Analysts Now Trying To Link Excessive VW Pollution Levels To Over 100 Deaths

Volkswagen’s pollution-control chicanery has not just been victimless tinkering, killing between five and 20 people in the United States annually in recent years, according to an Associated Press statistical and computer analysis.

The software that the company admitted using to get around government emissions limits allowed VWs to spew enough pollution to cause somewhere between 16 and 94 deaths over seven years, with the annual count increasing more recently as more of the diesels were on the road. The total cost has been well over $100 million.

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TheSteve - 10/5/2015 1:02:40 PM

+2 Boost

Oy vey! Let's get actuaries to build models for deaths caused by:
- The oil industry in general (contaminated water tables, air quality, etc.)
- The tobacco industry
- Alzheimers (right up there as a killer with cancer!)
- Pesticides
- Guns
- Water contamination by big industry world-wide
- Allow life-saving drugs to be unaffordable to many
- Armed conflicts

The list goes on and on, folks. I'm not saying VW hasn't done a seriously bad thing, because they have. I'm saying we haven't tended lots and lots of things, of much greater significance, that are killing far more people... so let's put a little perspective on this scandal, shall we?

Agent009 - 10/5/2015 3:04:44 PM

-1 Boost

The fed can go after them for public long term health care costs associated to the extra pollution and this can be estimated to a fair degree.

This would surface in the form of higher insurance rates attached to Obamacare. Overall claims in the pool influence the healthcare premiums subsidized by the fed and therefore make it easy to determine a dollar value.

Could it be stretched that far? If you want to make an example of one of the richest corporation in the world then certainly so.

Vette71 - 10/5/2015 3:36:05 PM

0 Boost

009 your comments are relevant provided of course that the executive of the USA is also held responsible for the long term health care costs caused by the gold mine diasater in Colorado. The EPA was warned about the risks of what they were about to do and did it anyway. A deliberate act. Hence the EPA budget should be docked, people let go, etc. etc.

Vette71 - 10/5/2015 2:36:04 PM

0 Boost

Liars Figure but Figures Never Lie.

This is why the EPA will fine VW, but a class action suit will be damn difficult as one cannot point to those definitive victims. Also all these mathematical models have assumptions they are built on, and those assumptions can be challenged. But there are folks like these guys who love to build these cases.

TheSteve - 10/6/2015 1:07:24 PM

+1 Boost

"Liars Figure but Figures Never Lie." -- Vette71

"There are lies, damned lies, and statistics." -- Mark Twain

I'm siding with Twain.

jameswisrik - 10/6/2015 7:55:58 AM

+1 Boost

Those analyst should be more concern about US Trucks by GM/FCA running of diesel...i'm sure its associated w/ a lot more deaths than VW diesel. GM/FCA could be in the millions of death. Ever been behind a HD Silverado 2500/3500 diesel w/ black diesel smoke filling our clean air w/ cancerous pollutants.... get the point..