Shrink-wrapped Babies Pay for Over Caution in the Long Run

[LexusInfernus 908]

1 hour ago, Delta 88 said:

Dashcam videos have shown every type of traffic accident that can possibly occur, at this point I hardly doubt it. Both common and rare. The vehicle sliding on an icy or wet road, losing control and subsequently crashing is just one of those types. And even then, well, I'm not particularly sympathetic towards people involved in car accidents whether they caused it or not. If I'm on the scene, my gut reaction is to help, yes. But accidents do happen and I'm not in the running for saving everyone's life. People die, and it's okay.

Showing every type of accident still doesn't mean that those videos show anything more than just a fraction of all the accidents out there. Again, you lack the necessary data to back up a generalized statement like that the majority of traffic accidents are caused by stupidity. 

Furthermore, we are not in the business of saving everyones lives when we build things like airbags into a cars. All they do is prevent easily avoidable deaths at almost no cost, and certainly no cost to you. I think that the people who survived a car crash because an airbag prevented them from crushing their skull are quite happy that these things were build into their car. 

1 hour ago, Delta 88 said:

Hold on, I never condoned genetic engineering. I don't support that myself. It sounds miserable - to have been basically designed by a creator(s), to possess certain traits they deem appealing and denied traits they don't like....ugh, it sounds awful to me. I may detest and tear apart the stupid, but I wouldn't wish genetic engineering on my worst enemy either. Science gone wrong...

Yeah you literally just spend the last few posts arguing what a shame it is that society has introduced simple safety measures in a wide number of fields preventing a lot of people from dying, arguing that doing so is allowing stupid people from continuing to procreate and spread their 'bad genes' around. You have, indirectly been arguing for genetic engineering, albeit the simple form of simply having the bad genes die off before they can procreate. You don't need a lab to do genetic engineering, selective breeding will do the same. 

1 hour ago, Delta 88 said:

Don't mix me in with being against social and technological progress just because I'm for allowing the stupid to die. Besides, while character does indeed develop regardless of upbringing, it just develops really poorly when everybody is pampered and kept in a sterile environment from day one. Go to any yuppie part of town if you want proof, where everything is sanitized and squeaky-clean. Deplorable. I find the poor parts of town to be far more interesting, and the people fascinating. You just know that so much goes down there every day, people are street-wise. I like that. I enjoy those people and how gritty those parts of town can be. Call me crazy...

That sounds like a tourist who goes on bus tours through ghettos to look at all the poor people like they are monkeys in a zoo, only to return to their nice hotel at the end of the day where all their wants and needs are met only to sigh because 'it doesn't feel real, you know'. You are fetishizing significant chunks of society, turning their lives into some idealized vision of what you want your own life to be, except that for you everything would be a choice, something you can switch off or ignore when it makes life a little to difficult, where you have the fallback option of going back to certain middle/upper class comforts that others don't have. For the people that live in the poorer parts of town, that 'grittiness' isn't a choice, its simply what happens when you don't have that much money to spend on the non essential stuff. You fail to realize that maybe, if the people in the poorer part of town weren't poor, they would for the most part be living like the rich people do right now, and your fetishization of their lives is just tone deaf, condescending and ignorant. Wanting to be 'poor' is the new wanting to be a 'gangsta'. 

1 hour ago, Delta 88 said:

I wasn't implying that being a "drain" means being on welfare or something like that. I too find the more annoying drivers to be driving BMW's, Mercedes and such. But I've seen bad drivers in every type of automobile out there. "The driver makes the car, the car doesn't make the driver."

So then how are they a drain? In what way do they take up more than they give back? 

1 hour ago, Delta 88 said:

Well they may not go out and say it, but they do express it when they buy a brand-new Volvo, or when they insist on talking about how safe they think their car is and how great its many safety features are. Don't underestimate their sheer numbers, I've met these people. It doesn't have to be a specific, known psychological disorder. Of course they'd like everyone to think they're happy when they're really anxious about their personal safety and cleanliness all the time. I just thought of that old Smokey Robinson song "Tears of a Clown" while typing this.

