ON NOV. 30, 1965, more than 50 years ago, a young Harvard-trained lawyer published a book that totally changed the automotive industry and helped to save millions of lives on the road in the subsequent decades.
Ralph Nader, 32, published “Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-in Dangers of the American Automobile” in which the first sentence was: “For over half a century the automobile has brought death, injury and the most inestimable sorrow and deprivation to millions of people.”
Nader contended that technology existed that could make cars much safer, but automakers had little incentive to use them.
On the contrary, he wrote, “the gigantic costs of the highway carnage in this country supports a service industry” – doctors, lawyers, police officers, morticians – and “there is little in the dynamics of the automobile accident industry that works for its reduction.”
Harsh truths
The book popularized some harsh truths about cars and car companies that auto safety advocates had known for some time. “Unsafe at Any Speed” came out when traffic deaths reached unprecedented numbers in the United States.
In 1965, the year the book arrived, 47,089 Americans were killed in traffic crashes. In 1966, the annual toll topped 50,000 for the first time.
It prompted a series of congressional hearings on traffic safety where doctors and other experts lamented “the wholesale slaughter” on American highways.
It also pushed the passage of seatbelt laws in 49 states and a number of other road safety initiatives. Before the seatbelt law was enacted, safety-conscious buyers of a Ford had to pay extra for seatbelts and a padded dashboard, but only 2 percent took the $27 seatbelt option.
By the spring of 1966, “Unsafe at Any Speed” was a best seller for nonfiction along with Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood.”
Inspired
Nader started researching automotive safety in 1956 as a second year student at Harvard Law School.
He was inspired by books that prompted change, including Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” which highlighted the dangers of the pesticide DDT to the environment,
He said he aspired to the level of getting a law through and getting an agency to implement it.
Nader got what he wanted.
In September 1966, less than a year after his book was published, President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act requiring the adoption of new or upgraded vehicle safety standards and creating an agency to enforce them and supervise safety recalls.
And a reluctant Congress created such an agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
Corvair
In the first chapter of his book, Nader railed against the 1960-63 Chevrolet Corvair, a sporty compact car with a swing axle and rear-mounted engine that Nader argued epitomized “the triumph of stylistic pornography over engineering integrity.”
Nader insisted that its swing axle made the back end unstable, causing it to “tuck in under turns and skid or roll over more frequently than other cars did.”
To this day, some Corvair enthusiasts dispute that assertion, although General Motors did make significant suspension changes starting with the 1965 model.
The Corvair was vindicated in 1972 when a government study (which Nader called “rigged”) found that it was just as safe as any other car. But the damage was done.
The Corvair became an icon of dangerous, even deadly design and the last one rolled off the assembly line in 1969.
Nader’s campaign gained more credibility after General Motors was caught hiring private investigators to trail and spy on him.
GM claimed that it only wanted to know if Nader was working for any of the personal injury lawyers in the Corvair litigation, but at a meeting of his subcommittee, Senator Ribicoff rebuffed that explanation and said the investigation was “an attempt to downgrade and smear a man.”
GM formally apologized.
But the Corvair aside, most of the book focused on a long list of neglected safety issues like brake performance, drivers being impaled by non-collapsible steering wheels and poor crash protection.
Gap
Nader maintained that there was “a gap between existing design and attainable safety” and the auto industry was ignoring “moral imperatives” to make car occupants safer.
“Unsafe at Any Speed” mobilized a mass movement in which ordinary consumers banded together to demand safer cars and better laws.
Fifty years later, Ralph Nader’s automotive expose remains relevant and vital for motorists.
Today, seatbelts, air bags, anti-lock braking system, automatic braking, safety crumple zones, head restraints, collapsible steering wheels, electronic stability program, traction control, rear view camera, parking sensors, adaptive cruise control, lane departure warning, front collision warning, blind spot information and other driver assistance and safety technologies are found in many motor vehicles.
Lives saved
In 1965, there were 6.3 fatalities for every one million miles traveled on US roads.
In 2014, there were 1.07 fatalities per million miles traveled, according to the NHTSA, the lowest number ever recorded.
A study released early in 2015 estimates that 613,000 lives have been saved between 1960 and 2012 because of advances in safety technology and standards.
Another analysis conducted by the Center for Auto Safety and The Nation puts the number higher, projecting a 5.5-fatalities-per-million-miles travel death rate.
Three million five hundred thousand deaths have been averted, the organizations say.
Much of that improvement is owed to Nader’s book.
Autonomous cars
At present, Nader is skeptical of autonomous car technology that has the potential to curb the death toll. In an interview with Automotive News, he downplayed the life-saving ramifications of autonomous cars.
Nader says their development is “leading to the emerging great hazard on the highways, which is distracted driving.”
Carmakers are turning the auto into an ever more complicated computer on wheels, he believes, which means that the driver is losing control to the software, and the more the driver loses control to the software, the less the driver is going to be able to control the car down the road.
Though the indifference of auto manufacturers that Nader has fought still permeates the industry (for example, General Motors’ ignition switches, Takata airbags and Volkswagen’s emissions cheating), the biggest safety challenges for cars remain to be the humans that drive them.
The NHTSA estimates that 94 percent of accidents are caused by human error or human behavior.
Self-driving technology may never be perfect, but if it can eliminate a lot of those human error-caused accidents, it may be the best tool yet to accomplish Nader’s goal to save even more lives on the road.
Sources: The International New York Times, autoblog.com, history.com.
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