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I kind of agree but this is missing a big part in my opinion. How can we quantify the penalty faced by consumers in EU with to increased costs due to regulation

I kind of agree but this is missing a big part in my opinion. How can we quantify the penalty faced by consumers in EU with to increased costs due to regulation? There might be certain number of deaths we can accept for increased cost but how is it so obvious that this tradeoff was worth it? What if cars got 2x costlier in EU due to the regulations to give you a .01% increased chance in safety? Edit: here are some back of envelope numbers from chatgpt A single, ordinary car ride carries an extremely small chance of death: USA: ~1 in 7.7 million EU: ~1 in 20 million Its not super clear that optimising these numbers is obviously worth the increased costs. Edit2: people can make the choice to buy Volvo cars that are ~40% safer. Why isn't every car buyer buying only Volvo? The assumption you have to make is that regulation would make it much cheaper to buy a safe car than just buying Volvo. It is somewhat true but not sure on the extent.

johanvts 11mo ago
The Americans didn’t get cheap cars, they just got very large cars which is obviously detrimental to anyone but perhaps the driver.
- simianwords 11mo ago
  The specific regulations here > EU officials must revisit the hastily agreed trade deal with the US, where the EU stated that it “intends to accept” lower US vehicle standards, say cities – including Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam, and more than 75 civil society organisations. In a letter to European lawmakers, the signatories warn that aligning European standards with laxer rules in the US would undermine the EU’s global leadership in road safety, public health, climate policy and competitiveness. They point to many things and not only the size of cars - like fewer approvals, lower pollution controls, fewer safety measures. Some of them increase utility (like people might prefer bigger cars) and others decrease cost.
  - Sharlin 11mo ago
    Have you ever heard of the term "negative externalities"?
    - simianwords 11mo ago
      yes i'm questioning the extent of the externalities
      - Sharlin 11mo ago
        They are extensive. Death and suffering by other road users. It should be obvious to anyone with a working moral compass that nobody should die just because someone wants a larger car, or wants to go faster, or wants to drive under the influence – or simply has to drive because there are no better options. Direct monetary costs to the society caused by said deaths and injuries inflicted. CO2 emissions rapidly making the entire world a worse place to live for generations to come, with the death toll likely being in tens of millions as a conservative estimate. Climate refugees will number in hundreds of millions if not billions. Traffic emissions are dropping very slowly compared to other big sources, and that's almost entirely because of private cars and the political difficulty to regulate driving anywhere near enough even in less car-brained societies. Particle emissions, including tire and brake dust. These affect the health of billions of people and cause countless premature deaths annually. Dust is flushed into water bodies, causing ecological damage. EVs are heavy and wear down tires and road surfaces much faster. Noise emission, which is a real, recognized health hazard and a cause of stress. EVs still have wheel noise, which is a major noise component in urban areas. Direct healthcare costs to the society caused by inactive sitting-based lifestyle. Car-friendly infrastructure is actively hostile, not just indifferent, to active modes of transport. Direct costs to the society incurred by dark, paved surfaces and a lack of canopy coverage because cars need space. This can have an alarming effect on urban temperatures, increasing the need for cooling solutions and, in the absence of such, contributing to the hundreds of thousands of annual heat-related hospitalizations and deaths. The costs of building expensive new car-centric infrastructure are externalized to everybody. Toll roads are rare. Taxes on gasoline are nowhere near high