In one of the greatest movies ever made, when confronted with the horrific body count that accompanies his diabolical plan, Auric Goldfinger coldly dismisses Bond’s objections with, “American motorists kill that many every two years.”

Holy shit, was this evil Euro-trash dude ever right about everything! Well, almost everything. You know, up to the point he got sucked out of an open airplane window. Which given his callous view on transportation deaths, is rather delightfully ironic.

Hey remember Ebola, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other important topics covered at length with a wisp of media panic? You don’t? Oh, well, you see, ah …

While driving recently in Texas I remember seeing a highway notice that over three-thousand folks have entered Valhalla on Texas roads this year alone.

And now planes are falling out of the Asian sky like it’s Manila Circa 1941. And apparently a pleasant winter ferry ride off Corfu can lead to you burning or drowning in freezing water.

In 2012, 33K Americans died on the roads alone. And nobody cares! We just accept this as reality, like it’s scenery. A rounding error of our culture. But airplane crashes and horrible ferry fires are global news? Less than two-hundred people checked out via these two recent incidents.

It’s pretty horrible, I feel for their families. But in the meantime probably north of 2K people died yesterday on the planet’s roads. Damn, modern transportation is a freaking death trap. It makes one yearn for the days where you had to walk everywhere to get anywhere.

Of course, on the ancient highway, I’m sure they also had their own fair share of problems. Nobody is exactly in favor of going back to the era of good old fashioned club robbery by the covered bridge, right?

I guess we just need technology to save us. Or at least save us before technology makes us slaves. Self-driving cars will save tens-of-thousands of lives. Until the machines take over and crash all our cars at once in order to cull the herd.

And then we’ll begin walking again in order to save the human race. And we’ll enjoy the experience. That is, until machine robot highwaymen discover the art of club robbery by the covered bridge.

Eh, maybe we should all just stay home.

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