It's only worth doing if it actually saves enough lives per $ to be better than the other things we could do with that money. For context, NICE currently only pays for treatments that give over 1 QALY per £30k because that's all the NHS budget can support. If those bars cost $500 and needed to be installed on five million trucks and only saved 20 lives on average across the country then that would be an extremely poor return on investment and the money should be put towards cancer screening or paying off the national debt or improved road signage or something.
$500 is well more than triple the estimated cost per truck, and we already know that at least 400 people are being killed per year in the US. Likely far more, not to mention the grievously injured. Cost per unit would likely come down over time anyway as production practices improve, like with most goods. I understand the logic behind cost/benefit, but the math is pretty damn obvious here.
