Long before the most recent Connecticut Avenue death, I regretted having once argued that government has no business requiring drivers to buy and use inexpensive devices, like seat belts, that might save them from self destruction. There is a pitiless abstractness, and disrespect for life, in such dogmatic respect for the right of consenting adults to behave in ways disastrous to themselves. Besides, too many passengers are sacrificed on the altar. And a large part of the bill for irrationality of individual drivers is paid by society.

Most important, society desensitizes itself by passively accepting so much carnage.

On Connecticut Avenue that evening, the police operated with the weary patience normal to those who paid to look unblinkingly at what people do to themselves. "Go home," a policeman finally said, with barely noticeable disgust, to people milling around the debris. "Go home and watch television." After a while, we did.