Crims vs Hoons

Yesterday the Evening Standard proclaimed that more drivers had been imprisoned in the last year than burglars. They made this sound like a bad thing.

Of course, they were using absolute figures - approx 10,000 vs 15,000. If you considered the total pool of burglars, and the percentage jailed, compared to the total number of drivers and the number jailed, then I suspect you'd see that actually far, far more burglars were jailed compared to drivers.

However, even if there were more drivers jailed than burglars, then I wouldn't have a problem with this. Why?
Because on average, bad drivers cause more bodily harm and greater amounts of monetary loss than average burglars. Some examples:
I mean, say some junkie breaks into your house and steals the VCR and some petty cash. Cost? Fixing a jemmied window, replacing a VCR, and some small change. You'll be a bit traumatised because someone broke in, but you're physically OK. It's a jailed offence.
Now, assume a driver runs a red light at high speed, maybe they're drunk too, and hits your car. It's got to be a pretty nasty crash to be a jailed offence. But even at 30 mph that'll cause a bunch of dented panels, broken lights and windows, probably a punctured radiator, and these days its quite possible to write the whole car off. Expensive. You probably pick up some nasty bruises at the very least, and its likely you'll be in chiro for whiplash for months. People quite frequently get hurt worse than this, broken ribs and internal injuries for instance. Your car will be off the road for a while as it's repaired or replaced, so you're down time, and money for alternate transport.
Some may say that the trauma of having someone break into your house is bad, and i'm not saying it's not - however, the shock of having your life flash before your eyes as some lunatic skids towards your car, and that slowed down moment of time as everything goes smash and glass flies everywhere, is definately more traumatising in my opinion.

I'm trying to pick a couple of "typical" events above. Obviously some burglars clean out a lot more of value, and some car accidents are far more severe. However, my point remains that it seems acceptable to society[1] to cause bodily injury, large amounts of damage, trauma, etc by Automobile, but yet it is not acceptible to do it by breaking and entering.
I presume this is because of the motivation behind it. In one case it is, allegedly, accidental, whereas the other is premediated. However, I don't believe that the means justifies the outcome.
I am disturbed by the attitude to car crashes, an apparently blameless crime.


[1: Well, maybe not to society, but to the majority of the Evening Standard's readers]