enough to cover all the externalities even in Europe. Driving is subsidized by the society, which is economically incredibly inefficient. --- While we're at it, let's go over the main opportunity costs as well: Indirect costs to the society by deaths and injuries in the shape of healthy work-years lost. Indirect costs to the society caused by inactive lifestyle in the shape of healthy work-years lost. When you count both direct and indirect costs, spending money to encourage people to bike and walk, for example by building safe infrastructure, ends up saving money in the end. There are vastly more economically sane uses for all the extra space that cars need in urban environments where land is valuable, including a wasteful number and width of lanes, streetside parking, parking lots, and parking garages. Vast amounts of money have been, are being, and will be spent on road infrastructure that could be used on vastly more efficient modes of transport such as rail-based transit.
rtpg 11mo ago
I think if you want to make this argument you can go look at the stats. Look at the relative cost of vehicles in the EU over the past 25 years, compare to the cost of vehicles in the US over the past 25 years. Obviously the lack of difference there wouldn't prove much (if I had to bet I'd bet cars in the US have gotten way more expensive faster than in the EU, just from labor costs), but the lack of a major difference would complicate the theory that new regulations in the past 15 years have massively improved costs, absent a theory that some other thing the EU is doing but the US is not doing is also kicking in to similarly counteract that. The numbers exist, this isn't in the abstract. Just a question of doing the legwork
- simianwords 11mo ago
  I think we should not compare EU vs US costs but rather predict what would be the decrease in costs (relative to EU itself) due to reduced regulations in EU.
- netsharc 11mo ago
  Huh, but this is a terrible comparison.. the cars in both unions have been made the same, of course they cost similarly. In other words the US buyers partially pay for the R&D cost to keep to EU standards. And the US population also get the EU regulated-safety requirements (although only partially, since the US also allows Cybertrucks to drive around). A comparison would be comparing a car that can ensure the survival of their passengers, proven with test crashes, vs e.g. Chinese-made cara for the local market that have terrible crumpling when crash-tested..
  - ricardobeat 11mo ago
    A bit off-topic, but lots of the top ranked Euro NCAP crash tests have been chinese-built cars for a few years now. Their industry has evolved insanely fast, that perception of low standards is long gone.
  - seszett 11mo ago
    > the cars in both unions have been made the same, of course they cost similarly I'm really not sure what you mean, many of the most popular cars in the EU aren't even sold in the US (Renault, Dacia, Opel, Peugeot/Citroën although they have taken quite a hit in the last few years) and they are generally cheaper than US cars. And quite a few US cars aren't available in the EU either (although they can sometimes be imported privately, which bypasses the regulations somewhat) which is the very topic we're discussing. As for Chinese cars, the recent ones are performing adequately in crash-tests.
x3ro 11mo ago
> How can we quantify the penalty faced by consumers in EU with to increased costs due to regulation? I really hate that everything has to be seen from the consumers' lens, especially the consumer of luxury goods (I'm talking SUVs and the like, cheap cars exist in Europe). What if we didn't just look at it from the POV from people who buy or want cars? I don't own a car, nor do I plan to. I have to pay for roads, which I understand to an extent. But why should my life be at risk from people wanting to buy SUVs cheaper? Edit: Also, looking at "cars" without distinction really just obfuscates the real issue. The most dangerous cars (for pedestrians) are the biggest (and sometimes the fastest) ones. Plus most pedestrians die in cities, not on a Highway. So yeah, if you want to drive an SUV in a dense city, then I'm all for making it 10x more expensive for you, because it makes no sense (to me) and puts me in danger :)
