This is inspired by Mike M's interesting comments here: https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...
"Your claim is the reverse, that we are saddened by the victimization of one, but outraged at the deaths of many. And why not? I mean, can you say that one person is "worth" more than some number of others?"

I can imagine a thought experiment in which the same car has various levels of safety features available at different prices. Then you take a cohort of buyers with equal driving records. In this thought experiment, there is reliable data for how many death's will occur at each level of safety. Suppose there are some amazing features that cost millions of dollars. Or you an inexpensive Ford Pinto that can catch fire violently in moderate collisions. We could take the amount people pay for safety divided by the probability of a sever collision and calculate how much they value the lives of themselves and their passengers.

This sounds meretricious. It's like measuring the value of time with family by how much extra pay it would take for someone to take a job requiring one hour extra round-trip travel. But job choice and car safety features are real-world questions that must be answered. If we simply say because life is priceless, we should spare no expense, things will be prohibitively expensive.

This was part of the backlash against the Ford Pinto case. There were documents in which they determined which safety features were included by looking at cost * number of units produced < * number of projected deaths + value lost to disability * number of projected disabilities.

People found this unsettling, and it made Ford look bad. But I don't see what else Ford could do.