No, they definitely make a society more free. The difference between being able to drive somewhere and having to walk or take public transport is huge. You can go places at your own pace rather than what's 'best for the majority', reach areas more quickly, go to areas that aren't worth connecting to the rest of the transport system, etc.
The issue is that some places (like the US) are designed around cars rather than just treating them like another form of transport. Having shops and businesses miles from homes is bad design regardless of whether cars are a thing or not. Designing on the assumption every person will drive and having thousands of parking spaces is bad design for similar reasons.
The difference between driving and not driving is between going where the government deems it worth going/getting there in a far longer timespan and getting to wherever you want at roughly your own pace. The issues come from the assumption it's the only way to travel and societies designed around that idea.
> The difference between being able to drive somewhere and having to walk or take public transport is huge. You can go places at your own pace rather than what's 'best for the majority', reach areas more quickly, go to areas that aren't worth connecting to the rest of the transport system, etc.
This is leaving out a lot: your own pace is heavily impacted by traffic, the system is enormously expensive (around where I live, it’s tied with food as the second greatest household expense), and in many cities that freedom was constructed by removing other people’s freedom to have healthy neighborhoods.
Driving can seem like freedom but that’s because it’s heavily subsidized: not just for things like road infrastructure but also the less obvious things like not having to compensate the millions of people whose health is seriously impacted by car pollution or being allowed to carry grossly inadequate levels of insurance which mathematically ensures that the hundreds of thousands of people injured by cars every year will not be adequately compensated. That freedom is the illusion caused by shifting the costs to other people’s health and quality of life!
First of all, no, that's very unlikely: around 8 thousand pedestrians die in the US every year, out of around 40 thousand total deaths in traffic accidents.
But also, even if it is, this doesn't mean we should drive instead of walk to reduce our risk - it means everyone should drive less to reduce risk for everyone.
Everyone was very safe on foot, bikes and transit before there were so many cars. Cars made it dangerous to walk, so now everyone is in cars, which also makes driving more dangerous. Then people buy bigger cars that give them higher chances of survival in a crash at the great expense of everyone else involved, so everyone is buying bigger and bigger cars now.
Depends on how you frame it. Yes, there might be many cases where it's the driver's fault, but there are cases where the pedestrians were jaywalking and behaving in erratic ways.
I remember hearing a statistic (I can't find the source yet so please treat it as unverified) that a non-trivial proportion of pedestrians that were run over were intoxicated (the pedestrians, not the drivers).
I'm not saying this to assign blame to one party or another, just to refute the simplistic statement that it's just the drivers' fault.
It’s almost always the driver’s fault for speeding or not paying attention – people say “they jumped in front of me” but almost any time the police look for camera footage or find witnesses, it turns out that the driver wasn’t paying attention.
The problem is that if someone is killed, they aren’t around to argue their side of the story and most cases simply aren’t investigated.
It doesn't matter if pedestrians are intoxicated. You should be driving slow enough to stop. Here in Japan, if a driver hits a pedestrian, they're always at fault, with almost no exceptions. It doesn't matter if some kid runs out in front of you: you're the one traveling faster, in a dangerous vehicle, so you should be able to stop. Because of this, vehicle speeds in residential or pedestrian-filled areas are generally quite slow; people only drive fast on the limited-access highways.
The issue is that some places (like the US) are designed around cars rather than just treating them like another form of transport. Having shops and businesses miles from homes is bad design regardless of whether cars are a thing or not. Designing on the assumption every person will drive and having thousands of parking spaces is bad design for similar reasons.
The difference between driving and not driving is between going where the government deems it worth going/getting there in a far longer timespan and getting to wherever you want at roughly your own pace. The issues come from the assumption it's the only way to travel and societies designed around that idea.