In 2019, after a Cape Cod surfer became the first shark fatality in Massachusetts in more than eighty years, the towns equipped every beach with menacing Jaws-like warning billboards and hemorrhage-control kits, and commissioned studies on towers, drones, planes, balloons, sonar, acoustic buoys, and electromagnetic and odorant repellents. Yet every year on Cape Cod between fifteen and twenty people die in car crashes, and cheap improvements in signage, barriers, and traffic law enforcement could save many more lives at a fraction of the cost.
