surfaces, are likely to lock the brakes and thereby lose control of the vehicle. Or we can simply apply what is presently known and build automobiles with antilocking braking systems.

The lessons are as comparable in automobile design for injury prevention as they are for accident prevention. A crashworthy automobile is the last clear chance to prevent bloodshed; it is that final net that catches all the contributing factors in the collision sequence and cuts the sequence so that casualties are prevented or minimized. In this strategic placement, a crashworthy vehicle is highly efficient in that it can take all the infinite and far more intractable variables expressed through the behavior of drivers interacting with highways and vehicles and make the output fail-safe. By the way of illustration, a safe dash panel, steering assembly, and seat structure are constant factors ready to avert disaster; they do not depend on how they feel, on how they are educated or exhorted or admonished or fined to do their work. They do their work because they are there, in shape all the time. Just 4 years of automobile production will comprise half of all mileage traveled. A mass production industry can turn out such vehicles on the command of a tiny handful of men. Automating safety in automobiles consequently has great administrative as well as time advantages. Yet instead of a rigorous analysis of priorities so as to get the fastest and most efficient safety output from given inputs we hear the incantations about "balanced traffic safety programs" or that it is really all "the nut behind the wheel." The best that can be said about such thinking is that it is primitive. A civilized society should want to protect even the nut behind the wheel from paying the ultimate penalty for a moment's carelessness, not to mention protecting the innocent people who get in his way. These and other similar handy mottos are part of a self-serving ideology-there is no better word for it-of traffic safety strongly developed and perpetuated by the automobile industry in order to divert the public's gaze from the role of vehicle design. Consider the potent force of the "second collision" idea once it was sprung loose, not from industry sources, but from the projects supported by the Federal Government which wrapped data and photographs around this idea to nurture it on its way to the political and legislative policymaking process.

Here we arrive at the nub of the problem in traffic safety. The barriers to progress and innovation are not knowledge gaps but the overabundance of special interests which the scientists euphemistically call "nontechnical obstacles" to change. These special interests tragically have included the very groups which could have been the classic countervailing and disciplining powers to the auto industry-namely, the casualty insurance industry and the American Automobile Association. But the accomodations of other interests with the auto industry have sacrificed the vehicle design safety interest.

The latest performance of the direct and indirect power of the automobile and allied interests to divert, deter, and diminish the more effective measures for cutting the highway toll will become apparent very shortly when the administration sends its proposed Highway Traffic Safety Act of 1966 to the Congress. Reliable public indications point to a request for substantially more funds for research which is desirable. But the administration's proposal will not solve the jurisdictional and administrative bottlenecks within the executive branch that have impeded action, will not request authority for mandatory automobile safety standards, will not provide for the construction of prototype safety cars. will ask for sizable sums of money for existing and least effectively conceived programs at the State level-all to be primarily guided for the consumer's benefit by the Department of Commerce. (If this latter arrangement is a paradox, it is an institutionalized one). Another no-law law for the consumer's protection will be put before Congress and the National Safety Council, the Automotive Safety Foundation, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, the Auto Industries Highway Safety Committee and the President's Committee for Traffic Safety-those misnomers of the traffic safety establishment-will breathe a sigh of relief.

Of course, my predictions could be wrong. I would be delighted if they

were.

Until the suffocating hand of the so-called national traffic safety organizations and their omnipresent automotive patron is lifted once and for all by an aroused citizenry and Government, the critical priorities will not be translated into action. A good place to begin anew is with the President's Committee for Traffic Safety. This committee is an executive agency employing civil servants over

whom stand Mr. William Foulis, the executive director, and Dr. Richard Tossell, his assistant. These two men are privately paid by the automobile and insurance industries. The President's Committee really functions only through the Administrative Committee (of the Advisory Council to the President's Committee) which sets the policy. The President's Committee is composed of 16 private citizens and its chairman, William Randolph Hearst, Jr. As a Government agency controlled outright by private automotive interest groups, the President's committee occupies a place unique in the history of American Government. Never before have private business groups established themselves within Government in order to exploit the prestige of the President and his Office. Officials in the Department of Commerce and other Government agencies have repeatedly urged that this anomalous condition be terminated, William Randolph Hearst, Jr., notwithstanding. It can only be assumed that once the President finds time to turn his attention to this problem, it will be resolved in the only appropriate manner. Last week, President Johnson stated to the American Trial Lawyers Association that the "gravest problem before this Nation-next to the war in Vietnamis the death and destruction, the shocking and senseless carnage, that strikes daily on our highways and that takes the highest and more terrible toll each year." Implicit in this statement would seem to be an increased awareness of the necessity for Federal leadership. In the most important area—that of obtaining safer automobile design and construction, there is a need for five Federal functions:

1. Standards and inspection function.—The establishment of carefully administered dynamic standards for automobile safety performance to get faster application of known technology and override the barriers to innovation now rampant in the huge bureaucratic structures known as American automobile companies. To have meaning, standards require an attendant form of inspection or crashworthiness certificate to make sure the standards are met. Both criminal penalties and injunctive powers should be provided in any legislation.

