[coredog64]

The “Fight Club” math is incomplete for the sake of a good story. Regulators can force a recall on manufacturers and insurance companies can make a car uneconomical to buyers by appropriately pricing in risk. You may argue that the former has been undone by regulatory capture (something I would dispute), but I think we all recognize that insurance companies aren’t particularly charitable.

[hedora]

The Fight Club math is complete. They specifically quote the cost of out of court settlements, implying hush money.

This has been done successfully before. One model of elevators used to turn kids into ground beef (under a dozen a year -- the gap between the inner and outer door was too big).

Eventually they were almost all replaced, the deaths tapered off and everyone involved retired.

One year, much later, one of the few left in service killed a kid. No one working at the elevator company knew what was going on, and all hell broke loose. The remaining surviving culprit was in an old folks home at that point. The company ended up recalling something like two or three antique elevators.

[slg]

Wouldn’t this logic suggest that the economic value of taking on this liability is minimal considering insurers haven’t made cars with competing tech unaffordable for buyers to insure?