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Comment by open_book

9 years ago

I wonder that sometimes about seat belt laws and stop smoking campaigns. Is it the insurance companies that lobbied for and promote these ideas, or is it some altruistic group that actually cares about my well being instead of profits?

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open_book

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Noseshine  9 years ago

There have been studies showing that one, roads that "Look hard" instead of the wide & straight & obstacle-free variety make drivers slow down and pay more attention. I forgot what the influence on accident rate is. Two, same without seat belts, people drive more slowly.

That said, I think overall seat belts are better to have, and we can't redo our highways in a manner that makes people drive more carefully. Instead we need to and do turn the wheel of progress faster and head towards AI drivers on even "cleaner" roads. The planet is way too crowded for idyllic driving pleasure, especially since humans gravitate towards population centers. We can't have the "free driving" of former days back in most places.

tlb  9 years ago

Seat belts and many other automotive safety improvements were driven by insurance companies. That's a fortunate case of incentives being aligned.

It's surprising that health insurers aren't more vocal about sugar. Diabetes and obesity are expensive for them.

  • balabaster  9 years ago

    Follow the money, I'll bet you dollars to donuts there's a reason for it... like executives having conflicting interests that result in either direct or indirect financial stakes in or hidden kickbacks from the sugar industry.

    Companies of these sizes have departments that are aware of the entire picture and everything is scripted, choreographed and quite deliberate - except when it serves their purpose to play dumb: "Hey DOJ, <sheepishly> we're real sorry, but we weren't aware of this massive conflict of interest that we made billions off! Please, take this $50m (from our $958m profit) as our mea culpa and divide it up between to 284 million people it affected as our way of saying sorry, we fucked up."