Comment by jamessb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jamessb | Hacker News Reader

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Emissions from Volkswagen cats above those permitted by the Clean Air Act (enabled by cheating on emissions tests) are estimated to have caused a significant number of premature deaths in the US:

> According to the study, conducted by researchers at MIT and Harvard University and published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, excess emissions from Volkswagen’s defeat devices will cause around 60 people in the U.S. to die 10 to 20 years prematurely. If the automaker recalls every affected vehicle by the end of 2016, more than 130 additional early deaths may be avoided. If, however, Volkswagen does not order a recall in the U.S., the excess emissions, compounding in the future, will cause 140 people to die early.

https://news.mit.edu/2015/volkswagen-emissions-cheat-cause-6...

while not defending the purposeful fraud on VWs part the cars are still less polluting than the generation they replaced. That number cited by the MIT paper is so low as to be not something that can actually be corrected for.

Great compilation of California pollution regulation that applies https://www.dieselnet.com/standards/us/ld_ca.php#leviii

In that case it would make more sense to forbid cars entirely except for utility vehicles or electric cars.

Which the government hasn't done for decades, so it is a little hypocritical to make a big thing of the VW scandal.

Yes it would.

Unfortunately doing that in today's world would render them unelectable.

Emissions regs are the best our defective system can do, hence slow changes. That even those aren't being honoured makes it a big thing.

Of course many would rather see them start with fraudulent banking than fraudulent car makers.

I think this somewhat misses the forest for the trees - the case against VW and the punishment isn't over hypothetical deaths, it's about cheating the emissions tests and not complying with regulatory standards. In a tangential way yes, the goal is to increase quality of life, but that's not really the point of the case/arrests, nor is it realyl the focal point of the research done, which was more a study on just how much excess pollution was produced as a result of the scandal.

The FBI's actions have nothing to do with the MIT link.

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