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The 10 least safe cars of all time

You mean that the automakers fought the government from telling them what to build. This is natural and understandable. Not only because government telling them what to offer in their products is fundamentally wrong, but that they had tried to sell safety before and it wouldn't sell.

The idea that automakers didn't care for safety and didn't want to provide it is incorrect and any fair examination of history of the industry shows that. I've seen films of Henry Ford demonstrating laminated safety glass, the safety of the Chrysler Airstream, the benefits of GM's new braking systems in the 1930s, and much more. There has always been a drive to make safer vehicles and get the public to buy them.

However, the public didn't really start listening until the 80s. Then again, perhaps it had to do with the funds people had available to them, making safety a lower priority until their incomes increased or automakers increased productivity to where such things were affordable.

If at any time the car buying public had demanded safety devices the automakers would have provided them immediately. Many were *OPTIONS* for years before government made them required. They were options because most people wouldn't buy them back then.

Airbags are a prime example. Offered on expensive big three passenger cars in the early 1970s they weren't purchased often and problems were discovered with regards to children and small adults in using them to stop unbelted passengers. The government regulators refused to listen in the 1980s and the result was needless deaths from airbags designed to stop an average unbelted male.

What really needed to happen wasn't the growth of the government and using government force, but education of the american car buyer. All the safety regulations could evaporate right now and approximately nobody is going to knowingly buy a car that isn't as safe as we have come to know cars to be. That education has happened, all the government force didn't really make cars safer, it was the buyers demanding it. Government gets in the way right now with its CAFE requirements since today's buyers care far less about fuel economy than they do safety. While the government is more the reverse these days.

Reply to
Brent
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Doesn't shock me that the famous cost-benefit analysis was from a government "request". Here's a cite to back up what you have above:

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Reply to
Brent

You certainly are a princess of bullshit.

Reply to
Portnoy

Name calling is not an argument. Please learn some automotive history.

Reply to
Brent

Perhaps you'd prefer prince? In any case the concepts of classical physics, logic, govenment, law ... are quite obviously lost on you as they're farther over your head than is the exosphere

Reply to
Portnoy

whatsoever worthy of reading.

Reply to
Portnoy

Well GM and Nader reached a settlement wherein he was paid a large sum of money. And Nader was instrumental in leading folks like Ed to the conclusions they have drawn. Those are the facts and your claim that it bears no resemblance to the facts is a bit hollow.

I wasn't talking about what was in the book. We are talking about public perception. The public didn't read the book either.

Detroit didn't consider the attacks on the reputation of their small cars to be a detriment. The Corvair and Pinto were both popular car models that became unpopular in big hurry. Whether Detroit actively assisted in their demise or just let it happen makes very little difference in the end. It was a strategy that was only partially successful.

Reply to
jim

And the redesigned models were on the road before Nader published.

If they are 'unsafe at any speed' I'll just drive fast then!

Reply to
AMuzi

That GM paid him a large sum (the money from this case allowed him to lobby for consumer rights, leading to the creation the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Clean Air Act, among other things) is true, but for reasons which you have carefully, deceptively and pathetically avoided and remarks which you cowardly elected to truncate from your selectively edited non-responsive reply - those reasons being GM's invasion of his privacy and not for your stated excuse that "GM paid Ralph Nader something like a million dollars to deliver the message that the basic VW bug design was unsafe at any speed" as you so falsely claimed.

Irrespective of how often you continue this approach and repeat these same lies, they will remain just that.

Precious few books written in my lifetime have been more historic, were responsible for saving more lives or initiated an international consumer awareness.

More meaningless, non-responsive drivel.

Reply to
Portnoy

Please do so at your earliest convenience and at the highest rate of speed you can possibly attain (think 'cliff'), which should suffice quite nicely.

Reply to
Portnoy

My Corsa can't get much past 125mph. Too bad.

Reply to
AMuzi

Quite evidently you don't begin to understand the fundamentals of classical mechanics, either that or (unless you're a flatlander) you suffer from a debilitative reading comprehension issue.

Reply to
Portnoy

So you're religious, no wonder you're disregarding facts.

Reply to
Brent

Wrong yet again (what a surprise, eh), I'm an avowed atheist.

Reply to
Portnoy

The point went right over your head, which is not shocking in the least. It's pretty clear what you worship.

Reply to
Brent

"Portnoy" wrote in news:idlgqp$3af$ snipped-for-privacy@speranza.aioe.org:

By the time that book was published, Chrysler had been installing seat belts by default, unless the buyer specifically deleted them from the options list. The other makers probably did the same.

It was yellow journalism. Nader took much of his material from studies done by Stanford University. Stanford publicly distanced themselves from the book, saying that Nader had made a misleading hash of their work.

The engineers clearly recognized the need for safety features, and had been designing their cars to include more and more of them as time went on. The primary impediment was the public itself, as Ford found to its chagrin in the late-'50s.

Reply to
Tegger

Might I add Lady in Waiting of Innuendo in addition to Princess of Bullshit.

Please post again IFF you should EVER have anything of value to contribute.

Reply to
Portnoy

If you say so, clownboy.

Reply to
Portnoy

While that may be true for the Corvair after the Nader book, I don't think the same can be siad for the Pinto. Ford sold Pintos for a decade with realtively few upgrades. I'd say Ford jsut milked the Pinto until it was celarly obsolete compared to more modern cars from competitors. I suppose the Mother Jones hatchet job may have affected sales some, but I don't think you can blame the ultimate demise of the Pinto on safety conerns. I'd argue the Pinto died of obsolecence.

Ralph nader is lying creep. I imagine GM was jsut trying to prove he was in the pay of trail lawyers.

Ed

Reply to
C. E. White

Do kindly read and take to heart my remarks here as they're offered most sincerely: news:idm1de$jf2$ snipped-for-privacy@speranza.aioe.org...

Reply to
Portnoy

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