- simianwords 11mo ago
  I agree with everything you said but > But why should my life be at risk from people wanting to buy SUVs cheaper? What if the risk is not that much greater? That's what I'm questioning.
  - x3ro 11mo ago
    Makes sense. And I'm glad I don't have to make that choice. But as mentioned in my edit, I think that the "low hanging fruit" are still plentiful, so we won't have to think about this for a while (talking about pedestrian deaths).
  - CalRobert 11mo ago
    But it is much greater - more than double the odds of killing a kid in a collision, for instance.
    - simianwords 11mo ago
      what if reducing the size of a ball point pen by half reduces the rate of death by ball point pens by 50%.
PeterSmit 11mo ago
With the huge hoods these things have the driver has a hard time seeing what is right in front of them, and when they hit a pedestrian (kid or adult) they are much more likely to die. https://www.carscoops.com/2024/12/suvs-and-pickup-trucks-2-3-times-more-likely-to-kill-a-pedestrian-in-a-crash-iihs-says/ https://www.carscoops.com/2024/12/suvs-and-pickup-trucks-2-3...
otikik 11mo ago
> penalty faced by consumers in EU with to increased costs due to regulation? The question works both ways. How can we quantify the penalty faced by consumers in the US due to lax regulation? How much is each toddler ran over worth, exactly?
Sharlin 11mo ago
Zero pedestrian or cyclist deaths are acceptable just for someone to get a cheaper (or much worse, larger) car. Zero. There is a vast number of reasons why we need and must reduce private car modality share as much as possible. Making cars more expensive is a feature, not a bug.
- simianwords 11mo ago
  To get to zero you must eliminate cars completely and I don't buy into that kind of logic.
  - shantara 11mo ago
    It’s not some mystical thing, but a matter of smart urban design. Oslo and Helsinki have managed to achieve zero road deaths in a year without eliminating vehicles. You don’t need to accept a certain amount of deaths as some sort inevitability or a necessary sacrifice.
  - kelnos 11mo ago
    That's not what GP said. Zero deaths caused by cheap/large vehicles. You can eliminate deaths by that cause by eliminating those types of vehicles, not by eliminating all cars. Not saying that's feasible, but let's not argue against something that nobody said in the first place.
- cyberax 11mo ago
  Easy to fix. Ban bikes and start throwing people caught riding a bike into jail.
  - 9dev 11mo ago
    And how exactly fixes that pedestrian deaths? But I know your answer; put people not driving a car into jail too, right? Eliminate sidewalks too, use the space for an additional lane. Exiting your car anywhere except in parking lots and private property should be prohibited! Sounds like a lovely place for sure.
consp 11mo ago
Those numbers are for occupants. Not bystanders. And also do not include the injury adjusted lifetime rates as they say a lot more. I'm not going to argue the cost numbers are they are so far out of the ballpark it's not even funny.
piva00 11mo ago
It's worth the cost if it's your child or relative being killed by a car, these regulations don't make a car 2x costlier than the USA so it's ludicrous to start with that assumption.
- simianwords 11mo ago
  Volvo cars are 40% safer. Then why don't people buy only those cars and choose to buy more unsafe cars at the same price?
  - tmtvl 11mo ago
    Could be that other marques have better advertising. Could be that other marques have more attractive design. Or could be that people don't know that Volvos are 40% safer. Could be that demand outpaces production, so people can't buy them. Could be that people are suicidal and want less safe cars (funnily enough leading to fewer safe cars).
    - simianwords 11mo ago
      Could be people don’t want marginal increase in safety by paying more?
CalRobert 11mo ago
Making cars 2x as expensive would massively improve safety simply by reducing the number of cars. And it would make cities much nicer places to exist in general.
- lbreakjai 11mo ago
  Why not just ban cars in the cities instead? The problem is those who need cars the most are those who can't afford to live in the city centers, so it often ends up being an extra tax in the less affluent.
