[amitport]

I think he was asking for an actual study.

(Do people in China respond faster because they're on edge, or do they respond slower to the single risky event, because they're distracted from all the other noise?)

(Do children in China actually run into streets with fast moving cars more often? Perhaps they're more aware of the risks if the road is indeed more chaotic. Is the road filled with a slow constant traffic jam (something I experienced in India)?)

(Etc.,)

This could be one of those common misconceptions that can found out to be false if investigated properly (that being said- I don't know if it's true or false)

[ALittleLight]

I don't think that's the kind of thing we can have a direct study of. Nobody is going to send children out into the streets to see how they fare and we don't have numbers of how often kids run into the street because nobody is there recording that.

Wikipedia[1] shows deaths per 100k vehicles per year. It puts the US at 14 compared to China's 104. A slightly better statistic would be deaths per billion kilometers traveled but that's not reported for China.

If I had to bet, I'd bet that there is marginal benefit from having lots of experience with children running out in front of you. Maybe there's a slightly higher chance per incident of child-street-running resulting in death in the US, but I don't think there's any evidence for that opinion.

1 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic...

[gwd]

Several years ago I visited my uncle who lived in a small town in the middle of nowhere in Thailand. At some point I drove his old motorcycle around town, and he explained the traffic system this way:

In the West, the core concept in traffic is "Right of Way". Everyone on the road figures out who has the right of way, and that person shouldn't have to change their speed or direction.

In Asia [1], the core concept is "don't hit the thing in front of you". Basically, you should be aware of what everyone else on the road may try to do, and if you ever hit something in front of you for any reason, it was your fault.

([1] Obviously "Asia" is a big place, and traffic laws and customs will be different everywhere you go. This explanation matched the behavior I've observed in both Thailand and central China.)

So for example, in the West, if you're overtaking someone and need to switch lanes, it's your responsibility to check to see if there's already a faster car in that lane; because if there is, they have the right of way; if they have to slam on their brakes or swerve to avoid you, that's your fault.

In Asia, if you're overtaking someone, it's their responsibility to notice that you may need to switch lanes and give you space. If they hit you, it was their fault. So most people just swerve out without checking.

Same thing with pulling out onto the road -- in the West, if you're pulling out from a side street onto a main road, it's your responsibility to check that there's no traffic. In Asia, it's the job of the person on the main road not to hit you; so people will just pull right out onto the road without checking first.

I'm pretty sure "right of way" results in fewer accidents overall; but "don't hit the thing in front of you" definitely results in much more careful drivers in my experience. You just can't go 60 miles an hour down a city street if you have mopeds shooting out of random side streets left and right.

[jhrozek]

According to a quick search, Thailand is #5 in road deaths per capita. So I don't think they fare very well.

But your anecdote reminded me of what the instructors in my driving school used to tell us (20 years ago..I'm old..) - whenever you sit into the driver's seat, your left buttcheek is actually sitting in jail and your right buttcheek is laying in a morgue. Drive accordingly. - everyone else on the road is a psychopath that's out there to kill you. Drive accordingly.

That was of course mostly meant to calm down a bunch of 18 year olds who were eager to drive, but I think the basic premise of "don't even forget that driving is really, really dangerous" is correct.

[rangibaby]

In Japan there is traffic priority (right of way) but all drivers also have a legal obligation to not hit anything, which means that in nearly every accident blame will be split between both parties, usually 80:20.