[bluescrn]

But how many lives are saved each year by the internal combustion engine (or it's electric successors)?

Not just emergency services - more mundane things like, getting food and care to the elderly, getting workers and tools where they need to be to maintain infrastructure, produce food, and much more.

[Bakary]

You could say the same for the horse when the transition to cars happened. We can't just think of the advantages we have now, but what we could get in a more practical system. All of the things you describe could improve in an environment that not based on the car model, but because we live with the latter our outlook is dominated by it and we can't conceive of the alternative anymore than a regular non-Jules Verne citizen in the 1880s can visualize massive clover highway connectors