Car safety wars
Subtitle: one hundred years of technology, politics, and death
By: Michael R. Lemov
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 255
ISBN-13: 9781611477450
Subjects: Automobiles; Safety measures; Law and legislation; Safety regulations
Description: This study recounts the history of the hundred-year struggle to improve the safety of American automobiles and save lives, a long battle that was won by consumers and safety advocates only after decades of defeat. The major victory was the enactment in 1966 of a federal safety law, which cut highway deaths and injury rates by 70 percent. But the safety wars have not ended. General Motors and Toyota, among others, have for years failed to report defective vehicles, demonstrating that safety laws and agencies created with good intentions can be corrupted and strangled over time. The author suggests ways to avoid these undesirable consequences, but he also cautions that safer cars and highways are difficult to come by and that we are only part of the way home.--Adapted from publisher description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 237-244) and index.
Table of contents: title: Love and death on the open road; title: Voices in the wilderness; title: Just a congressman from a small state; title: Safety doesn't sell; title: General Motors meets Ralph Nader; title: A federal law; title: Dr. Haddon, Detroit, and the new safety agency; title: Dragon lady; title: The birth and near death of the air bag; title: Elizabeth Dole, State Farm, and how America got the air bag; title: Rough road for recalls : Ford Pinto gas tanks to GM ignition switches; title: Forcing technology : safety standards in the new century.