This is such a poor use of numbers to prove a point. Any unsafe car - one - could potentially end multiple lives. Therefore, one unsafe car is unacceptable. Look up "Vision Zero". It's possible, and should be expected from our town planners, vehicle manufacturers, and drivers.
Vision zero when done correctly makes a big difference. However useful changes are often expensive so instead they do cheap things (like put up signs, and flyers) that don't really make a difference.
Rebuilding just a mile of a side street would cost $10 million. If it is a major road the cost goes up, and if you need to put in bridges the costs is very high. A useful change to a single intersection can costs more than a million dollars.
We have the ability to do more testing and training. However may drivers would hate the fact that they can't pass a license tests - enough to vote out anyone who tries to pass such things and get the law changed.
Long term running great public transit is the cheapest answer, but anything less than great won't move the needle, so your minimum costs are in the mulit-billion dollar range for tiny cities - cost goes up greatly from there.
>We have the ability to do more testing and training.
This claim gets made a lot but, while I'm not sure how you would test this, I'm not really convinced that an expensive driving school and more rigorous driving test moves the needle much relative to just a lot of hours on the road and perhaps becoming more mature with age. My recollection is that my driving almost certainly approved with a year or two of driving after I got my license; you're not going to replicate that amount of driving with training/testing.
I had drivers training when I was 15. I'm now in my late 40s. How much has changed that I don't know about? I know about the zipper merge only because of an advertising push, but most drivers I know still are not aware of that. What else is new/different? I have no idea. Sure we should probably limit young drivers more (first 2 years passengers allowed only when a more experienced driver is in the passenger seat, perhaps something about low horsepower cars...), but ongoing training is completely missing from our current training and it shows.
Commercial (not private) pilots would be a good example. They regularly take refresher courses to get updated on the latest laws. They have regular simulator training so they can practice situations harder than anything they will ever encounter. They have to provide proof they are in good health. (I'm not what is legally required, or what something all airlines require but isn't legally needed).
I've seen driving simulators - not video games, but actual driving simulators. They are very good, we can require everyone spend a couple hours per year in one to show they know how to drive. We can setup situations where the other car does something stupid. We can setup situations where you will crash and have to choose the least bad crash. We can setup bikes and pedestrians to ensure that you drive safe around them. We can setup bad weather, ice on the roads. We can setup mechanical car failures. These are things that rarely happen and so you need refreshers to ensure you do the right thing should they happen to you.
I think "zero" refers to the amount of enforcement SF is willing to commit to. I commute to SF daily; I can't remember the last time I saw someone being given a ticket for a moving violation. Maybe it happens in places I don't go, but I've literally not seen it occur in the last 20 years. (Parking tickets, sure, but that's about it.) Our politicians love to pass laws and feel proud of themselves for doing so. But from where I'm sitting, I see a lot of people not caring and doing whatever they want with zero consequences.
Why blame Vision Zero for the metrics getting worse? Unless you're aware of places where all its recommendations are implemented in full, and enforced?
