CAR SAFETY ROW

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31112, 15 July 1966, Page 11

CAR SAFETY ROW

(By

ADAM RAPHAEL.

, in the "Guardian”. Manchester. Reprinted by arrangement.)

FTHE controversy over safety in car design now in progress in the United States has obvious lessons for British car manufacturers. Nearly all the criticisms made of Detroit’s failure to concentrate on safety are equally applicable to most British firms. The catalyst of the present row is a book by a young Washington attorney, Ralph Nader, published at the end of last year under the title: “Unsafe at any speed—The Designed-in Dangers of the American Automobile.” In the best American tradition of muck-raking, it alleges that the public has been lulled and conned by car manufacturers into accepting a chromiumplated death trap as the best means of transport. The book’s thesis is that all new cars could and should be redesigned to reduce drastically the chance that death or serious injury would result from a collision. Steering columns, seats, safety belts, interior design, bumpers, and the shape of cars could all, it is said, be made significantly safer.

Why so little has been done, claims Nader, is because the automobile industry, with its mammoth advertising budget and pervasive patronage, has so tied up the press, Government agencies, and safety organisations that there has been insufficient pressure for reform. Even independent research organisations have been sucked into the industry’s camp. Safety researchers at Cornell University, for example, are probably doing the most advanced work on motor accidents in the world but their contacts with the industry are unhealthily close. “Unsafe at any speed” reports that the publication of a study on steering column penetration, which named specific makes, was mysteriously and indefinitely delayed for “re-evaluation after submission to the industry for technical guidance.” The result of this “conspiracy of silence” is that vast sums have been spent in persuading the public that incompetent drivers and to a lesser extent bad roads cause fatal accidents—much less has been done to make cars involved in accidents less of a lethal weapon to drivers, passengers, and pedestrians. The importance of Nader’s case is seen in United States accident statistics nearly 50,000 deaths and five million hurt each year—more than six times the British total. Not surprisingly the book itself has raised a hornets’ nest of writs, counter-writs, and Congressional and Senate hearings. But It has also succeeded brilliantly in its object of prodding the Government, public, and industry into action.

Bowing to the prevailing winds, America’s "big three” car firms have given a 10 million dollars grant to establish a safety research institute at the University of Michigan. But further ammunition has

been given to the industry’s critics by General Motors and Chrysler having to recall nearty two million late-model cars within the last two months to remedy mechanical defects in throttle linkages. General Motors has also announced that its 1967 models will have two major safety features —a collapsible steering column and dual braking system—and Ford has begun by offering front and rear safety belts as standard. If American manufacturers are now apparently moving belatedly in the right direction —what of Britain? Two years ago, the Sigma safety car, designed by Pininfarina, Italy’s leading coachwork specialist, and stylist for, among others, B.M.C. and Ferrari, was on show at European international exhibitions. But it is still only a prototype, dismissed by those who might have sponsored its production as an uneconomic pipe-dream. Mercedes Benz and to a lesser extent, Rover, and the Swedish Saab and Volvo companies have creditably done much pioneering work, but most European manufacturers have lagged behind, particularly in putting safety research findings into production. Ford, Vauxhall, and Rootes are now sponsoring a pro-

gramme of crash analysis at the Motor Industry Research Association testing ground at Nuneaton. But the techniques of injury prevention, as opposed to accident prevention, are still very much in their infancy in Britain. Britain’s car makers claim, with some justice, that much of the present criticism of the industry’s morals is unfair. Clearly no single manufacturer could put a full-blooded safety car into production without taking enormous economic risks. They also point to the public’s notorious indifference to safety features. For example only 15 per cent of cars in Britain are fitted with safety belts and of these only half are used with regularity. But if some of the attacks on the industry are misconceived, publicity for safety in design can do nothing but good if it alerts manufacturers to their responsibilities and the public to demanding absolute safety rather than absolute performance. Whether the industry will, by its own efforts, be able to rethink its whole conception of selling cars is perhaps doubtful. The answer may well lie in Britain, as in the United States, with the Government laying down minimum safety standards for all new cars, however much the industry dislikes it.