The political rhetoric over health care this election season may leave voters confused, but they can be sure of at least this much: One of America’s more egregious public health afflictions, deaths and injuries in car crashes, is being massively ignored.
This should be a warning sign to the American people, since political leaders and their families, like the rest of us, are not immune from firsthand encounters with highway tragedies. President Clinton’s biological father died after being ejected in a car crash in the 1940s. As a teenage driver in the 1960s, Laura Bush struck and killed a family neighbor in a crash. President Obama’s father died in a car wreck in 1982. In 1972, Vice President (then U.S. Senator) Joseph Biden’s wife and infant child were killed in a car-truck collision. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, as a young Mormon missionary, was severely injured in a collision in France that killed another passenger. These experiences mirror those of millions of ordinary Americans, yet they have failed to prod the nation’s policy leaders into aggressive action to stem the carnage.