100-vehicle pileup on snow-covered highway - who pays for this?

The Washington Post: "Stunning video footage captured the aftermath of snow and ice-related pileup involving about 100 vehicles in southwestern Missouri on Sunday afternoon."

The autosprawl system is expensive in bad weather. Taxpayers have to pay of lot of the cost. This is subsidy to those who profit from the system.

The high cost of cheap auto insurance

The Stranger: "The Seattle-based Transportation Choices estimated that between 1994 and 2003, car crashes cost King County $8 billion (PDF). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have the yearly cost of traffic accidents in Washington state at $665 million. Even more staggering are the numbers in a study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. It found, among other things, that the annual cost of car crashes in 2010 was $871 billion. And who pays for a lot of this? The public, of course. It also is telling that the solution AAA recommends is increasing safety on roads rather than increasing access to safer modes of transportation. (One study found that "transit travel has about a tenth the traffic casualty (death or injury) rate as automobile travel."[PDF].)

As if subsides for car insurance and oil companies were not enough, the brilliant "parking professor" Donald Shoup estimated just over a decade ago that parking spaces in the US yearly receive somewhere between $127 billion and $374 billion in subsidies. My point: Socialism has got nothing on American cars."

Cost of auto collisions $900, cost of #freetransit $100. (per household per year)

New NHTSA Study Shows Motor Vehicle Crashes Have $871 Billion Economic and Societal Impact on U.S. Citizens | National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA): "WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) today released a new study that underscores the high economic toll and societal impact of motor vehicle crashes in the United States. The price tag for crashes comes at a heavy burden for Americans at $871 billion in economic loss and societal harm. This includes $277 billion in economic costs – nearly $900 for each person living in the United States based on calendar year 2010 data — and $594 billion in harm from the loss of life and the pain and decreased quality of life due to injuries."

Cost of #autosprawl, your life!

Planetizen : "The ten smartest growth counties have about a quarter of the per capita annual traffic fatality rates of the most sprawled counties. Yet, smart growth is usually advocated primarily for its infrastructure saving and environmental benefits, we fail to communicate its very large safety benefits."

How we subsidize the car -- cost of road collisions

NRMA has analysed the economic cost of road crashes on a number of major highways in NSW. Deaths
and injuries on our roads cost the community on average $2.8 billion each year. The total cost of road crashes over the five-year period was $13.8 billion. The NRMA believes that the cost of deaths and injuries caused by road crashes is a crucial issue that needs greater consideration when addressing road safety in NSW.