WHY CARS MUST-AND CAN-BE MADE SAFER

THAT most typical product of American civilization--1 the auto--brings joy, jobs, mobility, freedom. It also brings economic waste and human pain. Death and destruction on the highway are now the subject of muckraking books, rock-'n'-roll ballads, congressional inquiry, and serious self-examination in Detroit. The auto represents power, speed and progress--and each of these elements involves risk. As long as men move, there will be accidents. But need there be so much human cost? Clearly the answer is no.

Asked not long ago why his industry did not design more safety into its products, Ford Group Vice President Lee Jacocca replied: "Styling sells cars and safety does not." But the mood of carmakers and their customers is shifting drastically. The industry is rushing to build safety devices into cars, partly because the public is becoming aroused, and partly because the manufacturers are afraid that the federal and state governments will devise strict safety standards and force them on the industry. Washington already has safety and performance standards for every major form of transportation--except the automobile. U.S. Senators Abraham Ribicoff, Robert Kennedy, Gaylord Nelson and others, who continued some well-publicized hearings last week (see U.S. BUSINESS), are pressing Congress to establish minimum safety requirements for cars, and prohibit from interstate commerce any vehicles or parts that fail to meet them, beginning with the 1967 models. President Johnson wants that too, but is willing to give the automakers until Model-Year 1970 voluntarily to comply with federal standards--and he will doubtless get his way. Meanwhile the courts have begun, under the doctrine of "strict liability," to hold the automakers liable for crash damages resulting from defective or dangerous car design.

The Sinister Superlatives

The statistics of malignant motoring are hard to face. One American is killed in traffic every eleven minutes. More than one-quarter of all U.S. autos are at some time involved in an injury-producing smashup. Since the auto was invented, it has killed 1,500,000 Americans, more than the toll in all the nation's wars. The number of fatalities has jumped 29% since 1961. Though the death rate has been cut by two-thirds since the 1930s, to 5.6 per 100 million vehicle miles last year, car travel is still substantially more dangerous than commercial plane travel.* The U.S. Air Force in 1965 lost nearly as many men in car crashes as in air crashes, including Viet Nam combat. In the U.S. last year, 20 million cars were involved in 14 million accidents. They killed 49,000 people, injured 1,800,000 others, and permanently disabled 200,000. The economic cost: $8.1 billion in lost wages, property damage, medical and insurance payments--a sum equal to 10 for every mile driven, or 1.2% of the gross national product. Auto accidents are the biggest cause of death and injury among American children, teen-agers and adults under 35. Unless the rate is reduced, one out of every two living Americans will some day be injured by a car, and one out of 72 will be killed.

Alleviating these sinister superlatives is an exciting idea: it is possible not only to prevent a large number of accidents, but also to immunize passengers against trauma and grave injury when accidents do occur. With effort and purpose, the nation could cut the traffic toll almost as sharply and effectively as it did smallpox and polio. In dozens of laboratories in Detroit, and on campuses from Harvard to U.C.L.A., engineers, statisticians, highway designers, and psychologists are working toward the goal of "delethalization."

The issue of auto safety is as complex as it is emotional, and the inevitable temptation is to lean on cliches and pick a scapegoat. The auto companies for years have blamed the driver, pointing to the National Safety Council's estimate that 85% of all accidents result from careless driving. Psychologists agree that driving is a direct extension of the human personality, reflecting tendencies to care, compassion, aggression or even suicide. Lately, however, some polemicists have been trying to place all the blame on the machines, not on the man. Most conspicuous among these is Lawyer Ralph Nader, who gained attention at last week's congressional hearings because G.M. had set private eyes on him after he wrote a book, Unsafe at Any Speed. It is an arresting, though one-sided, lawyer's brief that accuses Detroit of just about everything except starting the Vietnamese war. The manufacturers deserve some knocks for arrogance and a laissez-faire attitude toward safety, but Nader and other recent anti-auto authors weaken their case by overstating it. The traffic tragedy is a compound of many factors: bad roads, loose licensing, lax police, lenient judges, drinking and--not least--auto construction. Says National Safety Council President Howard Pyle: "There is no single offender. They are all interlocked."

Misrule of the Road

The first step toward safety would be for the Government to iron out the confusing, conflicting jumble of state traffic laws. No fewer than 12% of all fatal accidents involve out-of-state drivers. Experts estimate that if Washington were to make the laws and signs uniform on all roads--as they are throughout Europe--this alone would save 2,000 lives a year.