2. Research and development function.-Behind the chrome curtain there is too little safety research and many an excuse between research and use. A Federal facility for research into automobile design safety will serve to advance sharply the state of knowledge and will also encourage and support independent centers of such work around the country and break the near monopoly of automotive engineering presently held by the automobile industry. Such a facility will be a major contributor to the constant upgrading of Federal performance standards and would include the design, construction, and testing of prototype vehicles, as envisaged by S. 2162 introduced by Senator Gaylord Nelson and presently before this subcommittee.

3. Federal support function.-Financial and technical assistance to the States for the establishment of proficient accident-injury investigative teams to collect the data for future preventive policies and to provide the facts for the just adjudication of legal responsibility instead of the automatie bias of blaming the river in lieu of an investigation. Elemental notions of due process of law require such a program. Support should also be given for vehicle inspection of a scope well beyond the nominal procedures employed today and the inspection standards written by the auto industry. Administrative safeguards against corruption and other abuses of State inspection programs must be carefully devised, Data and other experience from these accident-injury investigations and inspections should be aggregated and processed with the objective of determining patterns of make and model failure due to defective design or poor quality control. All bulletins and other communications between the manufacturer and dealer about such defects should be publicly filed with the appropriate State authority together with a copy of the communication to the car buyer which should be required under prescribed forms.

The Federal Government must establish once and for all, as it has for aviation safety, the principle and practice of recalling defective makes and models of automobiles for correction by the manufacturer at its dealer or other suitable location. The 1960-63 Corvairs with their extraordinary tendency for rear-end beakaway behavior leading to uncontrollability and roll over are prime candidates for such callbacks. There are at least 750,000 Corvairs remining out of these 4 years of production. By merely adding rebound straps, replacing the rear springs and installing an antiroll bar in the front suspension-at a total material and labor cost to Chevrolet not exceeding $15 per car, the risk of many deaths and injuries can be substantially reduced. Warnings to owners, through ad

visories and printed decals in a prominent location on the vehicle, about the critical importance of the proper tire inflation pressures front and rear should be included.

4. Statistical and data processing function.-The Nation can no longer rely on a private organization-the Naitonal Safety Council-for its traffic accidentinjury statistics. In no other area of mortality and morbidity statistics has the Government relied on a private organization. With the immense potential offered by the computer for fast, complex, and meaningful data processing and with the forthcoming implementation of the Baldwin amendment pressing the States for more explicit, more uniform, and more adequate highway safety standards, it is all the more incumbent upon the Federal Government to establish a complete statistical facility.

The entire information and data output of projects financed by the Federal Government at universities or other institutions should be obtained by the Government. The decade-long situation at the Cornell automotive crash injury research (Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory) whereby data relating to specific accident cases are funneled exclusively to the manufacturers and denied all public agencies, even though these data are obtained chiefly through Government funding and support, is a disgrace too long tolerated and overdue for congressional investigation.

5. Educative and alert function.-This should involve a governmental contribution to the improved working of the marketplace. First, the manufacturers should be required to file annual reports detailing, with supporting technical data, the operational safety and crashworthy improvements in their automobiles and disclosing any deteriorations. This information should be then translated into readily understandable consumer publications distributed by GPO to better inform the car buyer about the choices available to him and to generally improve his critical capacity. In addition, the antitrust laws should be rigorously enforced to dissolve any collusive or concerted activity on an industrywide basis or between various manufacturers to to restrain the development and/or marketing of safety features. An analysis of the present scope of antitrust law may well lead to recommendations for strengthening them to cover subtler, though just as harmful, anticompetitive behavior.

If these and other Federal functions in highway safety are to be administered fairly and efficiently, a thorough reorganization of the present dispersal of re sponsibility into one or possible two administrative units is necessary. With the President's recommendation last month for a Department of Transportation, it is quite clear that the administration is engaged in just such an endeavor as part of an overall reorganization of the Government machinery for transportation.

All the above points to meticulous care in drafting the law to anticipate the many problems that would otherwise arise and provide the necessary safeguards against easy administrative rigidity, erosion, or capitulation to the regulatees. This is a demanding legislative task-one that calls for an ambitious exercise of the legislative hearing function to gather together the facts and judgments that will increase the wisdom of final policy decisions. This subcommittee has com piled two volumes of considerable value, but the bulk of the iceberg remains be. neath the ocean. Many more volumes need to be assembled to explore the workings of government, industry, and to hear from other groups and specialists con. nected with motor vehicle safety in various ways. Taken together they will illuminate the pitfalls and tragedies of the past which are to be avoided, extend the awareness of the problems and remedies throughout the land, and construct a scenario of the future toward which we all should strive.

