The Oil Drum: Local

Well, yes and no.

The no part first - the people who drive are just humans, with all the flaws we all know too well. In my opinion, Germans are not better drivers, except for the points which follow in the yes section.

Yes, they are better, but for different reasons -

1. A significant percentage of Germans don't have driver licenses - among this percentage are most likely to be people who shouldn't be driving anyways.
   
2. Germans receive all kinds of training, in grade school, about how to ride a bicycle safely in traffic - though not quite as extensive as American high school driver's ed, it does have both a class room and a range component, maybe 5 hours or so of each, taught by the police (there are police officers whose sole job it is to teach these classes).
   
3. It costs a lot of money (easily above $2,000) to get a license, and the driving test itself is 45 minutes to an hour long - and yes, people fail it quite regularly, and you have to wait a month before retaking it. The written test is multiple choice - and German multiple choice is interesting - all answers listed can be false, all can be true, or any combination in between - it isn't possible to pick the most likely one as a simple test beating strategy.
   
4. Your license is a privilege that the state will happily take away - 3 months for running a red light, for example. Getting your license back takes considerable time and money.
   
5. In the case listed above, the driver would have been charged with a felony (causing injury, basically), and their insurance (or themselves) would be responsible for all costs - for example, all lost income from his medical practice.

I have never actually seen a flipped car on the autobahn (a few times on other roads) - but some of the scrap metal produced is spectacular, until you think about what the people inside probably ended up as.

Actually, since I grew up and drive with a more or less American attitude, I generally let my wife drive in a German town or city - here, people on foot or bicycles are actually part of the traffic mix, and they actually act as if the car drivers will act that way. Partially because if the car drivers don't, they will be hunted down as dangerous criminals - which they are, of course. Since there basically is no reason to drive here (who cares if you need to get to work after you killed a child on a bicycle), losing your license is a matter of a few minutes for a police officer at the side of the road, and not a major court proceeding (I have read/been told - no personal experience there).

By the way, riding a motorcycle is not a problem - it is a different set of skills in most ways, along with the lack of blind spots and smaller size.