The economic percent loss of value due to car accidents, per capita is likely the same around the world. What stands out is the extraordinary rate of vehicular deaths and serious accidents in the US. [1] [2] Yes, everyone knows it's high. But, 5x the traffic accident and fatality rate of other comparable developed countries is unforgivable.

Now high car crash numbers are bad enough, but their breakdown is even worse. It is the primary driver of child death [3]. Cars don't just kill other car-drivers. They kill every type of road user, while the others barely register, even when normalized per capita. [4] [5]

Ironically, bigger and safer cars make both the driver and the roads a lot less safe as the prisoners dilemma means everyone loses. [6][7]

And these are just the numbers. There are insidious cultural patterns that appear when cars are the only way to travel. The US has a shocking cultural acceptance of DUI. I don't blame them. If the only way to party is to go downtown 20 miles away, and an uber is 75$ each way, then people start making dumb decisions. No one follows the speed limit, frequently exceeding it by 100% in slow neighborhoods. [8] Stop signs are considered optional across the country and the assumption is always that 'might makes right'. I have learnt to never engage with a pick-up truck on a road, and never to trust a car to stop just because you have the right of way as a cyclist/pedestrian. Old people, sick people, the sleep-deprived, 15 year olds, and the soon-to-be-blind all drive in the US, no matter how suited for it. Because the other options are so much worse. Ofc they're out there running over people. What did you expect would happen?

The article tries to quantify the damage done by cars with the least relevant metric : "$$". As bad as those numbers look, the economic damage is in fact the most charitable way to look at damage done by car culture in this country.

[1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fk7HavRaYAMRa_w?format=jpg&name=...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4igbmr3Qj30

[3] https://twitter.com/buttermilk1/status/1446513576559194118?c...

[4] https://twitter.com/ETSC_EU/status/1461356632042979339?cxt=H...

[5] https://twitter.com/fietsprofessor/status/138004836808543027...

[6] https://twitter.com/emollick/status/1568797893888249858?cxt=...

[7] https://twitter.com/jdavey_2/status/1533865942731526146?cxt=...

[8] https://twitter.com/WarrenJWells/status/1501638281573777408?...

P.S: This is not arbitrary link spam. These are carefully curated links I have accumulated over years of this being my proverbial hobby horse. I am a broken record. I know that.