Car Safety Wars: One Hundred Years of Technology, Politics, and Sudden Death

Car Safety Wars is a gripping history of the hundred-year struggle to improve the safety of American automobiles and save lives on the highways. Described as the "equivalent of war" by the Supreme Court, the battle involved the automobile industry, unsung and long-forgotten safety heroes, at least six US Presidents, a reluctant Congress, new auto technologies, and, most of all, the mindset of the American public: would they demand and be willing to pay for safer cars? The "Car Safety Wars" were at first won by consumers and safety advocates. The major victory was the enactment in 1966 of a ground breaking federal safety law. The safety act was pushed through Congress over the bitter objections of car manufacturers by a major scandal involving General Motors, its private detectives, Ralph Nader, and a gutty cigar-chomping old politician. The act is a success story for government safety regulation. It has cut highway death and injury rates by over seventy percent in the years since its enactment, saving more than two million lives and billions of taxpayer dollars. But the car safety wars have never ended. GM has recently been charged with covering up deadly defects resulting in multiple ignition switch shut offs. Toyota has been fined for not reporting fatal unintended acceleration in many models. Honda and other companies have--for years--sold cars incorporating defective air bags. These current events, suggesting a failure of safety regulation, may serve to warn us that safety laws and agencies created with good intentions can be corrupted and strangled over time. This book suggests ways to avoid this result, but shows that safer cars and highways are a hard road to travel. We are only part of the way home. This study recounts the history of the hundred-year struggle to improve the safety of American automobiles and save lives, a long battle that was won by consumers and safety advocates only after decades of defeat. The major victory was the enactment in 1966 of a federal safety law, which cut highway deaths and injury rates by 70 percent. But the safety wars have not ended. General Motors and Toyota, among others, have for years failed to report defective vehicles, demonstrating that safety laws and agencies created with good intentions can be corrupted and strangled over time. The author suggests ways to avoid these undesirable consequences, but he also cautions that safer cars and highways are difficult to come by and that we are only part of the way home.--Adapted from publisher description Car Safety Wars is a concise history of the hundred-year struggle for safer cars and highways, involving at least six presidents, reluctant congresses, a fiercely resisting automobile industry, unsung heroes, and GM detectives. Termed the “equivalent of war” by the Supreme Court, the struggle was a major victory for government safety regulation, which may have been undermined recently by a co-opted, overwhelmed federal safety agency and the automobile industry’s cover-up of millions of dangerous cars. In Car Safety Wars Michael Lemov has done a masterful job of documenting the long and complicated evolution of a critically important public-health effort-the century-long campaign to make motor vehicles safer. As a first-hand participant in and observer of that effort, he brings special insights into its successes and failures. Car Safety Wars is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the history of auto safety in this country Love and death on the open road Voices in the wilderness Just a congressman from a small state Safety doesn't sell General Motors meets Ralph Nader A federal law Dr. Haddon, Detroit, and the new safety agency Dragon lady The birth and near death of the air bag Elizabeth Dole, State Farm, and how America got the air bag Rough road for recalls : Ford Pinto gas tanks to GM ignition switches Forcing technology : safety standards in the new century.