Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

I used to think this was very dumb and irrational. but eventually I came to think that the statistical death toll doesn't capture the full impact of a problem. how people feel about it is just as important, if not moreso.

yes, driving is pretty high on list of dangerous things we do. but in my whole life I've only known two people that died in crashes and one who was lucky to survive. I take appropriate precautions, of course, but it isn't something that I think about every time I get in a car. on the other hand, if a few guys flew another plane into a skyscraper, I'd be thinking about that every time I got on a plane for a while, even though I'd still be way more likely to die on my way to the airport. doesn't really make sense, but that's how humans are.

the things that make us happy, sad, or fearful are pretty arbitrary in the grand scheme of things. it's not unreasonable to optimize for the things people actually care about. or at least it's not less reasonable than a more "scientific" approach. either way, your goal is to improve the lives of a bunch of intelligent apes.

I remember once doing the math and finding that there are many times when our local light rail is less efficient than just putting four people in a sedan. When the train is full, though, it's unbeatable.

EVs throw another wrench into that math since they're so much more efficient than ICEVs.

And just that last clause makes it clear that, at least at that time and place, that person is not going to be deterred by reasonable incentives against reckless behavior, because their judgment is impaired.

Basically, your solution (which is also, as you point out, the solution in place in our current society), is to put unreasonable incentives in place--unreasonable from the point of view of the person, because, in your hypothetical, they're 100% convinced they won't harm anyone, so to them this whole "don't drive drunk" thing seems like an unreasonable restriction. It might be reasonable from the point of view of society, but that very view of "society" is not really compatible with a free society of free and responsible adults. More on that below.

> I gather you think reaction is morally preferable to prevention in such cases. Is that a fair assertion?

The only moral principle I have stated is that one should not impose punishments on people who have not caused actual harm. But I did imply a corresponding moral responsibility for the people themselves: that they should exercise reasonable judgment when making choices. People who either will not or cannot take on that responsibility are not going to be deterrable by the kinds of reasonable incentives I am proposing.

Your position seems to be, basically, that in our current society, most people fall into the latter category: they either will not or cannot take responsibility for exercising reasonable judgment--for example, by making it an ironclad rule for themselves that if they are going to go someplace where they might get drunk, they have a plan in place in advance to get home without having to drive. If most citizens of our supposedly free society can't meet that standard, we have a much worse problem than drunk driving.

> Since it's a situation drunk drivers make for themselves I'm happy to punish it.

I don't disagree that being in a situation where you "need" to drive drunk is self-inflicted; I basically said the same thing just above. My point is broader: that our society seems to assume that most adult citizens, if not prevented by various nanny-state laws, will make such errors of judgment frequently enough for it to be a problem. Either that assumption is false, in which case our society is imposing huge restrictions on people that are not justified; or, even worse, that assumption is true, in which case I think our society is doomed.

At any given institution rates are usually quite low, and infections a rarity. But when you project that up to every ICU or hospital in the country, you suddenly get something that causes more deaths than drunk driving.