[QUOTE=myrridin;11803136]
all of the countries other than the US have instituted programs that allow for random screening of drivers for sobriety tests--something the 4th amendment of the Constitution would disallow.
Ain't so in the UK. The police need evidence of impaired driving to breathalyse
As far as using vehicle miles as the basis for the comparison is concerned, it seems likely that that too is somewhat flawed. It seems also arguable that, because of the greater sprawl that US cities tend to display, a sizeable part of each driver's journey will be in conditions of lower traffic density, thereby reducing the number of interactions s/he has with other drivers. It would be interesting to see what difference there is in the vehicle miles travelled in Florida, which has a pretty appalling collision rate, with the vehicle miles travelled in the states with the lower end of the collision/injury/death rate. Are Florida's cyclist deathrate figures connected with the fact that their driver's licence test is a joke since it takes place
AFAIK on glorified carparks with a few mock traffic junctions and road signs, rather than testing the applicants actual ability ot drive in traffic?
I'm not sure that the centralised vs decentralised system of government argument is entirely convincing, either. Is there much difference between the different states' interpretations of the Uniform Vehicle Code? Or is it more to do with their different standards of enforcement/punishment?
Not being a statistician of any kind, I don't pretend to know which is the correct method for comparing our different collision rates. I suspect that both the per capita and per vehicle mile models are flawed and a true comparison would require weightings for population, vehicle density per mile, vehicle ownership levels, distance travelled, number of potential interactions per journey/driver, average number of people per vehicle, etc.
But where cyclist victims are concerned, judging by the experiences described on this forum, the US standard of driving and anti-cyclist attitudes are rather worse than I've experienced in the UK - had no problems in Toronto, when I've ridden there on holiday, by the way. Note, I'm not using that as a valid argument about Canada/US standards