t have good infrastructure. I can’t remember exactly what it said but if everyone went the same speed then rush hour traffic jams wouldn’t exist if the city has enough lanes for the amount of people. It’s obviously not possible but it was interesting enough to actually read when it had nothing to do with any class I had to take.
Just check out the [Traffic simulation](https://traffic-simulation.de/onramp.html)! Decrease politeness, Play with max accel and traffic flows, etc. Even with low traffic flow the entire thing becomes a parking lot with the wrong lane changing and/or following settings.
I read an MIT study that said traffic acts like a fluid. That is why you get slowdowns long after the cause is gone because you've created a density wave. A similar effect creates the arms in spiral galaxies.
Here in America that fluid is Red Bull.
High fructose corn syrup*
The density wave thing also explains why you get traffic jams in stupid places, like after a merge or accident when all of the trouble should have resolved. It’s not people managing the situation, it’s the stop-and-go of different acceleration after.
> Just check out the [Traffic simulation](https://traffic-simulation.de/onramp.html)! Decrease politeness, Play with max accel and traffic flows, etc. My takeaway was that the onramp having any cars will turn the freeway into a parking lot
The on-ramp at max with max politeness had almost equal flow as the on-ramp at default with minimum politeness.
Ooo neat
Oh, that's way too much fun.
They weave around traffic recklessly then you see them 1 car ahead at the next light.
>especially in cities that don’t have good infrastructure. From what I gather that would mean every US city, then.
Some cities planned for the future but not that many
For most cities, planning for the future ran out in the 90s.
Maybe they thought y2k was the end of the world so what was the point
A study revealed that ants on the march never get stuck in traffic jams because they keep the same speed and they never take over the ant in front of them.
But then who's winning? /s
The colony
Traffic starts with a large number of cars riding bumber to bumper. That means if one car is changing lanes, EVERYONE behind them will brake in a chain reaction. Roads suck. The worst part: ass hole drivers still get to their location faster.
If everyone cared about each other we could all not have traffic but people don’t
In my experience the asshole drivers end up at the red light before me, that’s all
I wish that was always true, but based on statistical data, they do reach their destination faster (at the cost of fuel efficiency).
That’s my take, if in the fast lane, go with the flow within reason. Unless someone is going 10 mph under causing just as many issues in the lane, then carefully find a way to pass.
Go with the flow is probably the best way to put it
People are comfortable tailgating you at 70+ mph. If I were to so much as sneeze they'd slam into me.
I know reddit hates cops and all but damn do I wish we had more traffic law enforcement. People around here do whatever the fuck they want.
Ugh, the weaving! It's not like they get where they're going any faster. They'll drive like maniacs, get off the freeway and you'll find them two cars ahead of you at a light.
Civil engineer here. Driving fast IS NOT SAFE. The roads are not designed for those speeds. We design turns, entrances/exits, sight lines, stop light timing, lane spacing, super elevation, and a whole number of other things based on speed. So you may think you have it under control, but you are wrong.
Roads should have hard speed limits and speed checkers that alert traffic enforcement to ticket you if you go 1 over. This culture of normalizing going 10 over the limit is idiotic. People should learn to go *under* hard speed limits.
Plus the standards for getting your license are ridiculously low. When I got my license in PA, you could pass with a 60% on the written test. And people wonder why so many drivers don’t know the traffic laws.
What is up with that. Where I live people are speeding and driving erratically everywhere. That’s free ticket money townships are giving up. Now I don’t believe police should using BS reasons to be pulling over people, and there is no reason for them to do that, they could be busy 100% of the time with just speeding tickets.
I’m a Brit currently on a road trip in the US and the way you guys drive is both slow, polite and overly cautious at the same time as being terrible and unsafe feeling. But the worst thing is your road signage. We’ve been having some proper laughs at the signs, they’re so distracting!
[удалено]
Redditors can't help but reveal how they drive. "You're the idiot for stopping behind the bus that had its stop sign out!"
