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Society has collectively decided that people dying from automobiles is a price it's willing to pay. I'm rather resentful of our car-centric infrastructure, but here we are.
this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
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Mildly Infuriating
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Amazing.
The Chicago metropolitan area has about one and a half times the population of denmark and five times the traffic fatalities.
(And 150 times the gun murders, but it's kind of a given that the US is completely whack on that compared to the rest of the western world)
You should really look into both.
They don't have 50+ hours of mandatory training before hitting the roads like we do. In some states you can practically just go to an exam and luck out.
Their perception of freedom is messed up and literally causing huge amounts of unnecessary deaths.
There is also a lot more driving in the USA, even in a decent transit area like Chicago.
Very true, we do like our bicycles
One of these things is purpose-built for the deliberate infliction of harm. The other is vastly more popular and merely causes harm through negligence.
Sort of like the American political parties, I guess
I guess it's because one of these things is a widely used tool, a requirement for work / living in the USA and gives people freedom.
The other is just car.
That is a pretty high number of shootings then. Practically everyone drives so that is a lot of miles/person. You have to drive, you don't have to be shot, that is why it draws media attention.
Chicago is pretty different to most of the US. There is actual reliable public transit. The average resident isn't doing nearly the driving of the average American
Wow, we really need to educate people on safety and strictly license usage based on examination and proven ability.
If guns are so alike to cars, why not require a license that you get by passing a written test on gun safety and a practical test on basic competence and safe usage?
They are not alike. It’s a dumb comparison. Transport (albeit flawed) brings many more advantages than shooting people. That’s why people accept cars more than guns.
And yet a drivers license requires a lot more than a gun.
Driver's license requirements honestly should be much higher
I'm a European and in my country driving tests are really hard and it takes a lot of very motivated people 3 or more tries and the better part of a year of frequent training to get a license. When I hear Americans talking about their driving test, most of them didn't even get on the road and did the test on a separate test terrain. All they need is knowing what a traffic sign is and being nearly able to use their highly automated car. The difference in required knowledge and ability is staggering.
Add to that the tendency to drive huge and heavy SUV 's and trucks that are highly dangerous to other road users and you get an extremely deadly situation.
I agree. But a gun license should be harder too.
I agree it was a dumb comparison to start off with.
I wasn't the one who made it, but the license issue is the logical conclusion if OP insists on the comparison.
America has ~280M cars, and ~500M guns
Americans, at least, are very accepting of guns. There's a reason the fatality rate is so high
Sorry let me clear that up. I meant people are more accepting of the deaths that cars cause compared to guns
Traffic engineers use decades-old manuals that ignore safety in favour of driver convenience. This has to change. Streets built by them are a huge public safety issue.
We should never accept crashes that result in serious injuries or deaths as if they are an inevitable force of nature or something. They're merely a predictable outcome of a badly built system.
You need three prongs, infrastructure, training and enforcement. No one wants to spend the large amount of $ it would take to redesign thousands of miles of roads in each city. There is also the issue of how ridiculously low the bar is set for getting a license and how basic safety inspections are. In my state I can count on one hand how many times I've seen highway patrols enforcing traffic laws.
Traffic engineers
They are just doing what they are being told. They don't have the authority to diviate in practice.
This is a political issue. Everything is captured by the shittiest lobby.
Health care > health insurance and pharma
Infra > cars and oil
Privacy > tech firms
There is nothing a slave can do via direct action in these jobs since they will fire you and out somebody in place who will follow orders.
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This is especially surprising to me because Chicago is one of the few US cities with decent public transportation, so there's a significant percentage of people that aren't driving.
Vehicle fatalities are generally far higher than gun fatalities in the US. For decades it was the #1 cause of death under 45, only recently being dethroned to poisonings thanks to fentanyl
For Chicago, this is brought down by very low car ownership rate (by US standards), and a high gun fatality rate (including suicides by gun)
Still surprising guns have kept up though
Side note:
I've always been on the fence about including suicide in gun violence statistics because I can see both sides of the argument. Yes, the death probably wouldn't have happened without the gun since it's the "quick solution", but also I don't really see self harm as "violence" per se...
Given the strong correlation between these two, I hypothesise that in Chicago, cars rather than bullets are shot from guns.
Car guns. Fully automatic.
In absolute numbers.
How many users? How many per people?
Why does the absolute number matter? Why does the rate matter?
The claim is that cars and guns are equally deadly in Chicago, with the observation that gun deaths are reported more.
If this is 3 people or 30 thousand people, the critique is the same.
If this is 1 in 10 million people or 1 in 10 people, the critique is the same.
Craah = Probably unintended
Shootings = Probably very intended
Besides. There are loads of local crash/emergency reports in the local newspaper.
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