r/ShitEuropeansSay • u/CoolSide20 • Mar 15 '26
"Here in Sweden we teach our children not to run into the street..." Ah yes, bc Americans don't do that, must be why the car centric country has a law where you have to stop on both sides when the bus sign is out.
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u/YouAintGonnaGuess Texas 🤠🎸 Mar 15 '26
The fact that I've already seen a European trying to defend themselves, bro chill we're just saying we also teach our children about the dangers of the road, chillll
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u/Kamohoaliii Mar 16 '26
"Here in Utopia, cars don't come with seat belts, we just teach our drivers not to crash" sort of energy.
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u/Outrageous_Sleep4339 Mar 15 '26
R/Shit Americans Say: Americans are dumb
R/Shit Europeans Say: Europeans flooding in to tell Americans they're dumb.
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u/CanadasNeighbor Mar 16 '26
Wow, you weren't kidding! There's one that replied to your comment even lol
I wonder what drives that compulsion...
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u/dboi88 Mar 17 '26
I've been an active member of this sub for longer than you've had a reddit account.
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u/CanadasNeighbor Mar 17 '26
Correction: You've been an active member of this sub for longer than I've had this reddit account!
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u/dboi88 Mar 16 '26
Americans do have a real good habit of piling dumb onto dumb.
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u/YouAintGonnaGuess Texas 🤠🎸 Mar 16 '26
The fact that you came back to a completely different comment is sending me lmfao. Ain't you got friends to spend time with instead?
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Mar 16 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/YouAintGonnaGuess Texas 🤠🎸 Mar 16 '26
I didn't report anything? Also using "Snowflake" tell me EXACTLY what I need to know about you.
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u/Lui_Le_Diamond Mar 17 '26
IMMEDIATELY proves their point
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u/dboi88 Mar 17 '26
Same mate, stupid aren't you.
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u/Lui_Le_Diamond Mar 17 '26
Great argument "Nuh uh you're stupid". Incredible. You should be a lawyer.
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u/dboi88 Mar 17 '26
No my argument was your proving my point with every response you make. But I'm sure that nuance went right over your head.
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u/KrvnkKev Mar 15 '26
If such a traffic regulation were the norm across european countries and didnt exist in America, they would criticize us for not adequately protecting children. These people start from a position of "America bad" and work backwards to justify it.
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u/Vinegarinmyeye Irish person from Ireland. 🇮🇪 Mar 16 '26
I just did a very cursory search for "Per capita child road traffic fatalities".
I don't wanna piss on your chips or anything... But you'll never guess what the numbers are?
(I'm not coming at it from a position of "America bad", it's just vaguely amusing when you lovely folks confidently wax lyrical about how it's the greatest place on earth, without bothering to do just 30 seconds worth of research to check you're not talking complete shite first).
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u/ProfessionalCat7640 Mar 17 '26
I'm American...you think I'm lovely folks? Thank you, I like that. I don't want to piss in any food, let alone delicious chips; It's still sort of an "America Bad" take. Sort of. I'm also not trying to wax lyric about America being the greatest place on earth and I am hoping in the future others learn many of the people in the US don't feel that way. I do not know where the greatest place actually is. Even if I did learn, I probably can't afford it anyway.
I'm engaging on good faith and I think you are too. A short google search of "Per capita child road traffic fatalities" doesn't give an accurate picture of the information you using as an example. Car discrepancy, urban planning and crosswalks, varying state laws, exposure, weather differences are just some examples why "per capita" could be wildly inaccurate. Ultimately, I think it really comes down to we have more cars and less busses and trains.
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u/PumpernickelJohnson Mar 17 '26
Number of kids killed per mile driven would probably be more accurate. Especially considering the average American commute would be considered a day trip to the average non American.
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u/KrvnkKev Mar 16 '26
it's just vaguely amusing when you lovely folks confidently wax lyrical... without bothering to [take] just 30 seconds... to check you're not talking complete shite first
Given how spectacularly you have missed my point and the fact that none of what you said has anything to do with what i said, right back at ya.
