apparently airbags were controversial when they were first introduced? and a lot of people were against making them mandatory
-F
@Felthry They were, yes, I remember that time. Also the complaints about the third brake light, the one in the rear window of cars.
Seat belts were also crazy controversial, as were mandatory-seat-belt laws. (I am old enough to remember when the law changed where you had to actually wear the seat belt and *oh* the *whining*.)
@Austin_Dern I can't comprehend how such basic safety features would be conttroversial!
-F
@Felthry There's *some* space for legitimate argument.
After all, one can always make a car (or whatever) *safer*, so one can ask why *this* standard is reasonable but a more safe one too uneconomical or a less safe one too irresponsible.
And there's a personal-autonomy argument. Who is the National Transportation Safety Board to declare my tolerance of risk on Route 17K is unreasoned? What do they know about my case?
But mostly it was crybabies who DON'T WANNA and YOU CAN'T MAKE ME.
@Austin_Dern cost wise i never really thought about it but airbags and seatbelts are both pretty simple things, I can't imagine they add that much to the cost of a car in comparison to all the other things that make a car expensive -F
@Felthry You'd think, but often the constraints, in budget, space, weight, and manufacturing line processes are complicated.
Also there was for a while the idea that if a car touted its safety features, it meant the car was unsafe. Which sounds daft until you remember how often an ad is just a lie.
If someone spends a lot of money to tell you Product is Very Good at Thing, how often is that because Product is actually only okay, or even bad, but it's cheaper to buy ads than to fix it?