245 children killed in totally avoidable accidents is still 245 too many.
If 245 kids were killed in a plane crash or building explosion there would be media outrage. Yet we are so numb to constant deaths on roads that we just accept it as ordinary.
If 245 kids were killed in a plane crash or building explosion there would be media outrage. Yet we are so numb to constant deaths on roads that we just accept it as ordinary.
And reducing risks comes with exponentially more cost, at some point those costs may become other lives. E.g. if we took the extreme measure of banning any and all vehicles, period, then millions of people might die because economic networks sustaining society would collapse. But hey, almost no children killed by vehicles (some might still die, e.g. by being crushed under a decommissioned vehicle).
There's plenty of cities outside the US where most people do not use personal cars to get around, and where it's perfectly safe to get around by bike. Just look at Amsterdam and Copenhagen. The economies there are doing just fine, and much better in fact than many American cities.
So if 240 children killed by vehicles is too many and we set a goal no other than perfection then we have to get rid of vehicles.
Or we accept a statistic greater than zero.
Your entire argument is "we can't completely eliminate ALL deaths from any vehicle of any kind, so we need to keep our society car-based."
I never said the amount is equal.
> Your entire argument is "we can't completely eliminate ALL deaths from any vehicle of any kind, so we need to keep our society car-based."
Not at all. Neither did I say we cannot reduce the number. I said too many is not a useful statement. That is all this is about. Too many does not tell us what the correct tradeoff is. My concern is that people only see a number and want it go down to zero without taking pareto efficiency into account.
If yes, where exactly does too many stop?
Sure, this is a reasonable condition since "practical" subsumes about any caveat. But it is fundamentally incompatible with:
> zero should remain the goal.
You can asymptotically approach zero, but you cannot reach zero. So setting it as goal is aiming for something unachievable and thus a policy failure. It would be better to set goals that are actually achievable within some timeframe.