Oh, c’mon. Don’t get stupid about this. There is a point to be made about the waste in crushing 2000 automobiles without dismantling. I give you that. But there isn’t a product out there like the automobile that is as capable of killing as easily as the automobile and EVERYONE has access to it once they turn 16.
IF (I say if because I don’t know what the 2K cars were used for) they were used for crash tests, and they ended up with a much safer product because of it, then it was money (and “waste”) well spent.
Where they missed the mark is that this is the message we wanted to hear 5 - 10 years ago. Today, the safety aspect is table stakes. Now the message should have been:
“We destroyed 2000 automobiles in an effort to make our cars safer. We were successful…When we were done, we dismantled, recycled all unusable parts and rebuilt cars from the viable scraps and donated those cars to those who can’t afford them.”
That’s a message that would have worked today.