The resistance we met and the tactics used against us, particularly in 1964, created a drama during which the public became informed. We concentrated on what lay beneath the particular issues, and we became more informed. It had become obvious to us that the automobile companies did not want to give official notification to the buyer, through standard installation of the seat belt, that the car is dangerous as well as luxurious and powerful. Certain concepts of salability and advertising were in control. The fire under the smoke is that the car itself is unnecessarily productive of injury in accidents because safety has never really been in the automotive picture except as a step-child to function. The accident, which in generic terms we don't yet know how to prevent, had been the only focus of legislative work for many years. The steering shaft, the dashboard and various parts of the interior were doing the direct killing and maiming, in percentages statistically established, but had escaped accusation. We have submitted bills to achieve collapsible steering shafts, interior car padding, circumferential strength of passenger compartment, anchorage units for shoulder harnesses and doors that will not fly open on imapct. Projection of the motorist through the open door into the highway is still among the major direct causes of death. In addition, the tendency of certain types of cars to be involved in accidents because of weight distribution, steering instability and failures in brake and steering assemblies has been almost overlooked. We ask for dual brake systems and minimum performance standards for brake linings. It has been estimated by the most highly-qualified experts in automotive safety, outside the industry, that correcting existing automotive features would prevent the majority of the 800,000 highway deaths forecast during the next 15 years. We agree. Statistical and clinical research, and our own experience as traffic safety legislators, bring us to the truth: The automobile is murderously unsafe for the conditions under which it is used and is the only component of the intricate highway-safety complex that can be readily changed for safety purposes. In terms of positive potential, this is the priority, requiring all-out legislative effort. Comparatively speaking, no other approach is effective, and will not be until there has been a break-through in knowledge of accident causation, resulting from research. Our bill prefiled for 1965 setting up an accident-investigation team is one of the most significant we have ever submitted. The goal, the culmination of our work, would be the establishment of a complex of minimum automotive safety standards. The existing standards, in the law, relate to headlights, windshield wipers, directional signals-and seat beltsall but the latter comparatively peripheral. To find these standards in one great step, and go beyond them into undiscovered safety design, we are seeking, and have submitted a bill to initiate creation of a proto-type safety car. This proto-type would give the Legislature and the nation specific information, now lacking, about what can be done to change the automotive product to meet the needs of safety. A proto-type safety car built by an aero-space firm with multi-state and federal funding is so powerful an idea that the proposal on August 3, 1964, brought immediate expressions of interest from legislatures and federal agencies. The Committee received letters from citizens in all walks of life throughout the nation. A highly-qualified aero-space firm, Grumman Aircraft Corporation, is ready to undertake the job, if funding is made available. Under state-established criteria, the proto-type could be designed to protect its occupants against the average fatality-producing impact speed in collision with an unyielding object. Other ideas originating with the Committee which have long-range significance include the Automotive-Medical Research Division; minimum safety performance standards for new tires; and the equation of highway safety with automotive manufacturing. We have won highly-selective national awards and the close support of major traffic safety organizations for our bills. A few federal interest in traffic safety is evident. Back in the late 1950s, the sole custodian of this interest was Rep. Kenneth Roberts (D.-Ala.), head of a Subcommittee on Health and Safety, who gathered available information about seat belts and other devices at hearings in Washington. Some of the dedicated medical doctors and engineers who testified at his hearings later testified before and advised our committee. Rep. Roberts in turn placed newspaper and magazine stories about our legislative efforts in the Congressional Record. Recently, starting in March, 1964, several United States senators started communicating with us, introduced versions of our automotive safety bills and paraphrased our statements about the problem. Several U.S. departments and agencies and two Presidential committees have been in correspondence with us concerning the tire and safety car bills, in particular. State legislatures which have been first to follow our lead in the past are considering our 1965 program. To our surprise, four Michigan State legislators, including that Senate's new president pro tem and majority whip, paid us a visit on December 29, 1964. and announced that they would introduce our legislative package there, the home of the automobile. Letters and requests for further information from citizens in private and public life throughout the United States and from governmental and private organizations in seven foreign nations, tell us that we have opened the flood-gates to forces which will eventually convert the automobile to something approaching a safety car. It has been my privilege to serve as chairman of this bi-partisan committee for seven years. I will contribute to the committee's work as the ranking member after March 31, 1965. I join committee members past and present, and our staff, in giving thanks for having had the opportunity to do this important work. Every time a life is saved by a seat belt, we receive thanks, although we may not know it. EDWARD J. SPENO, Chairman, Joint Legislative Committee on FEDERAL ROLE IN TRAFFIC SAFETY (Pursuant to S. Res. 186, 89th Cong.) THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1966 U.S. SENATE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON EXECUTIVE REORGANIZATION, COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS, Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met, pursuant to recess, at 10 a.m., in room 1318, New Senate Office Building, Senator Abraham Ribicoff (chairman) presiding. Present: Senators Ribicoff, Kennedy of New York, Curtis, Javits, and Simpson. Also present: Senator Nelson. Staff members present: Jerome Sonosky, staff director and general counsel; Philip Cook, professional staff member; Robert Wager, assistant counsel; Esther Newberg, chief clerk; and Dana Brown, clerk. OPENING STATEMENT OF THE CHAIRMAN Senator RIBICOFF. The committee will be in order. Yesterday morning, General Motors announced that it would make collapsible steering columns and dual braking systems