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I'm not suggesting getting rid of regulation, I'm just suggesting less. I'm suggesting (for cars anyway) that there is a point where the marginal systemic cost

by Aloha 5y ago

I'm not suggesting getting rid of regulation, I'm just suggesting less. I'm suggesting (for cars anyway) that there is a point where the marginal systemic cost to save a life isn't worth the dollar amount for the safety technology used to save them. Backup cameras are the best example of this, I'd have to dig thru my comment history, but the mandate of backup cameras adds some huge amount of cost to cars (when totaled), something like 300k or 500k (or more) per life saved, mostly because people are too lazy/busy/distracted to approach their vehicle from the rear and very few lives are saved in real numbers by backup cameras. These regulatory burdens have hidden costs, and those costs are shouldered disproportionately by the poor. The same argument applies to housing, the reason only 'luxury' housing gets built, instead of middle income housing, is because only 'luxury' housing has the profit margins to support the protracted development process you have to go thru to build anything. While yes, it's true that no one builds low income housing, once you have a good supply of new moderate income housing, yesterdays moderate income housing becomes todays lower income housing. But because we stopped building moderate income housing, the progression downmarket just stopped. Another thing we missed, is the government ripped out a huge amount of low income housing when it closed down the large housing projects in most urban areas in the early 90's, the focus on "affordable" units by private builders, is a wrong-headed approach to get that capacity back.

