Crash

Iowa man sent me a link to a story in The NY Times that contained this clip. The weird thing is that this was a produced by an agency that is funded by the insurance companies, not by the US government. Everybody complains about the government making all these rules, but here we have business pushing for those rules. People just like to complain.

Most people would expect a head-on collision at 40 MPH to be a disaster. It would be a miracle if you walked away from it. But walking away is the probable outcome if you are driving a modern car.

People are generally very materialistic. They look at the material destruction resulting from a crash and immediately think of the loss in terms of their pocket book. They don't see the damage to the people involved. For some reason that's private, or too grisly to be shown. But it's the damage to the people that is significant. Cars can be replaced without qualm: they don't have any feelings*. People are another matter. America is like Disneyland in that respect: anything really bad gets shielded from public view.

*Problem with believing that inanimate objects have no feelings is that it is hard to reconcile with the number of times I have taken apart something that wasn't working, found nothing wrong, put it back together and it started working. My theory is that the device was just feeling neglected.