Friday, May 28, 2010

Do we tolerate too many traffic deaths? A discussion....

One in a series of panels run in the NY Times, this one focuses on accidents and traffic fatalities in the US. I really enjoyed reading these statements from genuine experts. I bet you will too.

2 comments:

James Thurber said...

I read "Traffic" last year and it's quite a book. Highly recommended.

Take a small city of 40,000 people and kill everyone - every single man, woman and child. What do you think will happen? Will society raise a fuss?

That's how many people die, every single year on our freeways. It includes men, women and children. It include pedestrians, motorcyclists, bicycle riders, skate boarders. It includes drunk drivers and innocent victims.

Americans are awful drivers. People who text or chat on the phone while driving should have their automobiles confiscated. Drunks should spend three years without a license after spending 6 weeks in a military style "dry out" camp in South Texas (run by the Marine Corps).

If somebody drives with a license suspended for DUI they should spend the remainder of the suspension in a state prison.

Until we begin to get serious about the dangers of driving we will NEVER begin to address safety on the road.

Doom on all of us!

Khal said...

James is right, of course. But we kill in dribs and drabs so nothing gets done except the occasional hand-wringing when a drunk wipes out an entire family, as we sometimes see here in New Mexico, the Land of DWI.

Not to mention, Americans are more likely to revolt if the government tried to up the ante on traffic management than if government suspended the Bill of Rights.