Why Does the Auto Industry Oppose Safety Improvements?
Earlier this month, safe streets advocates received a rare piece of good news: the National Highway Highway Traffic Safety Administration, for the first time, will require automakers to test their cars’ safety for pedestrians, not simply drivers and passengers.
The proposal is not radical: it would require automakers to conduct “hood-to-head” safety tests to ensure cars are being designed to limit pedestrian deaths in the US, which have risen by more than 50% in the past nine years to levels not seen since 1981.
Near the bottom of its article covering the announcement, NPR dropped an ominous note: though safe street advocates praised the news, “the auto industry may not be so welcoming,” NPR’s Joel Rose wrote, noting that industry trade groups like the Alliance for Automotive Innovation (AAI) are “still reviewing” the proposal.
“Safety is a top priority,” begins the Alliance for Automotive Innovation’s response, rather disingenuously, I might add, considering the group comprises Ford, BMW, Ferrari, GM, Honda, Hyundai, et al., and its entire raison d’etre is to maximize profits and limit liability for its car-making members.
The industry mouthpiece’s next line, particularly the choice of adverb, also rings false for anyone with a cursory understanding of the auto industry’s approach to safety reforms: “Automakers have voluntarily developed and introduced many crash avoidance technologies to help make roads safer for pedestrians and road users.”
If you’ve read the first two parts of our series, then you heard the discordant note: the auto industry has never “voluntarily” done anything that would hurt its bottom line.
Sure, they may sell you an option for a little light that will blink in your side mirror when another car is nearby, but when victims and advocates cry out for safer automobiles and governmental agencies begin to apply pressure to implement logical safety measures, the auto industry, which, as we have been told, values safety above all else, believes we need “further study.” We never have quite enough information.
Common sense says that we should design cars to ensure as few people die as possible. But, when it comes to auto safety, common sense often takes decades to prevail.
For perhaps no automotive safety measure is this truer than the seatbelt, a common-sense, life-saving device that for decades was portrayed as an impractical gizmo worn only by the lily-livered that was perhaps more dangerous than eschewing one altogether.
As the auto industry’s lobbyists prepare for the next legislative session, changing the dates on their copied-and-pasted statement on how “safety is our top priority, which is why we need to ‘study’ this for a few more years before we do anything,” let’s consider the saga of the seat belt.
The Second Collision
Seat belts first became prevalent in airplanes around World War I, “when staying in his craft was one of a pilot’s biggest challenges,” Ralph Nader writes in his seminal Unsafe at Any Speed.
By the end of the 1920s, the US government mandated seat belts installed and worn on all civilian passenger aircraft, but “the transfer of safety knowledge and attitudes from airplanes to automobiles lagged greatly then, as it has ever since,” Nader writes, adding that the majority of race car drivers didn’t wear seat belts through the ‘30s and ‘40s because “the man who did was considered to lack courage.”
Though there was plenty of public outcry about the deadly cars careening down American roads in the first half of the 20th century, the public was largely ignorant of the mechanics and true dangers of an automobile collision — through no fault of its own.
“The public had no choice but to rely upon the automobile manufacturers as its sole source of information. The industry had the field to itself and chose to dispense no information whatsoever.”
With little public knowledge available on how car crashes specifically affect those inside the car, safe-streets advocates focused their approach on decreasing collisions and crashes in the first place.
But, by the early ‘50s, advocates like Indiana state policeman Sgt. Elmer Paul wondered if we shouldn’t focus more on what he termed the “second collision”: the impact of the occupants on the inside of the vehicle that occurs in the instant following the first collision. After all, “this second collision was what caused killing and maiming,” as Nader writes.
Pioneering researchers at Cornell University wanted to study the second collision, and their findings were stark: ejection from the vehicle accounted for about 25% of serious and fatal injuries, and the risk of death increased fivefold if the victim was thrown from the car — debunking the common misconception that being trapped in a car was the true danger in a fiery crash.
Finally, after the release of numerous damning independent studies and years of clamoring from safe-streets advocates, the automakers responded in 1955 when Chrysler and Ford announced that they would make seat belts an available option on new cars — at extra cost.
It took nearly 10 years, January 1964, before “the auto industry, prodded by legislation and overwhelming public pressure, accepted the proposition that seat belts should be standard equipment with all new cars,” Nader writes.
General Motors Mischief
Throughout the fight over seat belts, the loudest voices of auto-industry opposition belonged to General Motors’ engineering vice president Charles Chayne and vehicle safety engineer Howard Gandelot.
Chayne’s (stated) reasons for opposing the seat belt were twofold: one, “there is not sufficient factual information on the protective value of seat belts in automobiles to form any definite conclusions,” Chayne said, neglecting to mention that the auto industry had been the party responsible for the dearth of information on all safety automotive matters; and two, that “there is little interest on the part of the motoring public in actual use of seat belts.”
(For what it’s worth, this second reason is the same circular logic used by drivers who don’t want precious car lanes removed for bike lanes: the lack of public acceptance or demand for reform is then used as a reason for not promoting said reform. Little thought is given to the rather logical notion that perhaps some promotion would help people understand and accept reforms.)
