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How many taxpayer dollars is a human life worth?

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Where is your cutoff?

  • If it costs more than one dollar let them die.

  • $100,000 or greater.

  • $500,000 or greater.

  • $1 million or greater.

  • $10 million or greater

  • $100 million or greater.

  • $1 billion or greater.

  • I would opt to save the life no matter the cost.

Results are only viewable after voting.
Chaotic42 said:
Yeah, you're only the second person to say something about my location. Republic of West Florida. I figure it's more meaningful to people than Hancock County, MS.

I'm talking about what I think the law should be. I think that 60 on an interstate in a relatively flat rural area is too slow and should be illegal in much the same way that 80 is currently illegal. I *do* think that we should raise the speed limits on those roads to 90, but I understand that will never happen. I just want people to have to drive at the same speed, whatever that may be.
Click to expand...

Like I mentioned before, there's plenty of vehicles that can hold 60 safely but won't be safe at 80. Older vehicles or people towing something might make a decision to go slower which is a perfectly rational decision and is the correct one to do in many situations. As long as they stay to the right and people can get around them I don't see any problem with it.

You may have never had to drive a vehicle that doesn't handle well at high speeds or is heavily loaded so it can't brake as well but people need to do it all the time. It's just a fact of life. I drove cross country in a truck completely loaded with all my stuff once and I set the cruise control at 60 for the whole trip because the vehicle felt top heavy and its braking distance was increased. I was still within the vehicle's capability to operate but I felt it was safer to operate where I felt comfortable handling it. It's just something that people need to do sometimes and you'll probably get stuck doing it at some point in your life.
 
Kaido said:
I think that's what it really boils down it - the cost depends on the situation. Sometimes it doesn't make financial sense to do something, even though it could save thousands of lives. In my senior paper I suggested that limited the speed limit to 20 miles per hour would greatly reduce the number of fatalities on the road, but as someone else mentioned, that could also cause a huge economic meltdown because of lost time and productivity. So ultimately, we accept the reality of the world we live in, for better or for worse.

We could slap standard height/spec bumpers on cars, but then people in Corvettes and Ferraris would get all uptight and we'd have to spend billions retrofitting every car on the road, which would also be a form of removing our freedom, since we like what we have already. Here's a Corvette under a semi-truck:

http://imagehost.helluvafast.com/files/3/vette2_original.jpg

Versus a car with a higher bumper:

http://imagehost.helluvafast.com/files/3/18-01-06_1531_original.jpg

Pretty sure the second guy got a better deal. But...it would cost a lot of money to add standard height/spec bumpers and remove some perceived freedom. Not gonna happen! :awe:
Click to expand...

Speed played a much bigger factor in the differences between those two wrecks than bumper height.
 
Bignate603 said:
You may have never had to drive a vehicle that doesn't handle well at high speeds or is heavily loaded so it can't brake as well but people need to do it all the time. It's just a fact of life. I drove cross country in a truck completely loaded with all my stuff once and I set the cruise control at 60 for the whole trip because the vehicle felt top heavy and its braking distance was increased. I was still within the vehicle's capability to operate but I felt it was safer to operate where I felt comfortable handling it. It's just something that people need to do sometimes and you'll probably get stuck doing it at some point in your life.
Click to expand...

I drove a 91 Ford Festiva from New Orleans to Indiana about 12 times, two of which were moving everything I owned. I also drove a 626 with everything I owned from New Orleans to Upstate New York. It can be awkward, but I never had to do less than the speed limit, save getting stuck in construction in Pennsylvania.

I understand your point, I just disagree with it.
 
Hypothetically if you knew a given dollar amount could definitely save a specific human life, this argument would be worthwhile.

But it doesnt actually work that way. You cant just put out a thousand bucks and say "this man lives".
 
Bignate603 said:
Even if they passed a new regulation for bumper height you'll never see any regulation that requires people to retrofit their cars.
Click to expand...

Exactly. We don't want to change, even if it means saving lives. Forcing a retrofit is a form of removing our freedom - taking away something we had before. Too many people would vote that down, even if it saved 35,000 lives a year out of the 40,000 lost to car accidents. Heck, even if it was 100%, society still probably wouldn't buy into it.
 
Kaido said:
Exactly. We don't want to change, even if it means saving lives. Forcing a retrofit is a form of removing our freedom - taking away something we had before. Too many people would vote that down, even if it saved 35,000 lives a year out of the 40,000 lost to car accidents. Heck, even if it was 100%, society still probably wouldn't buy into it.
Click to expand...

It's more about forcing cost onto people that bought something that was completely legal when they bought it. How would you feel if the government told you that they suddenly changed the rules and you now need to pay thousands of dollars to make your brand new car legal?

When they passed laws for seatbelts, airbags, or any of the other safety regulations they always enacted it as an ongoing basis. Even today if your car is old enough you don't need seat belts. It's not always possible or realistic to apply new safety regulations into old designs.
 
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