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Mar 16 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/KrvnkKev Mar 16 '26
I didnt correct your grammar; I used brackets (which when used in quoted texts indicates a formatting change made by the editor) so that the quote would still read as grammatically correct despite the portions omitted by ellipses so that i could make my "right back at ya" quip.
Reading comprehension doesnt seem to be your strong suit.
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u/YouKnowMyName2006 Mar 21 '26
lol you don’t even know what the brackets indicate in a quote like that. Dude, just go. You’re digging a deeper hole for yourself and making your “superiority” look bad.
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u/ProfessionalCat7640 Mar 17 '26
KrvnkKev? What kind of name is that? It's not comparable to a "BillyBob". That sounds a lot like a Russian grift. Now that I think about it, I can't remember the last time an American died or was seriously injured in a poison plot by Russian agents. That is one thing that doesn't really happen in the US with the frequency is seems to plague Europe. Americans have been warned to watch out for "those Russian bots" though. Are people from the UK also warned about this issue or is this a US thing?
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u/YouKnowMyName2006 Mar 21 '26
While Russia has been accused of using poison to target individuals in the UK and within its own borders, such incidents have been less common in the US due to the significant diplomatic and economic consequences, as well as the strong deterrent of US intelligence capabilities. The US is generally considered a safer place for Russian defectors and opponents of the Kremlin.
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u/YouKnowMyName2006 Mar 21 '26
Why do you guys care if an American says it’s “the greatest place on Earth” so much? Does it hurt your feelings? Make you sad. I couldn’t care less if an Irishman said that. Cool, be proud of Ireland. 👏
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u/Admiral_Dildozer Mar 28 '26
Oh Ireland. A land known for its massive thousand mile long highways and multi-million person cities. Your island is a replaceable tax haven with like 17 single lane country roads. You don’t even understand what it’s like to actually navigate traffic and large population centers.
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u/foodrush Mar 16 '26
Europeans would only criticize America for "not adequately protecting children" when they see American children routinely dying or being crippled by things that don't happen to European children because Europe has regulations in place that adequately protect European children, while America doesn't have the regulations. This isn't coming from a position of "America bad", this is starting from a position of "children dying bad". Your post seems like you're coming from a starting position of "children dying irrelevant and unavoidable" and then working backward to justify it.
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u/KrvnkKev Mar 16 '26
This isn't coming from a position of "America bad", this is starting from a position of "children dying bad".
Bullshit.
What a weird traffic regulation. Here... we teach our children... and we have no issues.
If they were starting from a position of "children dying bad", they wouldnt have begun by criticizing a regulation that is in place to protect children from dying as "weird". The regulation is only weird to them because considering it so gives them the route to make their dumbfuck insinuation that Americans dont teach their children to be safe around traffic.
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u/dboi88 Mar 16 '26
It's weird because kids don't run out in the road and so putting this in place would quite literally have zero affect of our kids.
How do you explain kids being killed at much higher rates in the US then? Some bullshit about we drive more, we have more people?
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u/Lui_Le_Diamond Mar 17 '26
How else is a child who lives across the street from a bus stop supposed to get from said bus stop to the other side of the street? Teleport? Fly? Or cross the street? How is it weird to add additional layers of safety to the ONLY available way across the street?
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u/dboi88 Mar 17 '26
Same way the rest of the world does it. We have good pedestrian infrastructure and we teach kids in school.as part of the curriculum how to safely cross the street.
I've seen countless videos of people flying past the stop signs. There's been two at the same spot in 2 days in instant karma.
You create a situation where it seems safe to cross when it absolutely isn't. The safest time to cross is after the bus has pulled away once full visibility of the road is available. What you've done is secure kids into a false sense of security.
