Fuck Cars
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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I realized I ADHD rambled in my post. tl;dr: I totally agree
It for sure is a statistical average. Like one in four women in your life have been sexually assaulted (can't remember the exact statistic, but whatever it is, it's bad).
To your point about some people being more affected than others, you are absolutely correct. Adding to this, some people don't realize how many on their own life, like friends and family, have been affected by automotive accidents. Traffic injuries and deaths are so so normalized. Just anecdotally, the more I think about it, the more I remember people who have been injured, myself included. I just thought of a family friend, right now, while typing this, that was killed in a drunk driver hit and run, while she was jogging on a paved bike path in a park. My cousin and his wife were killed on a motorcycle when a truck pulled out in front of them illegally. Another cousin's best friend died in a car accident in high school.
But when I first read the statistic my first thought was "I don't think I know anyone who has died that way." Stunning. I have a relatively high level of empathy and it took a fair amount of introspection to remember those who died. Partly because they weren't immediate family or friends, but rather, once removed. No wonder, as you say, those callous, self-interested bastards don't allow statistics like the OP to move them toward change.
Without knowing any real details, this is a type of accident where the perpetrator may not be held liable (because accident), and there’s really no technical solution (except maybe self-driving). Pulling out without seeing traffic is far too easy for a human to do by mistake, and no amount of road engineering or stop signs can change that
(Certainly roundabouts can help, and getting rid of stroads, but there’s still “pulling out”)
Behaving illegally and causing someone's death as a consequence should be treated as a criminal matter. It's a homicide, compounded by "reckless disregard."
A lower threshold for taking dangerous drivers off the road would help. And don't believe the self-driving hype: self-driving car makers' stats should not be trusted unless corroborated by peer-reviewed, third-party science, where the people doing the analysis have no conflict of interest.