|
|
Wall Street History
https://www.gofundme.com/s3h2w8
|
03/12/2004
Ralph Nader, Part II
There are a couple of reasons why I’m running a second piece on Ralph Nader in three weeks. First, the following article from 1959 was a preview of Nader’s 1965 groundbreaking book, “Unsafe at Any Speed.” Second, this is part of our nation’s corporate history. Third, I’m traveling and very grateful to The Nation magazine for allowing me to reprint it, thus saving your editor quite a bit of time. This is in no way an endorsement of Ralph Nader’s candidacy for president. It merely acknowledges, however, his role as consumer advocate and the important work he did decades ago to help make our lives a little safer. At the same time I, like many of you, have problems with his style. You’re either with him, he believes, or a corrupt tool.
---
April 11, 1959
“The Safe Car You Can’t Buy”
The Cornell Aeronautical laboratory has developed an exhibition automobile embodying over sixty new safety concepts which would enable an occupant to withstand a head-on collision at 50 mph with at most only minor scratches. In its design, six basic principles of crash protections were followed.
1. The car body was strengthened to prevent most external blows from distorting it against the passengers.
2. Doors were secured so that crash impacts could not open them, thereby saving passengers from ejection and maintaining the structural strength of the side of the car body.
3. Occupants were secured to prevent them from striking objects inside the car.
4. Interior knobs, projections, sharp edges and hard surfaces have been removed and the ceiling shaped to produce only glancing blows to the head (the most vulnerable part of the body during a crash).
5. The driver’s environment was improved to reduce accident risk by increasing visibility, simplifying controls and instruments, and lowering the carbon monoxide of his breathing atmosphere.
6. For pedestrian safety, dangerous objects like hood ornaments were removed from the exterior.
This experimental car, developed with funds representing only a tiny fraction of the annual advertising budget of, say, Buick, is packed with applications of simple yet effective safety factors. In the wrap-around bumper system, for instance, plastic foam material between the front and rear bumpers and the back-up plates absorbs some of the shock energy; the bumpers are smoothly shaped to convert an increased proportion of blows from direct to glancing ones; the side bumpers are firmly attached to the frame, which has been extended and reinforced to provide support. Another feature is the installment of two roll- over bars into the top of the car body as added support.
It is clear that Detroit today is designing automobiles for style, cost, performance and calculated obsolescence, but not – despite the 5,000,000 reported accidents, nearly 40,000 fatalities, 110,000 permanent disabilities and 1,500,000 injuries yearly – for safety.
Almost no feature of the interior design of our current cars provides safeguards against injury in the event of collision. Doors that fly open on impact, inadequately secured seats, the sharp-edged rear-view mirror, pointed knobs on instrument panels and doors, flying glass, the overhead structure – all illustrate the lethal potential of poor design. A sudden deceleration turns a collapsed steering wheel or a sharp-edged dashboard into a bone- and chest-crushing agent. Penetration of the shatterproof windshield can chisel one’s head into fractions. A flying seat cushion can cause a fatal injury. The apparently harmless glove-compartment door has been known to unlatch under impact and guillotine a child. Roof-supporting structure has deteriorated to a point where it provides scarcely more protection to the occupants, in common roll-over accidents, than an open convertible. This is especially true of the so-called “hardtops.” Nor is the automobile designed as an efficient force moderator. For example, the bumper does not contribute significantly to reduction of the crash deceleration forces that are transmitted to the motorist; its function has been more to reflect style than absorb shock.
These weaknesses of modern automobile construction have been established by the investigation of several groups, including the Automotive Crash Injury Research of the Cornell University Medical College, the Institute of Transportation and Traffic Engineering of the University of California and the Motor Vehicle Research of Lee, New Hampshire.
The remarkable advances in crash-protection knowledge achieved by these research organizations at a cost of some $6 million stands in marked contrast to the glacier-like movements of car manufacturers, who spend that much to enrich the sound of a door slam. This is not due to any dearth of skill – the industry possesses many able, frustrated safety engineers whose suggestions over the years invariably have taken a back seat to those of the stylist. In 1938, an expert had this to say in ‘Safety Engineering:’
The motor industry must face the fact that accidents occur. It is their duty, therefore, to so design the interiors of automobiles that when the passenger is tossed around, he will get an even break and not suffer a preventable injury in accidents that are today taking a heavy toll.