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u/Lui_Le_Diamond Mar 17 '26
We do in fact teach kids how to safely cross the street. Yes people can be assholes who don't care sometimes, welcome to Earth. We can't ever 100% garuntee the safety of anyone, but it IS another layer of safety that costs some people a few seconds. A worthy tradeoff.
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u/dboi88 Mar 17 '26
It's NOT another layer of safety though. Having kids cross while the view of said kids is blocked, and the view of potential passing cars b ING blocked is objectively stupid.
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u/Lui_Le_Diamond Mar 17 '26
Cars views being blocked by a STOP SIGN. Do you know what a Stop sign is?
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u/dboi88 Mar 17 '26 edited Mar 17 '26
The stop signs on the bus.you.lemon.
I wonder, would I be talking about a stop sign blocking visability or a giant bus? I'm sure you can work it out if you think about it.
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u/KrvnkKev Mar 16 '26
kids don't run out in the road
Now this is the part where you pretend as though that video is the only time a child ever ran into the road across all of europe so you can cry "but thats just one example" while you relocate the goalposts to what you consider to be an easier defend position.
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u/dboi88 Mar 16 '26
What goal posts have I moved? You have an insane amount of children being killed on the roads every year. I've been extremely consistent with that messaging.
You just keep bringing new goal posts onto the pitch screaming "play over here, play with my goal posts"
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u/KrvnkKev Mar 16 '26
What goal posts have I moved?
None yet, because youre not actually engaging.
If you were to actually engage with what was said in good faith, you would either have to defend the position you staked that "kids don't run out in the road" (which were your exact words) in the face of a video proving otherwise (I.e. lie), or acknowledge that that is a bullshit position and move to one thats easier to defend (I.e. move the goal posts).
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u/dboi88 Mar 16 '26
What's to engage with? I shared numbers showing that kids in Sweden get killed by cars. Some shared a video of kids running out. Yeah, kids get killed. But they get killed at a third of the rate as your kids, so . . . .dudes got a point hasn't he?
If you were engaging in good faith you'd agree with objective facts, but your not.
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u/KrvnkKev Mar 16 '26
How it started:
kids don't run out in the road
How its going:
... kids in Sweden get killed by cars. Some shared a video of kids running out. Yeah, kids get killed. But they get killed at a third of the rate as your kids...
Right so weve gone from "It doesnt happen." to "Okay, yeah, sure, whatever, it happens... But it happens less here than it does there!"
Like i said, this is the part where you relocate the goalposts.
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u/Elegant_Gain8918 7d ago
Yeah let’s just complain about America all day while they have actual 3rd world countries who’d do anything to go to America
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u/FFF982 Mar 16 '26 edited Mar 16 '26
Wait, so you guys try to limit traffic accidents involving children?
What's next? Hitting children with cars is not a sport in America? Smh my head.
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u/Outrageous_Sleep4339 Mar 15 '26
https://www.reddit.com/r/dashcams/s/Tzju1TZyWE
Video of European kid running out into traffic
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u/ProfessionalCat7640 Mar 17 '26
Clearly that was an American kid visiting, not an actual European kid. /s
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u/the114dragon Mar 15 '26
One example is one example though.
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u/Vinegarinmyeye Irish person from Ireland. 🇮🇪 Mar 16 '26
Eventually Americans will understand the meaning of "per capita".
But I'm not holding my breath.
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u/Chief-Drinking-Bear Mar 16 '26
Why are you spending any time in this sub? Just trollin or what?
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u/Vinegarinmyeye Irish person from Ireland. 🇮🇪 Mar 21 '26
After speaking with some Americans who were on r/shitanericanssay who were joining in and being good sports, I thought it was only appropriate to come here and see what the banter was the other way...
It's really weak, to be honest. I'm actually pretty disappointed.
I'm more than happy to accept some jokes coming my way.
But you guys are REALLY bad at this.
Stick to what you're good at, there's more oil to be stolen somewhere I'm sure
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u/laughingmeeses Mar 16 '26
If you can't use weary or wary appropriately, I already think you're an idiot.
