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Comment by arzt | Hacker News Reader

This is what America's softly regulated human driving crisis looks like: "38,300 people were killed on U.S. roads, and 4.4 million were seriously injured, meaning 2015 likely was the deadliest driving year since 2008."

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/02/18/467230965/...

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This is a red herring. Just because there are also a frightening number of driving fatalities doesn't mean we shouldn't better regulate firearms. It means we should ALSO better regulate driving.

Ah, but priorities, priorities.

Which should we regulate first? The media is leading me to believe that the "gun crisis" is the most pressing issue and that aggressive regulation will lead to the greatest gains in terms of preventing loss of life.

It could be classified as a red herring. But I think he is trying to point out that the potential deaths a regulation will prevent does not correlate well with how much media coverage it receives.

Can I get some stats on what America's softly regulated medical malpractice crisis looks like?

> between 210,000 and 440,000 patients each year who go to the hospital for care suffer some type of preventable harm that contributes to their death

https://www.propublica.org/article/how-many-die-from-medical...

A car is designed to get you from A to B.

A gun is designed to kill.

Then it's impressive that one is far more fatal than the one designed to kill.

Can we get a combined statistic on how many drivers & shooters were under the influence of serious prescription drugs?

How many guns were used to safely transport people on U.S. roads from one place to another?

Luckily, this has become a huge focus for many of our most innovative companies. As someone who commutes in a car daily, I can only hope mass use of self-driving cars is soon a reality.

Humans are more afraid of gun violence than car accidents. Since we pass laws for the benefit of humans, it is fitting and proper to consider what they fear in the cost assessment.

If we ever start making laws for robots, then I'll get behind your passionless and ultra-rational account of death totals. But, for now, the laws we make are for meat bags and that's why your comment is a non sequitur.

> Humans are more afraid of gun violence than car accidents.

Well maybe we wouldn't be so afraid of gun violence if the media wasn't such a fear-mongering agenda-driven political entity.

Maybe we should regulate the media instead of guns.

> Maybe we should regulate the media

  Donald Trump revokes Washington Post press credentials

http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/13/media/donald-trump-washingto...

but i totaly agree with you. Much of our fear of guns is from media. They could probably make us all terrified of going out in our cars if it helped them sell more page views.

You have this backwards. The reason the media focuses on shootings and not daily car accidents is because they know which one we fear more. They didn't create the fear. They're exploiting it.

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