Personally, I don't feel 100 fatalities a day is alarming in a population of hundreds of millions. Something can be a leading cause without being a problem that

Personally, I don't feel 100 fatalities a day is alarming in a population of hundreds of millions. Something can be a leading cause without being a problem that needs to be addressed. To dive deeper into that - you mentioned that the total cost of all collisions, fatal and non-fatal, is $250B a year. I'm curious where you got that number from, but let's assume that's accurate. Just new vehicle sales in the US is something like $600B a year, and if you include the rest of the consumer-facing automotive industry (used vehicles, parts, etc.) it's over $1T a year. People only spend money on things when they derive a lot more value than what they're spending. Therefore, we can probably safely assume that the societal benefits of cars is an order of magnitude more than the societal costs. I'll also note that continued standardization of safety technologies (automatic braking, collision avoidance, blind spot monitoring, rear view cameras, etc.) will continue the downward trend in injuries and fatalities per mile driven.