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Aha, now I understand. It' not okay to die at the hands of terrorists but it's perfectly acceptable if we kill ourselves on the road. That explains why car crashes are the #3 killer of Americans and #1 for young Americans.

And that, children, is why there are no Vietnam type protesters against traffic fatalities. If you drive a car its perfectly acceptable to die in a crash. Its the risk you voluntarily take (as opposed to being "drafted" to drive). Makes sense to me!

The idea of a risk budget is neither new nor particularly effective as a deterrent to risk-taking activities, unless the whole range of perceived risks is taken into account. In NSW, Australia, where I live, seat belts became mandatory in the mid-60's. There was a resulting large drop in the road toll. What happened next was that speed and other bahaviours were increased by the drivers to a point where the perceived risk matched up with the preparedness to accept that risk. That is, the budget was re-balanced.

Since then mandatory improvements in car and truck design rules and driver behaviour (random drug and alcohol testing, manadatory wearing of seat belts, banning use of cell phones whilst driving, to name a few) have resulted in temporary large increases in the raod toll, followed by a decaying performance.

The past 40 years have thus seen the regulators improve the road toll results overall, but mainly by introducing new risks, such as heavier fines, loss of licence, radar traps, and so forth.

I wonder what will happen when the regulators run out of socially acceptable new threats, laws and designs. Will society accept, for example, a limit of 2 hours' driving between breaks for all classes of road user? This has seriously been recommended to the legislators, but how will it be enforced and will the public vote from office those who favour such a law?

Probably, the toll will then creep back up into the thousands, where it was at the start (say 1400pa for a population of 2 million), from its present level of about 400pa for a population of 6 million.

I know that the new, legislatively induced "risks" are more likely to enter my mind than the thought of death or injury. Loss of licence (and thus, loss of employment)or imprisonment are, to me, now a greater deterrent than the thought of an accident when I am tempted to drive a little over the speed limit.

That's really scary.