Imagine if we spent all of the billions of dollars surrounding those 30,000-40,000 deaths (healthcare, insurance, litigation, first responders) and invested it into research for alternative methods of transport, eg. driverless cars, public transportation.
No other properly operated consumer item poses a risk of death as high as automobiles.
Please show me a death caused by a car and not by the driver.
See how well this argument has worked for gun owners over the last 50 years :)
Its working for cigarettes and foods with trans-saturated fats. (somewhat tongue-in-cheek here)