Not sure how you missed the point but some how you did.

The point is mechanical failures in cars happen. If it happens to something like the airbag or brakes then it’s likely not a life threatening issue.

If something happens to your wheels or suspension, your axels, etc then it can have catastrophic outcomes when you’re traveling at highway speeds.

People die all the time to mechanical failures in cars resulting in freak accidents. They happen more than you think and a lot of the time it comes down to manufacturing defects. Haven’t you ever seen fight club? The car industry is a lot more lax on safety standards then aviation is and the annual death statistics backs it up.

On the other hand mechanical failures on planes happen all the time. The reality is very few of them result in inoperability and therefore death. It would also require a series of freak incidents to fully cause a crash. Watch the show “Air Disasters” for reference. It’s virtually never just one thing or one mechanical failure that causes a catastrophic incident.

But you don't have to drive, that's a cultural misconception.

One day my car's battery was completely dead. Instead of just having my kids take the day off, I took them in my bicycle trailer and picked up a new battery on my way home. I could totally go without a car if necessary.

Taking a bus or train is much safer than driving. Cycling is also net healthier than driving because the health benefits outweigh the conflict with cars. We spend so much money researching ways to make cars safer (air bags, crumple zones, lane drift alerts, etc), yet it's still incredibly dangerous.

The problem with driving is that people "feel" safer than they are and get complacent. It's similar to someone working in a large machining plant or something, they'll feel safer after a year than a week on the job, but they're probably more at risk because they're more complacent about the risks.

Statistics don't enter into the thought process

But they absolutely should. If you want to be safer, trust the statistics. Almost any mode of transportation is safer than driving, and the ones more dangerous than driving are often more dangerous because of cars.

Airplanes are still way safer than cars. Yeah, one had a door blow out, but the risk of something like that happening is so incredibly low compared to someone crashing into your car that it's almost not worth talking about. The news overreports the one-off cases and underreports the common cases, because surprising news sells. If the news reported every car death, you'd quickly stop reading it because it's just so common.