Issues
Nader made American car buyers demand safer, cleaner vehicles
Here’s something I never thought I’d say: Ralph Nader is fascinating to speak with, and I admire and respect his contribution to the auto industry.
That’s an about-face for me. When I discovered cars in the early 1970s, Nader was the enemy.
Nader’s the one who really opened the door to government oversight of the automobile industry with his landmark 1965 book, Unsafe at Any Speed, and his testimony before Congress the following year that helped lead to the creation of the agency that morphed into the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Nation’s top highway safety official backs seat belts in school buses
The nation’s top highway safety official said Sunday that his agency has vowed to pursue a policy mandating that every school bus in the nation be equipped with three-point seat belts.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administrator Mark R. Rosekind used his keynote address at a conference of school transportation officials in Richmond, Virginia, to announce that his agency will focus research on the effectiveness of seat belts aboard school buses.
Unsafe At Any Speed – Fiftieth Anniversary (1965-2015)
November 30, 2015, marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Ralph Nader’s landmark book Unsafe at Any Speed. The book focused on the faulty rear suspension system of the General Motors Corvair, This defect could cause the Corvair to skid violently and roll over. The corporate negligence that had produced the various Corvair defects, Nader said, was “one of the greatest acts of industrial irresponsibility.” More generally, Unsafe at Any Speed documented how Detroit habitually subordinated safety to style and marketing concerns.
50 Years Ago, ‘Unsafe at Any Speed’ Shook the Auto World
FEW DRIVERS could imagine owning a car these days that did not come with airbags, antilock brakes and seatbelts. But 50 years ago motorists went without such basic safety features.
Road Warrior: Safety advocates contend highway bill won’t cut it
Safety first!
Perhaps Congress could grasp what that accident-prevention slogan meant when it was coined during the golden age of railroading in 1873, a time when the federal government managed to scrape by on a $290 million budget. But this week, safety priorities seem open to question as House and Senate conferees attempt to patch together a transportation budget that would spend a few hundred times more each year than it took old Ulysses S. Grant to run the whole country back then.
Questions raised about General Motors, government action in recall over thousands of car fires
DETROIT – Shortly after Elizabeth Berry parked her bright yellow 2003 Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS on the street in front of her family’s home in May 2014, flames engulfed the engine, destroying the car and scorching her mailbox.
“I was hysterical. That was like my third baby,” she says of the car.
Compounding the shock was the fact that five years earlier, Berry had answered a recall notice from General Motors for a repair that was supposed to prevent engine fires.
ARCCA Petition for Rulemaking on NHTSA Seating System Regulations, FMVSS 207
ARCCA PETITIONS THE NHTSA TO PROTECT OCCUPANTS IN REAR-END COLLISIONS
Alan Cantor of ARCCA submitted a petition to NHTSA in 1989 r
How a small White House agency stalls life-saving regulations
The little-known Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs can delay, rewrite or kill rules mandated by Congress, and as the case of requiring rearview cameras on cars shows, it often uses that power.
COLUMBUS, Ohio – But for a small, little-known White House agency, Melissa Helcher might not have killed Clark Biddle in a Columbus, Ohio, parking lot on a cold February day this year.