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Unfortunately the same argument makes the case for ignoring safety all together. The socially acceptable ways to die in a car gets smaller and smaller. Things l

Unfortunately the same argument makes the case for ignoring safety all together. The socially acceptable ways to die in a car gets smaller and smaller. Things like death by gasoline fire illustrated here, or death by steering column implation[1] get reclassified from an unavoidable hazard of driving to a preventable death all the time. We've even seen steering column trauma get re-conceptualized as preventable with the passage of the Surface Transportation Efficiency Act in 1991 and it's implementation in 1998. We'll likely see the same with deaths that are currently considered unavoidable road hazards. The fact is that as safety technologies are developed, they have the tendency to make people reevaluate what is and isn't avoidable. As to structural columns and crumple zones, public perception might reevaluate these too. The cumulative effect is that the deaths per VMT[2] has dropped and is likely to continue to drop as advances are made. Personally I don't care so much how it's done just that it's done. It seems to be working out pretty well so far. 1. https://www.pailton.com/latest-news/collapsible-steering-columns-explained/ https://www.pailton.com/latest-news/collapsible-steering-col... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year#/media/File:US_traffic_deaths_per_VMT,_VMT,_per_capita,_and_total_annual_deaths.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

microsoftdoes 4y ago
>Unfortunately the same argument makes the case for ignoring safety all together. No it doesn’t. It’s all about cost/benefit. We accept some safety risk because the alternative is a product that is too expensive to be useful.
SilasX 4y ago
I don't think that addresses my question about why this particular tradeoff was unusually objectionable, it looks to be just the general point that safety is good. But even your examples of "doing it right" are implicitly doing the same thing as the Pinto: not spending infinite resources to improve safety, but cut it off at some point. Also, this is false, or at least, you've asserted it without basis: >Unfortunately the same argument makes the case for ignoring safety all together. If you have a reason why this case stands out, I'd love to learn it. If you just want to shame everyone who recognizes the inherent tradeoffs in improving safety, then I'm not sure your comment makes HN a better, more curiosity-friendly place.
- kelseyfrog 4y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. Feel free to rewrite it so that it is more curious.
  - SilasX 4y ago
    If it were from a spirit of curiosity, none of those points would have been made, because you would have soon realized you're not responding to anything in my comment. The more-curious version of your comment would be, "That's a good point. I can't quite put my finger on what makes this particular safety/cost tradeoff different from the other cases, especially given that it maintains the same general level of safety through different decisions. Something still seems off, but I'm not at the point where I can rigorously justify it." Does that about summarize where you stand?

microsoftdoes 4y ago

>Unfortunately the same argument makes the case for ignoring safety all together. No it doesn’t. It’s all about cost/benefit. We accept some safety risk because the alternative is a product that is too expensive to be useful.

SilasX 4y ago

I don't think that addresses my question about why this particular tradeoff was unusually objectionable, it looks to be just the general point that safety is good. But even your examples of "doing it right" are implicitly doing the same thing as the Pinto: not spending infinite resources to improve safety, but cut it off at some point. Also, this is false, or at least, you've asserted it without basis: >Unfortunately the same argument makes the case for ignoring safety all together. If you have a reason why this case stands out, I'd love to learn it. If you just want to shame everyone who recognizes the inherent tradeoffs in improving safety, then I'm not sure your comment makes HN a better, more curiosity-friendly place.

kelseyfrog 4y ago
Thanks for the feedback. Feel free to rewrite it so that it is more curious.
- SilasX 4y ago
  If it were from a spirit of curiosity, none of those points would have been made, because you would have soon realized you're not responding to anything in my comment. The more-curious version of your comment would be, "That's a good point. I can't quite put my finger on what makes this particular safety/cost tradeoff different from the other cases, especially given that it maintains the same general level of safety through different decisions. Something still seems off, but I'm not at the point where I can rigorously justify it." Does that about summarize where you stand?