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By "not off to a great start" I mean that so far this century it's only taken us 13 years to kill half a million people. Sure, there are a lot more people in the country now and a lot more people are driving, but does that make the number any better? If a nuke was dropped on a small city in China and killed a million people would you say "Oh, that's not bad, that's only .07% of their population!" ?
If the years before that a nuke was routinely dropped every year and always killed more than a million, yes. Since nukes aren't dropped every year on Chinese cities, it's a stupid analogy. Rate of auto fatalities has gone down from 15 per 100,000 to 10 per 100,000. Seems like a great start. The question is if as the economy picks up people start driving more miles resulting in that increasing again. Probably will be a increase, but miles driven doesn't account for all of the reduction.
In the grand scheme of things, given the beyond vast number of people who have lived, died, and drived in the United States over the past century, this number is not overly concerning, especially given that the fatality rate has been steadily dropping.
I do like living in a city with a good public transit system, but having a car is still the best way to "get out" and explore/visit other places.
In the grand scheme of things, given the beyond vast number of people who have lived, died, and drived in the United States over the past century, this number is not overly concerning, especially given that the fatality rate has been steadily dropping.
I do like living in a city with a good public transit system, but having a car is still the best way to "get out" and explore/visit other places.
I think it's still pretty concerning. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure most people know someone who has been seriously injured or killed in a car accident. I think it's still the #1 cause of death of young people, so that should say something too. Also, whenever I ride around in my bike I can definitely sense the threat cars pose as they whiz by, which is why I prefer to ride on trails away from the roads.
But I definitely agree about cars being the best way to get out of town. I'm a big fan of road trips - hoping to take one here pretty soon!
I think it's still pretty concerning. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure most people know someone who has been seriously injured or killed in a car accident. I think it's still the #1 cause of death of young people, so that should say something too. Also, whenever I ride around in my bike I can definitely sense the threat cars pose as they whiz by, which is why I prefer to ride on trails away from the roads.
Oh no, you're good - I didn't mean to sound so argumentative. You and some of the previous posters made good points about how driving is a lot safer than it used to be. Compared to the 70's we're much better off having fewer fatalities overall, especially considering there are a lot more people now who are driving a lot more.
I still think 30k+ deaths a year in accidents is a sign of a faulty transit infrastructure. It could definitely be worse, though. China has at least double the number of auto-related fatalities with only one third of the number of cars on the road compared to the US:
Nanny state concerns notwithstanding, I'm looking forward to Mr Market improving my driving habits: I want insurance companies to plop a GPS in every car, with some function to know if I'm on my cell phone. While I'm making my wish list, a "driving tired" and "driving erratically" monitor would be nice too.
I would be willing to trust, to some extent, insurance companies, because their financial incentive involves you driving safely. Police have an important role in enforcement, but unfortunately, the laws they enforce are not always tied to safety. Theoretically, an actuary should be able to determine that driving 85 mph in a new Audi in rural Texas is safer than driving a rickety Datsun at 70 mph elsewhere, despite the fact that 85 might be technically illegal.
Are people forgetting that the world's population is rising, thus more drivers? Not only that, nearly everyone is buying a car. Every member of the family has one (at least where I'm from). So it's much more likely that the numbers will go up.
Are people forgetting that the world's population is rising, thus more drivers? Not only that, nearly everyone is buying a car. Every member of the family has one (at least where I'm from). So it's much more likely that the numbers will go up.
The thread was about the U.S., not the world.
That said, I'm fairly certain the number of people who die in car crashes will be much, much lower in the U.S. this century. First, vehicle miles per capita seem to have have peaked. But more importantly, even by the most pessimistic projections by the second half of the 21st century we should have moved to an entirely automated driving system, which should reduce accident rates by 80%-90%.
* Pedestrians and bicyclists killed by drivers: many thousands
* Drivers killed by non-drivers: nearly, if not exactly, ZERO
It is disgusting to see non-drivers, who receive none of the benefits of an automobile-centric society yet have to pay for it not only with their tax money but sometimes with their lives, lumped in with car-to-car and car-to-nature collisions.
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