" If a plane crashes, lots of data is collected from the site. The incident is carefully examined and reviewed by a number of organizations. If flaws are found, they are registered and, if possible, corrected. Flying (which one should do as little as possible for environmental reasons), as a consequence, is very safe. Why is this not the case with cars, the dominant mode of transportation in the US?"

Charles, what has led you to believe that automobile accidents are not investigated?

@1) Strawman this early in the chat? You really have nothing to offer.

Chaz, I would add that the extreme lobbying and advertising of the auto makers helped build this delusion into a generation, to the point that this TV generation (boomers!) literally equate cars with fweeeeeedom. Never mind that the automobile did not exist when the Founders implemented the US Constitution. That is a document which discusses things like freedom.

“There is no rational explanation that can penetrate the cult of the car.”

Uh, convenience?

I agree with the overall point - we shrug off the 30,000 deaths a year from automobiles like they’re nothing. AIDS killed fewer, and we treated it like the emergency it was.

Cars have a cost/benefit tradeoff. The cult of the car may not be reasonable, but it is rational.

Substitute “guns” for “cars,” and I would be with you. A gun almost never imparts a practical benefit to its owner - most of us will never face a situation where deadly force would be useful - but nearly all of us will need to get somewhere and not want to wait for a bus.

You'd think after all that time spent working the police blotter, Our Special Charles might have learned the difference between homicide and manslaughter.

Probably because the overwhelming majority of car accidents are determined to be "operator error", with the occasional freak incident thrown in. If automobiles ran on the sort of centrally controlled networks that airplanes, trains, subways, etc. operate on I believe there would be a much bigger deal made of these incidents.

Also, what @7 said.

@7 and @10 both have a point. @4 does not.

Never giving up my car. I read the "I, Anonymous" post describing the bus.

Understood. There's no rational reason for people to do things you don't like or wouldn't do yourself.

Having kids, owning a dog (much less a pit bull!), owning a home, eating a burger, owing a gun, flying in a plane, drinking a Coke, buying from Amazon... anything someone else does that expends any resources or has the possibility of impacting anyone else has got to go.

Gosh, the New Puritanism is fun.

Since when is a 65 year old woman elderly? Would you call a 65 year old man elderly? You should live so long.

@4: And after the investigation, then what?

Stupid post.

You make good points, Charles. I like your presentation of 'superstition'.

Until the buses are clean, quiet, more frequent and go to where I want to go I won't give up my car. You want people out of their cars you need to provide significantly more desirable options BEFORE they should be expected to give it up.

And deal with this issue: I live in Edmonds and work in downtown Seattle. It takes me 30-40 minutes to drive home during rush hour whereas with the bus it takes at least an hour (best scenario but typically an hour fifteen minutes) and that assumes it's running on time and I make the transfer I have to make.

I like my trucks (years) 2000&2007, my house 1912, my boat 1989 it has sails too. Looking forward to an electric car one day even added extra power to the garage for the electric charger. Oh...and guns, I like guns that provide my meat and the black guns which are fun to shoot. Yes,yes fishing poles, is it ok to catch fish? My wife believes its cruel to catch and release the fish for fun so she bonks them on the head and cooks them on our propane grill. Ok done now.

@19) Please tell me you spin folksy yarns and have gee whiz old-timey values everyone can admire??!

We don't investigate car crashes because the economic activity they enable massively outpaces the value of the lives lost.

We investigate airplane crashes thoroughly and auto crashes not as much under the man bites dog theory of journalism

Not really.

TLDR:

"blah blah blah. I hate cars. Nevermind the fact that they created the world that I so thoroughly enjoy. Somehow this is capitalism's fault. Everything I don't like should be banned!!"

If we spent more on public transportation infrastructure -- and it wouldn't take much, compared to, say, what we spend on the military -- we could significantly reduce the need for cars, and therefore the number of car accidents.

