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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: October 23rd, 2023

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  • That doesn’t affect the ability of older drivers, only the number of them.

    In fact, since one reason very old drivers might get more accident prone is because they stop driving as much and lose some of the skills, you would expect that, if older Americans really persist in driving more as they get older (you haven’t provided any evidence that they do) they would retain those skills and be less accident prone, not more, so would be safer, and less at need of re-tests, than their UK counterparts.

    Focusing on the driving safety of the elderly is a classic example of Saliency Bias. A 20-year old kid wrecking his car is nothing unusual so you don’t remember it when thinking about safety. An 80 year old who can’t even remember which way to turn the wheel getting in a wreck is unusual and extreme, so it’s more salient. Getting stuck behind an elderly driver gives you the impression that they’re a bad and hence unsafe driver, which contributes to this.







  • As far as I can work out about this USA, this is not true. It is certainly not true where I am from. It may be true in the case of postdoctoral researchers (but not always), i.e. relatively junior researchers who don’t yet have a permanent position. But a permanent position is just that - it’s like a permanent job, and you’re paid a salary by the university that gave you that position. You will typically also need to apply for grants in order to pay for things like:

    • travel to conferences
    • travel to collaborate in person with colleagues at other institutions
    • make papers open access
    • hire postdoctoral researchers and PhD students.

    I did two postdocs during my time in academia and both were grant funded (one awarded to me, one awarded to a more senior researcher who then took me on as a postdoc). I also applied to one postdoc position I remember which although fixed term, not permanent, was paid for by the university. I worked with many permanent staff who had salaries from the university as well as grants for other things.

    As far as I can tell in the USA the only real difference is that your salary may only be for the 9 teaching months, not the full academic year, and you’re expected to top up those 3 months if you want to be paid a proper wage.