  - mrweasel 11mo ago
    For some reason we decided to put a great deal of jobs in the city centers. Commuting to the edge of a city and then taking public transport to office doesn't really work, unless massive amounts of money are pumped into trains, busses and trams. There's this weird perception that Europe has excellent public transport, while in reality it only works, sort of, in a few larger cities. Everywhere else functioning in society really requires a car or assumes that you're living within biking distance of work and daycare.
  - iso1631 11mo ago
    People that need cars don't tend to have large cars, unless there's some tax benefits (someone in the village has one of those 5 seater dumper trucks because they can write it off as a business expense but can't write off a Toyota Aygo or Citroen C1 which would far more sensible)
    - lbreakjai 11mo ago
      That doesn't align with my experience. I grew up in Belgium, in a place where you'd be lucky to have a bus an hour. The closest place to get groceries, by foot, was half an hour away, most of it 5% uphill on the way back. If you need a car, then you need it for everything. You need to be able to fit the two kids you picked at school, the gear for the sport activity you'll drop them at, the mom you picked at the train station after work, and the weekly groceries you picked from the supermarket on your way back. From experience, you aren't doing all of that in a Hyundai i10. Now I live in the Randstad. Groceries get delivered, mom rides the bus for 8 minutes to come back home, and I pick the kid by bike. The car is optional and pure convenience, so I can get away with a small one.
eecc 11mo ago
That’s the same flawed reasoning Kirk flaunted when discussing gun laws. It ultimately proved to be wrong; as in it’s all fine and “Vulcanian Logical” until you or your close ones become the statistic
saubeidl 11mo ago
Making cars more expensive disincentives car use, which is a good thing. The fewer cars, the better.
kelnos 11mo ago
I think that's a little bit of a weird way to look at the probabilities. Sure, for a one-off activity I might look at 1 in 7,700,000 and decide that's an acceptable risk. But many people in the US take several car rides per day. At, say, 4 rides per day, that's about a 1 in 5300 chance of death over a single year. That's still small, but not that small. Someone in a decent-sized town or city could expect to lose someone they know once every few years with those odds.
- zmgsabst 11mo ago
  We know what the rate of deaths are: 1 in 8000; roughly 40,000 over 320,000,000. Slightly less than the rate of suicide; and slightly more than half the number of fentanyl deaths. And a smaller fraction of medical mistake deaths. (Of course, none of the risk is evenly distributed.) As a systemic problem, I’m not convinced that cars are the worst. Or outside what we accept in several areas.
  - bombcar 11mo ago
    The non-even distribution is a key part of it. Fentanyl deaths don’t affect me if I don’t drug, and if 80% (made up number as example) of car fatalities involve drunk driving, it also factors out for most people. If cars had a random chance to simply explode equivalent to the mortality rate in crashes, people would treat them Very Differently.
rsynnott 11mo ago
> What if cars got 2x costlier in EU due to the regulations to give you a .01% increased chance in safety? Ah, yes, the old "what if [totally absurd scenario]" argument. That's not what anyone is talking about.
- simianwords 11mo ago
  Why isn't everyone buying Volvo cars if they are 40% more safe?
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  - Naillik 11mo ago
    Part of the issue is that larger vehicles are “safer” for the person driving them, so long as their crash partner is smaller. Larger vehicles are more likely to “win” crashes versus smaller vehicles and pedestrians, at the expense of being more likely to be involved in crashes and more likely to cause fatalities when they do. It’s not just about how safe it is for the driver or passengers of the vehicle, it’s about the impact of those design choices on the safety of everyone else on the road.

