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Terrorism is not a threat

In the last year, some ten thousand people in Britain died in car crashes. In the same time and country, terrorists killed precisely nobody. Indeed, it is hard to come up with a definition of terrorism under which the worldwide death toll reached five figures. (Counting the occupation of Iraq as "state-sponsered terrorism" would do it...) So why are we supposed to panic? Even if an attrocity of the scale of September the 11th occurs in the UK, it will still kill less than a third of the number who die on our roads every single year.

The government wants to sacrifice our civil liberties to prevent an unlikely terrorist attrocity, yet regularly backs off any plans that might lead to safer roads. The reason is obvious - people like speeding, driving too close, and pulling out of roads without looking, and they don't believe that they will be involved in a crash. Therefore traffic safety is a vote loser. On the other hand, people do believe they might be the victim of a terrorist attack, but not that they will be mistakenly arrested without charge. Therefore scare tactics and over-reaction is a vote winner.

A moments rational thought will show that these perceptions aren't accurate. Most of us know no one who has been affected by terrorism, but many who have suffered from car crashes. Those of us who can think clearly - and that should include politicians, or at least their advisors - need to keep a sense of proportion. Anything we aren't willing to do to prevent car deaths, we shouldn't be prepared to prevent the lesser threat of terrorism.

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