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Comment by rookie | Hacker News Reader

> "six children die each year in bus accidents"

Those seem to be ridiculously good numbers and back up everything stated in this article. I would worry that making ANY changes could actually increase that number.

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This seems to be the cue for those annoying people to start reciting "if it saves even one life...".

In reality, these numbers are incredibly good, so much that chasing after any improvement is bound to be extremely expensive. The money that would be spent on seatbelts or whatever could obviously be invested to greater effect in some other effort.

Yeah, and not only extremely expensive but because of things like misuse, what if the addition of seatbelts actually results in more deaths?

If you wanted to be even more heartless (rational) you could approximate a statistical value of life for those casualties. It wouldn't compare favorably to even the costs of installing seat-belts in one urban school district.

Incidentally, this is what the FAA does when evaluating the costs of new safety measures against the projected number of lives saved.

Sometimes those people are wrong, but it seems that in this case the cost is purely monetary and the budget has plenty of bloat in it where we could move money from which could make the final 6 lives be saved (it is what, the cost of two helicopters and 7 hellfire missiles? Half a bridge to nowhere?).

Given these things, I would have to disagree with you, in this case it would be worth saving the final 6 lives.

Would installing seat belts actually save those lives? An accident that would be fatal without a seatbelt may well be fatal with one, involving perhaps a fire or train or semi truck.

Improving general road, pedestrian, and bicycle safety would be a far better preventative measure (or even offering more/more convenient school bus service) using any money that would fund seat belts, as car accidents are the number one killer of children.

Of course there's a ton of bloat in the budget. But once we've pared down that money (if we could pare it down -- bureaucrats have been promising to do so forever, but it just gets worse), there are other ways to spend the money that would be more effective. It's a question of the opportunity cost: spending the money here means that it's not available to spend elsewhere. We must choose the most effective way to spend it.

We could install those seat belts on every bus in the nation, but that would cost hundreds of millions (and the article quotes information indicating that it might actually be counterproductive anyway, but set that aside for this argument). But that money could instead be invested in finding a cure for some childhood disease, or building a poison treatment center, or better law enforcement to keep some drunks off the road, and on and on. It seems to me that any of my suggestions are likely to save more than six lives a year, so why would you want to invest that money on something that is going to do less good?

Here's an idea: All cars should be school buses! This also doubles as a way to encourage more mass-transit. :D

BTW I know you were joking, but one of the reasons they are so safe is that they are the largest, and more importantly heaviest, vehicle on the road.

If everyone drove such heavy vehicles they would lose almost all of their safety advantages.

In fact those larger vehicles may increase the risk of hazard to smaller vehicles. It sounds almost like a zero sum game, but I'm sure many more factors come into play.

They most certainly do increase the risk. There is a reason people choose larger cars when they can.

  tight : loose
  find : lose

Sorry to be "that guy," but I'm seeing this error with increasing frequency, and it would be a real shame to lose such a useful word.

That word has been driving me crazy recently. Every time I write it I stare at it trying to decide if I got it right. Most of the time I do, but this is twice in a row I got it backward.

I think I worked at it so much I got it reversed in my head.

Choose and Chose also always give me pause when I write them.

I edited my post and fixed it.

How about a memorable saying... like, "Lose the extra 'o', let loose with one."

We need more people like you in this world. I had a (foreign) prof that used loose constantly in the handouts. I think no one ever mentioned that to him..

I had an English instructor that would give handouts in which the word "Internet" was not capitalized. (There is only one Internet so it should always be capitalized.) I decided that I would wait until I was finished with school before sending her a correction. (I never actually got around to it, though.)

I think that a huge factor is also that people will treat a bus full of small children with a lot of respect simply because they might have / know children themselves.

You really don't want to live in a small community and the 'jerk that rear-ended the school bus in their F150.'.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNixDlRoMvA

In cities with good public transport, many otherwise-would-be-cars are buses. Here in Helsinki many school children use public transportation, and none of the buses, trams, trains or subway cars have seatbelts, and as far as I know, nobody has ever suggested them to be installed.

I'd be far worried about a seatbelt malfunction locking a child inside an overturned bus or with a vehicular collision where the car is leaking gasoline and has the very real potential to catch on fire, which given sufficient heat means there's a very real risk of a diesel fire from the school bus.

I'd agree, six deaths a year out of 24 million is acceptable losses by any measure. I'd consider 1 in a million deaths in school busses to be fucking amazing, but 0.25 in a million is absurdly good.

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