> even though 2,977 people died while 42,116 died from car accidents that same year

I have trouble understanding your logic. A lot of trouble is made to prevent car accidents. We require driving licenses, we develop whole categories of law and do plenty of research to make driving safer.

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BobbyTables2 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

We’re certainly not trying 15x harder to prevent car accidents as done to prevent another 9/11.

Prior we had metal detectors for people and hand luggage x-ray. Now we have x-ray backscatter for people, ID and facial photography, and a whole lot of other nonsense. Liquids banned, visitors at the gate not permitted, and the list goes on…

I don’t entirely agree with the actual measures taken purportedly to prevent a recurrence, but it’s hard to argue anything other than significant steps were taken.

Roughly a million people have died in car accidents since. Was there really nothing possible to prevent a fraction of them?

Where’s the new government organization? What new laws have been passed to prevent? What safety features are now required to mitigate such?

Ok, we have backup cameras and the funny headlights that turn off when the turn signal is on. Mission Accomplished?

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margalabargala 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Right, so we would expect the magnitude of the changes from 9/11 to be about 1/14th the magnitude of the changes we do to prevent car deaths.

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kulahan 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Maybe if you have zero understanding of things like emotion and humanity, and also cannot tell the difference between an accident and a mass murder.

Otherwise, this is surface-level insanity.

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margalabargala 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

This is America. We see constant mass murder of random citizens, often children, via mass shootings. So maybe the question is, why was 9/11 special among murder?

	▲	kulahan a day ago \| parent [-]
		Is this a serious question? Because it was a terrorist group killing people to make a point, not somebody who has lost their sanity and, failing to have any other outlets, takes it out on the weak. How are people THIS dense?

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twoodfin 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

hn comment threads on most articles have rapidly taken on the character of Reddit threads ca. 2009. This argument in particular was a classic back then.

I’ve started downvoting inanity and flagging one-liner, content-less snark, but unless the mods get serious on stuff that hits the front page, I don’t see that trajectory changing.

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lern_too_spel 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

We have a whole licensing apparatus and traffic policing as well as safety regulations for vehicles driven on public roads. It's not cheap.

	▲	margalabargala 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Traffic policing is generally an income source. You're right on licensing but I wonder how it compares to the cost of the TSA?