Yeah, nobody disputes that. But the key words are "in driver-side crashes." That 37% is the probability only after you've assumed that the accident has in fact occurred.
There's no reason to wear your seat belt either, by your line of thought, as they only reduce your odds of death by about 45% once you're involved in an accident.
The difference is that wearing a seat belt has no marginal
COST. My car already has them, and even if it didn't they'd be cheap to add. My car does
not have side airbags and ESC -- to get them in the same model of car would cost me at least an extra $10,000, because I'd have to upgrade from a '90 model to a 2006 or so -- and that cost is what makes the difference.
It's like the scene from Fight Club, where they talk about car safety recalls, and how if it's statistically cheaper not to do the recall, then they don't do it. That is
correct reasoning! That is the harsh reality! The movie may be fictional, but the cost/benefit analysis is real. The math doesn't change just because you don't like it.
(Also: is it really only 45%, or did you make up that number randomly?)
It also states auto fatalities occur tens of thousands of times a year, and are among the primary killers of young and middle-aged people.
Only because the vast, vast majority of young and middle-aged people don't die at all in the first place. Once again: conditional probability!
It also states crashes are much less likely to be fatal (or to occur at all) with certain features built into your vehicles. If you choose to ignore that last part, that's your choice, but it doesn't make it irrelevant. It just means it's not important to you. It's part of the same math, so there's no need for arrogance when cherrypicking it.
First, I am not cherrypicking, and if you think my tone is arrogant then too fucking bad -- quit reading if you don't like it! This is not some political discussion or whatever where opinions matter. This is me telling you that 2+2=4, and you complaining that 4 makes you sad or something!
Second, you've got the cause and effect backwards: it is only not important to me
because it is statistically insignificant, not the other way around as you claim.
You people must think I have some sort of insane death wish or something. Rest assured, I do not! If the statistics said the extra safety were worth the cost, then I would agree!
You'll note, for example, that I have
not objected to thefinancialstudent's post that for a 2005 Civic, the difference in cost for side airbags is only $100. Yes, that's worth it!
Of course that's worth it! If the expected value of airbags were $1,100 as Genevieve calculated, then $100 would be a veritable
bargain!
I only object to people who pull fantasy bullshit out of their asses because they get upset by reality, and
that's what Daleth did when he claimed that side airbags and ESC were worth $11,500. Just think logically about it for a second: if that were actually the case, the the NHTSA would be calling for every car worth less than $11,500 that didn't have those features to be recalled and scrapped or something and Ralph Nader would be getting more news coverage than Trump!
TL;DR: New safety features have a value. It's larger than $100, but a whole lot smaller than $10,000 -- the best estimate so far (in this thread, at least) is somewhere around $1,000. If it costs you less than that to get the safety features, you should do so. If it costs more, then you're perfectly welcome to still get them anyway, but you are on notice that you aren't being rational about it.