5 ms·

Horses were dangerous, would often spook and throw riders - most carriage designs are top-heavy and unstable, I won't even start on bicycles - pretty much anyth

by Aloha 9y ago

Horses were dangerous, would often spook and throw riders - most carriage designs are top-heavy and unstable, I won't even start on bicycles - pretty much anything short of walking is dangerous on some level - even then you still might injure yourself, even severely. Modern Society lives in a fallacy - that we can somehow, someway engineer danger out of life, that we can eliminate all risk of accidental injuries or death and make everything perfectly safe and sanitary - and in some ways we can, at an ever increasing incremental cost to do so - a cost that is often not justifiable in my humble opinion. For example, In 2014 the NHTSA required all new cars to be sold with a backup camera - at an estimated cost of up to 143 dollars a car. In 2016 we sold 17,500,000 cars - if you add 100 dollars to the price of each car sold, you're looking at an extra 1,750,000,000 or 1.75 billion dollars, annually - to save 210 lives - in short 8.3 million dollars per life saved - even if you look at just injuries from accidental backing incidents, there were 15,000 of those in 2014 - you're still looking at 116,000 dollars spent per injury prevented - and this presumes this technology prevents every death, and every injury from accidental backing - Is this a worthy expenditure my gut tells me no (but I might be a cold hearted bastard) - I can just think of better ways to spend 1.75 billion dollars in the public good - an education campaign, and requiring a label, or warning sign to flash in the car would cost far less and probably save about as many lives. Society doesn't think about those things though, we choose the easy, feel-good answer that all lives are valuable - its why for example, we've not even touched on end of life, and when pouring money into someone who may only have 1-2 years left in their natural life - may not make much sense, and I'm not even suggesting I know the answer, I'm just suggesting we start having the conversation instead of taking the easy approach, and immediately passing another law, then patting ourselves on the back for a job well done.

supergarfield 9y ago
> 8.3 million dollars per life saved Interestingly, this is very close to what the EPA uses as the cost of a life -- a little above 9.1 million dollars when adjusted for inflation [1]. This seems in line with the math for environmental regulations. [1] https://www.epa.gov/environmental-economics/mortality-risk-valuation#means https://www.epa.gov/environmental-economics/mortality-risk-v...
- Aloha 9y ago
  Interesting - it seems like a really high number to me - but I'm just an engineer and environmental science isn't really a specialty of mine.
  - wyldfire 9y ago
    The EPA's rationale: > ... values are typically reported in units that match the aggregate dollar amount that a large group of people would be willing to pay for a reduction in their individual risks of dying in a year... > Suppose each person in a sample of 100,000 people were asked how much he or she would be willing to pay for a reduction in their individual risk of dying of 1 in 100,000, or 0.001%, over the next year. Since this reduction in risk would mean that we would expect one fewer death among the sample of 100,000 people over the next year on average, this is sometimes described as "one statistical life saved." Now suppose that the average response to this hypothetical question was $100. Then the total dollar amount that the group would be willing to pay to save one statistical life in a year would be $100 per person × 100,000 people, or $10 million.
michaelbuckbee 9y ago
I'm not disputing any of your numbers, but if you're going to do the calculation you'd need to also include: injuries (lots of broken legs) and non-injury causing auto damage.
- Aloha 9y ago
  I did - hence the 116,000 per injury prevented figure. I don't count auto collision damage, as thats operator carelessness, and is non-injurious to an innocent third party, and therefore shouldn't be part of the whims of the state.
  - sokoloff 9y ago
    When my car was parked on the street and backed into, I was a (financially) injured innocent third party.
myhf 9y ago
Motor vehicle deaths per year: 30,000 Train deaths per year: 300
- Aloha 9y ago
  How do you get somewhere if you live 80 miles from the nearest railhead then?
  - myhf 9y ago
    Bus deaths per year: 30
- majormajor 9y ago
  Another way to spin it: about 1 percent of deaths in the US.[0][1] Note also that the raw count (and thus presumably the percentage, even more so) has been trending downward for about 40 years. In other words, we're already working on it and making headway. And for the 9/11 comparison hysteria: note the 30x difference between 3000 deaths in a day and under 100. If a million people a year were dying from motor vehicles, I think we'd be doing even more than we already are. Many cities are investing in transit. Many companies are investing in self-driving tech. Tons of improvements in safety and driver-assist technology have already been made. What gives people the impression that we simply don't care and aren't doing anything? [0] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr65/nvsr65_05.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr65/nvsr65_05.pdf [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i...
TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
Does it make sense to include the lives saved annually for the life of the vehicle? or at least the mean time between failures of the cameras? Say the average reverse camera dies around 10 years after the vehicle is built. So maybe $14.30 per vehicle per year / $175 million per year to save 2100 lives over ten years. Or 150,000 accidental backing incidents over ten years (assuming ever one of those incidents can be prevent by a reversing camera, which is probably optimistic). What about when the original owner sells the car secondhand and recuperates some of the original expense. What if we imagine new-car-buyers, when they sell their car secondhand, apply the value of the sale only to the safety features. Which isn't entirely unreasonable because when you sell a car the only thing you have left is the injuries and death it didn't cause. Where am I going with this: the parent wrote about "amount of death we accept as a society just for the convenience of automobile", which is a popular trope but is false. We don't just accept it, we've done a lot to reduce road related death and injury, and we are, evidently, prepared to spend even more money and resources trying to reducing it.
- Aloha 9y ago
  Oh yes, quite - and I'm not even questioning if reducing backing accidents isn't a noble goal, it is - I'm just questioning is this the most cost effective way of going about it is all. Improved tires, and mandatory seatbelts (as in included with the car) since the 50's have probably saved more lives than airbags however, as until recently airbags were only helpful for a very specific kind of collision.
- sokoloff 9y ago
  I think in steady state analysis (once backup cameras become ubiquitous across the in-service fleet), it's fair to analyze deaths in a year vs sales in a year, even if the deaths don't correspond 1:1 with model years.

