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Originally Posted by KenWittlief
If we had this many people dying each year on commercial airlines the industry would be shut down. Why is it tolerated on the roads?
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My theory? It's because car accidents rarely if ever kill hundreds of people at a time. Which draws your attention more, a hundred dollar bill on the table in front of you, or a thousand one-dollar bills scattered and hidden across a football stadium?
Unfortunately, I don't think the entire solution is solely in better-engineered cars. Just as a mediocre robot with a good driver will do better than a great robot with a bad driver, we could have nothing but Ford Pintos on the road if people actually knew how to drive. How many times have you had someone nearly clobber you because they were driving too close, too fast, or too distracted? Until they figure out how to fix (or at least curb) human stupidity*, all the engineers in the world (and all the ones to come) won't be able to fix it.
*The only way I can think to do this is to require folks to re-take their road test every five or ten years, when they renew their license. That leads to a whole slate of other issues, but at least we'd have to brush up on how to do it the right way every now and again.