Technology

No it makes it harder. I know that sounds crazy but it's very true. Basically humans are very bad at paying attention to boring things. The automation gives the feeling that the computer has it and the human is not ready and aware when the computer doesn't have it. Leading to lots of easily avoidable accidents.

There has been some really good reporting on this over the last year or so. If you want to learn more.

To add another factor:

People buy muscle cars and over accelerate because they can't handle the power of those cars

EVs accelerate much quicker than normal cars, Tesla's more than normal EVs

So if someone isn't using the automation they're still susceptible to the classic "overshot into or over something" situation

Tesla's self-driving and safety systems are clearly half baked compared to competitor and other vendors.

My drivers ed class in new england pretty much focused only on educating teenagers about how brutally dangerous drunk driving is. It was frustrating at the time because I felt like I didn’t even learn how to drive but given how where I grew up as a teenager you had to go drink in sketch places which usually involved driving (what a dumb way to structure society ughh) because of the car hellscape I grew up in…. I honestly think those drivers ed teachers spent their time well.

Driving a car isn’t so hard so long as you take the perspective that you have one rule, don’t hit other people and always remind yourself that you can’t assume other drivers will do anything they should on the road. Drunk driving was VERY hard not to do as a bored teenager trying to hang out with other bored teenagers. I could have died, my friends could have died. Idk, so I can’t be too upset at my drivers ed class in retrospect.

In Canada we still have to pass a practical test that covers that stuff with pretty strict requirements for passing. Just how you gain the knowledge and ability to pass that test is up to you. It's pretty normal to take a driver's Ed class if your friends or family don't have time to trach you themselves. And the drivers Ed class is what you described as what is mandatory in the Netherlands. We just don't put people through it automatically if they have already learned all that somewhere else.

Having said that, there are some small towns that are known as places to go if you want an easier driving test, as they just don't have enough things around to properly represent everything you should know while driving. But if it turns out you do actually suck at driving, you'll lose your tiny amount of demerits on your beginners license pretty fast and then you are legally required to pass a driver's Ed and defensive driving class before being able to reclaim your license. It's not perfect, and I do think the one major thing we are missing is periodic re-testing. In Canada people are a little less resistant to "greater good" social policies, but there is still resistance. It's tough to pass stuff that lowers or is perceived to lower freedoms, but they do still occasionally pass.

And as I'm sure is the problem everywhere, people want all kinds of services, they just don't want the government to have the money to pay for those services. And also they only want the services they personally currently benefit from, everything else can be cut until they personally need it, then it was a tragedy that no one stood up for it.

That doesn't sound all that different from where I learned in Maryland. You had to go to a class for a few months that had both theoretical and practical portions. You had to do 40 hours of supervised driving outside of class with an adult. The 40 hours covered a range of situations. Then there was a driving test. Which I passed fine for the car but failed for a motorcycle because I started about a foot back from the stop sign on the course so I didn't pull up and stop at it. Doh.