But they're saving children! No cost is too great when children are at stake.
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Originally Posted by from the article
With NHTSA reportedly employing a statistical cost of $6.1 million as the financial worth of a human life, this legislation is expected to cost between $11.8 million and $19.7 million per life saved.
Yet NHTSA's analysis doesn't discount the "emotional cost" of accidentally killing children is something that lies outside the scope of its normal cost-benefit analysis:
"The agency recognizes that most people place a high value on the lives of children and that there is a general consensus regarding the need to protect children as they are unable to protect themselves," the report said. "As backover-crash victims are often struck by their immediate family members or caretakers, it is the Department's opinion that an exceptionally high emotional cost, not easily convertible to monetary equivalents, is often inflicted upon the familes of backover crash victims."
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The mandate will mean that every dashboard will have a screen of some kind embedded in it. The automakers were heading that direction anyway, for example virtual gauge clusters directly in front of the driver. So that additional cost will be a wash, in my view. And the cameras themselves should cost pennies by then; heck, they're cheap enough to be giveaways now. My bet is that this mandate will end up being pretty cheap to implement.