Road fatalities

Here's something I just discovered. I suppose you could call this trivia but I think it is worth reflecting on in terms of what it says about human nature:

In Traffic, his recent book on the psychology of driving, Tom Vanderbilt writes that "[i]n 1720, traffic fatalities from 'furiously driven' carts and coaches were named the leading cause of death in London. . . . [I]n the New York of 1867, horses were killing an average of four pedestrians a week." And Maxwell Lay, in his Ways of the World, notes that cars are safer than horses were on an accidents-per-distance-traveled basis.

I found this on "The Straight Dope".