Good grief. Another tired, lengthy article attacking cars. Sorry but cars provide a lot of benefits, and are well worth the trade-offs in deaths. If you want to avoid deaths entirely, stay in your house. And even that might not keep you fully safe. But vehicle-related deaths are not even in the top 10 causes of unnatural death in the US, and making such a big deal out of it without considering the positives is absurd.
Cars are fast, and in areas that are not ultra high-density, they save time relative to ANY alternative (walking, biking, buses, trains) and therefore drastically improve your quality of life. They don't require you to wait on someone else's schedule, especially given the often inconsistent timing of buses. They don't require you to risk sitting down on dirty seats (6-year-old girl stabbed by uncapped needle on bus: https://metro.co.uk/2019/06/08/girl-6-injected-needle-hidden...). They don't require you to expose yourself to violence (40 to 60 teens rob BART train: https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/BART-takeover-robbery-5...). They let you travel all over the land, including away from cities, and therefore give you a greater degree of freedom than the reach of fixed rails or transit systems that are limited to cities.
Yes cars can cause deaths. So do a lot of other things. But the rate of vehicle-caused injuries/deaths has been dropping sharply since the 80s (see CDC data). It will continue to drop as backup cameras, lane departure prevention, collision detection, collision avoidance, and other assistance features become ubiquitous or required. Nothing is ever perfect, and this is the fundamental reason why efforts like Vision Zero are flawed. "Zero deaths" is not the goal, and generally any such absolute goal is unrealistic.
We get massive benefits from fast, private point-to-point transport. Let's not forget that and work to retain those benefits, instead of damaging the benefits of vehicles with low speed limits and other 'road diet' suggestions.
Cars are fast, and in areas that are not ultra high-density, they save time relative to ANY alternative (walking, biking, buses, trains) and therefore drastically improve your quality of life. They don't require you to wait on someone else's schedule, especially given the often inconsistent timing of buses. They don't require you to risk sitting down on dirty seats (6-year-old girl stabbed by uncapped needle on bus: https://metro.co.uk/2019/06/08/girl-6-injected-needle-hidden...). They don't require you to expose yourself to violence (40 to 60 teens rob BART train: https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/BART-takeover-robbery-5...). They let you travel all over the land, including away from cities, and therefore give you a greater degree of freedom than the reach of fixed rails or transit systems that are limited to cities.
Yes cars can cause deaths. So do a lot of other things. But the rate of vehicle-caused injuries/deaths has been dropping sharply since the 80s (see CDC data). It will continue to drop as backup cameras, lane departure prevention, collision detection, collision avoidance, and other assistance features become ubiquitous or required. Nothing is ever perfect, and this is the fundamental reason why efforts like Vision Zero are flawed. "Zero deaths" is not the goal, and generally any such absolute goal is unrealistic.
We get massive benefits from fast, private point-to-point transport. Let's not forget that and work to retain those benefits, instead of damaging the benefits of vehicles with low speed limits and other 'road diet' suggestions.