The argument was that these accidents don't happen because of an inability to see, but due to being "oblivious". Cost effectiveness doesn't enter into it. The question at hand is simply whether back up cameras save lives. NHTSA says they do. hyperion2010 says they don't.

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.

Sorry, but I don't put up with the double standard where you're allowed to be a jerk as long as you're just completely derailing the conversation and acting like an idiot, but not if you come out and use sarcasm.

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.