I sympathize with the gist of this article: Car accidents cause death, injury and trauma. Why do we shrug them off?
I have two reactions to this article. On the one hand, yes, cars are awful. Lots of people die from car crashes, and it’s somewhat weird that we accept that.
On the other hand, as opposed to what? For whatever reason, we have “shrugged off” the mayhem caused by cars. The fact that we accept it shows that it’s acceptable. Or at least that we’re not willing to pay the price to fix the situation.
And what would that price be?
We could lower speed limits and have more traffic enforcement. We could force people to retire older (less safe) cars. We could invest in better roads. We could require more stringent training to get a driver’s license. We could require every car to have a breathalizer.
Or, if we wanted to go all in, we could require everyone to live in cities with ubiquitous subway systems. We could re-engineer the entire society to do away with cars.
Clearly we’re not willing to do that. Life is apparently not as precious as we like to think it is, and we’re willing to take some risks for the convenience and freedom we get from having cars.
Maybe that’s unfortunate, but that’s the way it is.