Murder Machines: Why Cars Will Kill 30,000 Americans This Year

「殺人機械：車」

We are not anti-automobile.

However, the true cost of an automobile, its true cost to society, has yet to be passed onto the consumer.

From pollution, to road-building, to injury and death, society picks up the tab for much of car-related mayhem. Automobile taxes do not come close to covering this cost.

An thought-provoking article caught our eye. If you want to kill someone in the United States, you can get away with it in a car - as long as you are sober.

Read on:

There’s an open secret in America: If you want to kill someone, do it with a car. As long as you’re sober, chances are you’ll never be charged with any crime, much less manslaughter. Over the past hundred years, as automobiles have been woven into the fabric of our daily lives, our legal system has undermined public safety, and we’ve been collectively trained to think of these deaths as unavoidable “accidents” or acts of God. Today, despite the efforts of major public-health agencies and grassroots safety campaigns, few are aware that car crashes are the number one cause of death for Americans under 35. But it wasn’t always this way.

Read the entire article.

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Bicycle and Automobile Statistics Japan

自転車に関した統計

In 1960, Japanese owned just under 20 million bicycles. In the same year, there were only 2.29 million automobiles on the road in Japan.

Flash forward to the 21st century. In 2005, there were more than 86 million bicycles in Japan. Car ownership has increased in the same half century by a tremendous amount, but still has yet to eclipse the number of bicycles. In 2004, 74.9 million cars clogged the narrow roads of Japan.

With young men - the main demographic for car sellers - showing less and less interest in car ownership, those figures look to diverge in the future.

Moving on to road fatalities, in 2005 cars led the way. 6,871 people died in automobile accidents. In comparison, 846 cyclists were killed in accidents in the same year.

Road fatalities for drivers are trending down while those for cyclists are increasing, which is due to the increased number of people riding bikes in Japan.

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