I used to watch a lot of those Russian dash cam crash videos. It was a gateway drug. I then went on to US dashcam crashes, “insane” crashes, and am now mainlining on “pedextrian” crashes.
In all seriousness, they should show certain parts of those videos in driver’s ed. You can really learn what activities lead to such mayhem.
The pedestrian ones are amazing. About 80% are the fault of the pedestrian, and most of the remainder could have been avoided if the pedestrian had been attentive and understood that their life (and the life of the baby in their stroller) was at stake.
The earlier comment about how I should complain to my PM about my roads — actually, in Canada, we don’t have a national system of highways at all. The highways are all run entirely by the provinces. So I have complained to my provincial premier about some specific aspects. Generally speaking, however, the highways here are in better shape, the drivers on the other hand are generally worse, especially in the Vancouver region. If you ever come up here, be aware, an orange light ahead of the red is widely seen as an invitation to drive even faster. People run red lights here like Vegas visitors hit slot machines — early and often.
But as to the system of highways, we never went the route of a national numbering system like your interstates and the various US highways. It may seem that way because across all of the west, Highway 1 tends to be the Trans-Canada freeway or highway. But that was just done at the provincial level. And because the provinces do everything related to highways, it is somewhat easier for the voters to keep track of what is or is not being done and punish or reward the appropriate parties.
The U.S.A. is a much larger country in terms of population and (when you exclude the three quarters of Canada that is not developed) area to be covered by roads, so it makes sense to have a federal highway system there.
Good comment on the passive-aggressive drivers, they do annoy many of us. I try to let people pass when I see them coming, especially if I think they are gambling on space ahead of me. I don’t want to be sideswiped in a head-on.
I graduated from a US high school in the mid-70s. The year before I took drivers Ed, I sat in on a class with an older friend, and they had the gory films of accidents. I don’t know what happened, but the following year, no gory films, and I haven’t heard of them since.
For motorcycles, there was a study of accidents (HURT?) and they incorporated the findings into a really good motorcycle safety course. It would be good if they did the same for cars.