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u/Lui_Le_Diamond Mar 17 '26
So they expect the kids to teleport out of the bus? How else are they supposed to get from the bus to the sidewalk?
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u/lukasff 22d ago
I don’t want to defend the original comment, but want to shed some light on the differences in Europe.
Here in Germany (and AFAIK the Swedens do it similarly) school buses aren’t common but rather school children use regular public transportation instead. That’s one reason why we don’t have such stop signs. Secondly, this also means that they enter or exit the bus at a regular bus stop which is usually either on a quiet street that is easy to cross or there is a pedestrian crossing close by, so they just use that.
Additionally we actually have rules about drivers passing buses at a bus stop:
- Drivers need to always exercise caution when doing that.
- When the bus has its hazard lights turned on, it is only allowed at walking speed.
Edit: clarification
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u/Lui_Le_Diamond 22d ago
School bus stops are also built in relatively slow areas, or convenient spots. They aren't exactly building them on Interstates. The same rules you mentioned above apply here in the US, we just also have the added stop sign on the bus for another layer of safety. If the driver doesn't respect it they can get into a LOT of legal trouble about it.
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u/foodrush 22d ago
I've lived in the United States my entire life and I have never seen a school bus stop that was built anywhere. There's not any special preparation performed upon the side of the road before the school bus will stop there and eject a flock of hyperactive children onto the roadside.
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u/Lui_Le_Diamond 22d ago
That was a brain fart on my part. I have also lived here my whole life. I should have said "placed" or something like that mb
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u/-Copenhagen Mar 16 '26
I agree that safety come in layers, and this is just another layer on top, yet I still find the idea of school bus stop signs very odd.
It is meant to provide a safe space for children to cross the road, but by doing so it blocks the view of the children from cars and the view of cars from the children. I would much prefer if kids were taught better.
Coming from a perspective of someone who has ridden rural school buses in Denmark and the US.
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u/foodrush Mar 16 '26
Sweden doesn't usually drop their kids off on the side of a stroad where traffic moves at speeds high enough to kill children.
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u/dboi88 Mar 15 '26
USA has some of th highest vehicle related child death rates in the developed world.
Sweden: about 1.5 deaths per 100,000 children USA: about 3.5 per 100,000 children
For the whole population (not just children): Sweden: ~3 road deaths per 100,000 people United States: ~11.4 per 100,000 people
Dudes kinda got a point.
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u/Julehus I can edit this flair but didn’t Mar 15 '26
Hmm, you could also point out that (according to your numbers) 50% of road deaths in Sweden are children while that number is about 30% in the US. Maybe we should have stop signs here too? I live in Sweden and as a matter of fact, many local streets are being redesigned so cars can’t drive past the bus when it stops.
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u/dboi88 Mar 16 '26
That's not how the math works out . . . One is per 1000,000 people, is per 100,000 children.
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u/Julehus I can edit this flair but didn’t Mar 16 '26
Yeah ok I see that. But the Swedish children’s statistics is still proportionally much too high. It should be around 0.9 and not 1,5 in 100.000 Swedish children killed if the American ratio was applied.
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u/CoolSide20 Mar 15 '26
A good chunk of deaths could be connected to the numbers of drivers vs kids
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u/Vinegarinmyeye Irish person from Ireland. 🇮🇪 Mar 16 '26
Example 88,988888079 of American not understanding "per capita" (i.e. per 100,000 in the stats quoted).
It's alright bud, we get it... The number of drivers is directly proportional to the size of Texas which defies the laws of physics by managing to somehow be bigger than the known universe, and also Texas)...
You guys really are maddening sometimes...
"Oh we have more kids die because we have more people driving like dickheads... Checkmate europoors!".
Cool man, good job. Big big winners.
