I kind of agree but this is missing a big part in my opinion. How can we quantify the penalty faced by consumers in EU with to increased costs due to regulation?

There might be certain number of deaths we can accept for increased cost but how is it so obvious that this tradeoff was worth it?

What if cars got 2x costlier in EU due to the regulations to give you a .01% increased chance in safety?

Edit: here are some back of envelope numbers from chatgpt

A single, ordinary car ride carries an extremely small chance of death:

USA: ~1 in 7.7 million

EU: ~1 in 20 million

Its not super clear that optimising these numbers is obviously worth the increased costs.

Edit2: people can make the choice to buy Volvo cars that are ~40% safer. Why isn't every car buyer buying only Volvo?

The assumption you have to make is that regulation would make it much cheaper to buy a safe car than just buying Volvo. It is somewhat true but not sure on the extent.

I think that's a little bit of a weird way to look at the probabilities. Sure, for a one-off activity I might look at 1 in 7,700,000 and decide that's an acceptable risk. But many people in the US take several car rides per day.

At, say, 4 rides per day, that's about a 1 in 5300 chance of death over a single year. That's still small, but not that small. Someone in a decent-sized town or city could expect to lose someone they know once every few years with those odds.

I think if you want to make this argument you can go look at the stats. Look at the relative cost of vehicles in the EU over the past 25 years, compare to the cost of vehicles in the US over the past 25 years.

Obviously the lack of difference there wouldn't prove much (if I had to bet I'd bet cars in the US have gotten way more expensive faster than in the EU, just from labor costs), but the lack of a major difference would complicate the theory that new regulations in the past 15 years have massively improved costs, absent a theory that some other thing the EU is doing but the US is not doing is also kicking in to similarly counteract that.

The numbers exist, this isn't in the abstract. Just a question of doing the legwork

Zero pedestrian or cyclist deaths are acceptable just for someone to get a cheaper (or much worse, larger) car. Zero.

There is a vast number of reasons why we need and must reduce private car modality share as much as possible. Making cars more expensive is a feature, not a bug.

The Americans didn’t get cheap cars, they just got very large cars which is obviously detrimental to anyone but perhaps the driver.

> penalty faced by consumers in EU with to increased costs due to regulation?

The question works both ways. How can we quantify the penalty faced by consumers in the US due to lax regulation? How much is each toddler ran over worth, exactly?

That’s the same flawed reasoning Kirk flaunted when discussing gun laws. It ultimately proved to be wrong; as in it’s all fine and “Vulcanian Logical” until you or your close ones become the statistic

> What if cars got 2x costlier in EU due to the regulations to give you a .01% increased chance in safety?

Ah, yes, the old "what if [totally absurd scenario]" argument. That's not what anyone is talking about.

Making cars 2x as expensive would massively improve safety simply by reducing the number of cars. And it would make cities much nicer places to exist in general.

With the huge hoods these things have the driver has a hard time seeing what is right in front of them, and when they hit a pedestrian (kid or adult) they are much more likely to die.

https://www.carscoops.com/2024/12/suvs-and-pickup-trucks-2-3...

> How can we quantify the penalty faced by consumers in EU with to increased costs due to regulation?

I really hate that everything has to be seen from the consumers' lens, especially the consumer of luxury goods (I'm talking SUVs and the like, cheap cars exist in Europe).

What if we didn't just look at it from the POV from people who buy or want cars? I don't own a car, nor do I plan to. I have to pay for roads, which I understand to an extent. But why should my life be at risk from people wanting to buy SUVs cheaper?

Edit: Also, looking at "cars" without distinction really just obfuscates the real issue. The most dangerous cars (for pedestrians) are the biggest (and sometimes the fastest) ones. Plus most pedestrians die in cities, not on a Highway. So yeah, if you want to drive an SUV in a dense city, then I'm all for making it 10x more expensive for you, because it makes no sense (to me) and puts me in danger :)

Those numbers are for occupants. Not bystanders. And also do not include the injury adjusted lifetime rates as they say a lot more.

I'm not going to argue the cost numbers are they are so far out of the ballpark it's not even funny.

Making cars more expensive disincentives car use, which is a good thing.

The fewer cars, the better.

It's worth the cost if it's your child or relative being killed by a car, these regulations don't make a car 2x costlier than the USA so it's ludicrous to start with that assumption.