gnicholas 5y ago
Backup cameras save lives, but also prevent property damage. And not just to the driver's car, but also to the parked cars they might have otherwise hit. The value of property damage avoided should also be factored into the 'pro' side of the pro/con evaluation.
- wahern 5y ago
  Safety mandates also help drive obsolescence, which helps car manufacturers sell more cars, which in turn keeps the used car market well supplied. (It's basically a very progressive tax that mostly falls upon the wealthier.) Most safety mandates seem to be largely voluntary, AFAICT--literally, or with deadlines that go unchallenged by the industry--as the regulatory agencies hash out timelines with manufacturers so they can maximize return and minimize cost inflation by letting the features trickle down from luxury models over the course of 5-10 years. IIRC, backup cameras are a great example of this, with companies like Toyota preemptively committing to adding them to all cars across their lineup before (or at least very early during) the industry and regulatory agency negotiations. I think the most costly safety "taxes" (e.g. impact resistance) effectively just translate to heavier cars. Fuel mileage requirements also had the perverse second order effect of increasing car sizes. These are the closest analog for housing. There was recently a lot of noise about California requiring sprinkler systems in new single-family homes, but that just ends up increasing costs by like 1% or less. It's de minimis to begin with, and should drop as builders adjust their processes. (I realize these things add up, and I'm not trying to defend the sprinkler mandate, but there are also counterveiling forces--like standardization--which push back in the other direction.) But minimum square footage requirements for units, maximum height requirements for buildings, etc... those go straight to the bottom line of primary costs (property, raw material, and labor) similar to car size and weight. But unlike cars, the health & safety benefit of modern unit size requirements (i.e. the marginal increase over, say, mid-century requirements) is basically non-existent and were in many cases quite literally crafted in the first instance to limit housing supply.
  - ericmay 5y ago
    > Safety mandates also help drive obsolescence, which helps car manufacturers sell more cars, which in turn keeps the used car market well supplied. (It's basically a very progressive tax that mostly falls upon the wealthier.) Yes but these laws cover cars built from X date onward. Are people trading in their Corolla to get a new one because of a safety regulation like a backup camera?
    - wahern 5y ago
      I've always assumed so, and it was something I looked forward to for many years--I was late to the party. Backup cameras have been required by law since 2018, but judging by this 2021 list, similar, optional safety features do seem to be in high demand: https://www.autopacific.com/autopacific-insights https://www.autopacific.com/autopacific-insights (via https://www.autoblog.com/2021/10/20/top-10-car-features-people-want/ https://www.autoblog.com/2021/10/20/top-10-car-features-peop...) 1. Heated seats: 66% 2. Blind-spot monitoring: 60% 3. Front and rear parking sensors: 55% 4. All-wheel or four-wheel drive: 54% 5. Lane-departure warning: 54% 6. Apple CarPlay and/or Android Auto: 53% 7. Power front passenger seat: 52% 8. LED accent lights: 52% 9. Ventilated or cooled seats: 50% 10. Memory driver's seat: 49% All-wheel drive is classified as a safety feature, which assuming that's how it's perceived, makes safety features 4 out of the top 5 in-demand features.
      - ericmay 5y ago
        > Backup cameras have been required by law since 2018 Yes. In new cars that are built. It doesn’t require cars built prior to be retrofitted with a camera.
Aunche 5y ago
>mandate of backup cameras adds some huge amount of cost to cars (when totaled), something like 300k or 500k (or more) per life saved That is honestly a lot better than I expected. With infrastructure projects, the department of transportation values each life at $10 million. Also, in an ideal world, I do think that cars should be treated as luxury goods. They pollute a lot and take up a lot of space. Of course, most of the US would need better much better public transit.
- Aloha 5y ago
  "Luxury Goods." Tell that to the poor person who needs one to get to work, the store, or the doctor, see what kind of reaction you get. It's fine and dandy for all of us who make a high-dollar salary to sit here and moralize, "yes, tax cars more" when we can well pay the higher taxes, and it will relegate the poor to the bus, where instead of a 15 minute trip home, they'll have a 2 hour trip home by bus after 8 hours on their feet at a service job. Like it or not, much of the world has locked itself into a personal transportation oriented society, where you can transport yourself at your own discretion anywhere you'd like to go whenever you'd like to go there - they key for the future is to make that lifestyle more sustainable for the planet, not to sit here and moralize about it. Also, I was off with the numbers "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."
  - Aunche 5y ago
    Yes, that's why I prefaced my statement with "in an ideal world." Obviously we would need better public transit and urban planning before we can tax cars to oblivion. 8.3 million is still less than the 10 million that the DoT prices for an infrastructure proposal will save a life, so I'd still say the money at least wasn't wasted. It's debatable whether it was actually worth it, but consider that if we were purely utilitarian, we would all be like Bill Gates and prioritize eradicating malaria.
KptMarchewa 5y ago
>I'm suggesting (for cars anyway) that there is a point where the marginal systemic cost to save a life isn't worth the dollar amount for the safety technology used to save them. As long as we're allowing regular humans to drive few ton machines freely on the public roads we're very far from this.
Aloha 5y ago
Here is my comment from 2017: "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."

by Aloha 5y ago

gnicholas 5y ago

Backup cameras save lives, but also prevent property damage. And not just to the driver's car, but also to the parked cars they might have otherwise hit. The value of property damage avoided should also be factored into the 'pro' side of the pro/con evaluation.

