Bingo! And as a result, there isn't an objective benchmark for rationality here. This is pretty much what most people who've been arguing for spending a few grand extra for ESC and side airbags have been saying over and over again. This entire discussion does not depend on "rationality" or "irrationality." It completely depends on your personal value system.
All right, I'll change my response to OP then. OP, do whatever feels right. There's no possible way to make a rational choice here, because everyone is a snowflake and no two people are alike. Danger is scary, so spend money to avoid it. I have no idea how much you should spend, just feel it out. Have you been to a hospital lately? Scary stuff.
The problem with your big crazy assumption is that you're still making a lot of subjective assumptions, including the big one that it's not worth making any vehicular changes because that would require spending money, hence the monolithic focus on driver variables rather than on vehicle variables. That's not rational thinking; that's just good old fashioned rationalization that your personal, subjective value system is the most optimal and rational point for everyone. But it isn't.
As an aside, the OP hasn't been back to this thread since I pointed out on page one that s/he clearly agreed that safety upgrades were valuable, but didn't want to spend money on them.
The assumption was that the benefit should outweigh the cost. Maybe you don't care about that, I figured OP did. We used the DOT "value of human life" as the benchmark, and pointed out that the OP could change the numbers if he felt the assumptions were different (it sounds like your numbers are different, so change them). If you are concerned with the cost/benefit ratio, which it appears the OP is, it's irrational to choose safety features not based on an effective cost/benefit ratio. I suppose I should have qualified "rational" with "is rational for someone who is interested in optimizing their cost/benefit ratio", but I assumed it was implied. Oh well.
Sure, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about whether it makes sense to spend only $5000-$10,000 to reduce your risk of death and disability by something on the order of 30%-50%.
As has been discussed many many times, it is not a reduction of your risk of death by 30-50%. It is a reduction of your risk of death by .003-.005%. It only reduces your risk IF you are in a fatal car wreck, which is an extremely unlikely event. Someone without those features has a .010% chance of dying in a car wreck this year. Someone with those features has a .007% chance.
My example was meant to show that you are not choosing based on the math and numbers, but on gut feeling. You still haven't given me a cutoff where it's worth it, and a justification for it. If you don't look at the rate of occurrence, it's ALWAYS going to make sense to spend more money on safety. For some weird reason you decided $5,000-$10,000 makes sense and $20,000-30,000 doesn't, but you can't seem to explain why.
Maybe Delta has safer airplanes than United, but tickets cost twice as much. Should you fly Delta because the consequences of dying in a plane crash are terrible? Probably not, because it's such a low risk activity the risk is still basically 0.
And nobody has mentioned what the numbers are on lesser degrees of serious injury. Would I spend $5k or $10k to avoid breaking several bones and spending, say, 3 weeks in the hospital and another 8 weeks recuperating? HELL YES I would! I have a life--a good marriage, kids to take care of, friends and family, things I enjoy doing, a job, etc. I would gladly spend that kind of money not to spend 2-3 months in pain, unable to do the things I enjoy, unable to take care of my kids, unable to work, etc. And when you factor in that the same $5-$10k could also spare any or all of my immediate family members the same unpleasant fate, I'm like, "Five or ten grand?! Hell yes! Sign us up!"
Even looking solely at the prospect of not being able to work for a couple of months, and even factoring in that unlike many people I have good disability insurance provided for free by my job (6 weeks at 100%, the rest starting at 80% and decreasing to 60%), being unable to work for 3 months would actually come out costing several grand in lost salary alone, not to mention the possible cost of hiring someone to help with the things I normally do around the house and/or having to spend a lot more on food (having restaurant food delivered, etc.) in order to spare my husband the stress of having to do twice as much housework/cooking/childcare on top of working, visiting me in the hospital, taking care of me at home, etc.
And remember your copay for the hospital stay! If you're an American with a high-deductible health plan, as many Mustachians (including me) are, not spending a couple of weeks in the hospital will pay for your massive safety increase (from 2004 Corolla to 2008-11 Subaru) right there.
We're not talking about $200k tanks. We're talking about $5-$10k.
Plenty of people mentioned injuries and disabilities earlier in the thread. We get it, bad things happen.
Maybe reading the article the OP mentioned:
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/06/07/safety-is-an-expensive-illusion/ will be a good exercise here. It turns out MMM made the EXACT SAME decision we are! He used gas prices instead of purchase prices, to justify driving his Scion instead of a Tahoe which reduces his risk of death in a car crash by 37%, almost EXACTLY the reduction we're talking about. Sure, he's not the authority on everything/anything, but good lord you're 99.99% likely to survive driving the old car, and 99.993% likely to survive with the new one. Do you buy the antibacterial soap with 99.993% germ killing power instead of 99.99% germ killing power, or do you not even look at such a small number like everybody else? Disclaimer: I don't buy antibacterial soap, but as I'm finding out in this thread I'm quite the risk-taker.
It says something about our extreme levels of safety we have when everyone's up in arms about something that requires rounding to 3 decimal places to even be measured.
Yes, maybe OP decides his numbers are different than what we pointed out, but pretending we're some sort of crazy reckless risk takers for suggesting he not buy the new car is just ridiculous.