Eeeeeh. I mean sure, we do have stricter requirements, but not nearly as much as fantasized by Americans. My grandpa still has a license that he got where the whole test was saying “I solemnly swear that I can drive”. Here in Belgium the country is extremely car-dependent so license suspensions are actually vanishingly rare, requiring you to get caught red-handed more than 40 km/h above the speed limit (50 in practice due to radar correction), and even then the suspension is only temporary; I have never heard of anyone who lost theirs permanently. Most people here do consider driving to be a right. Until a few short years ago temporary license suspensions could even be scheduled only on weekends and holidays!

Another angle to see this problem: I see Dutch people driving in Belgium daily. And they’re absolute menaces. But they’re so chill when they drive in Holland! What gives? Well most roads around here have more in common with American roads than Dutch ones… Give a dutchie in a BMW a wide straight line and he will do 75 km/h in a school zone without a second thought before changing lanes without signalling, then barrel through a roundabout while ignoring right-of-way. They aren’t better drivers, they just have such good road infrastructure that forces them to drive one very specific way: slowly and carefully.

It’s multifactorial. Cities like Helsinki and Amsterdam are poster children, but Europe also has plenty of areas (especially suburbs) that are as car-dependent as equivalent US cities.

However traffic deaths remain much lower than in the US thanks to less idiotically-designed streets.

Step 0, by far the biggest impact-to-cost ratio, is narrow the damn streets. Take the biggest road-legal vehicle allowed on that street, mark down the path of travel, and put some plastic bollards a few inches on either side. Watch as everybody instinctively slows down even though the flow of traffic is not even impeded or redirected in any way. This policy - by itself - doesn’t even reduce car dependence! If you do it as part of the regular road repair schedule, it’s literally free.

America’s wide-ass roads constantly astound me with their profound stupidity. There’s literally no tangible gain, and so many downsides to public safety. I understand (though I strongly disagree with) the usual refrains for why the US is car-centric, but making streets too wide is simply inexcusable and unconscionable.

eeeeeeh

Your wife’s book club probably isn’t made up of a large proportion of your country’s cultural, financial, and academic elites which are openly involved in politics.

This isn’t some dudes meeting up in a bowling alley or a local bar, but rather one of the places where politics get made for real.

It doesn’t have to be a bad thing; Belgium’s most prestigious university is a freemason project. But excluding women from such “soft power” exercises raises some alarm bells for me.

My grandfather was a non-religious freemason.

I just checked, apparently in Continental Europe there are many lodges which don’t have strict spiritual requirements following France’s whole “fuck the clergy and also religion” in the 19th century.

English-speaking lodges apparently tend to require belief in a “Supreme being” (and also forbid women from participating because why not at this point), but who knows; lodges are independent organizations and some of them can have different rules or turn a blind-eye, there’s no “pope of freemasonry” to set any rules.

Also holy shit what a trip, the United Grand Lodge of England is… unironically misogynistic but not transphobic?? LMAO

In 2018, guidance was released by the United Grand Lodge of England stating that, in regard to transgender women, “A Freemason who after initiation ceases to be a man does not cease to be a Freemason”. The guidance also states that transgender men are allowed to apply to become Freemasons.