Murder

Seriously, I can't make this stuff up.

In fact, wish I were making this up. 


Annually, 40,000 people die as a result of injuries acquired in motor vehicle crashes in the US.   According to the CDC motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death among those age 5-34 in the U.S.  As Carolyn Hirschman, in her article "Take Control of the Wheel," puts it  "As a nation we are nearly three times more likely to be killed in a car crash than by homicide, and our children face no greater risk of dying from any cause, accidental or disease related.   If we die at work, it is usually in a vehicle; since records started being kept in 1992, crashes are the number-one killer on the job, with professional drivers, salespeople, and farmers especially vulnerable."

The trend holds globally, where the number killed is 1.3 million annually.  Compare that to a global rate of 490,000 intentional homicides in 2004 (Yeah, every-professor-I've-ever-had, I Wikipedia'd it.)  

You are in more danger driving the kids to soccer or to the store for milk than taking a pleasure stroll through Detroit.  So why isn't Dick Wolf making serious syndication dollars off Law and Order: DMV?

Because car murders are a legitimized form of violence. We accept driving fatalities as inevitable.  There are some car crimes that are becoming delegitimized: drunk driving, the most egregious of road rage incidents.  But for the most part, as the authors of Carjacked put it: "Americans on the whole still believe our cars and roads are safe and that it is individual drivers who are responsible for automotive injuries and deaths.  News reports of any crash rarely treat it as a tragedy whose repercussions can last for decades.  They inevitably treat it as a stroke of really bad luck or as inevitable due to poor driving conditions or bad driving behavior, rather than as part of a pattern that can be broken by driving less, using safer modes of transit, regulating car companies and enforcing behavior on the road.  And thus Americans, on the whole, like the car companies we buy from and the government we elect, have resisted regulation and enforcement."

People die in horribly violent ways, at a higher rate than by homicide, but no one's on the news asking "What are the police going to do about this?  This is ruining our suburbs!"  No one worries that the tourists will stop coming to your suburb to see..............(Ok, I can't think of anything...your awesome collection of strip malls?) because of concerns about car violence.  But not only do consumers excuse it, they're accomplices.  


While the automotive manufacturers distract us with the ways they're making cars safer through engineering and design with one hand, they're distracting us in our vehicles with the other.  Each day, according to CDC data, more than 16 people are killed and more than 1,300 people are injured in crashes involving a distracted driver.  While distracted driving is increasingly being legislated against and becoming an enforcement priority, cars are getting computer screens because you''ll buy the cars that have them: "Initially, putting Internet access in the car sounds like a distraction and frivolous but as time passes it will become a part of our lives and we will feel uncomfortable not having access," said Jeff Kagan, an independent telecoms analyst."I think this is going to grow into a vibrant sector."


Here's a hint: your safety is only as good as their bottom line.  No matter how good their ad execs are,  they're still not in it for you, or your kids.  The way to stop this epidemic is by hurting their bottom lines--or even better, voting with your feet. 


Otherwise, it's time for my L&O franchise.  Sure a plushie-lovin', horse-and-rider fetish -havin', sci-fi role-player wielding a compressed gas knife (I may have mixed some Bones in there.  Also, these shows are a little too into fetishes.) is infinitely more sexy than a soccer mom fumbling with her cell phone, but Soccer Mom's way more deadly.  


Hey--people could even watch it on the screens in the car.  Synergy!