Talk:Cyprus (island)

Cypriot driving standards?

"Driving standards are not as safe as in the UK, with proportionately twice the number of deaths on the road, but are superior to US safety standards."

Why is this described in relative terms to the UK and the US? I've no idea what to do with this information. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 22:15, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, it was an ethnocentric post, seemingly by a Brit who has an axe to grind with the US. I'm going to delete the entire sentence. If someone wants to post statistics, I guess they can. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:20, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

The text quoted above by User:Andrewssi2 was actually that of User:Ikan Kekek who I'm surprised to hear self-identify as a "Brit". The sentence he "corrected" was my own.

Not that it's relevant, but I don't have any connections to Great Britain other than I can speak, read and write English and my country was once colonised by the British - as yours was.

In any case, some tests of whether text is included or not might be

a) if it's useful to arriving or contemplating travellers or not

b) it's truthful.

Since much of the world "has an axe to grind with the US", you two US citizens might like to consider whether that is really a good test for whether facts are included or not.

It's not such a huge deal that I'll risk annoying you, but there are relatively few visitors to the island of Cyprus from countries like the US and South Africa that have more dangerous roads. Most overseas visitors are from areas like the British Isles, Scandinavia and Germany where things are safer. The glaring exception, of course, are the many visitors from Greece and Turkey that will be statistically safer on Cyprus roads than back home! 80.234.185.120 12:32, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Here are some interesting representative figures for the annual road deaths per 100,000 inhabitants of various countries (figures are usually from 2010 and provided by WHO):

Libya 40.5

South Africa 31.9

Bangladesh & United States 11.6

Chile 11.5

Equatorial Guinea, Jamaica, South Korea 11.4

Uzbekistan 11.3

Romania 11.1

North Korea 10.7

Bahrain 10.5

Belarus 10.0

Turkey 9.6

Greece, Philippines 9.1

Cuba 7.8

Hungary 7.7

Cyprus 7.6

New Zealand 7.4

Canada 6.0

Australia 5.6

Austria 5.3

Singapore 5.1

France 4.9

Japan 4.8

Finland 4.7

Germany 4.3

Ireland 4.2

Netherlands 3.9

Iceland, Malta 3.8

Spain 3.6

United Kingdom 3.5

Switzerland 3.4

Israel 3.3 (?!? I would never have guessed that from observing Sabra drivers...)

Palestinian territories 3.2 (I'm even more amazed!)

Denmark, Sweden 3.0

Norway 2.9

80.234.185.120 12:56, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

When you take part in discussions on Wikis, you should remember that every article has a history. This shows the edits you initially made about Cypriot driving standards. I was not the person who introduced the comparison only to the UK and the US; I merely tried editing the description you put in, before realizing Andrewssi2 was right, and that there's no particular reason to compare Cypriot standards only to those of the UK and US. I think, by the way, that Andrewssi2 will be surprised to be called a "US citizen"; he can speak for himself, but I believe he's English.

Also, I think the stats you are using are a bunch of rot, because they are of road deaths per x number of inhabitants, rather than road deaths per x number of kilometres or miles driven or as an automobile passenger on the road (though there should also be a figuring of pedestrian deaths, which would make any really good stat more complicated, not less complicated). Americans drive so much more on average than people from most other countries that this is an extremely misleading measure of traffic safety. I will therefore re-delete your alleged comparison of road safety. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:24, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Certainly there are lies, damned lies and statistics and I do take your point that the better measure of road safety standards might be the number of injuries per distance driven. However, statistics gathering is very variable between territories and one has to try and compare like with like.

It isn't helpful for travellers that you deleted the main point of information for travellers: that for most visitors (apart from those low number of visitors coming from Africa and the US) they will need to drive more defensively.

I do think you shouldn't be so quick to delete helpful material, but I appreciate your patriotism. I'm still amazed that the two of you would claim to be Brits - but I'll accept you at your word. Did you both change your citizenship recently? 80.234.185.120 20:05, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

The figures for the US are misleading. If you compare Amtrak and Intercity bus travel in the US to Egged (in Israel) or Rail travel in Germany, you will see that the vast majority of Americans have hardly an alternative to driving. This of course raises the number of miles traveled per capita (though the US has recently seen the same falling trend as most of Europe). What it furthermore does is keep people driving who really shouldn't. In Switzerland, elderly people will gladly get rid of their car as you can get (next to) every place without a car. In the US many people simply see no feasible way of getting anywhere in the US without a car. Of course part of this is lack of mental flexibility and strong pro-car tradition, but outside a couple of cities the US have historically been built for cars. More so than any other major country. And this of course takes its toll in road deaths. Hobbitschuster (talk) 20:02, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

All good points. 80.234.185.120 20:05, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

I didn't change my citizenship. You aren't reading carefully. But this discussion has nothing to do with "patriotism", and I would suggest that you try to avoid tangents. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:08, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

What is this article for?

This article was created to describe at a high level the physical island of Cyprus, and direct viewers to Northern Cyprus or the Republic of Cyprus.

It is modelled on other intentionally superficial island articles such as Timor, Borneo and Hispaniola , all of which contain multiple nations (or parts of those nations) inside them.

The intention was not to replicate most of the information about Cyprus itself. I'd respectively ask to to keep observations about this island at the highest level and not go into massive details about driving safety here. Andrewssi2 (talk) 23:18, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Fair enough, but do you genuinely believe that the one sentence of "Driving standards are poor by the standards of Australia, Canada and Northern Europe - but you'll still be statistically safer on the roads of Cyprus than if you were on US, Turkish or Greek roads." goes into massive and superfluous detail? 80.234.168.131 23:32, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

I'd say put the sentence in the respective countries referenced in the extra-region, if it does indeed apply exactly the same to both. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 23:35, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Well that's one way. But I really don't favour a lot of stub articles - driving standards are one of the things that don't really change that much between the two republics - whether you're from Eritrea and marvel at how great Cypriot drivers are, or from Norway and grimace...

Either way, refer to meaningful statistics which are about more than what percentage of the population drives and rides in automobiles. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:49, 29 August 2015 (UTC)