[tptacek]

I'm not saying life expectancy tells you nothing, just that it doesn't tell you what a lot of people seem to think it tells you. If you got sick and had to pick a country to be treated in solely based on your health outcome, you'd be making a mistake to choose based on life expectancy. In the same vein: if you were picking countries based on quality of public transit nationwide, sure, life expectancy could be a counterintuitive and convoluted way to arrive at the right conclusion. But a look at an Amtrak schedule would tell you pretty much the same thing without the tea leaf reading. Everyone knows that Europe and Japan have denser public transit than the US.