But it is much greater - more than double the odds of killing a kid in a collision, for instance.

what if reducing the size of a ball point pen by half reduces the rate of death by ball point pens by 50%.

I'm not sure why you're responding to a measured, factual rate of death with some random weird thing that you just made up.

So ok, I'll do it too: what if reducing the size of a ball point pen by half reduces the rate of death by ball point pens by 0.01%? (Answer: you don't do it, because the benefit to doing so is low, and that measured effect could be well within the margin of error anyway.)

(And my weird made-up number sounds a lot more likely than your weird made-up number.)

The reason I brought it up was because it is not meaningful to only compare relative decrease of deaths without understanding the extent of how many deaths they are responsible for.

If only a few people die due to car accidents and one is much more likely to die of other causes than cars, is it worth making cars that much more expensive to decrease the deaths by a bit?

The regulations in my opinion add up to 20-30% of the car price. And likelihood of death due to a car at an individual level decreases by .01% (maybe).

Imagine you were given two options:

- Car A at $45k USD

- Car B at $35k USD

And you are less likely to die with Car A. Is it super obvious that you will buy Car A? If so why doesn't everyone flock to Volvo cars which lead to ~45% fewer fatalities?

Why is this so obvious to you that this regulation is a good thing? The sibling is implying that I'm trolling or whatever but this is a legitimate question.

“ And likelihood of death due to a car at an individual level decreases by .01% (maybe).”

This is made up out of thin air.

Maybe I'm wrong but can you explain why people don't flock and buy only Volvo cars when (I fact checked this) they are 40% more safe than other cars?

Look at injurious car crashes as a fraction of the population rather than in raw numbers. Therein lies the answer.

(And the answer is not to screech about how people are stupid because they don't share your values, prioritization or risk assessment. I shouldn't have to say this, but I feel like I do considering the subject matter)

>Look at injurious car crashes as a fraction of the population rather than in raw numbers. Therein lies the answer.

Elaborate? Are you suggesting that car accidents are not that high to begin with relatively, so it is not worth as much to increase safety only in cars because it may not translate to overall safety to a person?

More or less. The average person isn't gonna get injured in a car crash in their life, let alone in the time they own a particular car. Hence why it's treated as a "nice to have" that people only consider for a purchasing decisions once their other criteria are met. Which is also why you see it most touted when people are buying something that's handily doing what they need and more (SUV for 1 kid, car car for A to B commuting where just about anything will do, etc). People aren't gonna compromise a key requirement for half a star on a rating for something they're unlikely to need.

that's what i have been trying to say!! so why is it so obvious that people should accept increase in car prices with regulations when they don't behave that way when buying cars?

They're doing that all the time, check comment history.

If the ball point pen was responsible for ~40,000 deaths per year (in the USA), and reducing its size by half did not meaningfully diminish its function as a pen for most users… I’d rather not kill an extra 20,000 people a year just to have a bigger pen.

But how many of the 40k deaths are directly attributable to the characteristics being discussed? We can’t go from “twice as likely to kill a kid” to “half of the 40k deaths are kids killed by this thing” without examining the evidence.

(Apparently 30% of th fatalities involve alcohol but we already tried banning that once …)

I agree if this is true

> and reducing its size by half did not meaningfully diminish its function as a pen for most users

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).