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Road safety tips from Sweden

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Re: Road safety tips from Sweden

#51

Post by ptaipale »

ed_balls wrote: post #31
sjwright wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get why anyone would want that. At no time in the two decades I've been driving a car, I've never, ever, ever thought to myself "This seatbelt is annoying, I wish I didn't have to use it." I don't even recall ever thinking that as a child passenger.

There are 2 reasons - Health issues - trouble breathing. - getting stuck in the car that's on fire, drowning etc. (yes I know you are better of with the seatbelt)

Some people have a phobia with the belt, and might even be legally have an exception.

Someone I know has a brother who was in an accident, was wearing seat belt, was stuck in the car as he couldn't release the belt, and was burned somewhat. He simply couldn't buckle up after that and eventually got some kind of exemption for medical reasons.

Re: Road safety tips from Sweden

#52

Post by ed_balls »

briandear wrote: post #35
ed_balls wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 2 reasons - Health issues - trouble breathing. - getting stuck in the car that's on fire, drowning etc. (yes I know you are better of with the seatbelt)

Trouble breathing? You’re probably wearing the seatbelt wrong. It goes across the chest, not around one’s neck. If one is that delicate that the light touch of a chest belt causes difficulty breathing, then one might ought to drive oneself to a hospital post haste.

I know a person that has papers from the doctor to show it to the police. He's morbidly obese and has a medical condition, which causes trouble breathing.

Re: Road safety tips from Sweden

#53

Post by kalleboo »

briandear wrote: post #37
sdhgaiojfsa wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of ways to slice the data, and each of them tells a different part of the story. Suppose two countries have the exact same number of fatalities per km, and the same population, but one country drives twice as much. It is still a relevant fact that the country that drives twice as much has twice as many deaths. Policies that discourage driving will help reduce death rates in that country.

Assuming death rates from driving are the only death rates affected. There are unintended consequences worth studying.

It certainly can get very complex. Diesel emissions vs electric cars. Emissions in a city where everyone is inhaling the pollution vs in the countryside where it disperses quickly...

Re: Road safety tips from Sweden

#54

Post by Numberwang »

jlarsson89 wrote: post #45
Numberwang wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have numbers on these people causing a lot more than the average of accidents? Taking away driving licenses for old people is a big thing to do, especially if there is no need for it.

I have anecdotal evidence of old people with dementia driving and not having any idea where they are or what they are doing. https://www.thelocal.se/20170809/swedish-experts-call-for-ne... claims that they do recall licenses, but evidently not as thoroughly as they should.

I'm just thinking that to my mind it is very rare to hear about old people causing accidents (injuring someone else.)

Alcoholics on the other hand cause a massive amount of accidents.

Re: Road safety tips from Sweden

#55

Post by abelsson »

jakeogh wrote: post #49
abelsson wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having spent quite a bit of time in the US, I've noticed that getting somewhere there takes about the same amount time as home (which happens to be Sweden, hence me clicking the link). As an anecdotal example, some common times for me were about as follows: Going to work, 15 minutes. Grocery store, 5 minutes. Larger shopping mall, 30 minutes. The difference is that in the US that time is spent driving, while home it'…

I can get anywhere in my local city in the time it takes me to jump in my car and drive there. Comparing that with walking to a bus stop and waiting for it to get near my destination is not even remotely close, _and I wouldn't want to even if it was faster_. Talking about speed (while important) ignores the ability to instantly change your plan. Your experience might work in a closely spaced situation (hence your odd…

Walking/Biking also allows me to instantly change my plans, even more so than driving does (try turning around instantly in a car). What do you mean "low large countries work"? The absolute size of a country is irrelevant (what New Yorker cares what malls there are in Kentucky?), what matters is population/service density. The US has a 50% larger population density than Sweden, so it should be able to support at least as dense cities and services. The difference not economic or technical, but cultural.

