Comment by smcleod 21 hours ago
To be honest most of those accessories are actually incredibly cheap at manufacturing time and several have a direct impact on safety (e.g. ensuring people don't drive around with lights off). The cost usually comes as companies use them for pricing tiers where they market them as suggested extras to ratchet up profits.
It could make sense. We don't know the numbers.
Let's say net X lives are saved each year because of automatic lights turning on.
Let's say net Y lives would be saved each year without automatic lights, via more effective detection of drunk drivers and stopping them before they kill someone.
Is X > Y? We don't know.
> Eliminatung DUI is not a matter of detection
There are a lot of avenues to decrease DUI, among which one is effective detection combined with enforcement.
There may be something like that that does make it counterintuitive. Usually those kind of Malcom Gladwell paradoxes end up overstated.
There would be other factors, like drunk people are probably safer with their lights on too. Lane keeping probably makes it harder to detect drunk drivers too but also may make them safer.
This is simply because police don’t do their jobs. It would be trivial to simply wait outside bars at 2AM and give out tons of DUIs but a significant percentage of the population are alcoholics and this would result in massive blowback against the police.
Go to any small town watering hole at 2AM to see this in effect. The police have no legal obligation to prevent crime or enforce laws. None.
Driving with your lights off at dusk or dark gets you (rightfully) pulled over by law enforcement in CA. It's well-correllated with driving under the influence.
I'm a huge fan of many car safety regulations, but this isn't one.
(Sign me up for car-hiding-in-blind-spot notification lights on side mirrors, though, those are great)