"...requires many safety features for new cars:"

> "Making them mandatory saves lives."

Alternatively: making them mandatory raises the price of new cars and pushes more consumers to buy used older cars, which are generally less safe for a variety of reasons & often worse for the environment.

Economics is always about tradeoffs. Not saying this one isn't worth it, but you're not getting a free lunch here.

source: have not bought a new car despite being in the market for one since 2020 because prices make it a bad decision. Have added an additional 20k miles to existing car.

Only in the short term. In the long term cars only last so long. Plastic starts to wear out from sunlight exposure (ozone?) in about 10 years. Spare parts go out off production so when something breaks it is live without. Some things just aren't worth fixing. Sure it is possible to fix anything, but the labor is too high in general. Collectors sometimes pay $100,000 to restore an old care to brand new, realistically if the assembly line still existed the car would be about $8,000 (of course it wouldn't meet modern standards)

The current new car problems mean some people will be keeping old cars running a bit longer than normal, but all those cars are headed for scrap eventually. Eventually everyone will be jumping to newer cars.

I think a lot of potential car buyers are waiting for the price crisis to end. My comment was made in a more general sense.

Note that the price of the non-optional features is lower than if it were an optional feature thanks to economics of scale. So making them mandatory reduces the costs of the features.

That isn't how economics works. You can't cite a government mandated outcome and declare that the intermediary processes are cheaper because the government ordered more production of something. An "economy of scale" is something that happens in some circumstances where it is possible to increase production without incurring non-linear pressure on prices. Not a law of production or economics.

Most of the things we are discussing here are places where good manufacturing principals can bring the prices down, but it is only worth putting that investment in if demand goes up by a lot. As such government mandated outcomes often to come to pass just because the mandate ensures there is enough future demand as to make the investment worth it.

Of course the car makers are strongly involved. Things where there is no potential to reduce price don't get mandated unless they are already cheap.

Maybe it pushes some of those people to buy bikes which are a million times safer and better fir the environment.

> Which is a good idea because if such a safety feature remains optional, many people won't opt for it. Making them mandatory saves lives.

On the other hand, making them mandatory makes cars more expensive, which means (especially during a shortage) that some can't afford them at all while the rest are forced to do without other things to compensate; either way it reduces their qualify of life. But of course the government knows better than those actually affected by these laws where the ideal balance lies between safety and QoL.

On the other other hand, you can easily use the same reasoning in favor of mandating safety features:

Not making them mandatory means they remain expensive extras, more expensive than if required on all cars. That means second hand cars with these features will be significantly more expensive than those without. Which means that some can never afford these features, while others have to do without other things to compensate. Either way, quality of life is reduced - and more than in your scenario, because the features do not benefit from economy of scale as much when they're optional.

> Not making them mandatory means they remain expensive extras, more expensive than if required on all cars.

If they were rare they might be more expensive, but otherwise it's the same system and will cost about the same amount to incorporate into a vehicle. Making it mandatory doesn't make it any cheaper. (Usually the opposite, in fact. From the POV of those manufacturing the safety systems, there's nothing quite like having the government mandate that people buy your product.)

Economy of scale is not guaranteed, or even really all that common once you get past early research and development or one-off custom products and into the realm of mass production. In general commodities become more expensive in response to higher demand, not less. If these systems are something most people actually want and consider worthwhile then they'll already have the benefit of any economy of scale which may apply without the mandate.

Given your car’s safety features have significant externality effects on other citizens, yeah, the government seems well within its duties to mandate certain safety tech.

There is no negative externality merely from not having a safety feature. There would only be a negative externality if there were actually a situation where someone was harmed due to the lack of a safety feature (or any other reason, really) and the person responsible for the harm was not held liable for making the injured party whole.

Mandatory safety features, on the other hand, are a direct example of a negative externality: Those wanting the safety features to be mandatory get what they want while other people bear the cost.

Please explain how you’re going to make me whole if your car without auto breaking kills me.

Obviously I can't. The same goes for the case where my car with auto braking kills you—auto braking reduces the risk slightly but doesn't offer absolute protection. Either way the liability for your death is mine as the operator of the vehicle, though if it can be traced to a defect in the auto-braking system I might be able to redirect that liability to the manufacturer. There are any number of other ways you could die due to an accident or negligence, and we can't make you whole for those events either. The best we can do is try to atone for it with respect to those you leave behind—to make up, as much as possible, for the hole your absence leaves in society. That doesn't mean we paralyze ourselves with inaction or always prioritize marginal improvements to safety (even others' safety) over all other concerns.

The best way can do is prevent it with a baseline of good safety tech so that your willingness to save a buck to put others at risk is not allowed.

As I said:

> That doesn't mean we paralyze ourselves with inaction or always prioritize marginal improvements to safety (even others' safety) over all other concerns.

Frankly I don't care if a (private) road owner wants to require specific safety equipment on the vehicles allowed on their roads. Their property, their rules. Other potential users of the roads can then decide whether they're willing to accept the residual risk. But that argument depends heavily on those who are being excluded (for lack of required safety equipment or low risk tolerance) not being forced to pay for those roads' construction and upkeep. It doesn't work for a government mandating systems to be installed on all vehicles, or for tax-funded roads.

It works just fine. See seatbelts.

You’re asserting strongly that the changes are marginal. And sure, the efficacy of the mechanism should be considered. But the point remains.

Your individualism is irrelevant.

There was massive resistance against seatbelts when they were introduced. Maybe sometimes the government does know better than those actually affected.

A far better analogy would be airbags, which were both expensive and deadly in their earliest (mandated) forms.