[rconti]

We've decided we'd prefer to mandate tons of "lifesaving" technology in new cars. Nevermind that it pushes poorer people into old rust buckets, and due to risk homeostasis and the false sense of security that comes with driving a safe/quiet/competent car, people who _can_ afford new cars manage to find worse and worse ways to crash... that's without getting into the awful consequences of cars you can't see out of, "safety features" that numb people to the driving experience, and so on...

[adrianN]

Driving has become _a lot_ safer in the recent decades. But the problem is not the technology that we require new cars to have, but the city planning that makes owning a car pretty much mandatory in large parts of the country.

[BenFranklin100]

I’ve hypothesized that more expensive cars resulting from safety and environmental mandates might make it harder for poor people to have reliable transportation to and from work. This leads to lower incomes, which are strongly correlated with worse health outcomes.

Someone would need to do a study to test if this were true. My guess is many of the safety feature are a net positive. It would be interesting to see the tradeoffs though.

[mmooss]

I thought the stats have shown driving becoming safer and safer?

[rconti]

It has! More impressively, it's done so while Vehicle Miles Travelled has gone up as well.

But it feels like we're reaching a point where we're trying to catch a falling knife, where every safety improvement is _obviously_ worth it, even as the easy gains have gone away. We've also (almost) completely ignored the safety of everyone outside of the vehicle in our arms race to protect occupants.