My Life in Cars

Wrong. As I said, it is at the start of the paper. It is not the first sentence. Your statement is inaccurate.

without apparently reading any of the rest

Wrong. I did read some of the rest, and in fact indicated precisely where I stopped.

or even internalizing the meaning of that sentence.

One might argue that to internalize, is to be human. That there is always bias. However, this is hardly the case here, for what is instead happening, is that you are ignoring cause and effect.

Yes, every engineering standard identifies pavement width as a safety feature, but none of them provide evidence to back this up. The few actual investigations of actual crash statistics show the opposite to be true.

The above is irrelevant. Let me explain again. You assert this:

Roads are widened and paint lines extended for driver comfort, not for safety.

Yet, how do roads get widened? Well, a process exists, and part of that process is to follow standards, and to have engineers enact those standards at the behest of, for example, governments.

The process is simple. Clear. Logical. And both your cited paper, and everything else I've read indicates this happens:

- engineers looks at standards, are trained on standards

- standards say 'wider is safer', engineers believe this standard.

- money is spent, roads are built wider, with the intention of improving safety

Yet by stating "Roads are widened ... for comfort", you claim the act of widening was predicated upon some other motive.

Yet, this is not so. Even your paper agrees it is not so.

You are confusing 'cause' and 'effect'.

As I said in my prior post, all you can argue at this point is that this is wrong. You cannot argue that people are building roads wider for comfort, for this is not their intent.

Again, when you say "Roads are widened ... for comfort", you are indicating intent. Yet the intent is clearly NOT this. You are providing no context for anything else.

I am going to be very honest here, and I will ask that you do not take this the wrong way, for you are not alone in this.

By stating "Why this is happening" as "What people intended", and by stating "What the effect is" as "Why a thing was done", you are going to immediately lose your audience, and lose any chance of getting your real point across.

I know what you meant. The problem is, that even now, you have not actually said it.

What you meant to say was:

"All those governments may be paying exorbitant outlays from their budgets to widen roads, and all those engineers may be insisting on wider roads for safety, but they are wrong. Instead, there is a lack of data for this, and this assertion is predicated upon a falsehood."

I am fairly sure the above is somewhat what you mean. But again, by stating it as you did? It immediately seems like you think everything is some sort of conspiracy, which engineers, municipalities, governments are in on. Purposefully, intentionally, trying to make roads less safe.

And that concept is indeed absurd.