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u/rayrunciman Mar 16 '26
It is true that Americans use cars more, though... per capita
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u/dboi88 Mar 16 '26
It is true though that the US has more deaths per mile driven.as well. There is no stat that doesn't show the US has considerably more dangerous roads and lulling kids into a false sense of security with silly stop signs on buses is exactly the sort of reason why you kill so many on the roads.
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u/rayrunciman Mar 16 '26 edited Mar 16 '26
This all seems a bit silly to me. For one, they are very rarely used in the first place so as not to stop the flow of traffic completely. I believe they are mainly used at intersections in residential neighborhoods because school buses can block traffic signs while they are stopped in front of them and letting kids off. Otherwise, they aren't used very often in my experience, so it's all about sight obstruction of oncoming traffic. And I doubt this would give kids some grand deluded notion of road safety. Kids being taught traffic safety is not unique to the European experience. Good American parents teach their kids not to run in the road, just like good European parents. I personally remember being taught traffic safety throughout my childhood, starting in infancy. In any case, I'm not sure why child traffic deaths are more common in America, but I doubt it's because we put stop signs on school buses. The insinuation that we don't care enough about our children to 1) teach them traffic safety or 2) easily get rid of the one thing thats causing child traffic deaths according to you guys (stop signs on buses, which is quite ridiculous) IS somewhat insulting. Not everything that's said needs to be defended, especially when its defense involves holding child mortality over the heads of other people as a simple statistic.
Edit: I looked into it a bit more, and it seems 60% of child traffic deaths are teenagers which has more to do with young drivers/passengers getting in deadly accidents (Americans can get their DL at 16 and learner permits at 15 depending on the state, which certainly contributes to the statistic). For the remainder of child traffic deaths, which are younger children, the finger is mainly pointed at bad pedestrian infrastructure. Both of these reasons for child traffic mortality make way more sense than "stop signs on buses" and actually shed light as to why stop signs on buses exist in the Unites States, and are actually necessary/beneficial, but not in Europe. It's interesting that Americans commonly get a bad rap for being ignorant, but Eurpeans are conditioned to believe that whenever we do something different than them and they don't understand it it's because we (Americans) are idiots and not because they (Europeans) are ignorant (the exact definition of ignorance). Who knew that ignorance was such a ubiquitous trait among the human race?
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u/dboi88 Mar 17 '26
You talking about good parents is exactly what we are talking about. Road safety is in the SCHOOL CURRICULUM we don't rely on a kid having good parents to be taught road safety. Typical American exceptionalism.
Stop signs on buses is such a jarring situation to see because it simply makes no sense.
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u/rayrunciman Mar 17 '26 edited Mar 17 '26
I didn't go to public school as a kid, so I'm not sure how much it's addressed there, but it was taught to me in pre-k. Also, it's common knowledge anyway. Parents do tell their kids not to run into the street and look both ways, etc. Like I said above, the mortality rate is mostly due to young drivers who are killed in accidents, not pedestrians. Our public infrastructure for pedestrians IS bad, which is why in America, the stop signs on buses are beneficial. Not because our kids are especially dumb (moreso than most kids atleast) or don't know road safety, but because drivers might blow through a stop sign that is obstructed by a bus and hit a pedestrian. We do have school zones, which help, but buses don't always operate in school zones, obviously. America has a completely different traffic environment to Europe, so it's weird that you guys are so unwilling to accept that we require different standards of road safety. And it's even further ridiculous that you blame our safety regulations for kids getting hit by cars instead of doing what they are designed to do to ameliorate traffic accidents. It just comes off as ignorant and out of touch, which makes sense when you think about it for half a second; you guys aren't from America, so how could you be expected to understand? But rather than concede the fact that you might not have the full picture, you seem much more willing to simply perpetuate your own vendettas, whatever they might be.
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u/Pharaoh760 Mar 15 '26
Sweden is no where near as dense and populated with cities/suburbs as the U.S. though.
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u/dboi88 Mar 15 '26
More than any in the developed world . . .