Ah, so you haven't actually met them either, you are once again simply making assumptions about people based on what type of car they buy or when they talk about the safety features of their car. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Interestingly enough there used to be problems with injectable products such as Insulin.  When I went on insulin a while back I was pleased to note that the one I am using is created using Recombinant RNA and is not an animal product.  All that has happened is that my blood glucose is under better control.

[Sabretooth78 808]

20 hours ago, OcramsRzr said:

I read an interesting/scary statistic which showed that pedestrian deaths have increased since the mandate of automobile safety features like seat belts. Combined with increased amounts of traffic tickets, the study argued that drivers became more reckless when they felt safer in their cars. The drivers are indeed safer but are now far more dangerous for those without the safety features (such as those on foot or in small vehicles).

Risk compensation.

 

8 hours ago, Delta 88 said:

That reminds me of the small car vs. big SUV/truck argument I hear sometimes. Many people (at least here in the states) say they won't buy a small car (small as in Smartcar) because everyone else is driving the huge SUV or pickup truck, and that the small car won't fare well in an accident with the SUV/truck - I've been hearing that for years. I still have reached a conclusion on that argument, but a while back, Smart realized people were thinking that way, so they got together with a bunch of advertisers and marketers and produce this commercial:

 

 

Marketing foolishness aside - don't forget we live in the land that as I like to say, there's somebody to buy every piece of junk you can think to put on the market - there's an underlying trend to that belief among people.  I first read about it a few years ago and I think it holds a lot of water as it relates to safety systems in vehicles today.  It talked about the change in design from active to passive safety features.  Active safety would basically involve building a nimble vehicle wherein you can avoid getting in an accident in the first place.  Obviously, such is not possible with most of the vehicles on the road today (and judging from the way people drive them, pickup trucks in particular must be very difficult to handle/control).  So instead, we now resign ourselves to the theory that there will be an accident, so now we just try to mitigate the damage - thus passive safety systems.

As with most things i believe there is a happy medium between the two (which is probably somewhere around a hypothetical 2:1 active to passive ratio), but we've strayed far too deeply to the passive side and as a result people have come to expect those features.  Which all comes back around to, you said it:  risk compensation.

[krbe 193]

On 3/30/2016 at 10:18 AM, Delta 88 said:

Oh give me a break. If I should have already died then I would have by now. And if I'm going to die soon, then I will, whatever. I don't spend all day worrying about it nor do I lose sleep over it. By the sound of it, you would lose more sleep over it than I. That's a very loose, under-the-microscope attempt at irony anyway. For every one chance that a safety feature did save me or my ancestors, there were likely even more potential things that would have killed me or my ancestors, but they did not. And even if you turned that statement on its head, why would that disallow me from complaining about it anyway? Of course I can! Your fishing for potential argumentative loopholes in alternate universes doesn't affect me, get real. That smiling, winking avatar of yours with the thumbs up accurately depicts the attitude of your irritatingly self-satisfied post, at the very least. Doubt I'll get a complete/sincere response.

The notion that if you should have died then you would already have is a belief in predestination. I lose no sleep over your beliefs over how special you are. That being said, the fact of the matter is that safety features means that you are probably alive even though you should not be. It is not about potentials here; we're talking about death, and death is an absolute. The potential dangers, which you and your ancestors avoided by sheer luck or intelligent course of action, does not matter. You are alive, even though stupidity would've weeded you out earlier.

Complain away. It is the reserve of stupid people to complain, and avoid action. You're even allowed to complain about alternative universes, if that was what you got out of my sentence.

Finally, if Vaultboy with an ushanka cause such emotional distress, it stays. Let me know if you feel my response is dishonest.

On 3/30/2016 at 1:12 PM, LexusInfernus said:

Ah, so you haven't actually met them either, you are once again simply making assumptions about people based on what type of car they buy or when they talk about the safety features of their car. 

If he was actually interested in how car accidents actually are, it's not too hard to get some knowledge. I suggest the International Journal of Crashworthiness be a better resource than whatever dashcam videos drivers have thought YouTube-worthy.