johanvts 11mo ago

The Americans didn’t get cheap cars, they just got very large cars which is obviously detrimental to anyone but perhaps the driver.

simianwords 11mo ago
The specific regulations here > EU officials must revisit the hastily agreed trade deal with the US, where the EU stated that it “intends to accept” lower US vehicle standards, say cities – including Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam, and more than 75 civil society organisations. In a letter to European lawmakers, the signatories warn that aligning European standards with laxer rules in the US would undermine the EU’s global leadership in road safety, public health, climate policy and competitiveness. They point to many things and not only the size of cars - like fewer approvals, lower pollution controls, fewer safety measures. Some of them increase utility (like people might prefer bigger cars) and others decrease cost.
- Sharlin 11mo ago
  Have you ever heard of the term "negative externalities"?
  - simianwords 11mo ago
    yes i'm questioning the extent of the externalities
    - Sharlin 11mo ago
      They are extensive. Death and suffering by other road users. It should be obvious to anyone with a working moral compass that nobody should die just because someone wants a larger car, or wants to go faster, or wants to drive under the influence – or simply has to drive because there are no better options. Direct monetary costs to the society caused by said deaths and injuries inflicted. CO2 emissions rapidly making the entire world a worse place to live for generations to come, with the death toll likely being in tens of millions as a conservative estimate. Climate refugees will number in hundreds of millions if not billions. Traffic emissions are dropping very slowly compared to other big sources, and that's almost entirely because of private cars and the political difficulty to regulate driving anywhere near enough even in less car-brained societies. Particle emissions, including tire and brake dust. These affect the health of billions of people and cause countless premature deaths annually. Dust is flushed into water bodies, causing ecological damage. EVs are heavy and wear down tires and road surfaces much faster. Noise emission, which is a real, recognized health hazard and a cause of stress. EVs still have wheel noise, which is a major noise component in urban areas. Direct healthcare costs to the society caused by inactive sitting-based lifestyle. Car-friendly infrastructure is actively hostile, not just indifferent, to active modes of transport. Direct costs to the society incurred by dark, paved surfaces and a lack of canopy coverage because cars need space. This can have an alarming effect on urban temperatures, increasing the need for cooling solutions and, in the absence of such, contributing to the hundreds of thousands of annual heat-related hospitalizations and deaths. The costs of building expensive new car-centric infrastructure are externalized to everybody. Toll roads are rare. Taxes on gasoline are nowhere near high enough to cover all the externalities even in Europe. Driving is subsidized by the society, which is economically incredibly inefficient. --- While we're at it, let's go over the main opportunity costs as well: Indirect costs to the society by deaths and injuries in the shape of healthy work-years lost. Indirect costs to the society caused by inactive lifestyle in the shape of healthy work-years lost. When you count both direct and indirect costs, spending money to encourage people to bike and walk, for example by building safe infrastructure, ends up saving money in the end. There are vastly more economically sane uses for all the extra space that cars need in urban environments where land is valuable, including a wasteful number and width of lanes, streetside parking, parking lots, and parking garages. Vast amounts of money have been, are being, and will be spent on road infrastructure that could be used on vastly more efficient modes of transport such as rail-based transit.

rtpg 11mo ago

I think if you want to make this argument you can go look at the stats. Look at the relative cost of vehicles in the EU over the past 25 years, compare to the cost of vehicles in the US over the past 25 years. Obviously the lack of difference there wouldn't prove much (if I had to bet I'd bet cars in the US have gotten way more expensive faster than in the EU, just from labor costs), but the lack of a major difference would complicate the theory that new regulations in the past 15 years have massively improved costs, absent a theory that some other thing the EU is doing but the US is not doing is also kicking in to similarly counteract that. The numbers exist, this isn't in the abstract. Just a question of doing the legwork

simianwords 11mo ago
I think we should not compare EU vs US costs but rather predict what would be the decrease in costs (relative to EU itself) due to reduced regulations in EU.
netsharc 11mo ago
Huh, but this is a terrible comparison.. the cars in both unions have been made the same, of course they cost similarly. In other words the US buyers partially pay for the R&D cost to keep to EU standards. And the US population also get the EU regulated-safety requirements (although only partially, since the US also allows Cybertrucks to drive around). A comparison would be comparing a car that can ensure the survival of their passengers, proven with test crashes, vs e.g. Chinese-made cara for the local market that have terrible crumpling when crash-tested..
- ricardobeat 11mo ago
  A bit off-topic, but lots of the top ranked Euro NCAP crash tests have been chinese-built cars for a few years now. Their industry has evolved insanely fast, that perception of low standards is long gone.
- seszett 11mo ago
  > the cars in both unions have been made the same, of course they cost similarly I'm really not sure what you mean, many of the most popular cars in the EU aren't even sold in the US (Renault, Dacia, Opel, Peugeot/Citroën although they have taken quite a hit in the last few years) and they are generally cheaper than US cars. And quite a few US cars aren't available in the EU either (although they can sometimes be imported privately, which bypasses the regulations somewhat) which is the very topic we're discussing. As for Chinese cars, the recent ones are performing adequately in crash-tests.

