Jim Motavalli I have read some of your other blogs and found them accurate and informative. With the exception of: Cars: “In the U.S., they killed 37,133 people in 2017”. Are you serious? Inanimate objects such as motor vehicles and guns/knives do not kill people. Factory defects, improper maintenance/repairs and improper use concerning these inanimate objects are caused by people. Exceptions are people being killed by disease, extreme weather, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, dangerous animals, and wildfires started by lightning. Nearly all other causes of death are caused by human error.
If cars and guns kill people, do pencils and pens misspell words?
CSA
No doubt it’s the irresponsible people who are causing accidents but how can they be controlled?
It’s not unreasonable to say the cars killed the people. It’s not entirely accurate, but a string of words – each having multiple definitions — is necessarily ambiguous. Almost any sentence is at least partly inaccurate. Not something to lose any sleep over. If you ever see a sentence that is 100% completely the truth without exception, that is something to worry about.
"If you ever see a sentence that is 100% completely the truth without exception, that is something to worry about."
So what am I supposed to do with this? If you are right, then I’m worried about you and everything you wrote is doubtful. If you are wrong, then when do I get to relax?
I’m going to be up all night, and it’s your fault.
Life, it’s a logical conundrum all right … lol …
What always amuses me about these semantic games is that everyone involved, for and against, knows exactly what is meant by “killed by guns” or “killed by cars.” And one side thinks it’s being terribly clever by pointing out that inanimate objects don’t kill anyone, even though everyone involved knows that it’s the humans controlling the inanimate objects that causes the deaths.
Since that’s not in dispute, it should also not be in dispute that a human cannot shoot someone without using a gun, and a human cannot drive into someone without using a car, and that therefore the tools used to kill people are perfectly valid targets when attempting to reduce the number of people killed by those controlling the tools.
Leaving the gun debate aside because it doesn’t belong here, the “X-object doesn’t kill people; people kill people” argument as applied to cars suggests that we should never strive for increases in vehicular safety systems. The safety level of a Model T is plenty good enough for a Model S, because any time someone in a car runs into someone else, it’s all the human’s fault and improving the equipment to make it easier for the human not to kill someone is silly because the car didn’t do it.
Those who can’t see the abject stupidity in that line of reasoning are at a state of irrationality so severe that reasoned debate with them is impossible.
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I wish more people would understand how important it is to prevent chimpanzees from getting their hands on machine guns and hand grenades… And then watch reality tv and wonder if the monkeys might be smarter than the celebrities.
grin Try this one: “Everything I tell you is a lie.”
I agree with you as usual. The gun reference was relevant as the blog author included two unrelated negative references to guns. https://www.cartalk.com/blogs/jim-motavalli/do-we-have-right-drive I am safety obsessive. I’m 100% in agreement with improving safety of potentially dangerous/deadly inanimate objects. Unfortunately there will be some users acquiring a mindset that they no longer have to worry about safety. I have suffered three potentially deadly technology failures that prevent me from trusting it 100%.
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Thank you, Shadowfax, for summing-up the obvious facts of the matter.
Unfortunately, logic and facts rarely convince others to change their opinions.
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