standard features on all its 1967 passenger cars. This is good news. Accident reports indicate that a rigid steering column, pushed back into the driver's compartment, is perhaps the most lethal structure in the modern automobile. The dish-shaped, collapsible steering wheel that would not splinter on impact was an important safety improvement. A telescoping steering column, designed to absorb impact at either end, represents another basic engineering advance. It brings closer the day when the entire motor vehicle will be designed with the safety of the motorist-and the pedestrian the principal, controlling factor. The dual braking system, already a standard item on some makes and models, offers an extra margin of safety. Brake failure on today's heavy and powerful automobile can touch off a catastrophic chain of accidents that will cause scores of deaths and injuries. When this subcommittee convened just a week ago, I drew attention to the new concern for safety which the automotive industry had exhibited over the past 9 months. I also stated that collapsible steering columns, dual braking systems, anchorages for shoulder harnesses, safer dashboards and uniform instrument panels should be developed and built into all new cars. Yesterday's announcement represents a measure of progress. We have invited Ralph Nader to appear today because he is the author of a recently published book about traffic safety, called "Unsafe at Any Speed." It is a provocative book. It is a book which has some very serious things to say about the design and manufacture of motor vehicles now operating on the Nation's highways. It is a book which raises serious questions about current public policy in regard to traffic safety. We welcome Mr. Nader here today. You may proceed. From time to time there may be questions and interruptions for votes, so we will place your entire statement in the record. STATEMENT OF RALPH NADER Mr. NADER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the Subcommittee on Executive Reorganization. I appreciate and welcome the opportunity to be here today, and discuss what clearly is one of the most important issues in the country today as far as increasing the security and safety of our everyday environment. The basic subject of inquiry before this subcommittee relates to the Federal role in motor vehicle safety. The public safety is one of the first and most fundamental functions of any government. Yet it is quite obvious that over the past five decades, there has been no more serious avoidance of governmental responsibility for the public safety than that which has persisted to the present day in the area of automobile transportation. Year after year, with Medea-like intensity, the motor vehicle, through its traumatic and polluting impacts Senator CURTIS. I didn't hear that. Through what? Mr. NADER. Through its traumatic and polluting impacts. Mr. NADER. Yes, sir. The traumatic impact deals with the physical contact of the automobile with the occupant or pedestrian, the physical impact, and the polluting deals with the automotive exhaust problem. The motor vehicle performs as the greatest environmental hazard in this country-a hazard whose inceptions and consequences do not conform neatly to municipal, county, and State boundaries. And year after year, our scientific, technological, and organizational know-how and potential, to literally "invent the future" of motor vehicle safety expand exponentially and thereby expose the shocking, shameful gap between what can be done and what is being done. The enormity of this neglect by Government is not without some aggregate measure. The fatality toll on our streets and highways, since the first death by auto in 1899, is almost 114 million; millions more have been permanently crippled and tens of millions have been injured. Last year, it is estimated that just under 50,000 people were killed and, too little noticed, over 4 million were injured. TRAFFIC DEATH RATE This, incidentally, touches on an important point, when the measure of progress so-called in traffic safety is measured exclusively on the basis of the fatality rate per 100 million miles of vehicle traveled. That fatality rate, besides many other problems that it raises flowing from its inherent limitation as a reliable unit of exposure, does not take into account the seriously injured and overall injury totals, and as modern medical science and care permit people who ordinarily would have been killed on the highway to live today in a crippled condition, that serious injury rate becomes all the more important. Thirty years ago paraplegics had very little chance of any extended survival. So, I would not include the progress of medicine, emergency care, surgey, prompt blood transfusions, and so forth, as the result in saving the lives of people injured in accidents, of traditional traffic safety prevention programs. There are many other problems with the mileage rate that I won't discuss right now that can be discussed later. It is a biased type of measure, in other words. Deaths in 1965 amounted to approximately 1.8 million man-years of life lost. Between the ages of 5 and 30, extinction by motor vehicle is the American way of death; for the population as a whole, it is the fourth leading cause of death and the first man-made cause of death. These figures do not include the incalculable harm to individuals from automotive pollution. The problems of the quality of competition in this industry are intimately related with the quality of the product that comes out of it. ANNUAL MODEL CHANGE The car buyer pays over $700, according to a study by MIT, Harvard, and University of Chicago economists, when he buys a new car for the cost of the annual model change, which is mostly stylistic in content. Consider how much safer today's automobile would be if over the past few decades the car buyer received annually a substantial safety advance, both in the operational and crash worthy aspects of the automobile, for that $700 payment. Instead cars are being built which standing can kill adult and child pedestrians who fall or are inadvertently pushed into their sharp points and edges. Children playing have struck cars, like we all have when we were children, and there is quite a difference between striking a flat rear end of a car and the dagger fin of a Cadillac. A little girl in Kensington, Md., was killed by just such a dagger fin a few years ago. And passengers die in collisions at speeds as low as 5 miles per hour. Is it any wonder that at present rate at least one out of every two living Americans will either be killed or injured in an automobile collision? For those with a lifespan of 70 years ahead of them, the probabilities are considerably higher. Yet the orgy of expenditure for style, which is charged to the consumer every year, as entirely standard equipment, continues unabated. A style change for the rear end of a Mustang, for example, will cost the manufacturer close to $50 million. There are those rare instances when the impressive containment of public self-criticism by auto executives exhaust itself temporarily. Such an instance occurred in January 1964 when Donald Frey a percep 49-959-66-pt. 3-13 |