DRIVING FATALITIES AS AN INDEX OF TRUST (more on notoriously bad russian and ukr

DRIVING FATALITIES AS AN INDEX OF TRUST

(more on notoriously bad russian and ukrainian drivers)

British drivers, after swedish drivers, are some of the best drivers in the world. Because they follow the rules. And rules and costs keep people off the road.

American’s are not such good drivers. They are about average. America is big (like russia) and cars are a necessity, and rules and costs encourage people to be the road. Russian size, rules and cost likewise encourage people to be on the road.

However, data is data is data. Russians and Ukrainians are disproportionately bad drivers.

Russians (and ukrainians) do not adhere to ‘unnecessary rules’. Something which other authors have called ‘rules of low probability’. This is common the further east you go.

My suspicion is that it is a trust measure. High trust societies are more aware of, cooperative with, forgiving of, and tolerant of minor errors on the part of their fellows.

Reasons For Russian Driving Statistics

(a) excessive cultural machismo (which I personally love)

(b) lower observance of (probabilistic) rules,

(c) lower attention to the road – phones etc

(d) lots and lots of alcohol use

(e) Poorer quality roads, signage, and design.

(f) lower quality vehicles (less forgiving vehicles)

In the muslim countries we have less observance of rules, higher speeds and machismo, and … very low IQ’s.

Native American indians are interestingly terrible drivers, at nearly three times the black/white/hispanic fatalities. Theory is that this is alcohol driven. No way to know. Good spatial perception, but low IQ. But, gIven the disparities in IQ between whites, blacks and hispanics, and the high availability, and high use of vehicles, it’s pretty clear that driving is not an IQ problem. It appears that higher IQ countries are able to develop high trust more easily.

The question is why is eastern (byzantine) europe (and russia) a low trust culture – lower than southern europe, and nearly as low trust as in islamic countries, if not as low trust as tribal countries in Africa.

BAD DRIVING IS A LOW-TRUST PROBLEM

That’s pretty interesting. We can measure social trust by driving fatalities, rather than surveys. But interestingly enough, surveys correlate driving fatalities (mostly).

What I find most interesting here, is that while they disregard the rules and assume all other drivers are likely idiots or drunkards, they are as easily helpful to people in duress as americans.

I like people here better. Period. in my view, they pay more attention to each other than to rules. Americans (And most western europeans) signal with their adherence to rules.