Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 963

529US3

Unit: $U62

[09-26-01 12:54:02] PAGES PGT: OPIN

888

GEIER v. AMERICAN HONDA MOTOR CO.

Stevens, J., dissenting

that possibility.
It is, however, quite clear to me that Con-
gress neither enacted any such rule itself nor authorized the
Secretary of Transportation to do so.
It is equally clear to
me that the objectives that the Secretary intended to achieve
through the adoption of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Stand-
ard 208 would not be frustrated one whit by allowing state
courts to determine whether in 1987 the lifesaving advan-
tages of airbags had become sufﬁciently obvious that their
omission might constitute a design defect in some new cars.
Finally, I submit that the Court is quite wrong to charac-
terize its rejection of the presumption against pre-emption,
and its reliance on history and regulatory commentary
rather than either statutory or regulatory text, as “ordi-
nary experience-proved principles of conﬂict pre-emption.”
Ante, at 874.

I

The question presented is whether either the National
Trafﬁc and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966 (Safety Act or
Act), 80 Stat. 718, 15 U. S. C. § 1381 et seq. (1988 ed.),1 or
the version of Standard 208 promulgated by the Secretary
of Transportation in 1984, 49 CFR § 571.208, S4.1.3–S4.1.4
(1998), pre-empts common-law tort claims that an automobile
manufactured in 1987 was negligently and defectively de-
signed because it lacked “an effective and safe passive re-
including, but not limited to, airbags.”
straint system,
App. 3.
In Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Assn. of United States, Inc.
v. State Farm Mut. Automobile Ins. Co., 463 U. S. 29, 34–38
(1983), we reviewed the ﬁrst chapters of the “complex and
convoluted history” of Standard 208.
It was the “unaccept-
ably high” rate of deaths and injuries caused by automobile
accidents that led to the enactment of the Safety Act in 1966.
Id., at 33. The purpose of the Act, as stated by Congress,

1 In 1994, the Safety Act was recodiﬁed at 49 U. S. C. § 30101 et seq.
Because the changes made to the Act as part of the recodiﬁcation process
were not intended to be substantive, throughout this opinion I shall refer
to the pre-1994 version of the statute, as did the Court of Appeals.