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> If you live in a small town of 100,000 people, that means 11 of your neighbors will be killed by drivers crashing their cars every year. True. But for comparison, if we live in this small town of 100k people, then 192 people will die from Heart Disease, 178 people will die of Cancer, 47 people will die of Respiratory diseases, 43 people will die of Stroke, and 16 will die from the flu (influenza or pneumonia) every single year, according to the CDC. "Motor vehicle accidents" are not even in the top 10 causes of death (they're 13th, using 2016's data). > the most desirable and productive parts of our cities are that way despite cars and not because of them. Which is a strong argument for cars. Cars make things drastically more affordable for people. If you remove them, you increase the costs for everything (food, transportation, housing, healthcare, education, etc), to heights no regular person could ever afford. That also carries tremendous costs and even carries it's own death toll. Paradoxically, making things "more desirable and productive" makes them worst for real people (because that value will be captured in a pricetag, and real people will never be able to afford it). Paradoxically, too much safety can actually be less safe overall (that safety will be captured in a pricetag, and real people will never be able to afford it, and will be forced into less safe alternatives) - https://local.theonion.com/neighborhood-starting-to-get-too-... More people died from suicide (45k in 2016) in the US, than died from all automobile accidents nationwide (37k in 2016). The tradeoff here is not as simple as people often imagine it to be. |
To your point of bringing up suicide, there is "accidental" death; where it's 1. Opioid overdoses 2. Suicide 3. Car Accidents