The Solution to Preventing Car Accidents: NO CARS!!

What is the role of cars in the US? Many would say they are the most convenient way to travel across cities or states. However, as widely known, car accidents and the related fatalities are the most significant effects of the wide-spread use of personal automobile transportation. I propose a solution to this dilemma: improve public transportation so that there is no need for personal automobiles.

My mother and sister experienced a near death experience within the last year. A speeder collided with them from behind on our local interstate highway (I-95) and sent them spinning into the median wall. The car was totaled. Luckily, they remained unscathed. My takeaway from this experience is that car accidents are impossible to avoid. Even the most competent drivers get distracted at occasions and end up making a mess. However, I do not believe this circumstance is a fault of theirs, but of the system itself. When driving in a car, there is always some amount of risk built into the experience. This is true for all forms of transportation. However, the risk is greater for automobiles because driving one requires communication between drivers and said drivers easily make mistakes. The drivers are not as competent as those piloting other forms of transportation such as buses, planes, and trains, where the pilot gets paid and is trained to drive, or fly the vehicle. To be a US driver, on public roads, it is required that you pass an extremely simple driving test. This test only examines a small portion of what a driver should be able to do, which means that the competence of the driver after the test is still questionable. All of these things make it impossible to completely and totally avoid car accidents.

Furthermore, most solutions for eliminating car accidents only reduce their presence. For example, stricter drug use laws while driving do not eliminate the possibility of a sober driver carelessly speeding. Stricter driving requirements, like a higher minimum driving age or a harder driving test, cannot prevent a completely competent driver from sneezing the wrong way and crashing into the adjacent care whilst going 65mph. That is why I believe we should start to begin to slowly convert to public transportation via buses and trains. Many people denounce this idea, presenting arguments such as the following: public transportation is gross and unclean, the routes do not go where I need to go, and the transportation is slow. However, all of these complaints are caused by a lack of funding to the US’s public transportation system. If the system is expanded, then it will be able to reach more places. If the system is better funded, it will be cleaner and faster. New transportation technologies are emerging to better cater to the peoples’ needs. Spain recently implemented a new service, Alta Velocidad Española, which links major cities together using railways that go nearly 200mph. If the US did something similar, there would be no need for highways connecting major cities. Also, old highways and backroads could be used by buses and trams which are cheaper, safer, and more environmentally friendly than cars, thus, improving safety and efficiency in cities. More bus routes could also be created to appeal to the growing bus users’ location needs.

Although, there is one limitation with this solution: low density areas, such as farms, would not be able to benefit from the growing funding for public transportation due to the rurality of the living areas. It would be too much money for too little return if public transportation was made available to those few living rurally. However, this would not be a huge deal as the rural population in the US is significantly smaller than that of urban dwellers. So, rural people can have cars but urban livers should begin to rely on public transportation. Even though there still would be some car accidents (caused by the rural people), the majority of the car accidents would be eliminated due to the lack of cars in cities.

In conclusion, the world would be safer without cars because human error is unavoidable. Public transportation should be widely used in urban landscapes because it is cheaper, safer, and better for the planet. Implementing these steps would drastically reduce the amount of car accident fatalities as there would be less cars to have accidents.