Post-Gazette Editorial – 3/29/05

This page was last updated on April 2, 2005.

The drive to safety / Sometimes the government gets it right; Editorial; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; March 29, 2005.

This editorial is a hoot. If you believe this fiction, improved auto safety is purely a result of the government knowing better than we ignorant citizens. The editorial demonstrates the paper’s position that government drives its citizens, not vice versa. Given this view, I wonder what reason the PG gives for the failure of Prohibition.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject editorial.

“For all the knocks Americans like to give government for intervening too much or too little in their lives, one bureaucracy has reason to crow. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has hard evidence that auto safety measures promoted by government regulators since 1960 have worked significantly to save lives.

“Some 40 years ago, according to the government agency, 4.6 people were killed for every 100 million passenger-vehicle miles on the nation’s highways. Today that number is down to 1.25 deaths per 100 million miles. The lower fatality rate is attributed to safety measures that made a big difference for accident victims.

“Initially, Americans hated seat belts. They refused to wear them. In the early 1980s just one in 10 drivers buckled up. Today, four out of five do. Since 1960 NHTSA credits seat belts with saving 168,524 lives, or more than half the total number of lives saved -- 328,551 -- from various safety upgrades.

“And then there are energy-absorbing steering assemblies. The old steering columns were rigid and could impale drivers in a collision. They were once a leading cause of highway deaths. In today’s cars, they collapse like a telescope with a downward thrust instead of right into a driver’s chest. Chalk up an estimated 53,017 lives saved as a result.

“Front air bags, introduced only in the 1990s, were rated third among vehicle life-saving features in 2002 even though just 63 percent of all cars on the road had them. NHTSA found that air bags helped virtually all front-seat passengers in a crash -- ages 13 and older -- with 12,074 total lives saved.

“The list goes on: better instrument panels and padded dashboards, 21,043 lives; better door locks and hinges that help keep passengers inside a car, truck or van in a crash, 28,902; disc brakes and dual brake master cylinders, 13,053. Child safety seats, adhesive windshield bonding, stronger car frames and improved roof strength are some of the other innovations.”

[RWC] The editorial wants us to believe the NHTSA made the innovations. Not true, unless you think writing a regulation is innovation. In all cases the innovations came from auto manufacturers and/or their suppliers.

“Safety devices in cars have not all been enthusiastically embraced, either by the motoring public or by auto makers, which initially claimed they were too expensive and would hurt sales.”

[RWC] Some advances take time to be economically viable. That’s why we see most safety – and convenience – advancements appear initially in high-end vehicles. Purchasers of high-end vehicles can afford the high cost of new features. As technology advances and the production cost comes down, the advances find their way into lower-cost vehicles. We’ve seen this outside the auto industry with products like PCs and cell phones.

Let’s look at airbags. In 1969, regulators proposed making them mandatory by 1974. In reality it took nearly 18 years to make airbags economically and technically viable for large-scale production.

“Now, as these innovations have proved their value by helping to protect motorists from injury or death, they’re considered a selling point. That’s progress.”

[RWC] If you believe this editorial, you would think the auto industry didn’t offer safety features until the all-knowing government exerted force beginning in 1960.

The editorial author(s) failed to consider that some of us were alive before 1960 and have not lost our memories. I was three years old when my Dad took me to pick up our brand new 1956 Ford Customline at Beglin Ford in Rochester. Dad was a “Hudson” man at the time so why did he switch to Ford? Dad switched because you could get a safety package on the Ford that included seat belts, a padded dashboard, and a “flowerpot” steering wheel. A predecessor of the collapsing steering column, the “flowerpot” steering wheel collapsed when struck by the driver in an accident. For a lot of drivers, safety was a selling point long before the NHTSA existed.

Did the NHTSA have a positive impact? Probably. But in giving the government sole credit for auto safety advances, the editorial ignores several points.

· The editorial ignores the effect of the insurance industry. The insurance industry bases its rates partially on a vehicle’s safety and this affects buyer preferences. To a large degree, insurance premiums killed “muscle cars” in the early 1970s. Over aggressive fuel economy regulations then finished off high performance cars for 10-15 years, until technology caught up.

· The editorial ignores the effect of normal technological progress. Relatively speaking, the auto industry was still young in 1960. To a large degree, technological advancement in the auto industry was slowed from the beginning of the Great Depression in 1929 through the end of World War II in 1945. For several years after WWII, even “new” cars tended to be pre-war designs. Truly new designs didn’t appear until the early 1950s.

· The editorial ignores the effect of better roads. For example, the Interstate system didn’t begin construction until the late 1950s and many (most?) of our main roads were still two and three lanes.

· Did citizens – via Congress – drive many of the NHTSA regs? Our experience with Prohibition showed we would not tolerate laws we didn’t believe in.

· Would we have seen better results had we allowed the marketplace to operate on its own? Another way to ask this question is, did government standards hold us back? Regulations tend to have a nasty side effect of establishing de facto maximum requirements, not just de jure minimums.

In summary, the editorial credits the NHTSA with all lives allegedly saved as the result of auto safety equipment. In other words, the editorial assumes there would have been no auto safety advancements without government intervention.

I didn’t check the entire editorial for errors, but one jumped out at me. The editorial says “disc brakes and dual brake master cylinders” saved 13,053 lives. NHTSA regulations don’t require disk brakes. Despite no NHTSA requirement for disk brakes, 100% of domestic cars built beginning in 1978 have front disk brakes. I don’t know how many other safety features are incorrectly attributed to NHTSA regulations.

I also wonder about the claim government regulators promoted auto safety measures since 1960. The NHTSA’s predecessor – the National Highway Safety Bureau – wasn’t formed until 1966.