h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

fair enough, but that's not the way i see it at all...

"Most live within walking (stumbling) distance of at least one pub, so no need to drive, right?"
maybe, but not everyone...most people would prefer to drive anyway, whether they've been drinking or not...the driving age is only about a year different in the uk

"Since you have a usable public transit system in the UK"
*chokes* a rather expensive one that doesn't go where you want when you want, yes...
ok, it's probly better than in the USA, and it's probly better in towns than where i live, but that's certainly not my experience

"there's no real *need* to drive until you're much older, and therefore driving is more often delayed until after *most* people have begun using more judgement in their drinking habits."
most people learn to drive here at about 17 or 18, when they're still in school, or just out, and therefore have the time for lessons...and i would say that a lot (big generalisation) of 17 or 18 year olds haven't even thought about using more judgment

and also, if drink-driving accidents occur less often, in my opinion that would make you hear about them more often, because they're more unusual...

maybe not...i'm not trying to say it's worse here than there, or vice versa, just that it's hard to say because we each only have one side of the story...

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True. Neither of us has any real perspective on the situations in the other person's country.

When I say that we have a bad public transportation system, please be assured that *only* major cities here have one that's at all workable. To put this in perspective, we live maybe 4 miles from our city limits, and yes there is a bus which goes within maybe 1/2 mile of the house... but good luck trying to get anywhere on that bus. It's not like we're out in the boonies, there's shopping areas, business areas and developments along that entire stretch of road between home and the city (no sidewalks, though, and it's a heavily traveled road, so I strongly reccomend *not* attempting to walk it)

Sorry, I don't like working on this laptop.... hit post by accident.

Anyhow....

You really can't get anywhere useful at all on our busses. At least not without a *lot* of waiting around and riding it all over the place. For instance, there's only one bus route that goes to the mall, but it comes from downtown, which means that you have to go downtown to catch that bus... but that bus stop just happens to be a several block walk from any other bus stop from any other route. I really think our bus system has been designed to make it inconvenient to use.


I should have mentioned that I feel certain we *do* have a lot more drunk driving accidents than you could possibly have in the UK - more drivers on the roads, more roads to have accidents on, etc. Also, I don't know what the drunk driving blood alcohol content might be there - it changes from state to state here, but is extremely low in some cases - so any accident that shows even a very low BAC could be attributed to alcohol.


Interesting that you say most people in the UK still learn to drive at 17 or 18 - everything I'd ever heard led me to believe they didn't bother until they were in their mid-20's, but that may be something unique to your area, I suppose.

And considering that some of the sites I've seen with information about the unis over there seem to have maps to all the local pubs, it sure seemed like they must have been so numerous that unless you lived out in the sticks, they'd be very handily accessible without any driving necessary.

i'd be interested to know what the average age of learning to drive actually is in britain...i know that a lot of people *don't* learn when they're 17 or 18 but i thought the majority did..a lot of my friends can drive already, or they're learning...one of my brothers learned when he was 17, but the other one, who's now 21, still hasn't learned...so yeah, i don't actually have a clue
and i do live in the middle of nowhere, so i guess the situation would be different in more populated areas...the nearest bus stop to here is a mile away, and the buses come just at the wrong times
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My experience of the age that people in the UK learn to drive is a direct function of the ease of mobility by other means.

At age 16 I left West Somerset and moved to a new town north of London, which had great transport links and all sorts. Of my friends left behind in Somerset around three quarters started learning to drive as soon as they were 17. Yet of my new friends in Stevenage, bearly a quarter follow suit.

I don't know if the intervening years will have made any difference to those percentages. Cars and fuel is now cheaper than it used to be, but insurance is much more expensive, and the test is a lot harder.

it probably does have a lot to do with location then...
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In the largest cities in the US, where there are good public transportation systems, and particularly in NY city where the traffic and parking situations are so horrendous, not too many people ever bother learning to drive, and those who already drive don't try to do it in that city. Our next door neighbors (here) have a business office in NY City and they just take the train into the city and either walk or take cabs while there. Trying to drive or park in that city is nothing short of a frustrating nightmare, from everything I've heard.

Most people near me learn to drive early because we live in a village. And our public transport is terrible. At one point you couldn't get between two villages of a 5k+ population, three miles away from each other without a car, because there was no bus or safe route to walk on

Sounds like the US...

what a boring conversation

Only to you. And only because you're not the center of attention.














Now... What were we discussing?

"There is an inverse relationship between drinking age and drink-driving accidentns. You hear about them all the time here...on continental Europe, where there hardly is a drinking age, you don't really hear about them...coincidence? think not."

Actually, if you look at the actual statistics rather than making assumptions, quite the inverse is true. You're neglecting to control for confounding factors. If you look within a given country, DUI fatalities have uniformly dropped in areas/regions/states where the drinking ages have been raised -- this has been documented not only in trends over time but also cross-sectionally across geographic areas. It's been proven repeatedly and across quite a few countries that as the drinking age rises, DUI fatalities drop in both adolescents and adult, and adolescent drinking rates in general drop.

The problem as I see it is that people who are irresponsible enough to break drinking laws aren't (as a whole) going to be so bothered about driving drunk either

But that's just my personal opinion.

And a very valid opinion it is too.

It really does all come down to maturity. The immature will try to break the rules, no matter what they are.

i break the drinking laws, but i wouldn't break the drink-driving laws..and i wouldn't say i break the drinking laws irresponsibly either...i've never got really drunk, only really tipsy, and i don't drink alcohol *that* often...
but that probly doesn't go for a lot of people
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Maybe your mum is getting you ready for the cut throat world of high finance or something. Be their friend, learn how they work, destroy them.

who?
what?
where why when?
scuse me, it's late, i should probly to bed. go.
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