The Driving Force of Fear

An intriguing number flashed through the mainstream media a few weeks ago and caught my attention. According to estimates from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 37,313 people were killed in motor vehicle crashes during 2008.

Some reports gave that statistic a slightly positive spin; it's the lowest number of road fatalities in this country since 1961. I'm glad the toll went down, but I doubt many people cared one way or the other. Each year when the highway mortality count is released, most of America just shrugs it off.

Take a moment to consider those 37 thousand traffic victims this way: It's like having having ten 9/11 attacks in one year. It seems like that much carnage would cause an eruption of shock and anger across the country, and a collective demand for action from our government to prevent it from ever happening again.

Where's the fright factor with all this mechanized death? When it comes to generating fear and anxiety, the subject of traffic safety has no horsepower. The casualties just pile up year after year.

Oh the other hand, I'm still hearing sound bites on TV and radio from concerned citizens who say the most important reason for US troops to be in Iraq and Afghanistan is because "if we don't fight the terrorists over there, we'll have to fight them here."

The fear of being harmed by a terrorist is genuine. I'm not going to belittle anybody for that. But here's a question for everyone who believes we must do "whatever it takes" to prevent "them" from coming here: If you feel seriously threatened by danger from a potential terrorist attack, do you feel the same threat level while driving a motor vehicle? And if the answer is no, I'd like to know why, because your chances of dying in a car wreck this year are much higher than the likelihood of being killed by an Al-Qaeda agent.

A friend recently gave me an interesting explanation. He said, "A lot of people feel totally safe inside their car, very protected. And they figure most crashes are, like, screw-ups. Stuff happens. But the terrorists, they WANT to hurt us. That's a really scary feeling."

Using this line of reasoning, death by deliberate intention strikes a much more fearful chord inside many of us than death by careless mistake or other human error. I don't share that feeling, but it's understandable. I also understand that bad driving crosses social, cultural, and political boundaries. There's no obvious group to target for any sort of pre-emptive strike that will make us all safer in every lane. I've had near-collisions with motorists who were young, old, male, female, tall, short, bald, hairy, and one guy who might have been naked. The close calls happen on highways, residential streets, supermarket parking lots, anyplace where cars congregate and drivers may be in a hurry, looking at a map, talking on a cell phone, or arguing with a passenger.

During the past four years, as the cost of the Iraq war climbs higher and higher, I've often wondered how much public support a president might get if he declared a coast-to-coast war on dangerous driving and promised a six-year campaign that would spend twelve billion dollars a month to build safety barriers down the middle of every busy highway, improve car safety features, and put thousands of additional traffic officers on duty all over the country.

For now, those 37,000 crash deaths in 2008 aren't setting off any societal alarm bells. How high does the mortality rate have to get in order to make average drivers pause when they get behind the wheel and think, "I better be really, seriously careful out there."

Would 100,000 deaths per year be the tipping point? Half a million? What kind of number would jolt the American public into saying, "Hey, this car crash stuff is becoming a threat to national security. It's almost like some new form of terrorism!"