Agreed. I had an Iranian colleague also reach out who was ecstatic about this news. The hacker in me is curious to see how it all unfolds, as well as to see all the curious discussion that arises on this forum.
It's especially funny because HN commenters are some of the most likely people to make wild, sweeping claims then once they don't come true, turn back around and say "well no one was actually saying that anyway."
Or I just realized that if they are a 22 year old college graduate, they were in elementary school when the 2012-2014 3-D printing hype cycle was at its peak.
Yet per capita, US vehicle occupants are more likely to be injured in general while on the road than Europeans. Perhaps the driving standards are just far too different.
Because US roads traffic control systems suck ALSO licenses are much easier to get, there is more of a tacit tolerance of drunk driving, and the lower rate of public transport makes more people forced to drive despite preferring not to, leading to less of a selective effect of drivers.
We've consequentially paved over the issues (no pun intended) via creating a socioeconomic hierarchy of insulation from traffic injuries. Giant SUV's have become the mainstay of the upwardly mobile 30s suburbanite, who is immunized from the road hazards, collisions and dangers that would cripple sedans.
Two people crashing in big SUVs/trucks aren't really safer than two people crashing in smaller cars. As for the difference, my guess is the driving standards.
I'm not sure it is so simple. Some states have death rates in line with western/northern Europe (eg massachusetts has 4 deaths per billion km, similar to Germany), but road design and cars driven in massachusetts are highly similar to states with a larger death rate(south carolina, looking at you).
As an American who has lived in Japan and traveled around Asia, Europe, and South America, Japan's attention to detail is almost superhuman. From how bathroom lines are managed, packages are wrapped, garden moss is curated, dishes are plated, everything is almost perfect. It's like the level of service in Michelin restaurants, applied down to the lowliest of jobs.
There's nitpicks people will find with a statement like this but I've never found anything like it.
I've had multiple HNers message me saying that their gas bills and grocery prices have never been lower, and that since day 1 of the new administration prices have dropped. Looking at trends across all states, I wonder how they came to that conclusion at all.
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