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Comment by ForRealsies | Hacker News Reader

So they replace constant low-level anxiety of politics with low-level anxiety of getting hit by a truck?

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14967715 and marked it off-topic.

I can do more to not get hit by a truck than to try and convince my elected representatives to behave in a manner I consider upright and positive. There are a plethora of reasons I wouldn't take this option (friends, family, taxes, culture, property, etc), but if it was a fully even choice between "politics" and "cars," I'd take cars.

>low-level anxiety of getting hit by a truck

no, that one replaces the low-level anxiety of getting shot.

I can protect myself in one country, not in the other one.

What on earth are you talking about?

He thinks he's in a John Wayne film, where a guy with a bright T-shirt that says 'TERRORIST' across it will announce his intentions, before opening fire with an AK-47 in a public place. He will then draw his Smith & Wesson, and put the criminal down with one well-placed shot.

In the real world, this is, of course, laughable. Even people with guns don't fight back against armed gunmen, for two reasons.

1. Most of the time, you have no idea who the armed gunman is.

2. You are very likely to be mistaken for the gunman, and shot and killed by the police.

Ounce of prevention is worth a pound of a cure.

I'll take never being shot over being shot while carrying a gun and maybe shooting them back, anyday

The traffic fatality rate per capita in Germany about 40% of what it is in the US.

I assume you were referring to terrorist attacks, but a stupid, inattentive, or drunk driver will kill you just as dead.

And traffic accidents are far more common in all western countries than terrorist attacks. But you would never know that reading our newspapers or watching our TV.

Case in point: the number of cyclists killed in Berlin traffic 2016 was higher than the number of people killed by terrorist attacks. Providing safe traffic infrastructure may have a better ROI than all the anti-terror measures. It's just that we have accepted traffic deaths as inevitable and they happen one by one and terror attacks are one big event that people think is somehow magically preventable. (In truth, the 2016 attack would have been preventable had autorities arrested the attack instead of stopping the existing surveillance, but most traffic death would be preventable as well)

Traffic deaths are not entirely accepted. There is a constant trajectory of better infrastructure and more safety systems in vehicles.

Of course we are still accepting traffic deaths at some level, but there is a lot of effort and resources devoted to reducing them over time. It's just expensive and disruptive.

One of the primary reasons I moved to Europe (and not even a particularly cycling-friendly place within Europe) was so I wouldn't die under the wheels of some lifted pickup truck while riding my bike to work.

Try again.

Look up mass-murders/high-school shootings in the US and tell me they are less common than in Germany.

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