Tinfoil hat alert: IIHS says that without "Nanny Electronics", we're all gonna die...

Sorry if its a repost, but this crap gets my blood pumping...

Basically, IIHS says, if you dont drive a huge, tech inflated behemoth, youre dead

Long story short, the IIHS is saying that stability control and rollover avoidance technogadgets are keeping people alive while roadsters and efficient coupes are killing people...because they dont have rollover avoidance gadgets???

In reality, people stay alive in SUVs because the thing you hit is smaller, hence the small car occupants being involved in more fatalities.

The way I see it, from under my tinfoil hat, as long as its the IIHS saying this, congress can pass legislation mandating more nanny-tech in my car...which I dont like...at all. Let me buy what I want. let me be responsible for my decisions. You cant babyproof the world. Maybe thinning the herd of a few hundred thousand nimrod drivers is a good thing.

Thoughts? Go!

the govt is just legislating better idiots.

Posted in miata.net (oh, that joke doesn't work anymore, darn it)

But reading through the report, the numbers don't make sense. BTW, since each reporting agency will put their own spin on it to sway your opinion- here's the base report- http://www.iihs.org/externaldata/srdata/docs/sr4605.pdf

Each car gets a score + a range. A range?? For what? Maybe it's a correction for sample size, right? So a Miata with 83 (61-104) is that way because of it's 101k sample size.... But a Cobalt is 117 (109-125) with over 1M samples. Or a CRV is 7 (3-11) with a sample of 389k, or Edge 0 (0-27) 140k....

What is the range based on?

If the number is deaths/1,000,000 registrations, does that mean that during that window of 4 years, that the Miata had 6.1, 8.3, or 10.4 deaths for the 100k???? Wait, how do you have a partial death? That's a yes or no question only. Did 2.1 people die in rollevers?

And based on the part:"people don’t behave the same when they’re behind the wheel of a sports car as when they’re driving a minivan"

Do they correct sports car numbers to be high???

What in the world are those numbers?

I hate to be very cold, but death is rather absolute. So it's hard to factor in partial numbers. And it's hard to figure what makes the range of death rate large or small.

The sad thing is that few will read the actual report, and fewer will even see that something doesn't make sense. But their favorite reporting location will find something to scare them with. Oh, the children.

Let's see, a federal regulatory bureaucracy spending tax dollars putting out statements saying that the best thing to save the children is... more federal regulatory bureaucracy?

Who'd'a thunk it?

I beg to differ.... as does 3/5 cars in my posession. I haven't rolled a single one of them.

Duke wrote: Let's see, a federal regulatory bureaucracy spending tax dollars putting out statements saying that the best thing to save the children is... more federal regulatory bureaucracy? Who'd'a thunk it?

IIHS isn't a federal buracracy. It's a group of for profit insurance companies who what to make more money.

They do lobby congress, though.

But using NHTSA data, I'm still confused how they get partial deaths.

Edit- the IIHS has a bunch of member companies- you can find them listed here- http://www.iihs.org/members.html The list is long, but this "no profit" only does work for insurance companies. AKA- helping them make money.

WilberM3 wrote: the govt is just legislating better idiots.

/thread

Make something more fool proof and you just create a better fool.

Duke wrote: Let's see, a federal regulatory bureaucracy spending tax dollars putting out statements saying that the best thing to save the children is... more federal regulatory bureaucracy? Who'd'a thunk it?

Er... what federal bureaucracy would that be?

Edit - Alfa beat me to it.

alfadriver wrote: IIHS isn't a federal buracracy. It's a group of for profit insurance companies who what to make more money.

Parse fail on my part. I read that as NHTSA not the lobbying group. Thanks for the correction.

alfadriver wrote: If the number is deaths/1,000,000 registrations, does that mean that during that window of 4 years, that the Miata had 6.1, 8.3, or 10.4 deaths for the 100k???? Wait, how do you have a partial death? That's a yes or no question only. Did 2.1 people die in rollevers? ... I hate to be very cold, but death is rather absolute. So it's hard to factor in partial numbers. And it's hard to figure what makes the range of death rate large or small.

