Greater road safety. Aviation is a rare area where US government has done well regulating for safety. There’s no reason we can’t be as strict with cars. It’s a choice to accept risks.
> There’s no reason we can’t be as strict with cars.
There is. Money and lots of it. "Oh, poor, working class person; you can't afford $5000-6000 per year in exploratory inspections? Well, no car for you then. We really can't be too safe, you know..."
As an airplane owner, there's no way in hell the public would stand for the amount of maintenance and inspections given to aircraft for their cars.
"Every year, completely remove the interior of the car, pull up the floorboards, lubricate and check tensions on all control cables, check the engine compression and visually inspect the valves, ..." I think my A36 has ~50 hours of mandatory inspections (at $105-125/hr) every 12 calendar months. That's before anything gets fixed (and of course, whatever gets broken during the inspections is also fixed on my dime).
I'm not even sure that it particularly contributes to the good safety record, since most of the fatals are pilot-induced (just as most of the fatals on the road are driver-induced).
It doesn't need to reach that level of extreme immediately. Just follow what the Dutch did starting all the way back in the late '70s to address their road toll.
There are many many places that have far better driver safety records - start by learning from those. A lack of improvement isn't inevitable.
What do you think the ever-growing set of safety features it is illegal to sell cars in the United States without is for? The idea that nobody cares and nobody tries to enforce safety is quite questionable -- there's simply a lot more driving going on, and not only by highly trained professionals. It's a harder problem.
