> A ”best effort” summary of this article: if thousands of people die in once place, it’s one of the great tragedies in American history. However if thousands of people die in thousands different places, it is ignored and considered a fact of life.My summary is different: if thousands of people die because the government specifically puts them in harm's way but doesn't give them the best available protection against harm, particularly when, in retrospect, the government's reasons for putting them in harm's way were, to say the least, somewhat contrived, we take it very seriously and we demand that the government do better.
But if thousands of people die because they individually made serious enough errors of judgment that it ended up killing them, we consider it a fact of life--because it is. No amount of social engineering is going to be able to always protect people from the consequences of their own poor choices. You can't design perfect roads that will magically prevent all accidents.
What we can do as a society is to at least give people the proper incentives. Many people routinely ignore traffic laws (the most common is probably speed limits). Why? Because they can plainly see that many traffic laws are not there to actually improve traffic safety, they are there to give governments additional revenue sources (again speed limits are the most common example). And that means people lose respect for all laws, including those that actually are there to improve safety (such as seat belt laws).
The way to fix all that is, first, to stop penalizing people that haven't caused harm. If I'm speeding, but I don't cause an accident, a cop should not be able to give me a ticket and force me to either pay a fine or go to court. (Not to mention that, during the time the cop has me pulled over just for being X mph over the speed limit, event though I haven't caused harm or even been driving outside the normal flow of traffic, how many other drivers that were doing the same thing have gone whizzing by? Obviously enforcement of such laws is going to be random, which just makes the incentive problem worse.) Even if I'm driving recklessly, or under the influence, but I don't cause an accident, a cop should not be able to give me a ticket and force me to either pay a fine or go to court.
A cop should be able to stop someone who, in their judgment, is driving in a way that endangers other drivers. "Stop" here means pull them over, just as they would now, and, if in the cop's judgment that person is, at that time, not capable of driving safely (for example, if they fail a breathalyzer), don't allow them to drive. Ask them if there is someone they know who can come pick them up. If necessary, lock their car and take them to the police station and let them contact someone from there. But don't force them to pay a fine or go to court if they haven't caused harm.
Second, many of the proper incentives can be better enforced by private entities. For example, I mentioned seat belt laws (and another poster, a former cop, mentioned them also). What if, instead of having seat belt laws, your car insurance policy had a rider that, if you were in an accident and were found to not be wearing your seat belt, either your deductible becomes much higher (say $10,000 instead of $1,000), or your coverage is denied altogether? What if, instead of DUI laws, there were a similar rider for having an accident if you were found to be under the influence? That would give exactly the right incentive, for people to not cause harm due to those kinds of errors of judgment. Even the law itself could be written the same way: no penalty for simply not wearing a seat belt or driving under the influence, but if you cause an accident and you are found to not be wearing a seat belt or driving under the influence, you are presumed to be at fault and you can suffer increased penalties.
In short: put the responsibility for individual accidents where it belongs: on the individuals that actually cause harm.