If there are 192,771 Miatas registered and 16 people die that would give you 8.3 deaths per 100,000 registrations. They need to average the number so it can be compared across vehicles with widely varied registration quantities.

alfadriver wrote: But using NHTSA data, I'm still confused how they get partial deaths.

is it a partial death of a whole person or a whole death of a partial person, like a half a hooker? probably more dead half-hookers in eldorados than anything else...

Duke wrote:

alfadriver wrote: IIHS isn't a federal buracracy. It's a group of for profit insurance companies who what to make more money.

Parse fail on my part. I read that as **NHTSA** not the lobbying group. Thanks for the correction.

For sure, they used NHTSA data, so it's pretty easy to get it mixed up. And easy for a reporter to put them together.

Thoughts?

We're all gonna die sometime...

nervousdog wrote:

alfadriver wrote: If the number is deaths/1,000,000 registrations, does that mean that during that window of 4 years, that the Miata had 6.1, 8.3, or 10.4 deaths for the 100k???? Wait, how do you have a partial death? That's a yes or no question only. Did 2.1 people die in rollevers? ... I hate to be very cold, but death is rather absolute. So it's hard to factor in partial numbers. And it's hard to figure what makes the range of death rate large or small.

If there are 192,771 Miatas registered and 16 people die that would give you 8.3 deaths per 100,000 registrations. They need to average the number so it can be compared across vehicles with widely varied registration quantities.

Ok, some going through the numbers- I missed some, but the reported number is number of deaths per 1,000,000 registered vehicle years.

Miata had 101,962 registrations over 4 years- or 407,848 registraion years. If 33 people died in those 4 years, that would get corrected to 83 per 1M registration years. but that doesn't explain why the range is 61-104, or 24.8-42.4 over the 4 years and 101k samples.

So it partially makes sense. But just partially.

The Merc E class has a reported number of 0, which would imply that nobody died of the 130,696 cars spread out over 4 years. But how does that result in a spread of 0 to 43. And why does the 4wd car have 0, but the non below it has 12? So 16.3 people died in the normal version, but it's range is a much tighter 7-17? A sample of 16.3 out of 1.2M chances is still pretty slim.

How do you correct the data for weather? How do you correct it for the car, or the driver age? I assume they don't include passengers. Or maybe they should... (or even do....)

How do you correct for death?

alfadriver wrote: How do you correct for death?

I believe you steer into it.

Keith wrote:

alfadriver wrote: How do you correct for death?

I believe you steer into it.

yeah, it'll be gone by the time you get there.

I was actually at a Vehicle Safety Conference at the BMW Zentrum with many elected officials and people from the automotive industry and research.

We went over such a topic of discussion.

Without going into a two page discussion a similar thought had happened with the US military and fighter jets. After research they found that the end responsibility was the pilot and all the electronic wizardry wouldn't change that (until we take pilots out of the equation.)

So in a nut shell this is bull E36 M3 and someone wants more power/kick back/has a product to sell and knows someone. Because the government has this report on their desk.

Keith wrote:

alfadriver wrote: How do you correct for death?

I believe you steer into it.

Should I stiffen the front or rear sway bar?

In reply to alfadriver:

Depends on if you want to face death or back into it

Statistics can tell any story the Statistician wants to tell. Once you understand this, you won't believe anything you read. One of my favorite classes in gradschool was economic theory in which we used real life, incomplete data on various things, as I recall I used a cross sampling of developing nations measures of infrastructure, coupled with theoretical equations we personally developed, and tested against the data to find strong correlations in the data. The fun part was manipulating the equations UNTIL you had a strong correlation, and thus irrefutable proof given your boundary conditions...

Dear Lord please let me die in a fiery car crash rather than old age while crapping in my diaper.

alfadriver wrote: And based on the part:"people don’t behave the same when they’re behind the wheel of a sports car as when they’re driving a minivan"

Yeah, they are more aggressive and drive FASTER in the minivan.

I have proven this many times on my daily commute "no matter how fast you are going, someone will pass you in a minivan or SUV."

Keith wrote:

alfadriver wrote: How do you correct for death?

I believe you steer into it.

LOL just remember - where your eyes go, the car will follow...

Keith wrote:

alfadriver wrote: How do you correct for death?

I believe you steer into it.

"Steer into the light"

Yea, they're never getting me to buy an SUV. Period. Or a crap new car with acronym soup tech gadgets.