Car Accidents
Matthew Yglesias hits on one the things that bugs me. Forty-four thousand people will die this year in car accidents. That is a 9/11 about every 25 days. And this has been happening for decades, yet no one really seems to care all that much. Oh, but 120 people maybe die from Ephedra over 10 years...lets ban it. I know that automobiles are very important, and we can't really live without them, but have some perspective. Here is what Matthew says:
Matthew Yglesias hits on one the things that bugs me. Forty-four thousand people will die this year in car accidents. That is a 9/11 about every 25 days. And this has been happening for decades, yet no one really seems to care all that much. Oh, but 120 people maybe die from Ephedra over 10 years...lets ban it. I know that automobiles are very important, and we can't really live without them, but have some perspective. Here is what Matthew says:
"In general, people have a remarkable capacity to get all freaked out by problems (school shootings, mad cow disease, etc.) that kill way, way fewer people than car crashes. A certain amount of automotive fatalities are an inevitable consequence of a world in which lots of people drive, but even so many of these deaths could be prevented by sounder public policy."Now I know public policy solves everything in Matt's world, but he might have a point on this one.
