> A good test is to ask "If someone else killed my family because  they did
> xxx would I consider that they were acting in an acceptable manner  and
> that it was 'just an accident'?". 

This accident thing is really strange. Think about it... someone running
around in a crowded city swinging a hammer and eventually hurting or
killing people, not many, just one or two every few years -- he would
obviously get prosecuted. But his friend, taking is 2 ton hammer on wheels
every night to the bar, also eventually hurting or killing people, also not
many, is only causing "accidents".

We've gotten to accept most anything that happens on the road as an
"accident", as if it were god-given and not a matter of choice. In Germany
(and I suspect in most countries) there is a basic /law/ that says you may
only drive as fast as is safe within the circumstances. In my
interpretation, that means if you hurt or kill somebody, you drove too
fast, or in the wrong place, and violated the law. Yet one needs to do some
pretty outlandish things to actually get prosecuted for manslaughter in a
traffic accident. 

This is a matter of collective choice. Most countries have chosen to adhere
to an "individual vehicle mass transit" type of life style, and also have
chosen to accept most losses that are due to that choice as inevitable
"accidents" -- mostly because it's too disturbing to classify these losses
as the result of a choice. (Something like "the end justifies the means" or
so plays here, too...)

It would be very possible, by legal standards, to prosecute everybody who
hurts someone with a vehicle with the same rigor we use to prosecute people
who hurt others with a hammer. Yet we choose not to. It's a choice. If we
did, traffic most likely would change, not immediately but over time, and
most likely many other things like city structure, life styles, and so on.

And for those who think that I'm against cars: I'm not. I'm for clarity.

> My partial list would be an unexceptional one. 

Probably one of the most effective ones (in addition, of course, to
everything you wrote) is to only drive when necessary. And to constantly
minimize the necessity -- it's a matter of organizing your life. Organize
it around your car, and it of course seems extremely necessary to use the
car a lot. Organize it some other way, and the perceived necessity starts
to diminish.

Gerhard
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