and while the fact related to the risk of flying vs. driving are probably true, they are off-topic and irrelevant.
the reason that large airline safety in the US is so overwhelmingly good is the preceding 20, 30, 40, 50? years of continuous improvements. until the last 5-10 years that is. we haven't even seen the tip of the iceberg yet. when these 2010's and 2020 planes are 15-30 years old, it's going to be a shit-show.
so if you believe that the airlines are too safe, that there is too much margin, they are over-engineered, over-regulated, etc. then that wouldn't be at all irrational. you could trade some gold-plated engineering for profit. you could trade bureaucracy for faster production, maintenance, etc. you could reduce the cost of travel (by how much? it's already cheap). this would be an interesting argument to make. but these decisions should be made in the light of day by the NTSB/FAA, congress, the public, and the shareholders, etc. even then, it's likely that theory would have negative consequences (remember the better-faster-cheaper NASA theory of operation).
the problem is that, instead of an honest choice made in public by the appropriate stakeholders and the flying public, these choices and short-cuts were made in secret, illegally, with extreme dishonestly, repeatedly, for at least a decade, for extremely selfish gains, by FAA and boeing executives.
that's what's not ok. we're told and we expect the nearly perfect safety to continue. what we got was back to the 1950's-1970's era shit-show.