> Every safety regulation ought to pass a cold-blooded cost/benefit analysis. Few of them do.

I think that's the already the ultimate test for any regulation to pass, as it's up against a huge industry trying to prevent costs of compliance.

Of course, the calculation is not to put a price on a human and then compare this against the cost provided by e.g. a car-company.

When you've lost someone in a car-accident it's not much condolence to know that e.g. an airbag could have saved him/her but "back in 2026 it was deregulated because the car-companies have proven that there's no economic benefit to include them"

I know the economy is always important, but human society also shouldn't be taken for granted.

> Every safety regulation ought to pass a cold-blooded cost/benefit analysis. Few of them do.

This probably won't happen (at least in open) because there's a risk people will start asking for a cost/benefit analysis for everything. Laws that enable mass surveillance, immigration regulations, military spending, wars, political system.

> Without going into the specifics of car seats, I do think we overemphasize safety. The article mentions saving 57 children. How much are 57 lives worth? The answer is not infinite - a life has a numeric value, ask any insurance company.

Sure, the value of 57 lives isn't infinite, but this particular comparison is a totally absurd one to make. Births and deaths are completely morally independent, it's not as if those 57 lives could be substituted using the surplus of births.

> Every safety regulation ought to pass a cold-blooded cost/benefit analysis. Few of them do.

Actually I'm pretty sure that is in fact how safety regulations work.

Nonetheless, the concept of a "cold-blooded cost/benefit analysis" is paradoxical. Values are intrinsically subjective, hence we have democracy.

It is a mixture of misguided moralizing and math illiteracy as numbers become big. Same category: trying to get to zero traffic deaths.