The way to improve drivers safety is by insisting on better schooling. Compared to the kind of testing I had to go through to get a driving license in NL the American (and the Canadian, for that matter) license test is way too simple.
If you lower the bar to entry then you get more accidents, technology alone will not help with that unless you cut the driver out of the loop completely.
I'd upvote this 10 times if I could. It's amazing how much Americans rely on driving while being abysmally bad at it. The amount of driving errors, almost accidents and accidents you can see during half an hour driving on 101 on the peninsula is more than what you'd see in an entire day on the Autobahn.
I didn't compare Germany and the USA, I compare the German Autobahn to a specific stretch of 101 in California (for the Autobahn I was thinking of the A9 here but save for the north east most Autobahns are pretty similar).
Comparing on a miles driven basis for the entire country doesn't show the full picture because the miles driven per road type are likely vastly different, traffic density varies extremely in the US but not so much in Germany, and there are 50 different sets of traffic laws and educational requirements across the US.
Given what I've seen here vs. in European countries with good driving test standards, I'm surprised it's not much higher. Maybe the distances in the US are larger? Or perhaps our roads are wider and so have more wiggle room, which compensates for the stunningly bad driver behavior I see every time I drive.
Which seems like a potentially reasonable policy tradeoff: make it easier for more people to get their licenses, then make it harder for them to kill each other. (NB I would prefer more stringent licensing standards).
I live in Slovenia, where it takes at a minimum 30 hrs of driving with instructor (but usually around 40) until he lets you take the test.
Additionally young drivers need(i think its mandatory now, used to only be recomended) to go to school for safe driving (slippery road etc.).
And jet most foreigners from USA, who come here say we are one of the worst drivers they have seen. (guess they haven't been to south of Italy or Turkey)
We used to have high accident rate. The only thing that helped is expensive ticekts.
Its easy to get 500+ EUR ticekt if you are not careful.
I agree that there is a remarkable difference between the quality of driving in Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and say United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, Scandinavian countries and so on.
But I suspect that your average Romanian or Slovenian driver would have a hard time passing a Dutch license test.
Quality of the education is just as important as quantity and should be paired with suitably stringent examinations.
Expensive tickets are just a way for rich assholes to do whatever they want to because they can afford it. (There are interesting schemes where the tickets get progressively more expensive as you earn more, those are more effective).
I disagree in part. Tougher tests have to be combined with mandatory retests to renew a license every 5-10 years, it's not just the young who drive badly.
If you lower the bar to entry then you get more accidents, technology alone will not help with that unless you cut the driver out of the loop completely.