Highway Deaths
Traffic deaths are up this year to a 13-year high. This is something that bugs me because it is almost like something that we are blind to as a species. It is as if 40,000-45,000 deaths a year is an acceptable loss for the benefits that cars give us. Do the math on that, and say you drive for 60 years, you have a 1% chance of dying in a car crash in your lifetime (I think, I suck at stats (1+45000/290M)^60-1). That is a pretty big deal to me. Most people know someone, or know someone who knows someone, that has died in a car crash, but nothing really changes.
We go ape shit when 3000 people die from terrorism, and rightly so. But every 25 days or so we lose the same number in car crashes, and people just seem to go about their business. I don't know what the solution is, and I don't want any restrictions on my driving, but it seems like someone could make some money coming up with something that could cut down on the number of traffic deaths.
Traffic deaths are up this year to a 13-year high. This is something that bugs me because it is almost like something that we are blind to as a species. It is as if 40,000-45,000 deaths a year is an acceptable loss for the benefits that cars give us. Do the math on that, and say you drive for 60 years, you have a 1% chance of dying in a car crash in your lifetime (I think, I suck at stats (1+45000/290M)^60-1). That is a pretty big deal to me. Most people know someone, or know someone who knows someone, that has died in a car crash, but nothing really changes.
We go ape shit when 3000 people die from terrorism, and rightly so. But every 25 days or so we lose the same number in car crashes, and people just seem to go about their business. I don't know what the solution is, and I don't want any restrictions on my driving, but it seems like someone could make some money coming up with something that could cut down on the number of traffic deaths.
