Big Brother EU gets its way again with car tracking deal

davis

elbowloh wrote:

davis wrote:

£230 million sounds like a lot doesn't it? Unfortunately for your point, it isn't. The value of a life is about £5 million, according to US EPA, FDA, and DoT. That means "doing the rough maths" on this the system would be required to save 46 lives per year out of the approximately 800 per year that die in cars, or about 6%, assuming you're talking strictly in financial terms (I'm ignoring the "cost to the UK" of the coroner, the inquest, and the massive amount the NHS spends on a corpse, just to help your point along). Now, I can't find a reference figure for the golden hour (a somewhat contentious point anyway), but I *think* from memory about 30% of the "golden hour" deaths are directly attributable to bleeding to death. Anyway, as long as this evil system saves more than 6%, we're in profit (oh yeah and fewer people get all corpsified and gross).

Just as an aside, I used to write a lot of business cases for Network Rail in the support of various safety improvement features across the railway infrastructure (e.g. how many lives would be saved if we extended the length of the parapet on all road overbridges etc) and we would use a thing called "Value of preventing a fatality" or VPF. The VPF was £1.6 million and was the same figure that the Highways Agency used (actually we borrowed it from them). Subtly different to the value of a life.

Thanks. Very interesting, and it led me to this.

Well, whaddya know? The DfT reckons we'll stomach about £1.6 million (in 2008) to prevent someone dying, anonymized and aggregated across a population, which means my totally made-up figures would have to be about 3 times higher than I guessed at in order to satisfy captain bean-counter over there (assuming I didn't factor in coroner/inquest etc).... it's certainly not beyond the realms of possibility, and it's still worth thinking about (hey, I'm just happy to be in the same order of magnitude!).

Either way, to me, it sounds like it's still worth forcing people to take the 0.3% hit on the price of a new car, or at least definitely *not* worth voting for a bunch of slather-faced hate-peddlars.

ETA: That £1.6 million in 2008 adjusted for inflation is about £2 million today.

mudcovered

davis wrote:

Either way, to me, it sounds like it's still worth forcing people to take the 0.3% hit on the price of a new car, or at least definitely *not* worth voting for a bunch of slather-faced hate-peddlars.

Especially when you consider the fact that large numbers of cars sold today already have a very similar system already installed. The one in my car (2 years old) relies on a bluetooth mobile being paired to the car.

Mike

davmaggs

davis wrote:

davmaggs wrote:

Triage is done at the scene too. The ambulance service isn't going to dispatch one vehicle if a car has crashed into a bus stop full of people, and they aren't going to let them work on a motorway that hasn't been closed by the police. Ambulances aren't great for cutting apart crashed cars either or dealing with flammable liquids.

You know what: you're right. Completely, indisputably right. Let's not send any emergency services at all until Mrs Miggins phones 999. There would be no point whatsoever in an ambulance automatically turning up, with multiple staff trained in emergency response and a direct radio link to all the other emergency services in any of the remarkably common horror scenarios you've provided. Just the other day I saw a bus-stop full of flattened people; I thought I shouldn't phone for an ambulance as they'd need at least 10, so just 1 couldn't help, and besides the bus would be along in a minute.

The idea is daft. You still haven't sourced any estimates about the numbers of lives that would saved compared to a simple phone call.

I asked my dog earlier how many lives he thought the system would save; he said "82 per year". How many lives did people think would be saved by seatbelts? I'm not saying the numbers saved by the beacon are even comparable to the numbers saved by seatbelts, I'm saying we're in the same situation of trying to know the unknowable. It might save 5, 50, or 500 people per year. Please feel free to put a little effort into refuting my figures above though rather than simply knee-jerking and saying "it won't work".

It's bizarre you support billions of pounds of expenditure with zero evidence.

Billions? Who said billions? (hint: only you did). I'm not even saying I'm a fervent supporter; I don't particularly care that much about spending a few hundred million quid. I think it'll probably help in a few situations (I can name 4 personally-known anecdotes), and for the money, well, bugger it, why not try it?

For what it's worth, I do believe that requiring every licensed driver to be trained in first aid, and requiring every car to carry a first aid kit will probably help as much or more than a beacon. Not because having a few plasters will save the moribund, but because making every driver aware at some point they're going to be involved in or witness to a crash, and they have an obligation to actually *do* something. How would you fancy that for an EU law? Would that make your head fizz?

You seem to have forgotten how a business case works.

The person or organisation proposing to spend billions (yes, it is that if you run the system for more than 3 or 4 years) is supposed to produce the evidence.

You also seem to think that only the car buyer is paying when (in theory) they only pay a one-off charge. This system creates a huge installation cost on the telco network and in the 999 call centres, that then becomes an ongoing cost year in year out that has to now has to come out of emergency service budgets. You are proposing to divert money from what they spend now over to this system, so what service should the NHS cut or what taxes do you propose to increase?

So forget the £230m, that's simply £100 multipled by car sales in one year (edit; vans and lorries aren't in this either). You need to multiple that up by the system lifetime for the all vehcile buyers and then the infrastructure cost every year.

Your notion that seltbelts couldn't be proven is demonstrably wrong and you don't seem to know your history. Firstly they had the A&E figures as to how many people got launched through the windscreen so they had a good starting number, and then then introduced the law for children (less controversial so it got through the vote) and once that produced solid numbers then they reran the vote in parliament as they had a verifiable case for a wider introduction. Even then it came in in stages.

You appear to honestly believe that the moment a car crashes and the becon sends the signal that the ambulance service would just dispatch a vehicle. It's logistically impossible as they have to prioritise calls as the service is massively overstretched now, so logic tells you (well people that use it) that within months it would be just like burglar alarms are to the police. Thoroughly ignored due to volume of wasted time, so they will instead require people to ring in.

As I said provide evidence and I will retract my opposition. It's not a big ask is it?