Not sure what’s put you in such a mood, Charles, because I’m agreeing with you. I did write that I agreed that the total cost of accidents was much higher than what we pay in insurance. However, the cost of insurance is interesting because people are notoriously bad at factoring in the cost to society, they’re even bad at doing the math on the quantifiable costs to themselves. But if the cost of the crash-avoiding car could be clearly offset by savings in insurance, more people would get it and go for it, and more newspaper columns would tell them it’s the right choice. Fortunately with cars, people usually get a loan, so they really will compare the added payment on the car loan to the insurance savings. That will be even better with lease payments, because leases factor in the depreciated value of the car at the end of lease time, while car loans pay off the whole car in 4-5 years.

With leases, and a $5,000 crash-avoidance system, leasees would see the lease costing $40 more per month perhaps, and insurance going down by $50 and see it as an easily justified win.

And yes, I also agreed that you don’t need to network cars to do crash avoidance and I also agree you need to build the system to work as well as possible without any network information, but that doesn’t change that you can in certain circumstances improve things with networking, because other car’s sensors will see things your car can’t see, and will sometimes give you a chance at a longer time to react. Generally, I have been down on the uses of networking in cars but this is one of the few that has some mild potential.