Right, but I think it would be quite the engineering challenge — or, ‘evil genius side quest’, whatever you wanna call it disturbingly — to cause $600 million worth of damage with a sedan car. Tho, YMMV, that’s just me.
But there are a million times more “sedan” cars than boats, traveling a million more miles.
An 18 and a 78 year old just killed two different sets of four people a couple weeks ago in SF and near Seattle. The 18 year old totaled his 3rd car in less than a year driving far above the speed limit.
Edit: to respond to below, it depends what you count as damage. Do you count all the deaths and injuries of all auto vehicles? There are 40k+ deaths and many more injuries per year in the US. How about the effect of car centric designs on kids not being able to roam around neighborhoods? Of course, it all gets abstract very quickly, since you also have to start comparing benefits, but there are very large systemic effects (and just the same with huge container ships of course).
That's a good point about relative frequencies, and it's the saddest of tragedies what occured in the stories you list. So tragic...
In the abstract, outside of the tragedy of these unfortunate events, it's true that there's more cars, however...think of it like, there's far more background radiation particles than neutron radiation particles. But the damage you can do with one, is far less than the other.
The highest third party auto insurance claim I've heard of was £34 million in 2001 (probably about $90 million today).
The driver (of a Land Rover towing a car on a trailer) fell asleep at the wheel and crashed onto train tracks. A passenger express train hit the car and was derailed into the path of an oncoming freight train. 10 people were killed.
If a broke drunk driver knocks a packed school bus off a cliff, that could easily be 600 million dollars worth of medical bills, if all the kids survive but become permanently disabled. And nearly all of it would have to be covered in the end by the taxpayer.
No ‘side quest’ needed, just a few seconds worth of bad decision making.
The same incentive is there even if money did not exist. Providing services to someone (who is likely to be unable provide equivalent value in return) is more costly than not providing them. That is simply reality/math?
