We've come a long way

Yesterday I wrote about Electronic Stability Control and how Consumer Reports calls it the greatest safety advance since seat belts.

Last night I read a Wall Street Journal article entitled “Unsafe at Any Speed, With Any Driver, On Any Kind of Road.”  It is a fascinating look back at how lax safety standards used to be.  Every yea, about 42,000 people die in automobile-related accidents in the U.S.  In 1930, when there was only about a tenth of the cars on the road as there are now, more than 31,000 people in the U.S. were killed by cars.  “The automobile is here to slay,” said one newspaper.

Think about this, if 30,000 people a year have died since 1930, how many have died in total since the almost 80 years that have elapsed : 30,000 * 80 = 2.4 million!