For his part, Gandelot, GM’s vehicle safety engineer, provided some personal anecdotal evidence that seat belts weren’t viable: Gandelot recounted “how the seat belts and shoulder harnesses he had tested restricted his ability to reach some of the vehicle controls, rumpled his suit and gave him aches,” and accused seat belt proponents of being motivated by “the profit angle.”
Gandelot calling safety engineers and safe-streets advocates avaricious is rich, but it’s even richer (literally and figuratively) when you consider the era: each year between 1955 and 1960, the period during which Gandelot was bellyaching about his rumpled suits, General Motors earned the top spot on the Fortune 500 list of American companies, pocketing at least $800 million annually.
In 1956, GM banked $1,189,500,000 in profits, or $13,567,020,000 in today’s money. More than one billion dollars in profit in 1956 money, more than $13 billion in today’s, and safety advocates asking for fewer motor deaths are the ones pursuing profit at all costs?
The real reason for auto-industry opposition, Nader argues, is much simpler (and more consequential to automakers’ profits): “the seat belt is a constant reminder to the motorist of the risk of accident.”
Cars and the Illusion of Control
For automakers, an emphasis on a car’s safety features, like seat belts, “could only serve to focus public attention on the role of vehicle design in causing injuries during the second collision,” Nader writes. This, of course, is not something the auto industry wants you to think about.
It would be bad for automakers if you stopped and thought about how driving on American roads is far more deadly than it has any logical reason to be. That mad, mad world outside your car is not your concern: no, you’re the captain of your vessel, with all the most cutting-edge, industry-leading instruments at your fingertips and the creature comforts of an American living room around you. You have all the control.
Maintaining the illusion of control is vitally important for carmakers; a 2023 study found that drivers from around the world preferred a car over other transportation options because of “the sense of control over one’s own life, autonomy, and the freedom to use it when desired and to any destination.”
This kind of public perception doesn’t come cheap: the auto industry spends $14 billion annually — a greater sum than the U.S.’s total federal transportation budget — to advertise to Americans.
And what do these car commercials never depict? Other cars. Drivers in car commercials tend to be driving alone, whether it’s a smiling family driving down a scenic coastal highway on its way to a beach picnic or a dusty truck that keeps getting two-by-fours inexplicably dropped into its bed while it bounces along a closed course in the desert.
It’s a comforting feeling, imagining that you are in complete control of a 4,000-pound vehicle that can reach speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour. But it’s an illusion that is not only inaccurate but dangerous. By cultivating the illusion that you are in complete control, the auto industry is also shifting responsibility from a car’s designers, safety engineers, and manufacturers to you. After all, you’re in control, right?
Take Back Control From the Auto Industry
Passive speed governors, of the kind proposed in Senate Bill 961, would elicit an audible alert when drivers are speeding at least 10 mph above the speed limit — similar to the “ding” your car chirps out when you haven’t buckled our old friend the seat belt.
Passive speed governors puncture the illusion of control and remind drivers that they are, unfortunately, in quite a lot of danger any time they’re in a car. This is why our well-moneyed foes at the Alliance for Automotive Innovation have opposed SB 961 this legislative session.
AAI has spent $818,844.71 in 2023-2024 on “general lobbying,” according to state spending disclosures, hiring three firms to represent their interests in Sacramento: Politico Group; Read & Associates; and Nielsen, Merksamer, Parrinello, Gross & Leoni (better known as Nielsen Merksamer).
From April 1 to June 30, 2024 the latest period covered by AAI’s required filings, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation paid $59,258 to the three firms to help shape their “message” on bills like SB 961. And what did that money get them?
This three-pronged argument, taken from AAI and the California New Car Dealers Association’s “Arguments in Opposition” in the Aug. 31 Senate Analysis of SB 961, which is worth quoting in full.
The auto industry opposes the bill because, in their words:
“Federal regulators are already addressing this issue and, to address pedestrian safety, have recently mandated automatic emergency braking (AEB) systems on vehicles beginning in 2029.”
“Unlike the EU, California’s road infrastructure does not enable the technology mandated by this bill to be effectively implemented.”
“Automatically limiting vehicle speed does not, in and of itself, improve pedestrian safety.”
So, to summarize, the auto industry opposes SB 961 because:
(1) someone else should worry about it
(2) it won’t work here because AMERICA; and
(3), most astonishingly, that the speed at which cars strike pedestrians somehow doesn’t matter — to which I would reply “what about physics?” and then share this photo:
The AAI’s lobbyists end their “argument” by suggesting that, and stop me if this sounds familiar, speeding is in fact quite a complex issue that requires a lot more time and study — though the carmakers do throw in one awfully convenient “solution” in the form of self-driving cars: “SB 961 will not necessarily improve safety. Indeed, increasing pedestrian safety requires a suite of solutions including, but not limited to: Enforcement of speeding laws and driver education, implementation of a transportation infrastructure that supports advanced vehicle safety tech, and rules to enable automated driving systems that comply with speed limits.”
These are not serious arguments, and, when it comes to safety, these are not serious people. As we have seen, time and again, the auto industry is not interested in safety, only its profits, and it’s high time that we stopped taking their claims seriously.
As of this writing, SB 961 sits on the Governor’s desk, awaiting his signature. If Governor Newsom vetoes this bill, it will be because he listened to the money and the dubious claims of an industry that inflicts massive human suffering on the American public, day after day — not the families who’ve been torn apart by traffic violence.