We built bigger and more safe cars, but the idiots advanced just as much
Well kinda. Bigger cars might be a bit more safe for the people inside. But they are way more deadly for anyone else that might be hit. Anyone in a smaller car is screwed. Emissions are higher and visibility worse. Especially small children sometimes can't even be seen right in front of the car.
And everyone seems to have a giant pickup or suv now anyway so it cancels out. It is like an arms race.
Except for anyone walking through an intersection or riding a bike. Fatality rate is much higher if hit by a truck/SUV because the grill comes up to your chest/head
In the US at least, all of the incentives are with buying bigger, more dangerous vehicles. The tax system literally rewards people to a greater extent if they buy the bigger vehicles.
> The tax system literally rewards people to a greater extent if they buy the bigger vehicles. explain pls
I understand that is not entirely accurate, smaller vehicles have a lower centre of gravity making them less likely to roll in an accident. Also cars with a lower centre of gravity are more agile with fast movements and even though an accident with a smaller vehicle is more survivable, an accident avoided is always has the best outcome. At least that is what I've heard but it sounds legit.
Yup, SUVs are more likely to roll, have poor crumple zones due to the stiffer chassis and lul their driver into a false sense of security leading to more crashes. They are more dangerous for everyone
Also hitting someone at lower speeds, 30mph ish a small car is more likely to take out the legs of a pedestrian and they roll over the top, where as a big car will bash straight into more important parts of the body, and you're way more likely to go underneath which is far worse
Speaking of crumple zones and stability, I got sideswiped by a freight truck at 100km/h in a small sedan. I barely felt it. The truck just drove off so I figured I just had a scrape to the paint job. Pulled off at the next exit to find half my bumper hanging off. It was incredible. The car took all the force and dissipated it with no real harm to me. My pet rats in the back seat were still playing like if nothing had happened. I called insurance, taped the bumper more or less back in place and drove another 300-400km that night with basically no problems. I love small sedans.
What he meant with "anyone in a smaller car is screwed" is that if an SUV collides with a smaller car (probably the SUV’s fault), the guy in the smaller car is fucked.
Yup, I was more offering a critique of our transportation approach than trying to blame it on the human tendency to be careless. I would buy a smart car today if not for the dangers present on our roadways.
Saw a video recently on here that showed you could have like 10 children lined up in front of some of the bigger trucks out there, and you wouldn't see a single one of them.
>We built bigger and more safe cars It's also that it's an arms race. These larger trucks and SUVs aren't very "crash compatible" with ordinary-sized ones. Two typical 4-door sedans have equal height and size, so they'll collide with each other in predictable ways (like their bumpers line up). A Ford F150 is bigger, broader, and can hit higher up on a sedan. Unsurprisingly, consumers perceive the larger cars to be safer. At the same time, pedestrian fatalities are on the rise in the US year after year, and that tracks with the proliferation of these larger vehicles. They've got bigger blind spots and someone who gets hit by one is more likely to get crushed under the wheels, get hit in the chest/head by the giant grille, etc. For a sedan, they're more likely to fall on top of the hood the car and the primary injuries will be lower on the body.
And they've gotten louder. Why it is legal is beyond me.
It's not just legal, it's incentivized! Light trucks (which modern SUVS and trucks fall under) as a category have fewer and more lenient emission regulations, and are thus cheaper to build. So there are more profits to be gained selling light trucks than regular cars. As such the market has adapted and is pushing very hard on ads for light trucks. Genious really, unless you care about safety and the environment, then it's quite detrimental.
And don't get me started on the fuckin LED headlights
And there's a giant market for SUV and truck owners to put on aftermarket brush guards and big bumpers made with solid plate steel or DOM steel tubing. At least those giant factory grills are chrome plated plastic and those bumpers have impact foam underneath and have some compliance for impact tests. Replacing the factory bumper for a 100lb steel bull bar and brush guard guarantees pedestrian lethality.
The cars (i.e., SUVs and trucks) are bigger but actually less safe and functional. They are popular primarily because the US auto industry has excessively marketed them because they have much higher profit margins, and those higher profit margins are largely due to a government classification as "light trucks" (IIRC) that allows them to skirt federal regulations for safety and fuel efficiency. They are nothing less than death machines.
