>Just imagine if they had more difficult to get drivers licenses,
>backed up with enforcement and ongoing testing, say every 2 years?
>What if there was a mandatory 150 hour driving instruction that
>wasn't available until you turned 21?
>
>Is that the goal here? Reducing preventable death?
I don't believe so.
It is simply that there are some risks people are more willing to tolerate. Its something the psychologists could probably explain, something to do with a misplaced perception that some risks are more within our control than others.
Anyhow, death or injury by road accident seems to be a risk people are more tolerant of. As opposed to, for instance, death by plane accident. That's why the public insists on stringent safety standard for air travel that we don't insist on for road travel. The more serious risk of being murdered by a relative or someone we know well is, like road accident death, a risk people are more tolerant of, whereas we get very uptight about the far more remote chance of being murdered by a total stranger. The even more remote likelihood of being killed by a terrorist is something we will go to incredible lengths to avoid. To the extent of voluntarily giving up most of our civil liberties and privacy to reduce.
I think what some people fail to grasp is that the risk of being mown down by a rampage mass shooter, while probably less likely even than being killed by a terrorist attack, seems to fall into the risk averse end of the spectrum.
So rabbitting on about the comparative risk of car accident is irrelevant. Different kettle of fish so to speak.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas