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People's lives are being sacrificed now, teaching us how to build safer cars. Some large percentage of the time, seatbelts prevent death or reduce the injury. S
by sathackr 7y ago
People's lives are being sacrificed now, teaching us how to build safer cars. Some large percentage of the time, seatbelts prevent death or reduce the injury. Some small percentage of the time, they induce further injury or death.
Do we stop using seatbelts until they are 100% effective? Was it a mistake to start putting seatbelts in cars before it could be proven that they absolutely wouldn't kill anyone?
- LanceH 7y agoAlso look at what regulations have done to seat belts. They are almost all identical and the tech hasn't changed much in quite a while. Are they completely optimal, or are they merely sufficient for liability by meeting government standards?
- volkl48 7y agoThere is the question of what we are trying to optimize for. If you are trying to attain maximum safety for a belted passenger, then no, current passenger seatbelts are not optimal. This is clearly evident from the far better seatbelts and driver safety devices used in motorsport. Current seatbelts represent a tradeoff between safety if you use it, and how annoying they are to use (and therefore, how likely people are to get annoyed and not use them).
- sathackr 7y agoIt's a liability issue. Say someone gets hurt from a seatbelt. If it's designed exactly as required by regulation, there is an immunity for the company (IANAL so I don't know the legal term for this) IF you try to make it better, and do make it better for most cases, but worse for some edge case, then you have a liability issue in that your 'negligence' caused injury that wouldn't have happened otherwise. The stance on civil liability in America often stifles innovation in many areas regarding life safety. Tesla is learning this quickly.