I would also point out that -- at least in the industrialised and organised West -- road fatality and injury statistics are fairly honestly kept and the numbers are a matter of public record.  There is not the consistent, continuing history of secrecy and coverups that has plagued the nuclear industry... well, more accurately that has helped the nuclear industry but plagued the public :-)  The FARS database in the US for example is a public resource and many road safety researchers -- including those who are vehemently anti-car -- use it to generate demographics, longitudinal studies, GIS-ref data, etc.  

I don't know of a highway or transit system in the organised, affluent West about which one could say that there was continuing great uncertainty about the number of road deaths over a 20 period in the history of any highway, intersection, or major town grid known to have higher than average lethality.

The public's indifference to the victims of the automobile transit paradigm is imho a qualitatively different thing from the cloud of obfuscation, foot-dragging, secrecy and spin control which seems to surround every nuclear accident.  In a future diary I'll be talking about this also :-)

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...