Imagine an ongoing catastrophe that kills about 400,000 people a year worldwide and is the leading cause of death for people 10 to 24 years old. Is it a plague or World War III? It is neither; these numbers represent the price we pay for using automobiles. In the U.S. alone traffic accidents result in a yearly toll of more than 40,000 dead and more than 3 million injured.

In this election year maybe we should use a litmus test to see where candidates stand in addressing this carnage, the result of an alliance between consumer and automobile makers, fueled by advertising. Beginning with the holiday season this past year, there have been many reports on dealing with the hazards of lead in toys. Yet, there have been roughly 200 deaths from lead poisoning over the last 20 years. Why the disproportionate media coverage when there is a 12,000-fold larger probability that your child will die in a car accident?

There is at least one quite simple answer. The advertising and lobbying budgets of the toy industry are minuscule in comparison to those of the automakers and the petroleum industry. This fact is not lost on media CEOs, who probably do not want to offend their major sponsors. It also may explain some of the lack of leadership by politicians in Washington, but in their defense, who will vote for a candidate supporting a carbon tax or a large increase in the gas tax to support alternative modes of transportation?

Revenue from both of these sources could be used to stop the carnage on the highways by rebuilding our transportation and residential infrastructure so people can commute to nearby job sites on efficient public transportation. If federal and state governments got behind this effort the way they got behind the effort to build the atom bomb or land a man on the moon, it would energize our economy and provide the U.S. with a more credible approach to world leadership in addressing climate change and the need for alternative energy sources.

For example, the introduction of the Nano, an affordable small car produced in India, will result in even more highway mortality, as well as increased oil use and greenhouse gas emission, as Asians imitate the American Dream of personal transportation on demand. In the Nov. 5 New Yorker, Elizabeth Kolbert notes that producing ethanol from corn or generating hydrogen requires a lot of energy, so unless we can come up with a safe, inexhaustible source of power, then “the car of the future may turn out to be no car at all.”

Kolbert also notes, “Detroit has to change. Detroit won’t change.”

What has brought about this paradoxical condition? Could it be ordinary consumers such as you and me? During the daily commute to work over the last 30 years, vehicle occupancy has gone down, the distance commuted has gone up, and vehicles are larger and less fuel-efficient. Detroit produces what sells.

The result is the following: Cars account for 40 percent of the nation’s oil use and 10 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, not to mention clogging a deteriorating highway infrastructure. Those of us who use cars must bear a lot of the blame for Detroit’s inertia. We are the ones who choose to buy and overuse gas-guzzling status symbols. The notion that political leadership has to change, but won’t change is likewise driven by whom we vote for and why we vote for them.

How best can we engineer a total sea change in public attitudes toward automobile use? There are economically viable options. For example, nuclear power can be used to charge electric cars or to produce hydrogen fuel, which would allow us to keep driving our cars without producing any greenhouse gases. What if GM could be convinced to commit itself to this approach? It might well reverse the company’s alarming decline in profitability. But we must balance current risks with the risks associated with new approaches.

We need to educate ourselves and especially our children to break the spell of the hypnotic propaganda fed to us by the profit-driven advertising industry. There is a developing science of risk assessment and risk management that could be used as an educational tool to enhance students’ skills in applying basic mathematical techniques so they can critically assess the risks of daily life. This in turn would, I hope, lead to common sense approaches to daily life issues.

Michael S. Greenwood of Orono is the Ruth Hutchins Professor of tree physiology at the University of Maine.