For your analogy on car accidents - a notable difference between both is that in the case of car accidents, we are able to get numbers on when, how and why they happen and then make conclusions from that.

In this case, we are not even aware of most events of fraud/"bad papers"/manipulation - the "crisis" is that we are losing faith in the science we are doing - results that were cornerstones of entire fields are found to be nonreproducible, making all the work built on top of it pointless.(psychology, cancer, economics, etc - I'm being very broad)

At this point, we don't know how deep the rot goes. We are at the point of recognizing that it's real, and looking for solutions. For car accidents, we're past that - we're just arguing about what are the best solutions. For the replication crisis, we're trying to find a way forward.

Like that scene in The Thing, where they test the blood? We're at the point where we don't know who to trust.

Ps: what's a tfa?