Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] computer and car prices (was Re: [MLUG])

[Jonathan King <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Tue, 5 Mar 2002, Michael wrote:

> > Here's a really brilliant idea:  Make car bumpers of a uniform height
> >

[snip]

> The really sad thing is that car makers couldn't agree on this
> sort of thing themselves? It'd save lives and be quite simple to
> implement in new cars but it hasn't been done.

If you pretend to be a car maker, you'll soon see that getting this
kind of agreement is much tougher than you think and it makes almost
no sense to do alone.  Seriously, it's pretty clear that people do 
not invest much time in thinking about safety features, and would 
only grouse about the fact that the uniform bumpers were boring or 
clashed with some other design element, or...

When I said before that cars had improved dramatically, I still
stand by that, but the improvements have generally come fastest when
they had to be made due to the competitive nature of the market. 
(Regulations have helped, but they can take forever to get 
anywhere.)

Now, there are things that could help, but the auto companies would
fight them tooth and nail.  So, for example, suppose in addition to
giving out the EPA estimated gas mileage ratings on an obvious
sticker that they also had to give out death/injury ratings for that
make/model (or absent sufficient data, the whole fleet) together 
with the average figure for cars/trucks of that class and all 
vehicles.  Like this:

          EPA est. MPG    DOT fatality rates
          miles/gallon    deaths/10 million passenger-mile

highway        25.0           2.0  (avg=1.0)

city           17.0           2.4  (avg=1.7)

I've made up the numbers, but you can see where this is going. Cars
that have proven to be much more dangerous, for whatever reason, are
not very likely to sell for much longer if the info is right there
on the sticker.

> Sure the government could force them to do it but they shouldn't
> have to. We really need a sort of standard car. Standard parts,
> standard saftey features, etc. Sort of what PC-compatible is to
> computers. Isn't the point of mass-production to use the most
> standard parts you can so they'll be cheap?

Some would suggest that the average Japanese-made sedan of the 1980s
played almost exactly this role, for better or for worse.  But the
problem with this comparison is that the reason you do this with PC
hardware is so that anybody can put one together or add more 
peripherals.  Nobody much buys stock parts to assemble a car or 
outside of a small fan base does any systematic "upgrading".  Some
parts are pretty standard (tires, plugs, belts), and, funnily 
enough, those are exactly the ones that do get systematically 
replaced or upgraded.

jking


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