[jacobolus]

That’s a pretty reasonable argument. Building better train networks between economically linked cities, getting people to choose other forms of transportation for their commutes, giving buses/light rail their own lanes, designing infrastructure to better segregate drivers from pedestrians/cyclists, encouraging car-pooling and use of smaller lighter cars wherever practical, and in general trying to slow down the speed of automobile traffic (ideally all urban driving would be <30 mph if not slower) would save a lot of lives.

Automobiles, while often convenient, are one of the leading causes of death, and we should try to organize public policy around reducing their use and the deaths they cause to the extent possible without overly compromising their convenience.

Reducing the number of automobiles would also have a big positive environmental impact, and reducing the number and widths of roads and parking lots would free up a lot of space which could be used for other purposes. Other forms of transportation also scale a lot better with population density, and denser cities use a lot less other infrastructure per capita.

Once self-driving cars become effective, I have high hopes that they will replace a large proportion of current human drivers, something else which should save many lives.