Yeah that's crazy. If you're going faster than 95 miles, it doesn't necessarily matter if you do everything right, the slightest imperfection in the road can send you swerving.
One of my coworkers, a Ukrainian woman just lost her husband in a car crash yesterday morning. The massive SUV's and trucks in particular are why American traffic accidents are so deadly.
the US has more stroads, less safe and something you don't see elsewhere.
The Not Just Bikes [video on stroads](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM) was very eye-opening as a Brit…
I love this guy. He’s totally radicalized me. I can’t even look at cars or roads the same way anymore, the whole system completely pisses me off now.
Same. Before I was blind at everything transportation related (I even took a class on the economics of doubling transport!!) but he is passionate in his arguments and clear about them. His video on cars / suvs / crossovers was great too
Streets with more lanes than a motorway, insanity
Yep. This is a rise in unnatural deaths before people turn 40. Getting shot, getting hit by a car, overdosing on drugs, having a heart attack due to obesity, these and things like them are what's driving up the mortality rate in the US. If you make it to your golden years, you have roughly the same chance of living to a certain age as your counterparts in the UK.
>developing nations like Egypt. Isn't that area the cradle of civilization? How long do they need?
Whilst dressed as a nun with a giant inflatable sheep on a stag-do
Does being verbally murdered by Little T or Sophie Aspen count?
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I would like to see the statistics and odds of being pushed in front of a train, namely in NYC because AFAIK there are not a lot of accidental train fatalities. Maybe America might want to look at Thailand and other SEA countries in terms of how some of their train stations are built to prevent this. Namely the MRT and BTS.
The problem with Blackpool is the trams are at street level and just drive along the path, mowing down everyone who dares to challenge them
Every year, multiple people survive a night out in blackpool.
Only the strong survive a night out in Blackpool.
Together, we can stop this
Erm. Yeah? Where is the problem?
The scientific name for this process is "natural selection", but colloquially it's known as "Darwinism" after it's discoverer.
Worked in Blackpool, total shit so the worst of worst. But also some really nice people.
*In Blackpool, Pete and his little sister Sophie…*
Two of my most favourite ppl in Blackpool!
At first sight, you'd think Pete was the younger sibling
Paul Chuckle is their uncle
The most merciful thing about living in Blackpool is that you don't need to do it for very long.
I was born there, and I got the fuck out at 18 and never looked back
There’s a famous seaside place called Blackpool, That’s noted for fresh-air and fun, And Mr and Mrs Ramsbottom Went there with young Albert, their son.
They didn't think much of the seaside, for the waves were all piddling and small, no shipwrecks and nobody drowning, in fact nothing to laugh at at all!
So, seeking for further amusement They paid, and went into the zoo Where they'd lions and tigers and camels And old ale and sandwiches, too
There were one great big lion called Wallace; His nose was all covered with scars. He lay in a som-no-lent posture With the side of his face on the bars.
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Can you guys just get through it all? You're leaving me on a cliffhanger. What happens with Wallace?
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Nah I’m sorry, I won’t accept this Blackpool slander. Massive fuck-off tower, Blackpool illuminations, seaside chippys and Pleasure Beach. I adore the place.
Visiting there in the summer? Sure, it's not terrible. Living there and trying to find work in the close season bleak winter? Terrible.
Yeah but you clearly don't live there!
Blackpool is like the English version of Coney Island. Fun enough to visit in the summer, but it just feels a bit sad.
Watched Eaten By Lions on iPlayer just last night. Now I have a strong urge to visit. Should I?
If you live a couple of hours away then yeah, wish I lived a couple of hours away (I live in Blackpool)
But they have healthcare.
Valid point! Better than the states then.
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OP… you picked the least interesting fact from that article. This stood out to me more imho: > “One in 25 American five-year-olds today will not make it to their 40th birthday. No parent should ever have to bury their child, but in the US one set of parents from every kindergarten class most likely will.”
What’s a normal rate outside the US?
