I can see how mis-information would affect government credibility, but if people never discover that it is mis-information, or if they believe that the government was mis-informed, then there is no reason for it to influence the credibility of government safety programs.

Car safety ads are mis-information, they only show us cases when we crash and die from drink driving, not when we make it home, or stop half way home and roll into a paddock throwing up. By showing the horrors over and over again, they make people relate drink driving to dieing, even if the probability of dieing was very low.

Ultimately, I would like it if fines were set to account for the true average probability of all the different outcomes, with some quantification of human life (say the average production left of someone in the middle of their lifecycle). I think that fines for drunk driving would probably be higher, but hey who knows they might be lower. However, if this is impractical, I’m happy to scare people with lots of drink driving ads, but a computer game that provides people with a realistic drink driving experience might counter the usefulness of such a campaign.

There must also be costs to a campaign of misinformation though. First, it is difficult to misinform people when they have access to both outside information and the means of testing the information you’re giving them (cars and alcohol). Secondly, it has long term consequences for the credibility of the government if it is found to have deliberately misinformed the population.

However, I wonder whether authorities actually price life correctly when they make fines etc. Authorities always seem to say that they want to stop all people dieing on the road, but if that was their only goal why don’t they stop people driving?

If we can quantify life, then we should use fines, most definitely. But if authorities are unwilling to directly quantify life and work out the efficient fine, I’m scared that they will set fines too low (as they might find it harder to justify a high fine unless they can directly quantify the cost of life). If this is the case, the equilibrium with full information but a suboptimal fine may be worse than an equilibrium where we pump people full of mis-information and make them scared to drink and drive. Mis-information is a great way of creating appropriate social norms 😉

“In this case the driver takes on the full social cost of their drunken activity, and so will only consume the socially optimal amount.”

However, the problem I have is trying to quantify these costs, which is why I said:

The problem with applying this rule comes from quantifying the costs. If a drunk driver kills someone, what is the cost of that in monetary terms?

As a result, I suggested that it might be easier (or cheaper) from a policy perspective to keep people mis-informed, or exaggerate the risks associated with drunk driving. If that is the case, this game will give the teenagers full information, which, since there is an externality involved is not socially optimal.

What I’m suggesting is like a third best equilibrium, it might not be as efficient as taxing the buggers, but it might be more practical from a policy perspective.

Now deep down I think its a stupid idea, that is what I said in the blog post. But if we believe that teenagers under-estimate the difficulty of drunk driving (and so under-estimate the probability they could crash), then there could be a case for this form of education.

The very least consequence of unsuccessfully running a computer game which simulates driving home drunk, should be complete melt down of the computor running the game.

Make that melt down with real sparks and smoke = totally irreparable.
Heh, a reality hit.
The Canadian developers need a brain scan to see if there is anyone home in there.