A doctor in Jerusalem sent a letter to HaRav Wosner describing his efforts to promote road safety. The latter reacted effusively: "You are most praiseworthy and deserve encouragement. Each Beis Din in its city, with the public servants must do all in their power to prevent damage to its residents, and it is a mitzvah to encourage them and to reprove a person who does not obey those safeguards and rulings which were made for his protection and for the welfare of the general public, for if he fails to do so and acts without conscience, he endangers himself and others as well."
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The Rosh Yeshiva, HaRav Michel Yehuda Lipkowitz, once said that if a driver is not careful in his driving, he is considered a rodef, one who intends harm. A driver must surely be careful according to the guidelines of the Torah. Pedestrians must similarly be careful. He also told that he once crossed the street while walking with the Chazon Ish and a car stopped for them. Maran said that while the car stopped for them, it did not cancel the chance that another car from behind would bypass it. It is difficult to gauge whether a car might not shoot out from behind. Therefore, one should not cross the street until he verifies that there is no other car on the move behind it.
HaRav Aharon Leib Shteinman said that a driver should intend to observe two mitzvos from the Torah as he proceeds: not to harm another and not to be harmed himself. The latter relates to `venishmarten - you shall be careful for your life' while the first relates to the prohibition of causing harm or damage to others. It is very dangerous to learn Torah while driving since one can become totally absorbed and forget himself, and harm both himself and others - even to the point of killing.
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People are injured and killed in road accidents every day. The driver did not concentrate/ is to blame, they say, when the real cause for the accident was because it was thus Divinely decreed, and the fact that the driver erred was in order to carry out that decree.
Eretz Yisrael has proportionally more accidents because it is a land directly under Hashem's vigil. One must behave differently in the palace of the King.
