>""We are committed to protecting the most vulnerable victims of back-over accidents — our children and seniors," Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in a statement."
This rule doesn't pass the "sniff" test. There is absolutely nothing backing this except an estimate that several dozen lives might be saved. No cost effectiveness analysis, no comparison to other changes.
Regarding your "absolutely nothing backing this" statement, did you read through their documentation before saying this, or did you just assume? It's pretty extensive.
http://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/rulemaking/pdf/FMVSS-111_Re...
If you actually read the report it is clear this has nothing to do with rear-vision camera systems being cost effective and is just about the NHTSA doing what they are told by congress.
>"Throughout this rulemaking process, the agency has been sensitive to the costs of today’s rule and has sought to ensure that the requirements adopted impose the least amount of regulatory burden on the economy while still achieving Congress’ goal of reducing fatalities and injuries resulting from backover crashes."
And hyperion2010 was right, having a rear-vision system doesn't mean you will use it (where I live it is illegal to use them when actually reversing). The solution to these accidents is education.
Technology is often the answer to human stupidity, but not at $15.9 to $26.3 million per life saved.
Even if this was the most cost-effective life saving measure the NHTSA could implement, it still doesn't mean it is the most cost-effective life saving measure that government could take.
I asked hyperion2010 why I should believe him over the NHTSA. You then replied with two completely nonsensical arguments:
1. That the NHTSA was wrong because their statement was loaded with emotion. This is silly, because emotion doesn't make a statement wrong any more than it makes a statement right. So let's move on to the meat:
2. That the NHTSA has no evidence for their claim.
And this is just plain wrong. The link I provided shows a reasonably thorough study which illustrates that having a camera does substantially reduce these types of accidents. It is not perfect, because some people really are oblivious. But neither is it useless, because some accidents are not due to simple obliviousness.
Your response to this was that it somehow doesn't count if it's not spelled out in their press release, which is just plain stupid.
If you want to discuss the cost/benefit tradeoff of this decision and whether the money would be better spent elsewhere, go for it. But that was not what we were discussing in this thread, so don't act like statements about cost effectiveness are somehow relevant.
It astonishes me that somebody can come out and say that the reasoning behind a rule is wrong, and then immediately turn around and say that they weren't actually talking about the reasoning, but the PR. And then he doesn't get called out on that at all, but I get called out for calling him out because I wasn't nice enough. Well, screw that.
If you really don't see anything wrong with posting that kind of aggressive sarcasm on Hacker News, then I don't think you believe in the guidelines here. They call for personal civility. Please follow them.