We know what's good for you....

So....once again the camel's nose of egalitarian fairness first peeks into the tent, then the camel moves on in. Which leads to my title for this blog. We know what's good for you. Apparently, once again the egalitarian concept of fairness has crept into yet another aspect of our lives.

It's not fair for anyone to have a greater survivability aspect than the next guy right? So we have to make it fair. And I wonder, just how did the Insurance institute and the auto makers approach that aspect? I am pretty sure they accomplished it by reducing the survivability of SUVs and pick ups. That would make it more fair right?

Redesigned Front Ends of S.U.V.’s Have Led to Fewer Crash Deaths

Sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks on the road today are far less deadly in frontal and side-impact collisions with passenger cars and minivans than earlier models, according to a study released Wednesday by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. The institute, a nonprofit financed by the insurance industry, attributed the findings to a voluntary effort between itself and automakers that began in 2003.

Automakers pledged to revise the front ends of their S.U.V.’s and pickup trucks so that they would be less likely to kill passengers in a smaller vehicle during a collision. Modern S.U.V.’s and pickups, the study found, were no more deadly than modern cars in front-to-front and front-to-side crashes, provided the S.U.V.’s and cars were of similar weight. None of these results, however, contradict the basic laws of physics in a crash, said Joe Nolan, the institute’s chief administrative officer and the study’s co-author, in a telephone interview.

“Your vehicle’s mass makes it worse for other people,” Mr. Nolan said. While a mismatch in vehicle mass would still heighten the risk of death, Mr. Nolan said that the geometric “compatibility” among S.U.V.’s, pickups and cars lowers the risk. “In the past, you had both a geometry mismatch and a mass mismatch, leading to a pretty bad problem,” he said. The study examined S.U.V.’s, pickup trucks, cars and minivans that were one to four years old in 2000-1 and looked again at vehicles that were one to four years old in 2008-9.

Researchers separated each of those vehicle classes into weight categories that ascended by 500 pounds. Next, they compared the number of occupants killed in two-vehicle crashes between cars and minivans exclusively. The study did not correct for the size of the vehicle occupants themselves, so in the testers’ data, the people who were killed could have been of any age, size and weight.

So there you have it, problem solved, but not really. Because if you paid attention to the language in the report, even reducing the survivability for SUV drivers doesn't completely accomplish the set goal of "fairness." The findings concluded: "provided the S.U.V.’s and cars were of similar weight." Which means?

They still must find a way to completely eliminate pick up trucks period. Either that, or reduce them down to the size of the three wheeled "Jitneys" that you see in third world countries. Which would probably make them all happy. Unless of course they could finally succeed in putting us all on bicycles.