[maxerickson]

We expend enormous resources preventing traffic deaths. From driver education to advanced safety systems costing thousands of dollars (in every vehicle sold!). There are (approx.) 15 million cars sold in the U.S. each year. Each $1000 of safety equipment is $15 billion spent mitigating traffic injuries and reducing deaths.

Maybe $15 billion looks silly in comparison to hundreds of billions, but it at least starts to look pretty comparable.

[rogerbinns]

We also require everyone who will drive to obtain government papers for both the people (license) and vehicles (registration).

[darkarmani]

If you are going to include the safety equipment people willingly pay for in their cars, you need to include the billions of dollars people spend on guns to protect themselves as well.

[maxerickson]

I think the second paragraph of my comment makes it clear enough that I wasn't trying to make a complete comparison. The goal was more to establish that just dismissing spending on things like traffic safety is a bad argument.

[darkarmani]

But it still isn't a bad argument. First of all, the spending is off by an order of magnitude, and secondly, the amount of money spent per death is many orders of magnitude different. Spending 20x the money to save under 1/10 the lives?