Does Product Liability Makes Us Safer?

Kip Viscusi (Vanderbilt) recently pubished an article in Cato's Regulation, on "Does Product Liability Make Us Safer?"  The article is now available on SSRN.  The article concludes:

Rather than creating an environment to foster safer products, product liability law often has adverse consequences. Some of the problems stem from the inherent nature of product risk decisions and the function of tort liability, while others may derive from individuals’ cognitive limitations and inability to think properly about balancing risk and cost. Thus it would be both incorrect and an oversimplification to blame all the ills on the tort liability system. That system functions reason- ably well for many types of accidents, such as personal motor vehicle accidents. However, tort liability falls short with respect to products.  

- SBS