Similarly, probably the most dangerous thing most people do in their lives is eat (or overeat). It is far more dangerous than smoking or driving or flying.

However, overeating (and the consequences) are extremely common and utterly unshocking.

People engage in the risky behavior 3 or more times a day, and have normalized the deaths they see resulting from it.

I think it’s both.

Honestly it’s like a lot of problems where it’s easier to solve when it’s one big thing as opposed to 1000 little things. Imagine cutting one big expense out of your budget versus having to cut 1% out of 500 things. One of those is vastly easier.

But that's the misconception, that car accidents/fatalities are somehow all unique and with a unique solution to be applied individually. In the end almost all of them boil down to the same few root causes: alcohol, speed, no seatbelt, tiredness, bad car maintenance, and a handful of others. So why 1% from 500 things, do you just want to prevent just a few accidents caused by speeding?

You don't need to fix 500 individual incidents but just a bit. You should fix one root cause. If your car won't drive faster than the speed limit for the area or the weather, if it won't drive at all if the driver is inebriated, sleepy, doesn't wear the seat belt properly, etc. then you prevent most of the accidents and fatalities.

So you don't cut 1% from 500 things, you cut all payments for a certain something you don't want.