x3ro 11mo ago

> How can we quantify the penalty faced by consumers in EU with to increased costs due to regulation? I really hate that everything has to be seen from the consumers' lens, especially the consumer of luxury goods (I'm talking SUVs and the like, cheap cars exist in Europe). What if we didn't just look at it from the POV from people who buy or want cars? I don't own a car, nor do I plan to. I have to pay for roads, which I understand to an extent. But why should my life be at risk from people wanting to buy SUVs cheaper? Edit: Also, looking at "cars" without distinction really just obfuscates the real issue. The most dangerous cars (for pedestrians) are the biggest (and sometimes the fastest) ones. Plus most pedestrians die in cities, not on a Highway. So yeah, if you want to drive an SUV in a dense city, then I'm all for making it 10x more expensive for you, because it makes no sense (to me) and puts me in danger :)

simianwords 11mo ago
I agree with everything you said but > But why should my life be at risk from people wanting to buy SUVs cheaper? What if the risk is not that much greater? That's what I'm questioning.
- x3ro 11mo ago
  Makes sense. And I'm glad I don't have to make that choice. But as mentioned in my edit, I think that the "low hanging fruit" are still plentiful, so we won't have to think about this for a while (talking about pedestrian deaths).
- CalRobert 11mo ago
  But it is much greater - more than double the odds of killing a kid in a collision, for instance.
  - simianwords 11mo ago
    what if reducing the size of a ball point pen by half reduces the rate of death by ball point pens by 50%.

PeterSmit 11mo ago

With the huge hoods these things have the driver has a hard time seeing what is right in front of them, and when they hit a pedestrian (kid or adult) they are much more likely to die. https://www.carscoops.com/2024/12/suvs-and-pickup-trucks-2-3-times-more-likely-to-kill-a-pedestrian-in-a-crash-iihs-says/ https://www.carscoops.com/2024/12/suvs-and-pickup-trucks-2-3...

otikik 11mo ago

> penalty faced by consumers in EU with to increased costs due to regulation? The question works both ways. How can we quantify the penalty faced by consumers in the US due to lax regulation? How much is each toddler ran over worth, exactly?

Sharlin 11mo ago

Zero pedestrian or cyclist deaths are acceptable just for someone to get a cheaper (or much worse, larger) car. Zero. There is a vast number of reasons why we need and must reduce private car modality share as much as possible. Making cars more expensive is a feature, not a bug.

simianwords 11mo ago
To get to zero you must eliminate cars completely and I don't buy into that kind of logic.
- shantara 11mo ago
  It’s not some mystical thing, but a matter of smart urban design. Oslo and Helsinki have managed to achieve zero road deaths in a year without eliminating vehicles. You don’t need to accept a certain amount of deaths as some sort inevitability or a necessary sacrifice.
- kelnos 11mo ago
  That's not what GP said. Zero deaths caused by cheap/large vehicles. You can eliminate deaths by that cause by eliminating those types of vehicles, not by eliminating all cars. Not saying that's feasible, but let's not argue against something that nobody said in the first place.
cyberax 11mo ago
Easy to fix. Ban bikes and start throwing people caught riding a bike into jail.
- 9dev 11mo ago
  And how exactly fixes that pedestrian deaths? But I know your answer; put people not driving a car into jail too, right? Eliminate sidewalks too, use the space for an additional lane. Exiting your car anywhere except in parking lots and private property should be prohibited! Sounds like a lovely place for sure.

consp 11mo ago

Those numbers are for occupants. Not bystanders. And also do not include the injury adjusted lifetime rates as they say a lot more. I'm not going to argue the cost numbers are they are so far out of the ballpark it's not even funny.

piva00 11mo ago

It's worth the cost if it's your child or relative being killed by a car, these regulations don't make a car 2x costlier than the USA so it's ludicrous to start with that assumption.

simianwords 11mo ago
Volvo cars are 40% safer. Then why don't people buy only those cars and choose to buy more unsafe cars at the same price?
- tmtvl 11mo ago
  Could be that other marques have better advertising. Could be that other marques have more attractive design. Or could be that people don't know that Volvos are 40% safer. Could be that demand outpaces production, so people can't buy them. Could be that people are suicidal and want less safe cars (funnily enough leading to fewer safe cars).
  - simianwords 11mo ago
    Could be people don’t want marginal increase in safety by paying more?

