so let's look at the whole issue for
looking at analogy so look at the whole
issue of automotive risk look from
innovation that actually started that
emotion actually started in the early
eighteen hundreds which was a surprise
in there and in researching the op-ed
piece as well as this here was that it
turns out the first patent application
for something I came to a seat belt came
and 1860 something I thought was sort of
an interesting scene people barely
wrapping their heads around the notion
of an engine and they were already
thinking in terms of well if you had
this built you know this might be useful
in keeping you out of trouble
you really didn't see anything explosive
in terms of adaptation of the technology
you had plenty of patents filing a lot
of intellectual property that came out
from the fifties on for eighteen fifties
on but really of 1934 you solve any
really significant uptake and with that
you saw the placement of the first
traffic light didn't have laws that made
against the law to run it but hey folks
were figured that the stakes were high
enough they were willing to obey it in
the fifties you had your first offering
of seatbelt and and 51 you also had the
invention of the first model of airbags
the stuffs been here awhile you have
this idea in this matter during of ideas
to a lot of discussion as to what
hazards were existing because about a
motive technology but also it's kind of
a slap shot approach nothing unified the
same period of time then came the
fifties in the sixties and in that
you've got three major influencers you
have a fella named Kenneth Roger
department if Roberts who was a
congressman over a long period of time
he chaired the house subcommittee on
automotive safety and the fifties
actually convened it he says this is
epiphany occurred when he was rear-ended
by someone else on a honeymoon trip and
his mother-in-law who he says was a bit
OCD of these deals
back their household goods as if they
were going on a really rough move so
packed it you know a newspaper and
problem and padding and so forth and he
was fascinated find that although the
back of the car was totally destroyed
the contents of the boxes and their
household goods are still intact so this
inspired him to say well what would
happen you know people get injured and
killed in these automotive actions what
would happen if we actually said let's
do the same thing for the people in the
cars as well so started convening
committees in the nineteen fifties on
safety in 10 years before they actually
spawned the 65 bill that required safety
equipments and all automobiles and
Angela find is a pattern in legislative
remedies is supplied to the US
government in parallel to him as a
fellow named William had was a who is a
physician public health expert William
head and did a piece of work that was
considered a seminal to the whole area
of analyzing safety equipment not
emotion in and automobiles thing called
accident research talk about inspiring
titles which was published in 64 it was
really the first time that's the highway
safety countermeasures were subjected to
anything resembling formal scientific
scrutiny everything up until then as a
little before was sort of slipshod what
folks finally think about when they
think about side
automotive safety movements is Ralph
Nader and route actually came on the
heels of these other two gentlemen
ralph was interesting ralpherz an
attorney
ralph was very much a crusader I think
it was a he went to law school because
he had decided he was going to spend his
life doing crusading and a lot other we
think of him first is because he wrote a
book called unsafe very any speed in
which he made a lot of accusations of
the automotive industry and saying
effectively automotive industry did not
give a
now what about any thing resembling
automotive safety they were going to
focus on the performance and they were
going to focus on the glitzy designs and
then we're going to focus on everything
that had to do anything with the safe
usage of those automobiles and that
people were dropping like flies because
of it a lot of horrendous steals so the
focus of his in the focus of his
attention and unsafe at any speed which
is continues to be a best-seller 140
years later
fifty years later now that was the
infamous chevrolet corvair and the
Corvair had a flipping issue as well as
a badly place fuel tank which made a
kind of a fireball once it rolled over
is it was more apt to do he was out
there in terms of accusing the corporate
realm of not only being negligent but
being deliberately so being profit ears
at the expense of the public and this
sort of dovetailed with the efforts that
Roberts had in the legislative realm and
it led to the passage of one of the
major at the first major really big big
pieces of highway safety legislation it
also created a thing called the national
highway traffic safety first
administration now agency which is a
standalone component of the government
that does effectively that extends his
whole scene to allow government to take
a coherent look and do coherent tracking
over time as a statistics what's worth
noting is that before these guys
actually did their thing
automotive safety was considered
strictly an educational issue if it was
going to be addressed as far as a
government was concerned any safety
issue an automotive no matter how bad
the design of the automobile it was
considered to be a driver error or a
passenger error and it was going to be
considered from a legal legal liability
point of view
the problem of the driver never an issue
of the manufacturer Nader and his
crusade as well as some of the other
legislation that came through here kind
of blew the doors off that