Senator RIBICOFF. Mr. Nader, I will ask a few questions because time may very well run out on us.

What

On page 13 of your statement you referred to the announcement yesterday concerning collapsible steering wheels and dual brakes. do you think of this development?

EXHIBIT 106

GENERAL MOTORS CORP. NEWS RELEASE

DETROIT.-Two new safety features an energy-absorbing steering column and dual-braking system-will be standard equipment on all General Motors 1967 model passenger cars, James M. Roche, GM president, announced today.

The new steering column provides an added driver safety feature device in addition to the energy-absorbing steering wheels offered now on GM cars. The steering column on 1966 GM cars already more than meets 1967 General Services Administration's standards. In event of a severe front-end collision, the steering column on 1967 GM cars will "collapse," or shorten at a controlled rate, when the force of impact is applied to it at either end, Mr. Roche said. Special mountings on the dash and beneath the instrument panel permit the column to absorb energy under force from an accident. This cushions the impact of the driver against the steering wheel and also prevents the column from being forced toward the driver.

Mr. Roche said that energy-absorbing steering column systems have been under development by General Motors for more than 5 years and the final system has been exhaustively tested in GM's engineering laboratories and on its proving grounds.

The dual master cylinder brakes which will be installed on all GM passenger cars will be the same functionally as the braking system which Cadillac has had as standard equipment since 1962 and which the Chevrolet Corvette has offered as an option since 1965, Mr. Roche said.

The new system will have dual cylinders, one controlling front brakes and the other the rear brakes. Thus, front and rear brakes will be controlled separately and independently. If one or the other or both brake cylinders are not functioning, a warning light will appear on the instrument panel.

Other special safety features which General Motors has made standard on all of its passenger cars within the last year include rear seat belts, padded instrument panel, back-up lights, outside left-hand rear view mirror, dual speed windshield wiper and washer, padded sun visor and improved penetrationresistant windshield glass.

The General Motors energy-absorbing steering column collapses at a controlled rate in the event on a forward impact, as illustrated in the multiple photo above. Figure 1 shows the column before impact. Energy from impact is absorbed through progressive compression of a mesh section of the column jacket, illustrated in figures 2 and 3. The fully compressed column, figure 4, has been shortened a maximum distance of 84 inches by the impact.

Compression of the steering shaft and gearshift tube, inside the column jacket, occurs simultaneously, also at a controlled rate.

Sufficient impact force applied from either end of the steering column will cause it to compress. This cushions the impact of the driver against the steering wheel, and prevents penetration of the driver's compartment by the column at the same time. The device will be standard on all 1967 General Motors automobiles.

Mr. NADER. Well, first I must commend them on their sense of timing. There is no question that these represent important advances in automotive safety. Just how much importance these advances reflect depend on the technical values which the manufacturers will give to describe these designs. That is, it is not enough to say a collapsible steering column. We want to know how it performs in technical terms during the collision situation.

I think that the announcement, I believe it was by General Motors yesterday, indicates how fast these companies can really move when public pressure zeros in on them to increase the safety of their cars.

I recall at this point an engineer in Michigan, in Saginaw, who told me that they designed, and Ford also designed, these collapsible steering shafts many years ago, over a decade ago, and they were put on the shelf. The signal to take them off the shelf and refine them further for production, I think, can be attributed to public pressures. The way this engineer put it, he said:

We designed them, threw them up on the shelf, because of management disinterest, and those 1-day engineers, Senator Kennedy and Senator Ribicoff, got them off the shelf.

He might have been a little facetious, but I think he had a lot of truth in that statement. The industry reacts to outside stimuli primarily if it is sufficiently focused and sufficiently intensified. It has not yet shown that it can react from within its own organization. It has not yet shown that it can override the types of rigidities that operate within these vast organizations.

INDUSTRY SECRECY

Senator RIBICOFF. Mr. Nader, you refer throughout your book to the "secrecy" of the auto industry. Could you give us some examples as to what you mean by the secrecy of the industry?

Mr. NADER. Yes, sir.

I mentioned that in two contexts. One, for the consumer's benefit, and the other for the scientific community's benefit.

Let's take a look at it from the point of view of the car buyer. He goes to a dealer and he is told what the acceleration capabilities of his car are, and what the rated horsepower of his car is. But if he wants to ask what the safety characteristics and values of his automobile are, he will not be given that.

He won't be given for example, what the brake-stopping distances are, what the tire-blowout strengths are. He won't be informed what the cushioning ability of instrument panels and instruments are or door latch strength effectiveness, or roof strength, or the difference between the rollover resistance of a hardtop convertible without the upper center post and the regular four-door sedan. So that it is very, very difficult for him to know about the safety of his vehicle.