Hacker News Reader

Comment by enriquec | Hacker News Reader

then why were seatbelts and safety glass delivered by the free market? why are tesla's significantly safer than other manufacturers of their own free will? Why do they push updates that improve braking to customers that have already paid? Why does volvo specifically advertise their safety as a differentiator?

Do you really think if a company could prove it provides double the survivability of accidents compared to others, the free market wouldn't reward it?

Your claim simply doesn't match reality.

View on HN

You're actually proving yourself wrong here.

Regulation and regulation alone provided us with seatbelts and safety glass. Car companies even ran a massive lobbying and advertising campaign to convince America seatbelts weren't necessary with slogans calling drivers in car accidents "the nut behind the wheel" https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/nut-behind-wheel/

No, Volvo gave us seatbelts and the Tucker gave us safety glass. 9 years after the free market created seatbelts, the government mandated it. Mandates have never and will never manifest technological/scientific advancements out of nowhere.

> Mandates have never and will never manifest technological/scientific advancements out of nowhere.

I don't think that anyone is arguing that. I think the point is that the free market doesn't deliver these kind of safety features w/o the "incentive" of government mandates. Whether that is b/c the market doesn't demand those safety features in the absence of a mandate is another issue.

The free market didn't deliver seat belts. Regulation had to step in and Ralph Nader lobbied the US govt to get it passed.

Volvo sold the three point seatbelt for nine years before the US government required it.

Most automakers had them, they were just optional and so people didn't spend extra money on them and kept getting flung out of their cars.

Volvo had them standard, but Volvo has also never been above 1% market share in the US [1]. If a tree falls in a forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

[1] https://knoema.com/infographics/floslle/top-vehicle-manufact...

Volvo is European too.

The part we should be worried about is that it took 9 years for the govt to require it. 50 years from now, we'll be talking about how stupid it was that drones didn't have safety features.

That’s a little different, seatbelts save the lives of your customers

> why are tesla's significantly safer than other manufacturers of their own free will?

Safer than who? Model T fords? How many Tesla's are on the road anyway? In which countries? What about Ferrari? Mercedes?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com