2,596,993 people die every year in the US. That number cannot really be changed. People have to die of something. 35,000 means my chance of death by car accident, over my lifetime, is about 1.3%. That's minuscule. That I don't drink, or drive a motorcycle (anymore) pushes my likelihood down further, far below 1%.
Driving is not statistically dangerous. Doing it wrong (drinking) can make it dangerous but compared to any number of other activities (light aircraft, horse riding, scuba diving etc) it is remarkably safe.
Nobody's saying your deathsport hobby is going to be made illegal, but you'll be outclassed by robots on the public thoroughfares, and possibly priced out of the artisinal motorcar market as the buyers dwindle.
> Driving is not statistically dangerous
Humanity is notoriously bad at making decisions regarding small probabilities, and tradeoffs between risk and money. We know that people give wildly different answers to the questions "how much would you pay to reduce your annual risk of death by X%" vs "how much would you charge to take on an additional annual risk of death of X%?" despite those being more or less mathematically identical. People have the freedom to make stupid, inconsistent choices of course, but that doesn't make them smart or consistent. Just freely chosen.
> 2,596,993 people die every year in the US. That number cannot really be changed. People have to die of something.
That's really, really not the case. Yes, all who live must die, eventually. But there's no conservation of annual human death that means that eradicating smallpox means an equivalent number of people die of choking on pretzels annually. I figure the proper number to track is not percentages, or minimorts, but average longevity.
Driving is not statistically dangerous. Doing it wrong (drinking) can make it dangerous but compared to any number of other activities (light aircraft, horse riding, scuba diving etc) it is remarkably safe.