Originally Posted by
flyinbob
OK, I really agree with the premise. The problem is where do you put this money so it actually will reduce those deaths, either crime or auto accident? How much safer do people want to be without sacrificing some freedom? This is why TSA sucks. They were given lots of money and no oversight while setting up, so went way overboard with the rules and regulations, and we know the result is we are no more safe today than pre-9/11. So what do you spend money on to make streets safer? Make all roads 10 mph? Stop signs every 50 feet? Video cameras everywhere to "watch" for crime? I'm with you on cutting TSA way back. But how about just giving us taxpayers our money back?
You can monitor roads to see where the local accident blackspots are and improve them - on a road I used to live close to, there were a few very notorious points, usually close to junctions, which, because funding couldn't be found, they could not be made safe. (The only way to improve one was to turn an open junction into a bridge and flyover situation. The other likely would have needed to have the junction entirely realigned.) So the council had to accept that a few people would die at each of those points ever few years, until they could scrape together the funding.
Now, imagine being able to start throwing some serious money at road design and maintenance. Improve the driver training systems (getting a licence sounds suspiciously easy compared to what I went through). Bring in a comprehensive roadworthiness tests for vehicles to reduce the likelihood of critical failures causing accidents.
The fact that accident rates all over the world are variable and not fixed shows that it is entirely possible to reduce accident rates. It's not surprise that in Europe, Scandinavia has some of the lowest accident rates, since their driving standards are some of the highest in Europe and they have extremely good roads.