Ralph Nader’s book Unsafe at Any Speed, rising vehicle death rates, and publicity surrounding the lack of safety in the motor vehicle industry moved the topic of motor vehicle safety to the forefront of the national mind, prompting reactions from the public, vehicle manufacturers, and the government.
Rising Injury and Death
Car Crash Deaths and Rates
"In this century, more than one and a half million of our fellow citizens have died on our streets and highways—nearly three times as many Americans as we have lost in all our wars. Every 11 minutes, a citizen is killed on the road."
"Last year,
50,000 were killed and the tragic totals have mounted every year. It makes auto accidents the
biggest cause of death and injury among Americans under 35. And if our accident rate continues,
one out of every two Americans can look forward to being injured by a car."
Failures of programs attempting to tamp down on accidents by modifying driving behavior, such as stricter speed-limit enforcement and greater driving education pushes, were drawing increasing attention in the early 1960s, with figures such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the assistant secretary of labor, speaking out to urge changes in approach. (Mashaw)
Publication
In 1965, car safety lawyer-cum-activist Ralph Nader published
Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers Of The American Automobile. The book was an outspoken critique of the automobile industry’s safety record, especially focusing on General Motors’ 1961 Chevrolet Corvair. (Nader)
The book publicized how investigations into accidents primarily looked to the driver’s negligence as the cause of injury, rather than design issues with the cars themselves. (Nader 235)
“Not until
1,125,000 more
fatalities and
tens of millions of injuries had occurred did a Congressional Committee open hearings on the
conditions that cause this massive casualty count” (Nader 295).
UNSAFE AT ANY SPEED: The Designed-in Dangers of the American Automobile, and contained diagrams