>This is just not the case, at least not in the modern world. There are quite successful auto companies who have made safety central to their marketing message.

>This is just not the case, at least not in the modern world. There are quite successful auto companies who have made safety central to their marketing message. Go car shopping on Volvo.com today, for instance, and the very first thing you see is a big notice for their "Summer of Safety Sales Event." There's a difference between the HN crowd and new car buyers in general. Most people here can afford any car they want (within reason) and buy whatever lines up with their priorities best. Your average car buyer does not prioritize safety or fuel economy (especially fuel economy) beyond requiring that it meet some threshold that basically everything in the class they're looking at meets. Getting in a serious crash happens zero times in most people's lives. Of course people who are cost constrained don't spend much time thinking about it. Nobody ever chose not to buy a Chevy Aveo because they didn't like the crash test rating. Seriously, 5%ers making software dev salaries don't shop for cars the way the masses do (and it shows, compare your office parking lot to the average traffic jam). >This notion that safety is only of concern to people who aren't directly relevant to the car-buying decision (such as, ugh, women) Where did I imply anyone was irrelevant to the car buying process? Most couple shop for cars as couples. Heck, many couples bring their kids and ask them if they like the rear seats (comfortable kids are quiet kids). Both members typically have non-negotiable "the vehicle must X" criteria that constrains the search space even when only one person is going to be paying. This is part of why the Jeep Wrangler sells so well (think about all the feature boxes it checks). People being people they have different priorities. Generally speaking whoever is going to be paying wants something fun and whoever isn't wants something practical. >which is one of the blind spots that ended up getting Detroit's clock cleaned by imports. You either have little memory of 70s and 80s imports and/or is looking at them through rose colored glasses because it's what you remember being dragged around in as a child. There's a reason people compared them to tin cans. Nobody liked them. Everyone bought them. Honda Civics were the Dodge Journey of their day. Detroit lost to imports because Detroit built what the US buyers wanted and they sat on the lots while the Japanese built the cars the US buyers needed. Honda built a better Chevette than Chevy did (and the organizational reasons that happened are well beyond the scope of this comment). Like most incumbents Detroit avoided change until it was basically too late.