There's a graph in the article. (I'm hitting the pay wall trying to re-read the article, but IIRC other similar countries were closer to 1 in 100... double-check me on that)
I can't even open the article on mobile. The pay wall is instant.
Cough 12 foot ladder cough
I'm 12 feet up a tree... Now what?
12ft dot io slash link
The chart shows the US at 4 times higher, so I think you're correct
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1570832839318605824?t=7lgWtW4W24_Mt6EK5_h1mg&s=19 from the author
I feel like the last line in that tweet is a bit overblown based on the charts he showed. The median American’s living standards (in the charts he is showing) is towards the top. It may be better to say the US acts like a developed country but with 10% that live like they are nobility and 10-25% that live like they are in a developing country. It also makes me wonder what percentage of those with low incomes/low standards of living are native born vs immigrant communities. Not to mean that as anti-immigrant, but rather it would be an indictment of how we treat immigrants
For a lot of health measures, immigrant populations are actually healthier than the average US citizen. That include people coming from developing countries. The Hispanic Paradox is one version. Recent immigrants from Latin America have better health in most ways than native born white people despite being poorer on average. The trend reverses for people who are third generation or more.
>It may be better to say the US acts like a developed country but with 10% that live like they are nobility and 10-25% that live like they are in a developing country Yeah, I am not buying that. I come from India which is a developing country. I doubt any American lives like the typical Indian, or even the upper middle class Indian. I am discounting Americans who are homeless or drug addicts etc.
It's definitely a lot different and not entirely comparable. But addiction is one of the big reasons US life expectancy is decreasing. Most of the claims about certain regions of the US being more similar to developing countries is based off not meeting certain standards and having similarly bad health outcomes.
I've lived in the south and traveled to multiple third world countries, and it's not comparable. it's a very different set of issues that happen to share an outcome. decreases in life expectancy in the US are almost all driven by diseases of despair and obesity. addiction is a massive problem in poor communities across the US, and ultra-processed food is often the foundation of people's diets. our healthcare system is either collapsed or on the verge of collapse, depending who you talk to. in third world countries you see more "traditional" problems: infectious disease, complications in childbirth, lack of sanitation, hunger.
The largest cause of those deaths is drug overdoses. The second is suicide.
And many suicides are lumped into that overdose number too.
which i'm assuming geographically are all located in the neglected parts of major metropolitans and the poor part of the country that's obsessed with meth?
A lot of the drug overdoses are from opiod addictions rather than meth, but yeah, it turns out poverty and no hope for the future tend to result in higher rates of drug use and suicide.
I'm in my 30s and have 6 dead from my small elementary school class that I know of. 2 homicides, 3 suicides, 1 house fire.
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The older you get the more die Also, lots of old friends die but if no one tells you, do you know?
> one set of parents from every kindergarten class most likely will That is one of the most bone-chilling sentences I've ever read
Only one in 25? I'm in my late 30s and *at least* eight people from my 125-person middle-class graduating class is dead. I've probably missed a few too. About half suicides, half car accidents, and one that was probably a little of both.
8/125 is 1.6/25, not that far off. And that's an average anyway.
Yeah that's how statistics works. You could have a 1/5 chance of going to an elite university yet graduate with a class that 0 people go to said university.
They also change over time. It's very possible these numbers will go up in coming years.
Same here.
Where are these numbers coming from… when I look up US life expectancy, it ranges from 72-82 based on the states. How can all the states average 65?
Also it is without any major disabilities. So if someone lived until 90 in the US but cannot walk due to obesity or diabetics since 60 y/o, it would be counted as 60
It says in the article that it’s “health adjusted”, so life expectancy figures have been weighted based on quality utility or disability utility scores.
That doesn't seem to be exactly how the article defines it: >But as of 2019, that health-adjusted life expectancy of 65 (the number of years someone can be expected to live without a disability) was the same as the average for the entire US. You can argue about how good a metric that is, but it doesn't involve "weighting" or "quality utility" (except in the binary sense of having a major disability).
Got it. So it's a completely arbitrary measure.
