A peek into the inscrutable methods of our government

A number of people have reported the shocking and arbitrary price set by the government on the cost of a life on Britain's roads. What got me more was not just the way in which it was measured (by a random survey of people listed on the electoral role into the amount of money they would pay to avoid risks in everyday life), but that the whole system was based in fear. I knew governments used fear to control the populace, but I didn't realise they used it to calculate how much to spend on safety.

That seems highly arbitrary - even more so than deciding where to spend money based on the cost of the (fatal) accidents in the various black spots. I'm not certain how I'd propose to spend the money, but I can't help feeling there is something ethically wrong with the way it's currently done.