It does always take two people to get in a [two vehicle] collision. You can't control the other driver, but you can control how you react - and usually whether you've seen them coming in time to do so.
Sometimes it's unavoidable - you're stopped at a light and someone crosses the median to plow into you. In that situation, you are screwed.
But often, there is something you as the not "at fault" party could have done to avoid the collision (even with the drunk driver), had you been paying attention enough to see the situation. Change lanes. Slow down. Speed up. Leave more room. Leave less room. Always, no matter what, be looking.
Once I prevented myself from getting rear-ended at a traffic light: I was stopped and saw someone coming up behind me way too fast. I leaned on my horn, they clued in, and braked in time to stop just touching my fender. (I was in a motorcyle at a time, so REALLY happy with the outcome.)
Again, sometimes it really is unavoidable - but in a surprising number of situations there are actions a driver can take to avoid or reduce the severity of the incident.
Insurance companies understand this - that's why your rates raise when you get in an accident, regardless of whether you're legally "at fault".
Driving well and alertly doesn't end at the bounds of legal fault. Sure if you were rear-ended someone else will pay damages - but if you're in a wheelchair or dead, that money isn't going to make things better.
So to GP's point: there are a LOT of things that are far more under your control when you're driving. Falling out of the sky... not so much.
I don't doubt that you can influence your own safety on the road to a degree. But the question is, how much? How safe is an extremely safe driver compared to flying on an airliner?
I doubt that even the best driver can get safer than an airliner. It's going to be hard to measure. For one, it's almost impossible to measure the risk of a "safe" driver compared to an unsafe one. For another, it's almost impossible to measure the risk of American airline travel today, because fatalities are so rare that it's no longer possible to turn them into a meaningful number. That last part suggests to me that even the safest driver will be far more at risk on the road than in a plane.
At some point the high rate is just called "normal". I would expect that majority of people freeze. And unless we're all trained in specific situations and see the situation perfectly and have a good reflex and ... there will be no reaction. And how would we prove that any kind of reaction is better than none?
You don't have to be trained to see the situation perfecty or even trained in a specific situation. It is possible to train you brain to still function in a panic situation and try something. You can think about whether that was the right action at a later time.
I've had people tell me "I don't even remember the last 60 seconds" after inducing a spin in a vehicle. It's a scary thought.
I've been rear-ended multiple times. None of the drivers that hit me were drunk or intoxicated. I still had no control over their actions. Short of not driving at all there was no action I could have taken that would have prevented me from being hit. I was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time (e.g., I had been fully stopped for about 60 seconds at a stoplight, not in rush hour traffic, when the light turned green and I was almost instantly hit from the rear. I was about 16 cars back from green light, and there was no way I could have been rolling. But, the driver behind me saw the light turn green and decided that traffic would be moving before he reached my location.)
