[drusepth]

>Why do we only care about public safety in one circumstance but not the other?

Outside of armchair theorists online, I'm not convinced anyone in charge of car design actually cares about car safety at all.

Car accidents are the leading cause of death for people age 15-29 and the second leading cause of death for people age 5-14. Nearly 3,300 people die every day in car accidents, and double that number are permanently disabled.

If people actually cared about car safety, it feels like these numbers would have gone down in the last 30 years. They haven't. [1]

[1] https://i.imgur.com/FE6lZu4.png

[moduspol]

They probably have gone down per capita, right? We just have a lot more people than we did 30 years ago. A car built today is certainly safer than one from 30 years ago.

My hope is that driverless cars end up solving this faster than we otherwise could politically, but obviously that may be a bit ambitious.