We banned mines, too, and it‘s been fairly successful. Not 100%, sure, but just imagine a world were mines weren’t banned, and what Europe and the US would look like, and you know the ban was very effective.
That's a fact the US should be deeply ashamed of. I had no idea how bad the land mine and unexploded bomb situation is until I visited Cambodia and Laos where even 50 years after the war people are still getting their limbs blown off.
Read up on the difference between persistent and non-persistent land mines [1]. The US only uses non-persistent mines that last usually 24-72 hours. The issue with 50 years later is not accurate since non-persistent mines haven’t been commonplace for decades and officially outlawed in 2004 [2]. Only place the US allows persistent mines is at the DMZ. There’s also a distinction between anti-personnel mines and anti-vehicle mines, which the US has a clearer distinction about than others. The Ottawa Treaty only bans anti-personnel mines [3], so the US in one of few countries that has a policy banning the use of persistent anti-vehicle mines.
Ottawa treaty only bans anti-personnel mines, not anti-vehicle or command activated. The US bands persistent anti-personnel mines, but not mines that only last a day or so. This argument gets more convoluted once you read up on it. As I mentioned in spaetzleleeser’s comment below, the US is one of a few countries that has a policy banning persistent anti-vehicle mines (they ban all persistent mines in general), so in some ways is more strict than others.
Any truck or bus has higher road pressure than a tank, because wheels footprint is much smaller than that of a tank tracks.
A very quick search also proves that deaths from anti-vehicle mines number at thousands each year. Even on the very UN website [1] we read:
> The Secretary-General calls on all countries to also regulate the use of anti-vehicle landmines. Such weapons continue to cause many casualties, often civilian. They restrict the movement of people and humanitarian aid, make land unsuitable for cultivation, and deny citizens access to water, food, care and trade.
I believe we can safely assume that anti-vehicle landmines DO pose a deadly threat to civilians.