wahern 5y ago
Safety mandates also help drive obsolescence, which helps car manufacturers sell more cars, which in turn keeps the used car market well supplied. (It's basically a very progressive tax that mostly falls upon the wealthier.) Most safety mandates seem to be largely voluntary, AFAICT--literally, or with deadlines that go unchallenged by the industry--as the regulatory agencies hash out timelines with manufacturers so they can maximize return and minimize cost inflation by letting the features trickle down from luxury models over the course of 5-10 years. IIRC, backup cameras are a great example of this, with companies like Toyota preemptively committing to adding them to all cars across their lineup before (or at least very early during) the industry and regulatory agency negotiations. I think the most costly safety "taxes" (e.g. impact resistance) effectively just translate to heavier cars. Fuel mileage requirements also had the perverse second order effect of increasing car sizes. These are the closest analog for housing. There was recently a lot of noise about California requiring sprinkler systems in new single-family homes, but that just ends up increasing costs by like 1% or less. It's de minimis to begin with, and should drop as builders adjust their processes. (I realize these things add up, and I'm not trying to defend the sprinkler mandate, but there are also counterveiling forces--like standardization--which push back in the other direction.) But minimum square footage requirements for units, maximum height requirements for buildings, etc... those go straight to the bottom line of primary costs (property, raw material, and labor) similar to car size and weight. But unlike cars, the health & safety benefit of modern unit size requirements (i.e. the marginal increase over, say, mid-century requirements) is basically non-existent and were in many cases quite literally crafted in the first instance to limit housing supply.
- ericmay 5y ago
  > Safety mandates also help drive obsolescence, which helps car manufacturers sell more cars, which in turn keeps the used car market well supplied. (It's basically a very progressive tax that mostly falls upon the wealthier.) Yes but these laws cover cars built from X date onward. Are people trading in their Corolla to get a new one because of a safety regulation like a backup camera?
  - wahern 5y ago
    I've always assumed so, and it was something I looked forward to for many years--I was late to the party. Backup cameras have been required by law since 2018, but judging by this 2021 list, similar, optional safety features do seem to be in high demand: https://www.autopacific.com/autopacific-insights https://www.autopacific.com/autopacific-insights (via https://www.autoblog.com/2021/10/20/top-10-car-features-people-want/ https://www.autoblog.com/2021/10/20/top-10-car-features-peop...) 1. Heated seats: 66% 2. Blind-spot monitoring: 60% 3. Front and rear parking sensors: 55% 4. All-wheel or four-wheel drive: 54% 5. Lane-departure warning: 54% 6. Apple CarPlay and/or Android Auto: 53% 7. Power front passenger seat: 52% 8. LED accent lights: 52% 9. Ventilated or cooled seats: 50% 10. Memory driver's seat: 49% All-wheel drive is classified as a safety feature, which assuming that's how it's perceived, makes safety features 4 out of the top 5 in-demand features.
    - ericmay 5y ago
      > Backup cameras have been required by law since 2018 Yes. In new cars that are built. It doesn’t require cars built prior to be retrofitted with a camera.

Aunche 5y ago

>mandate of backup cameras adds some huge amount of cost to cars (when totaled), something like 300k or 500k (or more) per life saved That is honestly a lot better than I expected. With infrastructure projects, the department of transportation values each life at $10 million. Also, in an ideal world, I do think that cars should be treated as luxury goods. They pollute a lot and take up a lot of space. Of course, most of the US would need better much better public transit.

Aloha 5y ago
"Luxury Goods." Tell that to the poor person who needs one to get to work, the store, or the doctor, see what kind of reaction you get. It's fine and dandy for all of us who make a high-dollar salary to sit here and moralize, "yes, tax cars more" when we can well pay the higher taxes, and it will relegate the poor to the bus, where instead of a 15 minute trip home, they'll have a 2 hour trip home by bus after 8 hours on their feet at a service job. Like it or not, much of the world has locked itself into a personal transportation oriented society, where you can transport yourself at your own discretion anywhere you'd like to go whenever you'd like to go there - they key for the future is to make that lifestyle more sustainable for the planet, not to sit here and moralize about it. Also, I was off with the numbers "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."
- Aunche 5y ago
  Yes, that's why I prefaced my statement with "in an ideal world." Obviously we would need better public transit and urban planning before we can tax cars to oblivion. 8.3 million is still less than the 10 million that the DoT prices for an infrastructure proposal will save a life, so I'd still say the money at least wasn't wasted. It's debatable whether it was actually worth it, but consider that if we were purely utilitarian, we would all be like Bill Gates and prioritize eradicating malaria.

KptMarchewa 5y ago

>I'm suggesting (for cars anyway) that there is a point where the marginal systemic cost to save a life isn't worth the dollar amount for the safety technology used to save them. As long as we're allowing regular humans to drive few ton machines freely on the public roads we're very far from this.

Aloha 5y ago

Here is my comment from 2017: "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."