a reminder that automobiles in the united states kill 36 thousand people a year (~6k being pedestrians), cause >3 million medically consulted injuries, and >10m

a reminder that automobiles in the united states kill 36 thousand people a year (~6k being pedestrians), cause >3 million medically consulted injuries, and >10m property damages/non-disabling injuries. i have a hard time with this issue of what is permitted in a car. personally i feel like a good driver, like i will handle things fine. but i also once was going up an icy highway late at night & ended up spinning 360 around (thankfully with no one around me & staying on the road) because i spent about 1 second going for some last fries in a take out bag & couldn't re-stabilize. it had just so happened to be the wrong moment. in driving, mostly things are boring & unexciting. but secretly we are surrounded by just the wrong moments, dotted here & there amid the boring. typically there's enough slack to navigate & avoid the little hazards, to prevent catastrophe or damage. but a little compounding factor can matters a lot. it's hard to impress onto drivers- who typically see such boring, easy, unassuming tasks, endlessly playing out- that this is serious work, that it requires vigilance. eternal, unrelenting, persistent vigilance. to believe in the hazardousness of the situation, especially whenever there is another human soul anywhere in a couple hundred meters. human's aren't built for hyper-vigilance, for attentiveness in such fast moving, high energy situations. so i don't know what we can do, but keep locking down on driving. anyone in charge of over 0.5kg of moving mass: sorry, but society has a moral obligation to clamp down on, to restrict potential distractions. whether it's your passenger playing a game or them just futzing with bluetooth. there's so so so many hours lost to driving, and having such a spartan existence at the wheel, having machines that refuse to interact (be it passenger or driver) or distract, that monitor the driver conditions... it just seems mandatory. i don't like it, don't want it for myself, it feels stupid. but i don't see that we have any other choices to pick from, given what absurd catastrophe driving enacts, every single second on this planet.