>> Would you choose that 60 million people
>> were all delayed by an extra 30 minutes every day to save one single 
>> life?
>
>  Yes?

Because you are looking at the problem selfishly and not the whole system. 
Of course, if you said to an individual that if they were forced to wait an 
extra 30 minutes every day to save a life, they might say yes.  But 
goverments need to look at the whole system in order to make a decision, try 
the following:

How much would someone have to pay you if it meant you lost 30 minutes each 
day to being stuck in traffic?

Ask 60 million people that question and add up all their answers, what do 
you think the total would be?  I'd guess around $10 per person on average, 
so say $600 million.

A hospital near you wants to buy some new piece of equipment that will save 
more lives than the old bit.  It's very expensive, let's say it will save an 
extra 10 lives, and costs 10 million dollars.

So, what you are effectively saying is that you'd rather waste $600m of 
peoples time, to avoid having to spend $1m to save a single life.  Good job 
you aren't an economic adviser for your government ;-)

BTW you can substitute the hospital equipment for anything that puts a value 
on human life.  Actually, whenever you buy or use anything that is not 100% 
safe, you are putting a value on your life.

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