It is a certainty. But to see it we must accept that crashes are inevitable on the whole, which to some extent goes against the mentality often expressed here that there's no such thing as a car "accident." I don't understand that rhetorical game; all crashes that aren't intentional are also accidents. They're brought about by some amount of risky behavior, starting from a baseline of putting a two ton vehicle in motion. A hundred miles of alcohol-free driving must equal at least ten miles of .1 BAC driving in terms of risk to self and others, but I don't expect to see an ad campaign for bundling suburban errands to save prom queens any time soon. We're all human and we make mistakes, and marginalizing bad drivers after a crash--because of course it really is someone's fault--might make us feel better (and better than the perpetrator) but isn't likely to improve things further. (Tho the victims or their survivors should get what they're entitled to.)

We'd do better to treat driving as a public health issue and reduce the harm it causes with some semblance of cool-headedness.

His entry "Connectivity Part 7: Crash Safety" is a primer on roadway design, safety, standards, sprawl, and on and on.

My favorite part:

The key factor in crash risk is design speed. Design speed is the speed at which drivers feel comfortable traveling; it is an entirely different concept than posted speed limits, which drivers usually feel are safe to exceed. Thanks to context, slow speeds prevail on livable streets. Drivers drive more slowly because the context signals the type of activity, amount of activity, and potential hazards that can be expected. Drivers “read” the context of livable streets and are impelled to exercise more caution.

Conversely, idiot-proof roadsides foster the illusion of safety and encourage speeding and lack of attention. High speed plus a lack of caution increases crash risk.

In short, US safety performance in terms of fatalities per capita has fallen dramatically behind its international counterparts, a finding that has led many in the transportation community to begin fundamentally rethinking the current approach to addressing transportation system safety (FHWA, 2001; 2003a; 2003b).

Contemporary designers might argue that US drivers nevertheless drive more miles per year than their European counterparts. While this may be true, it overlooks the gruesome fact that more people per year are getting killed as a consequence of their travel activity. Asserting that US drivers travel more miles assumes that there is some benefit associated with their doing so. Yet few drivers drive for pleasure; instead, longer distance travel is necessitated by the physical design of cities and regions in the United States. This travel cannot be regarded as an optional luxury that a driver could elect to forego, but as an activity that is mandated through design. Stating that US drivers travel more miles is little more than a reflection of the fact that U.S. cities and regions have less accessibility and fewer modal options than their international counterparts, thereby forcing US citizens to travel more using a transportation mode that increases their likelihood of being killed or injured.

Where he is correct is that the reporting is on a micro scale, and there's no real macro sense of outrage or frustration at the sheer number of overall deaths that occur on roadways. But don't say that road deaths don't get covered because they do every day.

I was excited when they printed my reply:

To the Editor:
In ''117 Deaths Each Day'' (column, March 13), Nicholas D. Kristof reminds us of the obvious -- that cars and trucks kill a lot more people than terrorism. If more people in each United States community would demand safe routes for bicycles, perhaps both cars and terrorism would gradually become lesser dangers.

A moving bicycle is far less likely than a car to seriously injure people, and it does not run on oil -- the polluting energy source that is arguably a source of revenue for those few terrorists actually out there.

You're more likely to die driving to the airport than you are on the flight, but guess which part of the trip is the one most Americans fear? When a plane goes down, it's such a rare occurance that it makes international news. A deadly accident on the expressway to the airport is cleaned up in an hour and lucky to get a mention in the local paper. It's just too common to be shocking.

Another issue is control. People drive cars themselves, and tend to trust their own judgment more than they should. A terrorist crashing a plane into your workplace is inescapable.