Twelve people were killed in a Christmas market in Berlin on Monday, mown down by a terrorist in a big truck. Elsewhere in Germany, if it was an average day, another 10 people were killed in or by motor vehicles. They are all equally dead; the only difference is the motivation of the man in the truck.
Oh, sorry, there's another difference too. On Tuesday, if it was an average day, another 10 people were killed on German roads, and another 10 on Wednesday, and another 10 on Thursday, and so on ad infinitum — 3,500 in the average year. So is traffic a bigger threat than terrorism?
Does this comparison offend you? Why? Would you be offended if I said that driving is more dangerous than flying, because 3,500 Germans die on the roads each year and only 50 a year die in plane crashes? Of course not. Yet if I say that traffic accidents are a much bigger threat to human life than terrorism, it sounds almost transgressive.
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