Norway has one of the lowest crash death rates in the world, with fatalities dropping ~50% in the last decade. I asked a senior Norwegian transportation official what role car technology has played enhancing safety.
“None,” she replied. “We focus on road design and enforcement."
@davidzipper Berlin/Germany is betting on equipping maybe a part of the new fleet of lorries with pie-in-the-sky technology to prevent traffic deaths. 🤦♂️
The claim here is that Norway's traffic safety efforts or no focus on the features of the car itself - any improvements in that front are the result of something other than Norway's policy efforts.
That Norway has gotten good results focusing on the street and ignoring the car while e.g. the US has gotten progressively worse focusing on the car & ignoring the street is instructive.
@kentindell@davidzipper they could, through EU bodies, put effort into the standards that govern a large enough market that manufacturers would absolutely listen. Solely domestically they could make mandatory since features that are available, and it would just narrow which models manufacturers put on the Norwegian market.
They apparently choose not to bother with either of those things, and get very good results with what they devote their efforts to instead.
@kentindell@dragonfrog@davidzipper nobody argue they make no difference. With the same standards other nations don't see 50% drop in fatalities (as an example, in France it's ~25%). So Norway has better performance and it's not because of car technology.
@kentindell@davidzipper Car safety has had an effect, I'm sure, but in the decades before the last. Road fatalities in Norway are down 80% in the last 5 decades. To use simple numbers, today is it about a 100 deaths per year, 10 years ago it was 200. In the 90s when I got my license, it was well over 300. The compression zones introduced in cars around the turn of the millennia was a game changer.
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