But seriously, there is no way for the war industries to profit from this, so there is no concern.

use phones more than before and texting is bigger than calling.

But, many new cars will break on their own and will save some lives.

The risk to those inside the car is only half the story. The risk to those outside the car is just as important.

then the flying pieces might hit the pedestrians.

Subaru EyeSight
AN EXTRA SET OF EYES ON THE ROAD AND, IF NEED BE, AN EXTRA
FOOT ON THE BRAKE WHEN YOU DRIVE.
EyeSight® Driver Assist Technology[1] is the culmination of everything Subaru engineers know about safety. Adding confidence to every trip, EyeSight monitors traffic movement, optimizes cruise control, and warns you if you sway outside your lane. The Pre-Collision Braking feature can even apply full braking force in emergency situations, helping you avoid or reduce frontal impacts.

http://www.subaru.com/engineering/eyesight.html

Other manufacturers have the same thing. I have this on my prius. I spent extra for it because I want the protection.

Shouldn't be a problem. There are few paved roads where I live.

How many times are vehicles used annually in the United States?

As of 2015 there were around 260 million registered passenger cars in the US, and let's suppose that each is used twice per day.

I'm very confident that that's a low figure, and it excludes trucks, buses and the like. So that comes out to about 192 billion uses of cars in the United States annually.

That puts the risk of fatality per use about about 0.00000016 percent, or 1 in 6.4 million. A significantly greater chance than, say, hitting the power ball, but still pretty safe overall.

I'm not a math guy, so I could easily have botched the calculation. Please correct me if I've done so.

Short of fully automating our vehicles, I'm not sure how best to spend money to reduce that likelihood of death.


What do you recommend?


Regardless, we sure as hell shouldn't be wasting tax payer revenues by shoveling literal tons of money into the pockets of war profiteers.

Greatly enhanced public transit would be another, as would telecommuting.

In the aggregate, how much will these cost, in taxpayer dollars?

At present, what is the dollar cost of these car-related deaths in taxpayer dollars?

That's not to downplay it. I'd love to spend zero money on wars and all of that money on infrastructure, but that seems a very long way off (if ever).

What do we do in the meantime?