Ralph Nader--Car and Driver Interview

When you buy a new car, after you do the test drive you do a lot of sitting around in offices with plastic plants or showroom floors with shiny monster SUVs while they pile up the papers you need to sign, even when you pay cash the way we did in November when we bought our 2010 Town and Country. I can't just SIT. I have to be reading or writing, so I did both, and took notes on the Car and Driver interview with Ralph Nader in the September 2009 issue. Maybe you're too young to remember, but Ralph Nader was the consumer crank of my generation who got all the press in the 1960s and 70s. Didn't hurt that he was Hollywood handsome, very photogenic and quirky--he actually lived the lifestyle he recommended for others, as I recall. On auto safety, he says history has redeemed him, and the critics in the government, industry and the media now look like fools. Even the horse chariots in Roman times had a padded dash, he said.

"Everything we’ve gotten so far, we should have gotten years ago. And everything we don’t have, we should have gotten years ago. The first generation of auto safety devices are in play now—you know, seatbelts, airbags, padded dash panels, collapsible steering columns, side protection, head restraints, things like that—but there’s a second generation out there. Part of it is made up of upgrading existing standards that came out in 1968 or so, because they get obsolete. So we need to take that first generation and upgrade them—better collapsible steering columns, stronger side protection, airbags that protect you at higher speeds. Then there’s the second generation, of which most people are not aware, like collision-avoidance systems, much more effective vehicle dynamics in terms of handling and braking—all these should have been phased in back in the 1980s and 1990s. All in all, though, over a million lives have been saved."

When asked what he could have done differently, he responded,

"Well, I’d like to have had a different set of presidents."

But he also tosses in the unions with the automakers as blame worthy, and you can look at the current bailouts and payoffs for health care boondoggles and bennies right up to today to see that he is correct.

"Fuel efficiency, that was the real disaster. Anybody could have seen this coming, and the UAW and GM marched up on Capitol Hill and crushed, year after year, any attempt at fuel-efficiency legislation. And that’s why GM went bankrupt. They did it to themselves."

Then he closes with a quote (paraphrased I assume) from Ross Perot.

" He was talking to some senior GM executives in 1986, and he said here’s a company that doesn’t like its dealers, doesn’t like its workers, doesn’t like its customers—you people don’t even like each other!"

That said--and I do believe auto safety is important--it's not more so than some common sense. Lowering the speed limit to 55 in the 1970s not only saved thousands of lives and billions of gallons of fuel, it made driving far more pleasant and allowed much smoother, more pleasant trips. The decade following 1995 when the speed limits went back up (had been 55 mph), studies show an additional 12,500 people died and about 36,500 injured through 2006, even though overall deaths are going down due to safer cars, more seat belt use, and alcohol crack downs. And health care costs? Gracious, even lives that are saved through safety features, if those people are in an accident the costs to the person, the insurance companies, their investors, the court system in litigation and the state and federal tax system while people are out of work, are billions. Better to get the driver and passengers to their location at "fifty five and alive," but no one wants that any more. The death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan of our brightest and best? Not high compared to our highways. We lose 5,000+ teen-agers (16-20) a year on the highways just because we won't raise the legal driving age from 16 to 18! Their passengers are in danger, too--nearly 5,000 teen passengers were killed in 2006.

Where are our priorities! I can only conclude there is no political advantage to either party or lobbyists or the free market or wing-nuts at either end of the political spectrum to save lives through common sense and raising the legal age to drive.