That is highway only. Add local roads to get to the total figure. And in any
case, compared to other sources of terror, 40,000 on the road still beats
9/11 by a factor of better than 10. EVERY YEAR. And the road kill has been
pretty consistent since the 60's. If you average 9/11's 3k out over 40 odd
years (less than 100 per year), you have a factor of 400 times more deaths
from Ford, et all than Osama, et all.

It's like chickens worrying about the fox on the way to the butcher.

They are holding Cat Steves outside the USA as a dangerous terrorist but you
can wreck other peoples cars with your SUV as long as you can afford to buy
insurance and even kill other drivers with impunity as long as you aren't
drunk or speeding, etc... "It was just an accident"

Someone told me that Hitler invented the freeway. If that is true, he may
have killed more people with that than in gas chambers. Think about it. 2.2M
in the US alone on the roads, 5 to 6M in the Holocaust over 14 countries. 
http://www.deathcamps.info/new_page_7.htm I'm not sure you can find another
2.7 to 3.7 million road deaths outside the USA, but you might.

I always feel like that guy in Catch 22 when I talk about this...  thousands
of people I haven't even met are trying to kill me. And no one else seems to
get that it doesn't matter if they are the "enemy" or not. I'll still be
just as dead.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065528/quotes
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/0684833395 

But they follow the rules, more or less, so who am I to complain?

---
James Newton, massmind.org Knowledge Archiver 
james@massmind.org 1-619-652-0593 fax:1-208-279-8767 
All the engineering secrets worth knowing:
http://techref.massmind.org What do YOU know?

 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Hansen [mailto:john@hansen.net] 
> Sent: 2004 Sep 22, Wed 15:34
> To: Microcontroller discussion list - Public.
> Subject: Re: [OT] rules, was Yes, I canned Olin again. Focus 
> on the REAL problems
> 
> At 03:23 PM 9/22/2004 -0600, you wrote:
> >James Newtons Massmind wrote:
> >>Just a thought. And we do kill 50,000 to 60,000 every darn 
> year on the 
> >>road here in the USA.
> >>http://www.massmind.org/other/911.htm
> 
> Well, the national insurance journal (you'd think they have a 
> dog in this
> hunt!) reports 43,220 in 2003:
> 
> http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2004/04/30/41664.htm
> 
> In any case, I have seen in a number of places that US 
> highways are the safest in the world... certainly much safer 
> than those in Europe.  I do think that you have to be very 
> careful of highway statistics.  For example, in one column in 
> Car and Driver magazine a couple of years ago the editor made 
> the statement that the reason alcohol seemed to be involved 
> with so many accidents was because the agency that collects 
> these data assumed that every accident that occurred after 
> dark was alcohol related regardless of whether there was 
> actually alcohol reported to be involved or not.  If true, 
> this really causes one to wonder about all of this data.  
> Unfortunately, almost everyone who collects this data has a 
> stake in the outcome.
> 
> 
> 


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