Over 42,000 US citizens are killed per year, by each other, using cars. Close to 3,000,000 injured. (1)
(What makes it so possible to drive so much, thus exposing oneself to the risk? Cheap, heavily subsidized fuel. Public money spent on roads. Externalized costs. What makes it so necessary? Development based on automobile culture and the assumption that society will pay for a large portion of the cost of the roads, and continue to subsidize cheap fuel.) (BTW, that is about triple the number of people killed via handguns in the USA annually) Total number killed in attacks of 9/11 (official figure as of 9/5/02): 2,819 (2) (Provided simply as a comparison to the annual death toll from automobile use) NHTSA earlier estimated that highway crashes cost society $230.6 billion a year, about $820 per person. (1) Fatalities in rollover crashes accounted for 82 percent of the total fatality increase in 2002. In 2002, 10,666 people died in rollover crashes, up 5 percent from 10,157 in 2001. The number of persons killed in sport utility vehicles (SUVs) that rolled over rose 14 percent. Sixty-one percent of all SUV fatalities involved rollovers. (1) In fatal crashes between passenger cars and LTVs (light trucks and vans, a category that includes SUVs), the occupants of the car were more often fatally injured. When a car was struck in the side by an LTV, the fatality was 20.8 times more likely to have been in the passenger car. In a head-on collision between a car and an LTV, the fatality was 3.3 times more likely to be among car occupants. (1) (What makes these 4-wheeled battering rams, used as daily transportation of a few passengers, so affordable? Cheap fuel. What makes them so popular? Advertising.) Causes of death: In 2000, the most common actual causes of death in the United States were tobacco (435,000), poor diet and physical inactivity (400,000), alcohol consumption (85,000), microbial agents (e.g., influenza and pneumonia, 75,000), toxic agents (e.g., pollutants and asbestos, 55,000), motor vehicle accidents (43,000), firearms (29,000), sexual behavior (20,000) and illicit use of drugs (17,000). (3) But, what happens if we combine factors of driving and poor diet and inactivity? What I mean is, how much does car dependence influence the purchase of larger quantities of unhealthy foods, and the tendency to less physical activity? These are quite obviously related. One drives to the fast food place or the grocery store to haul home larger amounts of processed foods... thus there is an increase all three risks: risk of accident while driving, risk of long term results of lack of exercise, and risk of long term result of diet. It seems it's the car, and the heavily subsidized fuel and roads, that make all this so possible, so easy....what's the real cost of a barrel of imported oil?... "...When added to the most recent nominal price for a barrel of imported oil, they raise its "real" price to between $101.40 per barrel and $103.24 per barrel. This translates into a pump price for gasoline of between $5.01 and $5.19, or from $90.18 to $93.42 to fill an average gas tank. " (4) (1)http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/nhtsa/announce/press/ pressdisplay.cfm?year=2003&filename=pr32-03.html (2)http://www.newyorkmetro.com/news/articles/wtc/1year/numbers.htm (3) http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/index.php?newsid=6971 (4)http://washingtontimes.com/commentary/20030722-093718-6082r.htm When it's all said and done, if the real costs of petroleum use as fuel were added up and reflected in the pump price, a number of interesting things would likely occur: 1) Less driving....fewer deaths/injuries and costs to the economy from the combination of driving-related factors including car-culture diet and lack of exercise. 2) A larger proportion of smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles 4) More use of renewable energy (it would make it easier for things like biodiesel at the B100 level to compete with fossil fuel if fossil fuel costs were reflected at the pump). New jobs in renewable energy technology and provision would take the place in the economy of jobs lost to fossil fuel-based transport. 5) A reduced requirement to pay military costs for access to imported oil. 6) Development of other non-renewables options within the country that are currently "too expensive" (e.g. extracting remaining reserves from old wells, by newer, more expensive methods, etc.) 7) Spur exploration within the country for more fossil fuel. 8) Increased development, and job creation, for new drive systems, new materials, new designs in the creation of a renewable energy economy. Conservation, needed to pay the higher per gallon or per unit of energy cost of renewables/true cost of fossil fuel, would make renewables a more viable option - in other words, you can afford to pay more for either of these if you reduce consumption. Then the renewable energy options are viable and sustainable, and only then. You have to use a lot less to accomplish the same tasks, in a renewable energy-based economy, to make it work. You can't as easily just "go find more" if you're using renewables. You can't substitute biodiesel for diesel, for example, *doing things the way we do them now*, i.e. extravagant use of diesel fuel*...but you *can* meet the needs of society via renewables, or are much more likely to be able to do so, IF you are much more energy-efficient and conservation-minded AND you combine a whole range of renewable energy technologies to take the place of that single, very convenient gift of nature, the barrel of fossil oil. > > Ok, so it's not exactly on-topic, except this: as we are asked to > discuss and debate and write about and mull over new auto propulsion > technologies, I can't help but return to the fact that so many of us > on Earth die or injured every year in them. > ------------------------ Yahoo! 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