Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: ont.general
Subject: Re: Highway Driving Rules
Keywords: speed limits = wasted gas, wasted time
Message-ID: <3201@looking.UUCP>
Date: 7 May 89 00:07:55 GMT
References: <89Apr26.134028edt.9320@ois.db.toronto.edu> <440@bnr-fos.UUCP> <1989Apr27.112604.11727@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> <1730@yunexus.UUCP> <3166@looking.UUCP> <9522@watcgl.waterloo.edu> <1989May5.211750.17968@ziebmef.uucp>
Reply-To: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Distribution: ont
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Lines: 29

In article <1989May5.211750.17968@ziebmef.uucp> mdf@ziebmef.UUCP (Matthew Francey) writes:
>  I'm afraid I don't understand.  Are you saying that perhaps its OK to
>let a few more people die (real deaths here) rather than waste a few of these
>fictious "lives" you have just created?

You responded to a followup to a followup to a followup that had my words
only in part.  I pointed out that this is purely a utilitarian argument,
calculating the total savings for everybody.

But it does apply in the more general case.  For example, if there were
a mode of transport that were instantaneous, but it had 10% more
deaths than highway travel, I think we would switch to it.

Likewise, if it turned out that we got no traffic deaths if everybody
went 10 miles per hour (and we would get very few, if not none) does
that mean we should all go 10 mph?  Or 20 if we're safe then?

We do have to set the tradeoff at some point, and that tradeoff really
is one between human time wasted on the road and human life wasted on
the road.

You can't equate time and lives directly, but there is some point where
you weigh one over the other.  If 70 years are wasted for each life
saved, we might think it's worth it.

If 500 years are wasted, we might not.   Like it or not, we do quantify
human life this way all the time.  Our own, and other people's.
-- 
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd.  --  Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473