Sometimes a bright spot...

It's difficult to find much good news these days, but occasionally a bit of it bobs to the surface of the murky water. This came unexpectedly from the MSN home page. It caught my eye because in the introductory photo was a gorgeous, looking-brand-new 1959 Chevy Bel Aire.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety had used it in a test, crashing it head-on into a 2009 Chevy Malibu. The purpose was to see how far we've come in vehicle safety in all these decades. It was pretty impressive.

But before I get to that, there is a rant in here somewhere about intentionally destroying a classic car like the '59. It wasn't my favorite body style; 1959 was the final year of the huge fins that were taken to ridiculous ends by Cadillac and anything from Chrysler Corp. But it still has become a favorite among collectors. And as I watched the crash video, the interior camera confirmed that the upholstery, headliner, dash and all that stuff were impeccable. So why didn't the IIHS destroy an old Edsel or Desoto or something? They're obviously safety guys, not car guys.

But back to the subject, whatever it was. The new Malibu, of course, held up much better than the Bel Aire, and the driver would have escaped serious injury. The driver of the '59 would have gone to that great Highway in the Sky immediately upon impact. Tough to be him.

The good news (besides the condition of the Malibu) was in the chart that accompanied the story. In 1959 there were 72.5 million registered vehicles in the U.S. By 2008 that number had grown to 255 million. In that same span of years the number of miles we drive each year grew from 700 billion to 2.9 trillion. That's a lot of trips to the 7-11.

Oddly, the number of annual fatalities in all that extra driving actually went down ever so slightly, from 37,910 in 1959 to 37,261 in 2008. In 1959, 5.41 of us would be killed for every million miles driven. By 2008, that million miles would only get 1.27 of us.

So there you have it. Though the roads and highways are more crowded than ever before, road rage is common, people drive like idiots and gas prices are too high, at least there's a silver lining: we're all much safer as we careen down the freeway heading somewhere else. Good news.