It’s estimated that 25 to 50 per cent of wars are related to access to oil – and motor vehicles guzzle up about half of the consumption of the fossil fuels used in the world. Cars drive in traffic in Tehran on Dec. 27, 2024.Majid Asgaripour/Reuters

Early on New Year’s Day, a 42-year-old man drove a pickup truck at high speed down Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing 15 people and injuring scores of others.

The incident, which made headlines around the world, is just the latest “vehicles as weapons” attack.

It was a brutal reminder that trucks and cars can easily be repurposed into deadly weapons by those with nefarious purposes. These attacks are also hard to prevent because motor vehicles are ubiquitous.

But, beyond terrorist attacks, we shouldn’t forget the casual violence motor vehicles inflict upon society daily.

About 115 people a day die in motor vehicle collisions in the U.S. – a total of 42,514 in 2022, the most recent year for which complete data are available. Another 2.4 million drivers, passengers, pedestrians and cyclists were injured in crashes in the U.S. that year.

We don’t see them mourned or memorialized as “innocent victims.” There is nary a........

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