Consumer Confidential: Boeing charged extra for safety features. The 737 Max crashes show why that's a bad idea

The passenger jets that crashed in Ethiopia and Indonesia, killing hundreds, reportedly lacked special safety features in their cockpits - features that Boeing charged extra for.

Meanwhile, buyers of new cars have to decide how much extra they want to shell out for add-on safety features such as lane-departure warnings, technology that could save the lives of drivers and those around them.

This raises an intriguing question for the digital age: Should safety be a premium service?

Put another way, if a plane, car or other machine can be made demonstrably safer through something as simple as a software