[jonathanlydall]

Where I am from, organised political movements are not a factor of teen pregnancy and were not the least bit in my mind when I made my statement.

And my two examples are completely arbitrary because my point applies to pretty much any problem which would be solved by people being “more careful”.

So, political/religious elements aside, teen pregnancy and road safety are the same in terms of “if people were just more disciplined, there would not be these problems” (i.e. if teens who have easy access to contraceptives planned ahead before giving into impulsiveness; if drivers were more attentive to their behaviour), which I then pointed out is naive because the reality is that people aren’t perfect, they aren’t always disciplined, we’re all only human.

Hence, we need other solutions to help with problems which don’t require ignoring that people are only human and lack perfect discipline.

I agree that some organised movements can be a problem in that they can make other problems worse.

[saghm]

My point is that teen pregnancy very much does have a solution that has empirically worked quite well at preventing it when it's actually practiced (i.e. high quality sex education and ample access to contraceptives), and pushing abstinence as a solution has demonstrably caused teen pregnancy rates in increase whenever it's used as a replacement for that; the only actual impetus for abstinence as a "solution" is ideological. I think teen pregnancy literally would be a solved problem (with instances being essentially a rounding error) in a society embracing what we actually have proven works well at preventing it; I've never seen any similarly successful mechanism at preventing injuries or deaths in automobile accidents be rejected by a society for ideological reasons.

Trying to handwave away the things we know work to prevent teen pregnancy as "just be careful" feels overly reductive, because it's way easier to do correctly than managing to drive without ever having an accident.

[jonathanlydall]

Talking about road safety.

In South Africa we have 12,000+ road fatalities a year, by comparison Australia (renowned for strong law enforcement) with about half of our population size has 1,200 or something. (And they apparently happen to have about 4,500 teen pregnancies a year.)

Australia’s (or maybe it was New Zealand’s which I visited on the same trip) road safety campaign is called “Towards Zero”, while South Africa’s is called “Arrive Alive”.

A big part of the difference in fatalities is that Australia has much better general law enforcement (such that a lot of foreigners complain about it), while over here it’s dismal with Arrive Alive’s strategy seemingly being to always do the same thing as last year’s holiday season except with “trying harder”, while largely ignoring day-to-day traffic offences.

Due to the high chance of being caught for transgressions, Australians tend to way more often stick to the rules of the road, while over here there is horrendous amount of (to put it politely) shenanigans happening almost all the time.

And the impact of this difference in discipline shows in the above stats.

Years ago now, but my now wife spent 10 days in intensive care after a minibus taxi driving on the wrong side of the road head on collided into the car she was a passenger in. My wife was fortunately in a car with good safety features and had a medical aid plan allowing her to receive some of the best care possible in the country, but I’m doubtful that the mini bus taxi passengers (who tend to be in the poor class of the population) sent to public hospitals received care anywhere near as good, I think I heard after this article [1] was published that two people died.

Perhaps road accidents, or at least fatalities, can be reduced more than you realize.

[1]: https://www.citizen.co.za/northcliff-melville-times/222787/2...

[rixed]

  Perhaps road accidents, or at least fatalities, can be reduced more than you realize.

You are talking past each others. The exemple of Australia (or was it new Zealand?) shows that accidents can be lowered, as much as thé exemple of south Africa shows they can't.

I've always found this misunderstanding fascinating; it touches on the physical reality of sociological laws, the origin and purpose of morality, as well of course as supporting in part the modern political divides.