The other issue is a bias founded in your exposure to traffic crashes. The general population speeds, drives distracted, drives drunk, follows too closely, etc. and rarely sees any negative outcomes from these behaviors. Unless they witness the crash, they just see the aftermath and are able to rationalize what happened. Everyone thinks they are an above average driver and that horrible carnage on the side of the road would never be them.
Cops are the complete opposite. They see almost every crash, and certainly the bad ones. I posted some comments elsewhere on-line and the comments from the cops were telling. Everyone could perfectly describe the smells associated with a serious crash and one guy even said he smells it when he sees a crash picture. When you see something again and again, that there is no good reason for, you have a desire to stop or reduce it. Cops patience for asshat driving is pretty minimal because they have an biased view of the actual results of the asshat driving.
It's not sexy but speeding continues to be a significant problem. By controlling speed, you can give drivers more time to respond/react/avoid a crash AND you control the intensity of the crash. Europe has done an impressive job of reducing their traffic fatalities by reducing speeding violations. How was this done - with automatic speed enforcements AKA photo RADAR. Photo RADAR has bombed in the U.S. for mostly cultural reasons. Photo RADAR is now limited to special applications such as school zones. Guess what happens to speeds in front of schools with photo RADAR - yep they quickly drop to match the posted limit. If we, as a culture, don't want photo RADAR and we're not willing to accept a bunch of unnecessary deaths and maimings then something other than white knight enforcement is probably going to be needed.