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Finally you can understand the lacking level of road safety in US versus European countries that have in service safety policies that will reduce the absolute number of killed by 30% over 5 years.
This book is the necessary building stone to the effort to make car manufacturers accountable for the safety level of his products.
I can't understand why some publisher is not doing a new edition of it.
Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile by Ralph Nader, published in 1965, is a book detailing resistance by car manufacturers to the introduction of safety features, like seat belts, and their general reluctance to spend money on improving safety. It was a pioneering work, openly polemical but containing substantial references and material from industry insiders. It made Nader a household name.
Unsafe at Any Speed is often characterized as the book "about the Corvair", though only one of the book's eight chapters covers the Corvair. The theme of tire pressures chosen for comfort rather than safety is recurrent, and the main theme throughout is the way in which the automobile industry evaded even well-founded and technically informed criticism.
Nader claims that GM responded to Nader's criticism of the Corvair by trying to destroy Nader's image and to silence him. It "(1) conducted a series of interviews with acquaintances of the plaintiff, "questioning them about, and casting aspersions upon [his] political, social, racial and religious views; his integrity; his sexual proclivities and inclinations; and his personal habits"; (2) kept him under surveillance in public places for an unreasonable length of time; (3) caused him to be accosted by girls for the purpose of entrapping him into illicit relationships (4) made threatening, harassing and obnoxious telephone calls to him; (5) tapped his telephone and eavesdropped, by means of mechanical and electronic equipment, on his private conversations with others; and (6) conducted a "continuing" and harassing investigation of him."
On March 22, 1966, GM President James Roche was forced to appear before a United States Senate subcommittee, and to apologize to Nader for the company's campaign of harassment and intimidation. Nader later successfully sued GM for excessive invasion of privacy. It was the money from this case that allowed him to lobby for consumer rights, leading to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Clean Air Act, among other things.[citation needed]
The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) issued a press release dated 12 August 1972, setting out the findings of 1971 NHTSA testing—after the Corvair had been out of production for more than three years. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) had conducted a series of comparative tests in 1971 studying the handling of the 1963 Corvair and four contemporary cars, a Ford Falcon, Plymouth Valiant, Volkswagen Beetle, