60,000 people die on the roads in the US every damn year. That is more US citizens than died in the entire Viet Nam war.
{ed: this figure is based on a combination of highway statistics compiled by the NTSB and a non-representative sampling of local surface street fatalities. The federal figures seem to hover at 40,000 to 50,000 per year (since 1965) with another 10,000 to 20,000 estimated locally. In the state of California in 2001 we lost 3,956 to "Motor Vehicle Crashes." See:
- http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/2003/html/table_02_01.html Federal statistics
- http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2004/04/30/41664.htm Insurance statistics
- http://www.nsc.org/learn/safety-knowledge/Pages/injury-facts-chart.aspx How will you die? Auto accidents will take 1 in every 113 of us.
In any case, even conservative estimates are telling. The US death toll in Viet Nam was approximately 58,000.}
I'm about sick of hearing about the (less than) 3,000 who died on 9/11. As many have died in Iraq and we would not be in the war if not for the reaction to 9/11. The only difference is "reasonable expectations" e.g. Soldiers are expected to understand that they may die. Drivers pretend to control their own fate. The WTC victims had no idea in what form their punishment would arrive.
Is being hit head-on by a drunk driver any better than being killed by a terrorist? What about the kids who get to watch their parents bleed to death from the safety of the child seat in the back? Most of us are (much) more likely to die on the freeway. I have a neighbor (about 5 houses down) here in So Cal (on the opposite side of the USA from New York) who is a fireman and has had a big display in his front yard about the 911 victims and NYFD, etc.. ever since it happened. I just found out that his wife was killed in an auto accident some months ago... But the sign is still about 911. And there is no light rail system up the I-15. And no funding for alternatives.
In one of the R.A.H. books, Lazarus says something about people who have not learned math through calculus being less than human. I like the bit about the lottery being a tax on people who are bad at math. But worrying about 3,000 when around 60,000 are lost each year just seems beyond stupid. The gene pool needs some chlorine.
Based on my rough calculations, I was safer in '92 floating about the Gulf of Oman than I am today commuting an hour a day. If I die, I want my tombstone to read "Flunked Statistics; Died on Freeway"
And if you only worry about money, how about the 60,000 cars? In Y2K, it was estimated that the Economic Cost of Traffic Crashes was over $630 Billion USD.
Pull your head out of the Television induced emotional trip and think about the hard, cold, facts. Why go on about the WTC? Our friends, neighbors, and family have been dieing on the roads every year right here in the good old USA.
But it serves the morals of the people who influence our media to separate the focus from reality. Why aren't we hunting down Ford and Firestone and drunk drivers? How much do you want our government to spend on keeping terrorists out? Want to guess what the current federal funding for R&D on alternatives to the daily commute is? How much more valuable would an infrastructure for telecommuting be?
It's like chickens worrying about the fox on the way to the butcher.
They held Cat Stevens 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"
I always feel like that guy in Catch 22 when I talk about this... thousands
of people I havent 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. But they follow the rules, more or less, so I'm not to
complain?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065528/quotes
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/0684833395
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.
I'm not sure you can find another 2.7 to 3.7 million road deaths outside
the USA, but you might.
http://www.deathcamps.info/new_page_7.htm
In any case, if our government would take the supreme courts ruling to heart and separate church from state, the ridicules bias we show for Israel might come to an end and we could stop pissing off all the Arab states. That would do more to keep out the terrorists than any amount of boarder checking...
Hell, we've been trying to stop Mexicans from coming over for years and we have NO success at that. They found a tunnel years ago and each side said they would fill their end with concrete, then each side said "well as long as they are filling their end, why bother filling ours" and the coyotes just kept on using it! Its a big country with a lot of borders and a good mix of people from all over. That is part of our strength.
Level the playing field between Arab and Israeli peoples and get back to working on our own problems. Stop crying over some pabulum from the media. Use your head. See:
And now they use 9/11 as a justification to invade other countries (HELLO! The 911 hijackers were SAUDI, NOT IRAQI. no link to Iraq has EVER been found and no WMD were ever found either. Hussain was no worse or better than any number of other mass murderers who we have left alone. He just had oil and had tried to sell it without OPECs permission.)
If the government can use 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq then what prevents them from using 9/11 to shut up anyone who doesn't agree with government policy? They think the U.S. public will believe their scare tactics, and to a frightening degree, they have been right. Remember the song? "...paranoia runs deep..." And here are the next round of victims:
Buck up, be proud, correct the problems, keep a level head and MOVE ON.