How Many More?

In the news last week I saw an overturned semi trailer in the Marquette interchange. Not surprisingly, the accident occurred on the temporary ramp from I-94 East to I-43 North. Luckily, the truck driver was able to get out of the vehicle.

There's a question that occurs to me each time I drive on one of the temporary ramps. How many deaths did they budget for when they engineered this? Sometimes when a project is hazardous to begin with, the engineers try to design around "acceptable failures" or "minimal loss." Or, bean counters get involved, as they did with the Ford Pinto:

Benefits derived from spending this amount of money were estimated to be $49.5 million. This estimate assumed that each death, which could be avoided, would be worth $200,000, that each major burn injury that could be avoided would be worth $67,000 and that an average repair cost of $700 per car involved in a rear end accident would be avoided. It further assumed that there would be 2,100 burned vehicles, 180 serious burn injuries, and 180 burn deaths in making this calculation. When the unit cost was spread out over the number of cars and light trucks which would be affected by the design change, at a cost of $11 per vehicle, the cost was calculated to be $137 million, much greater then the $49.5 million benefit.

Drive safely!