From GP's post I surmised that they are Indian or have spent a substantial amount of time in India. Being Indian myself, I didn't sense any racist intent. You're right that they are pulling numbers out of their ass. But from my own personal experience, drivers in India drive extremely aggressively, and regularly do things that would be an instant fail in any US road test.
I realize what you're saying, but it's still rhetorically foolish at best to say things like "Asians can't drive."
I live in CA, and I've met a lot of folks from India (not a statistically significant number though, of course!) and they seem to drive here just fine.
I know what you mean about driving in India. I watch video of Indian traffic. It's fascinating. How can folks drive like that and not have ( more ) carnage on the road?
But it's still "racist" to say "Indians can't drive.", even if the person is themselves Indian. (And of course, there are many races and ethnicities in India, eh? Bharata is hardly a mono-culture. So the word "racist" isn't quite correct anyhow.)
Someone once said to me "Women can't drive. My mom even said so." I said, "All that proves is that your mom is sexist."
OP may not have intended to be racist, sure, but being racist out of ignorance (or just not having thought it through) is still ugly.
> But it's still "racist" to say "Indians can't drive."
Sorry, I think you're reading something into GP's post that just isn't there.
What I got from GP's post was because of low standards of drive testing, weak or non-existent enforcement of traffic laws, a general lack of education on how to drive safely, drivers on roads in India are generally unsafe. Having once been one of those drivers myself, I agree wholeheartedly. I don't think GP ever said or implied anything like what you think. If India were to adopt higher licensing standards and better traffic enforcement (in addition to better roads, signage, signaling equipment etc), I'm quite certain the quality of our driving, and our fatality numbers would improve over time.
> I know what you mean about driving in India. I watch video of Indian traffic. It's fascinating.
It's not "fascinating", it's horrifying. People blithely zooming around, always a hairsbreadth from tragedy, all for very little gain. It breaks my heart to see it whenever I go back home for a visit.
> I live in CA, and I've met a lot of folks from India and they seem to drive here just fine.
I was one of those folks (don't live in CA anymore). I learned how to drive better after coming to the US. The reason all the Indian people you know drive fine is because they learned (or re-learned) driving in the US and have gone through American licensing tests.
You know what? I went back and checked and the actual sentence was: "In India, drivers don't know what safe driving is."
I think you're right, I read something into GP's post that isn't there. That could just be describing the traffic situation and NOT claiming some racist trope.
