{"id":8382,"date":"2022-07-17T15:13:01","date_gmt":"2022-07-17T15:13:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=8382"},"modified":"2022-07-17T15:13:01","modified_gmt":"2022-07-17T15:13:01","slug":"what-would-it-mean-to-treat-guns-the-way-we-treat-cars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=8382","title":{"rendered":"What would it mean to treat guns the way we treat cars?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“The decline of motor vehicle deaths in America over the past two decades is part of a broader trend<\/a> that began in the 1960s. Ralph Nader\u2019s seminal 1965 expos\u00e9, Unsafe at Any Speed<\/em><\/a>, catalyzed an auto safety movement that culminated in the creation of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration<\/a> (NHTSA), which set up the infrastructure for automobile safety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the 1970s onward<\/a>, the NHTSA would maintained a database<\/a> on motor vehicle-related deaths, make research investments, and provide safety certifications for cars on the market, incentivizing auto companies to adopt safety procedures. The work of the NHTSA and civil society groups like the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety<\/a> helped usher in a new era where safety features like seat belts and airbags became standardized. All of this, along with measures like universal state licensing of drivers and registration of cars, led to the decline in youth and overall American motor vehicle mortality. The CDC would eventually tout this<\/a> decline as one of the country\u2019s biggest public health achievements of the 20th century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And as Lee recounts in the NEJM<\/em> article<\/a>, that progress continued into the 21st century. In 1998, frontal airbags became mandatory<\/a> in all cars and trucks sold in the US. Other improvements like automatic emergency braking, blind-spot detection, side airbags, and rear-facing cameras also contributed to an improved auto safety landscape. \u201cWhat we\u2019ve seen is more than a half-century of efforts to make the automobile safer,\u201d said Mitchell Moss<\/a>, a professor of urban policy and planning and director of the Rudin Center for Transportation at New York University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If cars went one way with safety, guns went the other. Guns are one of the only consumer goods whose safety is not regulated by any government agency<\/a>. Gun manufacturers are also very insulated from lawsuits<\/a>, and perhaps consequently, have little incentive to design safer guns, such as \u201csmart guns<\/a>\u201d that would only be operable by the users they are registered to. As Moss said, \u201cWe really have a Wild West approach to the manufacture of weapons in this country.\u201d”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/future-perfect\/23151852\/gun-violence-cars-crashes-firearms-deaths-youth<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The decline of motor vehicle deaths in America over the past two decades is part of a broader trend that began in the 1960s. Ralph Nader\u2019s seminal 1965 expos\u00e9, Unsafe at Any Speed, catalyzed an auto safety movement that culminated in the creation of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which set up the infrastructure for automobile safety.<\/p>\n

From the 1970s onward, the NHTSA would maintained a database on motor vehicle-related deaths, make research investments, and provide safety certifications for cars on the market, incentivizing auto companies to adopt safety procedures. The work of the NHTSA and civil society groups like the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety helped usher in a new era where safety features like seat belts and airbags became standardized. All of this, along with measures like universal state licensing of drivers and registration of cars, led to the decline in youth and overall American motor vehicle mortality. The CDC would eventually tout this decline as one of the country\u2019s biggest public health achievements of the 20th century.<\/p>\n

And as Lee recounts in the NEJM article, that progress continued into the 21st century. In 1998, frontal airbags became mandatory in all cars and trucks sold in the US. Other improvements like automatic emergency braking, blind-spot detection, side airbags, and rear-facing cameras also contributed to an improved auto safety landscape. \u201cWhat we\u2019ve seen is more than a half-century of efforts to make the automobile safer,\u201d said Mitchell Moss, a professor of urban policy and planning and director of the Rudin Center for Transportation at New York University.<\/p>\n

If cars went one way with safety, guns went the other. Guns are one of the only consumer goods whose safety is not regulated by any government agency. Gun manufacturers are also very insulated from lawsuits, and perhaps consequently, have little incentive to design safer guns, such as \u201csmart guns\u201d that would only be operable by the users they are registered to. As Moss said, \u201cWe really have a Wild West approach to the manufacture of weapons in this country.\u201d”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1092,113,407,112,406,109,236,551],"class_list":["post-8382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-cars","tag-gun-control","tag-gun-deaths","tag-gun-laws","tag-gun-violence","tag-guns","tag-regulation","tag-regulations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8382"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8383,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8382\/revisions\/8383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}