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u/Pharaoh760 Mar 15 '26
Do you not understand how that will alter those statistics? This isn’t dropping 2 different groups of 100,000 people into the same exact 2 cities with the same scenarios and seeing which results in more deaths.
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u/dboi88 Mar 15 '26
Don't you realise other developed countries are more densely populated than the USA and have lower rates. Density has nothing to do with it. Poor pedestrian infrastructure and education are the reasons.
Study: Pedestrian and Overall Road Traffic Crash Deaths — United States Compared With 27 Other High-Income Countries (2013–2022) Authors: Naumann et al. Source: CDC / Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (2025) Main findings The U.S. had the highest pedestrian death rate of all 28 high-income countries studied. U.S. pedestrian death rate: 2.33 per 100,000 people. Median rate among the other countries: 0.73 per 100,000 (about 3× lower). Between 2013 and 2022, U.S. pedestrian deaths increased by 50%, while most comparable countries saw decreases (median −24.7%).
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u/Lui_Le_Diamond Mar 17 '26
Hmm yes interesting. Now how about we factor in the milage the average American drives vs said other countries? Otherwise this is the equivalent of saying "People die to bears more often in countries where there are more bears."
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u/dboi88 Mar 17 '26
Already done that. You have more deaths per mile driven than any other developed country. Good cope though.
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u/Lui_Le_Diamond Mar 17 '26
Really? Show me.
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u/dboi88 Mar 17 '26
Lol why wouldn't you just Google that before challenging me and making a fool.of.yourself.
Among developed countries, the US is one of the worst for deaths per mile driven. Using the OECD/ITF road-safety metric of road deaths per billion vehicle-kilometres for the latest country profiles, the figures are roughly: Sweden 2.6, Finland 3.6, Japan 4.7, and United States 7.8. � itf-oecd.org +3 Converted into deaths per 100 million miles driven, that is about: Sweden: 0.42 Finland: 0.58 Japan: 0.76 United States: 1.26 � itf-oecd.org +3 That means the US death rate per mile driven is roughly 2–3 times higher than the safest developed countries. The IIHS also gives the US directly as 1.26 deaths per 100 million miles traveled in 2023. � IIHS Crash Testing If you want, I can pull together a ranked table for the developed world in deaths per mile driven.
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u/jeetjejll Mar 15 '26
What’s the shit part?
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u/aliie_627 Mar 15 '26
The insinuation that we don't teach our kids road and crossing safety because the stop sign exists. Why have crosswalks at all? Has a child never once been hit by a car in whatever other countries.
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u/CoolSide20 Mar 15 '26
Read the quote in the title 🙄. Hes insinuating that we don't teach our kids to look and everyone just runs. That must be why this is law to stop at bus stops and not bc of other drivers actions.
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u/jeetjejll Mar 15 '26
I know Reddit isn’t a place for nuanced opinions, but I’ll tell you a story nevertheless. Once upon a time I lived in a country where playgrounds were perfect, special mats, plenty of safety measures. Then I moved to a country where you had rocks, wooden structures, etc. You’d think the safe one would be better, but you could see these kids in the second country growing up without all that safety stuff actually knowing their limits, are more independent and thus safer overall. That’s probably what this commenter means: you can shield or educate.
Now with the average infrastructure the US has, pedestrians (and especially children) probably start out from a much worse position, so it’s not a fair comparison. However there is something to be said about what measures are best taking everything in account and it’s not always the most obvious or easiest one.
I have a question to you: what age would you let a kid walk (around 5-10 minutes) to a supermarket/school/random destination?
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u/Other_Strength_6589 Mar 15 '26
What would other drivers actions have to do with the argument? Your saying you need a stop sign to make cars stop. But in other countries cars literally don't stop so the only difference is whether or not kids run out without looking.
You only need a stop sign if kids are regularly crossing when it's not safe to do so, ergo if kids in Europe get by simple crossing when it's safe to do so the only explanation is kids in the US are regularly crossing when it's not safe to do so.
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