In 1954, nearly 600,000 fatalities later, a U.C.L.A. engineer could conclude that “There has been no significant automotive- engineering contribution to the safety of motorists since about the beginning of World War II ” In its 1955 annual report, the Cornell crash-research group came to a similar conclusion, adding that “the newer model automobiles (1950-54) are increasing the rate of fatalities in injury-producing accidents.”
In 1956, Ford introduced the double-grip safety-door latch, the “dished” steering wheel, and instrument panel-padding; the rest of the industry followed with something less than enthusiasm. Even in these changes, style remained the dominant consideration, and their effectiveness is in doubt. Tests have failed to establish, for example, an advantage for the “deep-dish” steering wheel compared with the conventional wheel; the motorist will still collapse the rim to the hub.
This year, these small concessions to safety design have virtually been discontinued. “A square foot of chrome sells ten times more cars than the best safety-door latch,” declared one industry representative
Prevailing analyses of vehicular accidents circulated for popular consumption tend to impede constructive thinking by adherence to some monistic theory of causation. Take one of the more publicized ogres – speed. Cornell’s findings, based on data covering 3,203 cars in injury-producing accidents, indicate that 74 percent of the cars were going at a traveling speed under 60 mph and about 88 percent involved impact speeds under 60 mph. The average impact speed on urban roads was 27 mph; on rural roads, 41 mph. Dangerous or fatal injuries observed in accidents when the traveling speed was less than 60 mph are influenced far more by the shape and structure of interior car components with which the body came into contact than by the speed at which the cars were moving
In brief, automobiles are so designed as to be dangerous at any speed.
Our preoccupation has been almost entirely with the cause of accidents seen primarily in terms of the driver and not with the instruments that produce the injuries. Erratic driving will always be characteristic, to some degree, of the traffic scene; exhortation and stricter law enforcement have at best a limited effect. Much more significant for saving life is the application of engineering remedies to minimize the lethal effects of human error by designing the automobile so as to afford maximum protection to occupants in the event of a collision. In a word, the job, in part, is to make accidents safe.
The task of publicizing the relation between automotive design and highway casualties is fraught with difficulties. The press, radio and television are not likely to undertake this task in terms of industry responsibility when millions in advertising dollars are being poured into their coffers. Private researchers are reluctant to stray from their scholarly and experimental pursuits, especially when cordial relations with the industry are necessary for the continuation of their projects with the maximum of success. Car manufacturers have thought it best to cooperate with some of these programs and, in one case, when findings became embarrassing, have given financial support. The industry’s policy is bearing fruit; most investigators discreetly keep their private disgust with the industry’s immobility from seeping into the limelight
By all relevant criteria, a problem so national in scope and technical in nature can best be handled by the legislative process, on the federal level, with delegation to an appropriate administrative body. It requires uniformity in treatment and central administration, for as an interstate matter, the job cannot be left to the states with their dissimilar laws setting low requirements that are not strictly enforced and that do not strike at the heart of the malady – the blueprint on the Detroit drawing board. The thirty-three-year record of the attempt to introduce state uniformity in establishing the most basic equipment standards for automobiles has been disappointing.
Perhaps the best summation of the whole issue lies in a physician’s comment on the car manufacturer’s design policy: “Translated into medicine,” he writes, “it would be comparable to withholding known methods of life-saving value.”
---
Congress passed the Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966 overwhelmingly. Federal rules regarding seat belts, air bags, manufacturers’ recalls, crash tests, and other safety factors can be traced to that act.
*Reprinted with permission from the April 11, 1959 issue of The Nation magazine. For subscription information, call 1-800-333- 8536. Portions of each week’s Nation magazine can be accessed at http://www.thenation.com.
Thanks to H.A. for helping me out with this.
Wall Street History returns March 19.
Brian Trumbore
|
|
|