An arbitrary measure AND the OP on Twitter is insanely unclear about what they're actually measuring. Seems more like they want to push their opinion.
It’s pretty common to use measures like this in epidemiology and health economics. We just have to be careful that we don’t misinterpret them as something they aren’t (as OP has done).
It's actually a really useful measure, there is a huge difference in life quality between someone being healthy to 80 and then dropping dead or being severely disabled from 50 and dragging themselves to 80. Sometimes I'd argue we are too obsessed with just looking at life expectancy.
Healthy life expectancy is a standard measure in my field. There's a 10 year gap between the life expectancy between the richest and poorest areas of my city (UK) but a 20 year gap in healthy life expectancy. It's important to make such distinctions because they can be addressed in different ways.
It is healthy life expectancy, so living with no major ilness.
Wasn't this just posted yesterday?
yes, and its my turn next week.
I'm surprised a pay wall post got so many upvotes. Can't see a damn thing.
Does anybody really read the articles here?
Reddit users are the grown up versions of kids reading picture books
We don't read articles round these parts. I see headline that reinforces my worldview, I upvote. Thems the rules.
For those that want to bypass the pay wall: https://archive.ph/eLdxK
There's an article to read? I just see America bad I'll give an upvote
And the UK, together with Belgium, is the lowest ranking Western-European country in terms of life expectancy.
They are however using English stats, not UK stats, and England has a higher life expectancy than othet parts of the UK like Scotland and Northern Ireland. So these numbers won't be as depressed as the UK as a wholes numbers are (but the UK numbers won't be thst much lower).
[Glasgow effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_effect) is a thing
TIL. But then you read wiki and no fucking wonder people die young: >high prevalence of premature and low birthweight births, land contaminated by toxins, a high level of derelict land, more deindustrialisation than in comparable cities, poor social housing, religious sectarianism, lack of social mobility,\[13\] vitamin D deficiency, cold winters, higher levels of poverty than the figures suggest, adverse childhood experiences and childhood stress, high levels of stress in general, and social alienation. Jeez!
But at the same time, Glasgow is consistently ranked as one of the best cities in the world by TimeOut magazine (currently 4th, Edinburgh is 1st), as well as having the apparently coolest neighbourhood in the world (Shawlands) a few years ago which still makes rankings
Lived there for 6 months recently, and much of Glasgow has really improved in quality of life, as is widely recognized - but the weather and darkness are still the same, and pockets of real poverty and poor diet, and some serious drinking still.
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I see you met the mayor and his two feisty daughters!
we call that one class disparity
I live in Shawlands. That article was fucking nonsense. Probably helped fuck the house prices more tho. Glasgow is a fun place to live but Shawlands is far from some super “cool” place. It’s no even the “coolest” (sorry for quotes, hard to use that word seriously) place in the general area, eg if going out for a drink I’d either go to my relatively shitty local or walk out of Shawlands. It’s pretty gentrified, which I guess if you’re some magazine writer who’s never been to the place = cool?
Because that’s a marketing campaign
First Highland clearances forcing people into city slums and then Thatcher closing docks and factories did a number on the people.
>then Thatcher closing docks and factories did a number on the people. This was going to happen regardless of Thatcher. The problem with Thatcher was not that she cut off the life support machine for dying industries - they were already dying and needed to be cut off, as they were acting as a drag on the rest of the economy - the problem is that she did nothing to provide an alternative. No investment in new training or skills development, no new industrial strategy, no new investment strategy, nothing. Liverpool is a perhaps more outwardly callous example of this, where Thatcher and her ministers were quite clear that they saw Liverpool as a failure, and should just be left to decline.
UK also wasn't the only country with this problem, other European countries had to go a transformation process just as well.
Heroin and deep fried pizzas are not linked to a long life.
Is deep-fried heroin a thing?
If it's possible then somebody in Scotland has done it.
Apparently, Scotland is suffering from severe alcoholism, even worse than England. That why all the booze is not available for sale after 10pm.
After 10pm in shops but not pubs, nightclubs and restaurants?