by Aloha 9y ago

supergarfield 9y ago

> 8.3 million dollars per life saved Interestingly, this is very close to what the EPA uses as the cost of a life -- a little above 9.1 million dollars when adjusted for inflation [1]. This seems in line with the math for environmental regulations. [1] https://www.epa.gov/environmental-economics/mortality-risk-valuation#means https://www.epa.gov/environmental-economics/mortality-risk-v...

Aloha 9y ago
Interesting - it seems like a really high number to me - but I'm just an engineer and environmental science isn't really a specialty of mine.
- wyldfire 9y ago
  The EPA's rationale: > ... values are typically reported in units that match the aggregate dollar amount that a large group of people would be willing to pay for a reduction in their individual risks of dying in a year... > Suppose each person in a sample of 100,000 people were asked how much he or she would be willing to pay for a reduction in their individual risk of dying of 1 in 100,000, or 0.001%, over the next year. Since this reduction in risk would mean that we would expect one fewer death among the sample of 100,000 people over the next year on average, this is sometimes described as "one statistical life saved." Now suppose that the average response to this hypothetical question was $100. Then the total dollar amount that the group would be willing to pay to save one statistical life in a year would be $100 per person × 100,000 people, or $10 million.

michaelbuckbee 9y ago

I'm not disputing any of your numbers, but if you're going to do the calculation you'd need to also include: injuries (lots of broken legs) and non-injury causing auto damage.

Aloha 9y ago
I did - hence the 116,000 per injury prevented figure. I don't count auto collision damage, as thats operator carelessness, and is non-injurious to an innocent third party, and therefore shouldn't be part of the whims of the state.
- sokoloff 9y ago
  When my car was parked on the street and backed into, I was a (financially) injured innocent third party.

myhf 9y ago

Motor vehicle deaths per year: 30,000 Train deaths per year: 300

Aloha 9y ago
How do you get somewhere if you live 80 miles from the nearest railhead then?
- myhf 9y ago
  Bus deaths per year: 30
majormajor 9y ago
Another way to spin it: about 1 percent of deaths in the US.[0][1] Note also that the raw count (and thus presumably the percentage, even more so) has been trending downward for about 40 years. In other words, we're already working on it and making headway. And for the 9/11 comparison hysteria: note the 30x difference between 3000 deaths in a day and under 100. If a million people a year were dying from motor vehicles, I think we'd be doing even more than we already are. Many cities are investing in transit. Many companies are investing in self-driving tech. Tons of improvements in safety and driver-assist technology have already been made. What gives people the impression that we simply don't care and aren't doing anything? [0] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr65/nvsr65_05.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr65/nvsr65_05.pdf [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i...

TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago

Does it make sense to include the lives saved annually for the life of the vehicle? or at least the mean time between failures of the cameras? Say the average reverse camera dies around 10 years after the vehicle is built. So maybe $14.30 per vehicle per year / $175 million per year to save 2100 lives over ten years. Or 150,000 accidental backing incidents over ten years (assuming ever one of those incidents can be prevent by a reversing camera, which is probably optimistic). What about when the original owner sells the car secondhand and recuperates some of the original expense. What if we imagine new-car-buyers, when they sell their car secondhand, apply the value of the sale only to the safety features. Which isn't entirely unreasonable because when you sell a car the only thing you have left is the injuries and death it didn't cause. Where am I going with this: the parent wrote about "amount of death we accept as a society just for the convenience of automobile", which is a popular trope but is false. We don't just accept it, we've done a lot to reduce road related death and injury, and we are, evidently, prepared to spend even more money and resources trying to reducing it.

Aloha 9y ago
Oh yes, quite - and I'm not even questioning if reducing backing accidents isn't a noble goal, it is - I'm just questioning is this the most cost effective way of going about it is all. Improved tires, and mandatory seatbelts (as in included with the car) since the 50's have probably saved more lives than airbags however, as until recently airbags were only helpful for a very specific kind of collision.
sokoloff 9y ago
I think in steady state analysis (once backup cameras become ubiquitous across the in-service fleet), it's fair to analyze deaths in a year vs sales in a year, even if the deaths don't correspond 1:1 with model years.