Comment by bee_rider

I don’t think that’s why we mandated seatbelts. I don’t see any particular reason to believe either way, that seatbelts save money or cost it—if people die quickly they don’t cost the medical system much at all.

I think we mandated seatbelts because they prevent tragic deaths and cost almost nothing to manufacture. Sometimes we actually do impose on people’s liberty in the interest of preventing them from doing something stupid, and there’s no reason to pretend otherwise.

I mean, if we did look up the data and found that they actually do end up costing more, would you be in favor of banning seatbelts? I certainly wouldn’t!