A big thank you as well to all the consumer advocates, and the politicians and regulators who listened to them, for imposing safety requirements that car companies claimed would be cost prohibitive and hurt the economy.

But mostly, the insurance institute, who out of greed, wanted to save money on claims.

When incentives are aligned in the right way, good things can happen, even out of self interest.

Odd then that the insurance companies haven't been on the front lines against sugar, air and water pollution, climate change, meat consumption, etc etc. But good to know their greed-driven self-interests are closely aligned with individuals.

The safety of occupants in a car is directly influenced by the car itself.

Those other issues are obscured by tragedies of the commons.

If you install a carbon neutral HVAC system in your Florida home, it doesn’t decrease your probability of hurricane damage due to climate issues.

It does, just not by much if you look at individual cases. But insurance companies don't look at individual cases, they aggregate risk. And if millions of people buy carbon neutral HVAC systems, it will definitely decrease aggregate insurance liability for hurricanes.

The flaw in your original argument, and the reason we don't generally see insurance companies on the front lines lobbying for positive changes for consumers, is that they have the option of simply raising their prices in response to the risk landscape, rather than trying to change the landscape itself. This is why free markets, as useful as they are in many contexts, can't be relied on by themselves to provide a healthy, stable society.

There's not any single insurance group large enough where the aggregate risk of climate change is even remotely within the possibility of affecting change.

The IIHS represents the interests of 94 percent of vehicle insurance policies on US roads. So, almost all of the cars on the road are under underwritten by policies of IIHS members. Any change they affect has a direct impact on their bottom line.

There are a few property insurance trade associations in the US, and I don't think any of them have quite as high of a membership representation as the IIHS does for auto insurers, but let's for the sake of argument, say that there's an association that represents a full 100% of homeowner and commercial property insurance policies.

If that existed, they would have influence over 13% of US emissions, or ~778 million metric tons of CO2. But, while insurance law does stay within a country's borders, CO2 doesn't. Global emissions are 35 billion metric tons. So this hypothetical super powerful trade group would have influence over 2% of the total. If they could impose an (extremely expensive) requirement of a 20% reduction across all of their policyholders, this would have a 0.4% reduction of the global CO2 emissions.

Basically, assuming the most powerful trade organization possible, it would have no real effect.

International cooperation is required to fix this particular problem, and insurance just isn't an international-scale thing. Treatises are going to be the only way to fix it.

So, I guess we shouldn't thank them so much. Climate change was only one of the many items the insurance industry isn't helping much with. Which is my point. And I don't think they were particularly instrumental in getting the automotive safety ball rolling, either, though I'm sure they were happy to join in once it was.

For sure, it is a happenstance of aligned incentives that make the IIHS relevant.

That’s being said, they were a significant proponent that accelerated most of the safety improvements in North American vehicles since the mid 90s when they started doing overlap crash testing.

Before that, governments were mostly complacent with full-frontal crash testing, which simply wasn’t realistic enough.

Most of the major changes in North American vehicle safety has been due to their efforts.

Now, they’re not altruistic, they’re just asshole insurance companies with the right incentives.

As someone who drives a car from the 60s on weekends this was terrifying.

At least you'll go out in style. Seriously though, it would be great see the older car styles brought back with modern safety standards or older cars in some way upgraded to modern safety standards.

Not possible sadly. A lot of the appealing features on older cars (thin pillars, tall windows) are incompatible with current safety standards. Part of the reason why new cars tend to look clunky.

I get why thin pillars don't work with modern safety standards, but surely tall windows are fine? There's plenty modern cars with fairly tall windows, like the renault kangoo?

I'm not having success finding the requirements, but I am almost certain there are requirements on window size. Purely by logic, as the window size increases, side impact rating will decrease.

It's not the tall windows themselves that are dangerous, it's the accompanying low door sills. Higher door sills mean more of your body is protected by metal instead of glass.

You need both, slim pillars and large windows, to have the same aesthetic as classic cars.

This came up recently in another thread on HN.

Safety stands dictate what happens if you collide with a pedestrian. These days, ever car has a sloped front-end. It's not just for aerodynamics, but it's designed to push pedestrians up and onto the hood, whereas the old "stylish" cars had completely flat front-ends, which made it like getting hit by a wall.

Even worse, some older cars had a front end that had negative slopes. If they hit a pedestrian, they'd be pushed down and under the car.

Look at what they did to mustang.

My thought as well. Might be time to trade my shit in.

Yeah, I'm having second thoughts about my 91 sedan with no airbag...

The lack of airbag is OK because you'll be decapitated by the steering column pushing the steering wheel through your neck (1:45 in linked video):

1998 Toyota Corolla vs 2015 Toyota Corolla (Auris):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xidhx_f-ouU

It’s not the airbag that keeps the steering column from going into your neck, it’s the collapsible steering column.

I think the implied point was that the steering column will kill you anyway, so the lack of an airbag is not a problem.

The recent article about ejection seat failures makes me wonder about airbags

airbag is overrated as long as you wear a seatbelt. if it had had an airbag, it's likely to kill you either with phosphorus (early 90s) or metal shrapnel (late 90s to current)

We haven’t watch the same crash test videos.

As someone whose daily driver is a "land yacht" from the early 70s, I'm not too worried... the crumple-zone is huge.

There were some cars with crumple zones back then, but you very likely do not have a crumple zone capable of protecting you. No matter how long your bonnet, you will probably take the brunt of the impact with your body in a car from the 70s.

Not saying don't drive it, I drive a 90s car with no airbags as a daily so I am only marginally better off.

They don't crumple much, despite the size.

What ever other car hit will so. In such an accident, the combined crumble zone is halved so. If you a concrete wall, good luck so.

I know what would happen if I have a serious accident in my week-end hobby car so. A likely hood that is significantly reduced by current fuel prices. And a serious maintenance backlog...

While you can't control all the outside parameters we also don't tend to drive them the same way.

Absolutely not! You tend to be much more careful with hobby cars then you are with average daily drivers.

thank Ralph Nader

Hear, hear!

Blame it on the alcohol, not the cars.

So the alcohol is part of the story but far from the end of it. Alcohol related accidents only made up about 1/3 of the deadly accidents in the US [0]. The NHTSA identifies a few different causes of car accidents including distracted driving and drug or alcohol related accidents [1]. Also noteworthy is that Marijuana seems to cause the same issues as alcohol although the studies are a little less detailed[2]. I couldn't find long term studies on the topic but I suspect that distracted driving has gone up in the past few years since smart phones have become more popular. Distracted drivers killed about 3,000 people in 2020 [3].

What's interesting is that insurance companies seem to measure bad driving using a few different metrics including deaths per miles traveled [5]. Single vehicle crashes were also very dangerous in the rural states like Wyoming (deer are a serious problem), but for some reason Rhode Island tied with Montana at 70% of all accidents being single vehicle accidents[6].

I also couldn't find an annual figure for people disabled in car accidents, but a 2004 study found that about 1.2 million Americans live with permanent injuries from car accidents and about 41% of them are unable to work [6].

[0] https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drunk-driving [1] https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving [2] https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drug-impaired-driving [3] https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/distracted-driving [4] https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/worst-drive... [5] https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state... [6] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15474547/

People everywhere (well, a lot of places anyway) drink alcohol. The problem is when they go home.

Funny how alcohol on trams doesn't kill tens of thousands a year in Europe.