The following text is a blatant copy & paste from a blog over at treehugger, but I thought it put bluntly pretty much what I have been thinking the last few years. Some of the driving I have seen over the last few years especially have really stained my thinking, in particular, Auckland has to have been the most hardcore situation of urban traffic accidents I have ever seen :(
Make no mistake though, everywhere you go, you see it all the time and cars claim more lives than we might think...

"In one year, it is estimated that 1.2 million people are killed in auto-related accidents around the globe. That equates to slightly more than 3200 traffic deaths EVERY DAY. These mostly preventable deaths, in casualties alone, exponentially surpasses the number of casualties from higher profile, more newsworthy, less common tragedies. Yet, the horrific daily toll receives little attention by political leaders and the media .

Here are several scary but true comparisons, measuring daily global auto deaths against higher profile tragedies which have been embedded into our collective consciousness:

1) Every day more people are killed in auto related deaths than in the 9/11 attacks on America.
2) Every day, about 3 times more woman, children, and men are killed in auto related deaths than in the recent Gaza conflict.
3) Every day, more than twice as many people perish in auto deaths than in Hurricane Katrina.
4) The daily toll from traffic accidents is equivalent to 15 plane crashes, each with 200 passengers aboard."

Now, when you look at it this way, it seems that vehicles are more of a curse than a solution to travel. Honestly, I hate cars unless you have a total open place to drive and an electric one at that.