Zero pedestrian or cyclist deaths are acceptable just for someone to get a cheaper (or much worse, larger) car. Zero.
There is a vast number of reasons why we need and must reduce private car modality share as much as possible. Making cars more expensive is a feature, not a bug.
And how exactly fixes that pedestrian deaths? But I know your answer; put people not driving a car into jail too, right? Eliminate sidewalks too, use the space for an additional lane. Exiting your car anywhere except in parking lots and private property should be prohibited!
Sounds like a lovely place for sure.
To get to zero you must eliminate cars completely and I don't buy into that kind of logic.
It’s not some mystical thing, but a matter of smart urban design. Oslo and Helsinki have managed to achieve zero road deaths in a year without eliminating vehicles. You don’t need to accept a certain amount of deaths as some sort inevitability or a necessary sacrifice.
That's not what GP said. Zero deaths caused by cheap/large vehicles.
You can eliminate deaths by that cause by eliminating those types of vehicles, not by eliminating all cars.
Not saying that's feasible, but let's not argue against something that nobody said in the first place.
Is it ever acceptable to have pedestrian or cyclist deaths to have buses, trains, ambulances, fire trucks?
What a strange question. The answer is of course 'rather not'. But those are for the most part unavoidable without society paying a (potentially) much higher price. So we have decided to accept those risks.
In this case it is another country trying to impose their 'way of life' on the rest of the world, or in this case, the EU, which has a different set of values.
That doesn't really have anything to do with having buses or trains vs cyclists, it is not a personal decision and there are many alternatives compared to US vehicles that were never designed for European (or Asian, for that matter) traffic in the first place. The USA is very car centric to the point that walking is frowned upon (I got picked up by the police in North Dakota for walking). The EU is simply not like that, and that's fine. The USA should set their own standards for car safety and so should the EU, if that leads to incompatible products I think the mantra is 'let the market sort it out'. The Japanese seem to have figured out how to make vehicles for different markets, there is no reason the USA can not do the same thing.
Easy to fix. Ban bikes and start throwing people caught riding a bike into jail.