Some states and localities are inexcusably lax in granting driver's licenses to obvious incompetents. In New York, Massachusetts, Maine and Wyoming, drug addicts and mental defectives can get licenses. In Kansas, one state official discovered not long ago that 10% of the people receiving aid-to-the-blind payments were licensed to take the wheel. Children of 14 can be licensed in many states; in Montana, some 13-year-olds are permitted to drive--although one study by New York State showed that drivers under 18 have an accident rate 70% higher than older ones. Most drivers are tested only once in a lifetime, under ideal conditions at low speeds. On the highway--where they have to make 50 decisions per mile--they would flunk most elementary tests. Thirty states do not require periodic auto inspection, and those states tend to have the steepest death rates (the highest fatality rate is in California, the lowest in Connecticut).

Undoubtedly, the law should be tougher on drinking drivers. Half of all the fatally injured drivers are listed by police as "H.B.D."--Had Been Drinking. Tranquilizers also play a role: doctors calculate that one pill equals one drink. The U.S. might be wise to emulate Sweden, where police routinely stop drivers and take suspected drinkers to the station house for blood tests; anyone with more than .05% alcohol in his blood stream (about one cocktail) is sentenced to as much as six months in jail. That is more than many a drunken driver in the U.S. gets for killing a child with his car.

The Two Collisions

Because laws, highways and the human personality are difficult to alter, Detroit is beginning to realize that it will have to try harder to improve the car itself. To what extent could new designs reduce fatalities? Safety engineers at Harvard, Cornell, some of the insurance companies and in the Government believe that it is possible to build a stylish and economical yet fairly fail-safe car that would cut highway casualties by half. Achieving that would require, among other things, more reliable brakes and sturdier tires, bigger mirrors, better window visibility, and other devices to help prevent the "first collision"--the crash between a car and another object. Much more important, the safety scientists have lately begun to emphasize the "second collision" that occurs eight-tenths of a second later--the crash between the passengers and the car's insides, or against outside objects if passengers are thrown from the car. While drivers are responsible for most accidents, safety engineers contend that Detroit's designs are largely responsible for injuries in the second collision. Now the goal is to alleviate that human damage by building stronger car bodies, smoother and better padded interiors, and superior harnesses for passengers.

In a collision, everything in the car flies forward at its original velocity, particularly the passengers. Like hammers striking nails, they ram into lethal little things: gearshift levers, air-conditioning ducts, ignition switches, chrome decorations on seats, glove compartments. One-fifth of the passenger fatalities result from being impaled by the steering wheel. The most dangerous place in the car is right next to the driver, the so-called death seat. Three-fifths of all passenger deaths are caused by striking the instrument panel, the roof, the windshield or its pillars, or being thrown from the car.

The most common driver's fault in auto mishaps is speed. High horsepower is not necessarily dangerous; it can be a lifesaver in passing another car. But there is little reason for anybody to top 80 m.p.h. Asks George Romney, who has become particularly safety conscious since leaving the American Motors presidency to become Governor of Michigan: "Has the auto industry not neglected safety for style and overemphasized speed and power? It makes drivers feel that they are at Daytona Beach and not on highways." G.M. markets a limited-production Chevelle Z-16 that revs up to 160 m.p.h.; Ford last month also brought out a Galaxie that races up to 160 m.p.h., and Detroit sold the first one to Astronaut Gordon Cooper.

The Automobile Manufacturers Association has told its members since 1957 not to participate in races, but Ford and Chrysler have openly broken the ban, and General Motors does not prevent its dealers from slipping cars onto local drag strips. Racing spurs the sales of the winning car, especially in the Southern states where there's year-round weather for racing--and the auto fatality rate is the nation's highest. Says Chrysler Safety Director Roy Haeusler: "I find very little defense for our advertising the racing aspects of our cars." To back the contention that speed sells and safety does not, automakers cite the 1956 Ford, a heavily promoted "safety car" that was a dud. Of course, times change: back in 1956, people laughed at filter cigarettes too.

