AEI research assistant Phil Wallach writes:
On today’s Washington Post op-ed page, Peter J. Woolley advances the following argument:Cars, trucks, and getting where you need to go faster than walking:
Costs: Catastrophic! An “annual tragedy”! 44,000 deaths each year!
Benefits: Uh…“Radical solutions in the form of regulation, [taxpayer-funded] investment and enforcement”:
Benefits: Great! Should be a “cause celebre”! We can save these people!
Costs: Uh…Nothing like clear-headed, even-handed thinking to find the “story of the year.”
Of course, the way to eliminate 90%+ of fatalities is the reductio ad absurdum position to have a 10 mph speed limit. Woolley specializes in Japanese politics, so it’s not clear why he gets prime Washington Post space to argue thoughtlessly for a multi-billion-dollar reallocation of the American economy.
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Maybe we could just regulate car manufacturing so that every vehicle is an Abrams tank (w/out the guns.) Then we would have safety and speed. Of course, parking here in boston would be even worse, but I’m sure Wooley would develop a sensible solution for that.
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