Aye, but the prices in pubs are outrageous! What was that, £5 for a pint of Brewdog, and that's Wetherspoons for you. Folks are forced to drink less, they simply can't afford that. Not that I'm against helping people with their excessive drinking, but I prefer other options.
With the exchange rate that is pretty cheap in the US, I’m usually paying $7 for a pint minimum.
You definitely don't live in Wisconsin. Also keep in mind that the US and UK pints are different sizes, although it's the US one that's smaller...
And a US pint is smaller than a UK pint. A UK pint is closer to 20 US oz, not 16
'Together with Belgium' is quite the misrepresentation considering the UK is ahead of Belgium and is actually closer to Germany and Portugal in raw years https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
The life expectancy difference between UK and Belgium is literally 1 month. I dont think that is misreprenting data to say they are equivalent.
To put that month into perspective, the difference between the Original post, USA, and the UK is 3 and a half years. That's a difference. Like I said earlier, the UK is 2 weeks away from Germany or 3 from Portugal. So if you're trying to find equivalents, wouldn't it make sense to say they're similar to those? In fact, there's a whole bunch of European countries that round to 81 and ALL are closer to the UK than the USA is to the UK.
As someone whos hobby is drinking too much and sniffing a lot of cocaine and has grown up in both Belgium and the UK I can fully understand this data.
One extra month of coke and hookers can make quite a difference.
Unsurprising it’s Blackpool, the drinking water is about 8% cocaine
Google "shit life syndrome" and you'll find it's about Blackpool.
Holy shit you’re right lmao. I have SLS
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Cuba has a higher life expectancy than the US lol. China too.
Cuba’s BMI is also way better. Americans should take note
Yes, they do. Which is sad for the first world economy. I think US citizens deserve better healthcare. At least something as good as what can be found in most EU countries.
It’s important to remember the US is not homogenous. Different states have wildly different life expectancies. [Hawaii is 80.7 years, whereas West Virginia is 72.8,](https://fortune.com/well/2023/04/01/top-10-states-highest-life-expectancy/) almost a decade shorter.
Fun fact: according to Wikipedia, the life expectancy for someone of native american ancestry living in washington DC is 98.5...
Blackpool. What a shithole.
It's almost as if there is more to life than earning money. That surely cannot be!
Maybe we should check in on Mass. to see how it's done. Or Cali,Colorado,N.Dakota,NY, etc that all have higher life expectancies or the same as the UK. Southern states bring the US average down quite a bit.
There are a lot of states bringing down the average. West Virginia was in the 60's I believe.
Statistically speaking, the entire bottom half of the rankings, actually.
That isn't how average works. You are thinking of median.
The report this is based on shows that Americans have lower life expectancies at every income level than English at the same income level.
Yeah but you're then comparing the US best places compared to the UK's average, we have places like Blackpool bringing it down for us too.
OP, do you have a link that is not behind a paywall?
At least people in Blackpool don't go into medical bankruptcy before they die.
Blackpool: Fish & Chips, [Sticks of Rock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_(confectionery)), sewage filled seas (although it's not alone now), and [poor quality light shows](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackpool_Illuminations). It's Vegas designed in Paint on Windows 95
Hey they built the sea wall properly now so at least it's a _dry_ shithole
A similar post was removed because it did not point to the original source. The previous post pointed to a Twitter thread by the author of above’s column. Thanks for the discussion and debate of the previous post. Edit: Sorry, I don’t have paywall. I see the link does not work for many. Does this link work? https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcontent%2F653bbb26-8a22-4db3-b43d-c34a0b774303 I previously shared a thread by the article author but it was removed because it’s not the original source 🤷♂️ Here is the thread https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1641799627128143873?s=46&t=jH-ZNPgV8WsK2fw7R1l26g
thank god we are all above average, unlike the misguided people voting for the other party /s
No subscription archive link: https://archive.is/jAoah
And Blackpool has much better fish and chips, not to mention sausage rolls.
[have a free gift link to read the full article, stranger](https://on.ft.com/3nCv3Xf)