Hacker News Reader

Comment by vaadu | Hacker News Reader

GM killed more than 100 people with a known defective ignition switch. Volkswagen killed ... the air.

Guess which company will get the greater penalty from the US government?

BTW, GM spends significantly more on lobbying and campaign contributions to political candidates.

Source: OpenSecrets <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000042113&a... and <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000155&a...

View on HN

Seriously? Just in France, diesel emissions kill 42,000 persons every year [0]. In California, they kill at 1,500 to 2,400 people a year [1].

It might be possible that these estimations rely on measurements communicated by the manufacturers (i.e underestimated by 40x)!

[0] http://www.lemonde.fr/sante/article/2013/03/02/diesel-42000-...

[1] http://www.arb.ca.gov/research/diesel/diesel-health.htm

European cities have much worse air pollution than American ones because they went with diesels instead of hybrids in an attempt to be more green and partly because of German auto lobbying.

There are 7+ billion people sharing that air. It's interesting that you'd consider 100 lives worth more than a resource we all require to exist, but not really a stance I can consider agreeable.

There are many differences in this situation, not the least of which that there's a difference between an engineering flaw, and engineering the flaw intentionally.

More info on this GM matter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_General_Motors_recall

The emissions would have led to premature deaths of far more than 100 people.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com