A Step Ahead of Washington

There is no denying that most of the public has been apathetic about using the surest, simplest protection against violent death: the seat belt. Robert Wolf, director of Cornell University's auto-crash injury research, says that if seat belts were used universally they would reduce traffic deaths by at least 35%--more than 17,000 lives a year. Only 30% of the nation's 90 million cars have seat belts, and only 36% of the drivers with belts use them all the time. Hundreds of irate motorists have complained to auto companies that the seat belts are uncomfortable to sit on, and frustrated drivers have used fists, hammers and screw drivers to bollix the red-flashing "Fasten Seat Belts" sign in the Ford Thunderbird. Psychologists reckon that people reject the seat belt because it is a fear-inducing reminder that accidents can happen, and it insults their ability to avoid them; many would rather indulge their foolhardy feelings of derring-do and invulnerability or their fatalistic instincts that "when it's my turn to go, I'll go." But Detroit is beginning to realize that safety can be salable. Meanwhile American Motors President Roy Abernethy thinks that the industry should do more "force-feeding" of safety features to consumers.

Washington's General Services Administration, which buys 60,000 Government cars annually, is doing some force-feeding of its own. Last year it issued a long list of safety demands for those cars, and while the Automobile Manufacturers Association managed to get the list softened, the

Government still insisted on better standards for steering columns, padding and door latches. After the GSA ordered 17 safety features built into its 1966 cars, the industry adopted half a dozen of them as standard equipment on all models--and tacked an average of $60 onto the price.

Racing to keep a step ahead of the federal regulators, General Motors in February announced that all its 1967 models would carry a dual-braking system and a collapsible steering column that would telescope on crash impact. American Motors will buy the steering column from G.M., and Chrysler hints that it is building its own, but Ford for now plans to stick with its rigid steering shaft, which meets GSA standards because it is recessed 31 inches below the rim of the steering wheel. Last month GSA said that it intends to make even more stringent demands for 1968 cars, among them rear-window defoggers, front-seat headrests to prevent whiplash injuries, lights and reflectors to mark the car's sides, stronger padding on the dash and on the back of front seats. Boston's Liberty Mutual Life Insurance Co. has built a "safety car"--a Chevy Bel Air with automatic fire extinguisher, seats with high, rounded backs to prevent whiplash, and a stay-awake alarm that a drowsy driver can set to ring if he loosens his grip on the wheel.

The New Package

Still unsatisfied, critics argue that the contemplated safety features are merely primitive tack-on devices, that the industry is morally obligated to build an entirely new package with a collapsible, shock-absorbing front end and tail, completely rounded or recessed interior fittings, and a rigid passenger compartment that would protect people like eggs in a crate. Would such cars be too expensive? The companies might well absorb the cost by cutting back on shiny chrome and spearlike ornaments that are now often hazards to both drivers and pedestrians. What of looks? As Chrysler Safety Chief Haeusler has put it: "To a great degree our cars are 'women's hats.' They have to have special attractiveness, and sometimes they even compromise with function." The car is indeed a product of compromise, but the view is gaining ground that the safety engineers must prevail over the stylists. Besides, Detroit's ingenuity is such that a safer car could look every bit as smart as the contemporary models.

Detroit argues that it is working at top speed to upgrade safety, but some problems now defy solution and demand more research. Says Ford President Arjay Miller: "Experience has taught us that intuition and common sense are poor guides. The obvious answer often turns out to be no answer at all." Not long ago, many experts thought that seat belts were dangerous, and that the best way to survive a crash was to be hurled out of the car--notions that experiments have proved to be dead wrong. The automakers have found that soft, spongy padding gives a deceptive sense of safety, does almost nothing to prevent injuries; engineers now use fairly stiff plastic and are looking for a more suitable insulation. They are also trying to devise shoulder harnesses that will prevent fractured skulls without breaking necks or backs in the process--and that passengers can be persuaded to use.

Even these devices are just a prelude. The auto companies are experimenting with a "drivometer"--a device attached to the brake, accelerator and steering apparatus that would warn a driver when he is performing sloppily. Ford is well along with a "wrist steer"--two small wheels at the driver's side that would replace the dangerous steering shaft. Engineers at G.M. are tinkering with "unicontrol," a sort of auto pilot that would pick up directional signals from the road.

The cars of 1966 are safer than ever, and the '67s will be safer still, but there is no car planned or existing that could not be substantially improved. "The automakers have voluntarily adopted many safety features, but they have not gone far enough," says National Safety Council Chief Pyle. When Detroit rolls out a truly crashproof car, it will make all other models obsolete and serve as the greatest goad to sales since Henry Ford's model T. It is eminently possible that the makers of the world's most joyous and necessary appliance will be able to slash the casualty rate by three-quarters--and that is well worth setting as a national goal.

*Air safety, also a growing source of worry, will be examined in a future TIME Essay.

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