> "The fact is that liberty and safety are intrinsically at odds."
If you own an Apple iPhone, and you have photos on it, and you enter into a contract with Apple Computer to use their cloud service, and you upload photos to the cloud service for them to host on their servers, do you have the "liberty" for them to not be allowed to stop you abusing the service in egregious ways? This isn't a matter of freedom and liberty while you can still you can refuse to use iCloud and refuse to use iPhones. Where, by comparison to your example you have much less option to opt-out of travelling by road, using products driven to you on roads and working with people who travelled by road to get to you.
> "it's the implicit calculation we do in other cases, e.g. preventing child deaths in car accidents. We all implicitly agree that some amount of death and disfigurement of children is worth the economic and social benefits of cars"
We don't all agree in the same way; the amount of agreement is continually changing. Where roads are dangerous, authorities lower speed limits and add traffic calming measures and citizens agitate for cycle lanes and pedestrian zones. Where vehicle exhaust makes for poor air quality, people demand cars must have catalytic converters and be subject to emissions control regulations. When pedestrians die in crashes, car manufacturers add external crumple zones. Around schools, people are employed to stop traffic and help children cross roads safely. We pay educators to teach children about road safety and pay for campaigns aimed at educating drivers about pedestrian awareness, drunk driving, distracted driving, the risks of speeding, using fairly graphic imagery of children being hit and killed to drive home the point. We mandate that older cars have regular checks to make sure they're still road worthy and still have functioning brakes and tyre tread and working lights for safety reasons.
I'm often arguing against cars and the harm they do to humans, but it's not the "either you ban cars or you hate children" boolean you're suggesting it is where everyone who benefits from cars is happy to sacrifice children for those benefits and thinks the current amount of sacrifice is just fine thanks and wouldn't change it if they could.
If you own an Apple iPhone, and you have photos on it, and you enter into a contract with Apple Computer to use their cloud service, and you upload photos to the cloud service for them to host on their servers, do you have the "liberty" for them to not be allowed to stop you abusing the service in egregious ways? This isn't a matter of freedom and liberty while you can still you can refuse to use iCloud and refuse to use iPhones. Where, by comparison to your example you have much less option to opt-out of travelling by road, using products driven to you on roads and working with people who travelled by road to get to you.
> "it's the implicit calculation we do in other cases, e.g. preventing child deaths in car accidents. We all implicitly agree that some amount of death and disfigurement of children is worth the economic and social benefits of cars"
We don't all agree in the same way; the amount of agreement is continually changing. Where roads are dangerous, authorities lower speed limits and add traffic calming measures and citizens agitate for cycle lanes and pedestrian zones. Where vehicle exhaust makes for poor air quality, people demand cars must have catalytic converters and be subject to emissions control regulations. When pedestrians die in crashes, car manufacturers add external crumple zones. Around schools, people are employed to stop traffic and help children cross roads safely. We pay educators to teach children about road safety and pay for campaigns aimed at educating drivers about pedestrian awareness, drunk driving, distracted driving, the risks of speeding, using fairly graphic imagery of children being hit and killed to drive home the point. We mandate that older cars have regular checks to make sure they're still road worthy and still have functioning brakes and tyre tread and working lights for safety reasons.
I'm often arguing against cars and the harm they do to humans, but it's not the "either you ban cars or you hate children" boolean you're suggesting it is where everyone who benefits from cars is happy to sacrifice children for those benefits and thinks the current amount of sacrifice is just fine thanks and wouldn't change it if they could.