Yes, I also agree that people should have the choice, just as - re skydiving, high-wire walking and.. (and if smoking & alcohol are legal - marijuana isn't even lethal! Speaking of 'risks'.) The accident you cite kinda dovetails with a similar (nonlethal) event: while Frontline was filming the Rollover show: they heard a crash nearby - upside down UAV! (not an Explorer this time). Synchronicity ?

BUT.. all the rest you mentioned. If it is social engineering to publicize the negatives of these turnover machines, to tax them as the disincentives they represent re the [oil] burden - and as an incitement for our next oil-wars: then I guess I'm for that level of social engineering. It indeed appears to be a direction which aids survival of us all, who have to share the roads with these time-bombs.

If I must have a HumVee, for whatever early psychological damage has caused me to 'need' the security of a tank or the look-at-me notoriety (?) - I should not be told NO by Big Daddy - but I should pay for the potential hazard I represent to *every other* driver, via their mistake or my own: which results in my riding-over all their safety barriers and slicing off their passenger compartment. Ditto when I rollover into path of an innocent.

Guess we agree that this falls under that Popular rubric, personal responsibility. I think the program also points out that it is virtually impossible to exaggerate the pure cupidity of the Corporate mind - in daily action, in the face of stark knowledge of the consequences for a statistically predictable number of victims.

Somehow the equation which balances x-lawsuits/deaths VS a net profit of sometimes $20K/car needs to be balanced by a FINE of similar cynicism towards the perps in suits. (Same lethal arithmetic as 30 yrs. ago - re the Pinto gas tank = also at Ford.) Ford isn't alone - just the most blatant to date.

(But that last is likely dreaming, in Murica 2002.)


Cheers,

Ashton
Working for Ford must feel a lot like working for M$.. I wonder about next: for how long 'we' will continue to deem that Corps are immune to every consequence of decisions like the above ones; for marketing lies - known to be lies at the time. Goes to the heart ---> of 'hype', no?