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Comment by prbuckley | Hacker News Reader

According to Wikipedia there are approximately 254 million passenger vehicles in the USA. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_vehicles_in_the_Uni...

Also there are approximately 15 million new cars sold per year.

http://m.nydailynews.com/1.1567645#bmb=1

At a cost of ~$100 per vehicle for these cameras that means to get the entire passenger fleet compliment with this law will cost 25.4 billion dollars and 1.5 billion per year in additional costs. The article states that they estimate 58-69 lives per year to be saved, round that up to 70. 70/1.5 billion and we are spending over $21.4 million per life saved. That seems absolute crazy to me. How many lives could be saved with that amount of money spent in a more efficent way?

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The actual cost is lower; Some percentage, probably even a significant one, of existing car sales already have these cameras equipped. If the price drops and the feature is compelling anyway, I can see it being a tenth that in actual cost, which brings it into line with real life-saving programs. Preventing deaths is expensive.

My instinct was along your lines, though, and I'm not entirely certain that the whole idea isn't just a gift to automakers for yet another reason to jack up prices. What used to be a costly extra is now 'required'.

I think you are likely correct on the cost. I would honestly like to know what the most cost effective way is to save a life. My guess would be vaccines in 3rd world.

There is something that still bothers me about laws like these. A very vocal minority drives the cost up for everyone, while the effectiveness of the law is questionable. It is of course a tragedy when a young person is killed in an accident but is this really a good use of the government and law? People need to be careful when they are operating a car. Also who is going to argue against saving a toddlers life? That is probably a poor political move. This just seems like another sign of how weak willed our political system is at standing up for what is in the interest of the general public and not a vocal minority.

You're not including the general cost savings from accident prevention. It's likely that this measure will significantly reduce some kinds of "fender benders".

yes, looking at lives saved seems like a rather silly metric to judge this by. Most accidents that happen while somebody is reversing probably cause a couple hundred dollars in damage and go un-reported.

It's on the high end, but it's only a factor of three off of the roughly $7 million the EPA uses in cost-benefit analysis. Perhaps a bad call, but not wildly innumerate.

Not to mention that $100 per vehicle is probably wildly high. The quality on these things isn't great (and doesn't need to be). If I can buy a fully featured IP camera at a retail price of $50 complete with pan and tilt, I doubt car makers are going to pay more than $10 or so wholesale for a lesser camera with no networking and no motors. The screen is going to cost something too, but most cars already have those now.

hell, you can get a chinese android phone for $100 -- and that includes the camera and color display, plus all of the rest (battery, storage, wifi, wireless, gps, bluetooth, etc). Anyone who claims adding this to a car costs $100 is ridiculous.

$100, including labour, does not seem so incredible. Auto electricians may charge more than that per hour, too.

What does that have to do with manufacturing a car, or sliding in a prefabbed camera into an area of the car already covered with cabling (brake lights, backup lights, rear door open indicator switch)?

The grandparent touched on the costs for upgrading existing vehicles.

That would be weird if so, because the rule doesn't require adding it to existing vehicles, and nobody else is talking about upgrading existing vehicles. The important question regarding this rule is how much it costs to add a backup camera to a vehicle design for production of new units.

The raw parts cost may be less. But it'll have to be covered by new-car warranty so it can't be complete garbage. It will also have to be worked into the design of the car and the manufacturing process, which are one-time costs but they are costs. Automakers will also have to amortize in the expected cost of defending lawsuits and paying awards to car owners who will claim the camera failed causing them to have an accident, etc.

backup cameras are already designed into basically every new car there is; right now, it's an option not a requirement

It was expected that 73% of cars would have it anyway, so your numbers would be changed by that factor.

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