On the evening of Sept. 13, 1899 — 125 years ago today — taxi cab driver Arthur Smith struck Manhattan resident Henry Hale Bliss on Central Park West, making him the first victim of a fatal car crash in the Western Hemisphere.

“The automobile has tasted blood,” wrote the Alton (Illinois) Evening Telegraph, pivoting to prescience: “It is now an engine of death.”

In a good year, 40,000 Americans will die in a car crash, roughly 110 people every day. Imagine if an intercity jetliner crashed every day; the public response would be immediate and urgent. But scores of deaths merit a collective shrug.