Unsafe at any speed

What Hacker News says

1. pjmlpNov 2023
   The book unsafe at any speed, is a good background on the resistance regarding security improvements in the car industry.
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2. BoxFourMar 2023
   Vehicles became a lot safer because of Ralph Nader.

   Google “unsafe at any speed”.

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3. throwaway2037Dec 2022
   See also: "Unsafe at Any Speed" by Ralph Nader
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4. gumbyOct 2022
   Caveat emptor doesn't scale, which is why we have baseline safety standards and domain experts.

   Nobody is qualified to make those judgements on all their purchases, much less the time. That homemade yogurt you bought at the farmer's market? Wouldn't you like to know that its bacterial count was monitored. And drugs? The FDA regulates the printing on the bottle labels to try to reduce accidents. How many companies are going to think up things like that?

   I suggest checking out "Unsafe at Any Speed" and (nauseatingly and heart-breakingly) "The Jungle" if you want to know what it was like before safety regulations went into place (and those two books were responsible, for car safety and food safety respectively)

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5. mturmonSep 2021
   Perhaps start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsafe_at_Any_Speed

   The market-based process of product optimization you have outlined has many holes -- in this case, market failures including cartel behavior and incomplete information.

   The thing that's surprising is that despite the many flaws of the pure laissez-faire approach, seen repeatedly, people trot it out as if it's still fresh, in wonderment that it hasn't been tried hard enough.

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6. akira2501Feb 2021
   > sensationalized stories about self-driving deaths.

   I disagree that they're sensationalized. Self-driving systems are designed to improve user safety, but when they end up making mistakes that human drivers _wouldn't_ make then it's appropriate to thoroughly investigate these systems.

   > is because they were self-driving.

   Well, precisely. We tolerate driving accidents because we know that the mobility that cars provide end up offering far more value to the world than the occasional accidents that we end up tolerating.

   What's the trade with self-driving cars? What is the technology enabling that is worth the possible additional risks?

   > car getting in a minor fenderbender and equating it with the safety of the entire car industry?

   I don't think that comparison offers anything interesting, and it ignores the long and storied history of improving automobile safety. Look into Ralph Naders "Unsafe At Any Speed" if you really want to see people looking at "regular" accidents and deciding there was something to be fixed.

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