I think that's the underlying point. But because we've been indoctrinated with the notion that complete, absolute, total individual freedom -- the freedom to go, do, shoot whatever whenever wherever we want -- is paramount, we cling to our cars, despite the damage to society, the environment, human life, etc..

@7 exemplifies exactly the point Mudede is trying to make: When it comes to the automobile, we are willing to accept a disproportionate amount of death, injury, pollution, economic cost, and erosion of our society all in the name of marginal gains to convenience. In any other arena, be it non-automotive transportation, pharmaceuticals, building/electric/plumbing codes, industrial safety, etc, there is no such thing as an acceptable risk of innocent death. I do not think Mudede is advocating that we ban cars, but rather saying that we should tolerate more inconvenience to avoid KILLING AND MAIMING so many people. Death by traffic is now in the top 3 causes of mortality in the US for every age group under 40, and this doesn't even include the countless paralyzations, bankrupting hospital bills, and other life-altering injuries. To some extent this is achievable within our existing system with slight modifications (don't drive impaired, wait to answer your text message, drive the speed limit, don't be a sociopath behind the wheel), but at the end of the day we need to (a) implement engineering controls (including investment in other modes) so that it is less likely for a person to get into a situation where they will kill/be killed and (b) re-sensitize ourselves to the enormous human cost for marginal gains in convenience. The automobile is ubiquitous because the auto and oil industries have shaped our policies, budgets, cities, and even our mindsets to think that a car is the only option. It's not impossible to undo this, but it won't be easy.

@25 the gains aren't marginal, however, they're massive.

You know how they do "cost of congestion" studies - they show that the delays faced in NYC could be valued at $100B (Billion) a year. Now imagine if goods and services moved at bus-like speeds throughout every city, not just NYC? We'd be talking tens of trillions of lost productivity a year.

@25 - I didn’t say I was willing to accept the cost part of the cost/benefit equation - I was just pointing out that there is a cost/benefit equation.

@7 - "“There is no rational explanation that can penetrate the cult of the car.”
Uh, convenience? "

Convenience.... sure, in a system designed specifically to prioritize cars over all other transport options, cars are rationally more convenient.

It's way more convenient, for example, to take buses, subways & trains in many other countries than it is to own and drive a car.

The architecture itself forces a specific choice.
Politics repeatedly under-funding public transit also contribute to forcing that same choice.

So yeah, it is rational, as seanat points out.
But change is slow and expensive --because in part, private interests don't like to change unless they're forced-- and a better public transit ../and freight shipping/.. system in the US will not be comprehensive for a very long time.

So of course irrational justifications come along for the ride.

@28 - Holy Shit! You're one of those "L"ibertarians! ffffuuck.

@30 - I totally agree: the reliance on the automobile is a conscious choice. And not a collective one. Street cars were, as I understand it, ripped out of most cities after being acquired by automotive manufacturers intent on ensuring demand for their product.

If all that existed were trolley cars or if, say, we all lived in walkable villages, we might not miss cars at all; we would probably enjoy life a lot more. It is no different than our addiciton to disposable packaging or the popularity of services like Uber Eats or the existence of Amazon Prime Now - all these indispensable conveniences are only indispensable because we have decided life should be lived at a breakneck pace.

In America it is possible to kill another human being with your car and only serve a few years prison. Sure, you'll do time, but you won't do 20 years or more as if you shot someone or stabbed someone to death.

Simply hit someone with your car while they are on foot, tell the police that it was an accident (you didn't see them, the sun blocked your vision, etc), SHUT YOUR MOUTH and hire a good lawyer, and you'll probably serve 1-3 years. Yeah, serving 1-3 years would suck but it's certainly better than 20.

Plus you'll probably get your drivers license back eventually. THAT, my friends, is US car culture.

@33 You're comparing sentencing for an accident with that of premeditated murder. If a jury finds you used your car to intentionally take a life, you'll get your 20 years. Now if your name is actually Bob Sanders, you may have to find another way.