Manufacturers (and governments, for infrastructure) make a tradeoff between safety and cost all the time. You cannot make a car perfectly safe. Eventually you hit diminishing returns. This is an unavoidable fact of life.
What makes this case worse than the hundred other ones about e.g. making this structural column slightly stronger or the crumple zone this much longer, or the highway this much wider, and so on?
The fact is that as safety technologies are developed, they have the tendency to make people reevaluate what is and isn't avoidable. As to structural columns and crumple zones, public perception might reevaluate these too. The cumulative effect is that the deaths per VMT[2] has dropped and is likely to continue to drop as advances are made. Personally I don't care so much how it's done just that it's done. It seems to be working out pretty well so far.
1. https://www.pailton.com/latest-news/collapsible-steering-col...
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
No it doesn’t. It’s all about cost/benefit. We accept some safety risk because the alternative is a product that is too expensive to be useful.
Also, this is false, or at least, you've asserted it without basis:
>Unfortunately the same argument makes the case for ignoring safety all together.
If you have a reason why this case stands out, I'd love to learn it. If you just want to shame everyone who recognizes the inherent tradeoffs in improving safety, then I'm not sure your comment makes HN a better, more curiosity-friendly place.
The more-curious version of your comment would be,
"That's a good point. I can't quite put my finger on what makes this particular safety/cost tradeoff different from the other cases, especially given that it maintains the same general level of safety through different decisions. Something still seems off, but I'm not at the point where I can rigorously justify it."
Does that about summarize where you stand?
>"The standard requires that by 1972 all new cars can withstand a 20 mph rear-end collision without fuel loss, and by 1973 they can withstand a 30 mph collision. None of the prototype cars passed the 20 mph test."
They knew they had a design that didn't pass the industry-accepted safety standard.
Consider a surgeon who, on average, has better patient outcomes. Does this absolve them from malpractice lawsuits if they are shown to ignore standards of care like washing their hands in a particular case? It's a weird logic to apply fault when there are clear standards not being met.
"The only Pintos that passed the test were modified in some way" says the article.