Steps Toward Safety

HIGHWAYS Steps Toward Safety

Auto safety has become such an urgent and popular issue (TIME Essay, April 1), particularly in Washington, that hardly a week passes without some action on several fronts:

> In hearings before the Senate Commerce Committee, New York's Senator Robert F. Kennedy echoed earlier pleas that the Administration strengthen its pending safety legislation and push up the deadline by which manufacturers would have to meet safety standards from the 1970 to the 1968 models. A persistent critic of Detroit's safety record, Kennedy pointed out that astronauts and test pilots undergo much greater shocks than do people in many auto accidents--and survive. He asked the Government to force automakers to do something about protecting passengers from the "second collision" when they slam into a car's interior. "Our automobiles," he said, "are simply not designed to protect the passengers under these shocks." When military commanders want money to improve safety at airbases, added Kennedy, "they place the boots of dead pilots on the conference table before them. The boots of millions of traffic victims--past and future--are on the table before us. It is time to act."

> The Senate passed. 79 to 0, an Administration measure authorizing the Secretary of Commerce to set minimum standards for tires, effective in August 1967. The bill would give the Secretary authority to force Detroit to equip its new cars with stronger load-bearing tires and to bar from the road so-called "cheapies," the substandard tires with fancy names that have an unfortunate history of blowouts.

> The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare told manufacturers that, effective with 1968 models, all cars sold in the U.S. must be equipped with devices that will curb exhaust fumes, which pollute the air in almost every major U.S. city and are potentially a major killer. HEW hopes that its new regulations, which will cut out about half of the carbon monoxide and hydrocarbon pollutants, will clear the air somewhat by the end of the decade, as new cars replace older smoky models.

> To focus legislative attention on the chief causes of accidents, about which auto experts have little precise data, the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory announced that it will conduct a three-year study of accidents in Buffalo, N.Y. Said Dr. B. J. Campbell, head of the laboratory's accident research division: "We don't want to make a massive allocation of the country's resources to combat an accident cause that maybe ranks only 87th among causes." The study will be financed with $800,000 from the Automobile Manufacturers Association.

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