[www.themadhat.com]

Keep that in mind, everyone, the next time your favorite politician is stumping for "windfall profit taxes" on oil companies or healthcare companies or some other villainous force. They'll recover the cost, direct from your pockets.

/Traveshamockery doesn't know for sure because his windows are all broken.

The soap and clean drinking water for indigenous people is handled by others and yes a good idea, but irrelevant to this discussion.

Meaning you either are mindblowingly stupid or physically attempting to injure or kill someone.

Considering the average hospital stay costs $7,000, and we would save 1,949 patients from the hospital, that's $13,643,000 in saved healthcare costs.

Yes, it doesn't make that huge of a dent in $384,000,000, but it's still a lot of money.

@Falcon5768: My experience with American cars has been the opposite of what you say. If they have finally added it, that's great! Then the question becomes...which car maker HASN'T added this "feature" yet? One would think you would want return buyers....

@Pixel: I think part of the problem is somebody else putting the window up. still can't believe it happens that much.

@adamwinn: what if I crash into the ocean and a shark is trying to get through the window? if I have this feature, he'll make it in....what killed me then? power windows and sharks.

I'm just gonna walk everywhere, except the ocean.

@thefranchise2: plus you can work out the "guns". well, one gun for a while and then have somebody else drive you around or go to england. unless you're in england of course, then come here.

You have to lift the switch to raise the window, so a kid standing on it can only make the switch go down. No special circuits, no special sensors, so they should cost the same as the switches the other car companies are currently using.

I mean seriously, this isn't anything that common sense and good parental discipline won't solve.

I mean the Swine flu has killed more kids this year than power windows have killed in the past decade. I think the money spent on these auto-reversing motors could probably be better put towards making larger quantities of vaccine available.

Maybe power windows need to be moved higher up the food chain?

Also? It doesn't have automatic up. Just automatic down. It's the main feature I miss from that Passat. Who knew auto-up was the feature I'd miss?

Really, you're cheering for a law that puts a band-aid on negligence.

Why not a device that stops a door from moving if it swings too quickly? Some people get hit on the head!

@HurtsSoGood: On most systems you can simply pull the switch up again to close the window. It doesnt open the window fully again, just enough to let fingers free. Once it bounces back you can just pull up immediately again.

I've figured out the solution to this problem.

You should think about your statement for a moment. Thousands of children die of drowning every year. From your statement, even one death is too much. Therefore pools should be banned.

$500M spent on reversible windows is $500M not spent elsewhere. Perhaps not spent on vaccines, to keep children alive. Perhaps not spent on starving children, to keep them alive.

But I have a better suggestion. Perhaps you should pay extra to get reversible windows on your car, to keep your children safe, and let others decide how best to protect their children.

To save 6 people. That's $80M per life saved. How many lives could be saved if that $80M were used more productively?

And to the "What about the children? Isn't anyone thinking about the children?" crowd, I wonder about the women whose windows will unroll when an attacker sticks his hands in.

When I tell my window to roll up, I want it to roll up. This is ridiculous.

On the windows, if you have to hold the button to close the window, why do you need an auto-reverse? I can see it with one-touch windows but otherwise it's an unnecessary expense.

As a percentage of autos compared to the people injured is almost nill. It seems like a waste of resources. Drinking Soda probably kills more people. More people drown in their bath tubs.

@apd09:
Make it an option. Pay for it if you want it. Not cost effective to make it an option? Install it on all cars and charge a reasonable price (something the cars makers have been keen to do lately).

@Areyouagoodlittleconsumer:

So, we should be willing to spend any amount of money to save a single child's life? Well, then, we should also slow down all traffic on all roads to 10mph max - so what if it costs a huge amount of time to get anywhere, it'll save lives.

We make tradeoffs every day where we implicitly value human life, because we have to, because resources aren't infinite.

In my opinion, recalls should be instituted if there is possible realistic risk of even ONE child's death, and before it happens, not after.

I am similarly offended by the manner in which many city planners see risky conditions at an intersection, or see stop or traffic lights are needed, but someone on the committee says "well, when 10 people die there, we'll allocate the budget for it".

I know if it were my kid... but there has to be limits! I'm sure if you spend enough money here or there you can always come up with 1 more life saved, and this is not going to be one of the most cost effective areas!

Not to mention they have already mandated the switch change. If that saves 3 lives then we are talking about over $120m per child!

My new car, bought Saturday, and my old car, a 2003 accord, have this feature. The only holdouts on it, to my knowledge, are American car makers....