I doubt parents put their children on the school bus because "something bad is apt to happen anyway", rather "it is just what you do" without any further thought. The postal service carrying humans isn't what we do these days, so it stands out as a curiosity. If it the story was, instead, about a bus line or taxi service, it wouldn't seem unusual at all.
I have this idea that if one of us were talking to a bill and ted from 2200 or so, one of their questions would be something like "so 40,000+ people died in america alone from car crashes, and everyone knew this and just ignored it???"
It's amazing what you get used to.
So really, people in 2200 will talk the same way we do today: "oh, look at all the advances we made that reduced personal transport deaths from 40k people to 1k".
Humans have been assuming risk to gain particular value since we've existed, so only unaware people would say that we are ignoring it (or you wouldn't have the numbers to run your agenda in an unrelated discussion).
Everytime I read the phrase I just groan and move to the next thing to read.
when something bad happens now it’ll be all over news broadcasts and social media.
I think it’s pretty well established that fear mongering will skew your perception of something bad happening, but something I hadn’t considered until now is that it can make the bad thing worse. In addition to dealing with whatever tragedy befell you, there’s a layer of judgemental shame piled on top (“how could they be so careless to let this happen? They must be a bad, neglectful parent”)
The con man has to convince you not to trust institutions and authorities, when those institutions and authorities tell you his product/service/investment opportunity is fake.