Re: Road safety tips from Sweden

#56

Post by alkonaut »

lebski88 wrote: post #40
alkonaut wrote: post #11

Pushing a big 3.5yo into a rear facing seat is hard, even in Sweden, and I doubt it's very common to keep kids rear facing up to 4 here. We do listen to authorities but it's nearly physically impossible after they reach a certain length. I believe most start using front facing seats some time between ages 3 and 4 depending on size. One problem with rear facing seats and large children is that it requires a LOT of spa…

> (France, Italy, Britain) probably don't use rear facing seats as much In the UK rear facing is a legal requirement up to 15 months - I think that's being extended to older kids soon. We used rear facing until about 3.5 for our eldest. At that point we got her a new forward facing one and gave that one to our youngest. Two child seats basically means no one can fit in the middle unless you have an extra wide car. So…

> Two child seats basically means no one can fit in the middle unless you have an extra wide car

The middle I never even worried about, the problem I find is that they take so much space in the front/back direction of the car. I.e. if you put a rear facing seat in the front passenger seat, no adult can sit behind it, and if you put a rear facing seat behind the front passenger seat, then no adult can sit in the front passenger seat.

So for the first child, a compact was no problem. The read-facing seat takes the non-driver side of the car - front or back doesn't matter). One parent drives and the other sits behind the driver.

With TWO rear facing seats however, we found that not even a medium size car (A4, 9-3, C-class, 3-series...) would fit them in a way that also fits two adults - at least not in a way that works for long trips.

Re: Road safety tips from Sweden

#57

Post by riffic »

Numberwang wrote: post #54
jlarsson89 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have anecdotal evidence of old people with dementia driving and not having any idea where they are or what they are doing. https://www.thelocal.se/20170809/swedish-experts-call-for-ne... claims that they do recall licenses, but evidently not as thoroughly as they should.

I'm just thinking that to my mind it is very rare to hear about old people causing accidents (injuring someone else.) Alcoholics on the other hand cause a massive amount of accidents.

> accidents

Engaging in criminal behavior would be negligence, not accidental.

http://justicespeakersinstitute.com/traffic-crashes-theyre-n...

Re: Road safety tips from Sweden

#58

Post by athenot »

distances wrote: post #19
icc97 wrote: post #5

90% of the article is about forward/backward facing child seats. But also the article spells out the the paper it was based on falsely claimed there was a significant difference between them and was retracted, restudied and agreed to not be statistically significant. Then it goes on to say, that Sweden does use rear-facing seats as though that somehow proves that there is a statistical significance. Seems like the ar…

> Because accidents are inevitable, Swedish regulations aim to make them nonlethal. I sometimes wonder how it would be possible to just adopt new laws and regulations wholesale from countries that have aimed to do a thing well, and succeeded. I know countries take ideas from each other, but it always seems to be small things and adapted with local modifications. Laws are obviously not for "move fast and break things"…

Yes. But laws must fit within a given culture. Different cultures have different risk appreciation.

Re: Road safety tips from Sweden

#59

Post by toomanybeersies »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #27
TomK32 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Greece you can buy little metal plugs for your sealtbelt socket so you don't have to use the seatbelt and don't get the error beeps from the car. I'm sure it does contribute to the fatality rate.

These are common in China, too. What does Greece has that I've never seen in China? T-shirts that have a seat-belt design printed on them, to fool police officers from afar.

The dedication that some people put into breaking simple laws like wearing a seat belt astounds me.

It seems to me like it would be easier to put up with a little bit of discomfort (not that seat belts are uncomfortable) than it would be to get a special plug for your seat belt socket, and wear a T-shirt that looks like a seat belt. That's a lot of effort to be petty.

Re: Road safety tips from Sweden

#60

Post by JetSetWilly »

foreigner wrote: post #10
lemming wrote: post #6

Our 4 year old daughter uses a Swedish rear-facing car seat, and she seems fine with it. I'm sure she would prefer a front facing one because she'd be able to see more, but since she was 3 she's been able to see pretty well. It's definitely not uncomfortably small for her. A woman asked a friend of ours "how do you get your kid to eat brown bread?" and our friend replied "she doesn't know there's any other kind". I t…

My kids are a little older, but I've used the same strategy with bicycle helmets. There's never any argument about using them, because they've simply never been in a bicycle without a helmet, not seen me ride without one.

It is a bit worrying, there's no real evidence that rear facing seats improve outcomes for children, and similarly there's no real evidence that bicycle helmets improve outcomes for people in bicycle accidents.

But somehow, the "safety industry" has leapt on these things and now everybody has a ludicrously fearful attitude to cycling and you get looked at funny (or even harassed by strangers) if you dare to let your kid ride about without body armour on.

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