CalRobert 11mo ago

Making cars 2x as expensive would massively improve safety simply by reducing the number of cars. And it would make cities much nicer places to exist in general.

lbreakjai 11mo ago
Why not just ban cars in the cities instead? The problem is those who need cars the most are those who can't afford to live in the city centers, so it often ends up being an extra tax in the less affluent.
- mrweasel 11mo ago
  For some reason we decided to put a great deal of jobs in the city centers. Commuting to the edge of a city and then taking public transport to office doesn't really work, unless massive amounts of money are pumped into trains, busses and trams. There's this weird perception that Europe has excellent public transport, while in reality it only works, sort of, in a few larger cities. Everywhere else functioning in society really requires a car or assumes that you're living within biking distance of work and daycare.
- iso1631 11mo ago
  People that need cars don't tend to have large cars, unless there's some tax benefits (someone in the village has one of those 5 seater dumper trucks because they can write it off as a business expense but can't write off a Toyota Aygo or Citroen C1 which would far more sensible)
  - lbreakjai 11mo ago
    That doesn't align with my experience. I grew up in Belgium, in a place where you'd be lucky to have a bus an hour. The closest place to get groceries, by foot, was half an hour away, most of it 5% uphill on the way back. If you need a car, then you need it for everything. You need to be able to fit the two kids you picked at school, the gear for the sport activity you'll drop them at, the mom you picked at the train station after work, and the weekly groceries you picked from the supermarket on your way back. From experience, you aren't doing all of that in a Hyundai i10. Now I live in the Randstad. Groceries get delivered, mom rides the bus for 8 minutes to come back home, and I pick the kid by bike. The car is optional and pure convenience, so I can get away with a small one.

eecc 11mo ago

That’s the same flawed reasoning Kirk flaunted when discussing gun laws. It ultimately proved to be wrong; as in it’s all fine and “Vulcanian Logical” until you or your close ones become the statistic

saubeidl 11mo ago

Making cars more expensive disincentives car use, which is a good thing. The fewer cars, the better.

kelnos 11mo ago

I think that's a little bit of a weird way to look at the probabilities. Sure, for a one-off activity I might look at 1 in 7,700,000 and decide that's an acceptable risk. But many people in the US take several car rides per day. At, say, 4 rides per day, that's about a 1 in 5300 chance of death over a single year. That's still small, but not that small. Someone in a decent-sized town or city could expect to lose someone they know once every few years with those odds.

zmgsabst 11mo ago
We know what the rate of deaths are: 1 in 8000; roughly 40,000 over 320,000,000. Slightly less than the rate of suicide; and slightly more than half the number of fentanyl deaths. And a smaller fraction of medical mistake deaths. (Of course, none of the risk is evenly distributed.) As a systemic problem, I’m not convinced that cars are the worst. Or outside what we accept in several areas.
- bombcar 11mo ago
  The non-even distribution is a key part of it. Fentanyl deaths don’t affect me if I don’t drug, and if 80% (made up number as example) of car fatalities involve drunk driving, it also factors out for most people. If cars had a random chance to simply explode equivalent to the mortality rate in crashes, people would treat them Very Differently.

rsynnott 11mo ago

> What if cars got 2x costlier in EU due to the regulations to give you a .01% increased chance in safety? Ah, yes, the old "what if [totally absurd scenario]" argument. That's not what anyone is talking about.

simianwords 11mo ago
Why isn't everyone buying Volvo cars if they are 40% more safe?
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- Naillik 11mo ago
  Part of the issue is that larger vehicles are “safer” for the person driving them, so long as their crash partner is smaller. Larger vehicles are more likely to “win” crashes versus smaller vehicles and pedestrians, at the expense of being more likely to be involved in crashes and more likely to cause fatalities when they do. It’s not just about how safe it is for the driver or passengers of the vehicle, it’s about the impact of those design choices on the safety of everyone else on the road.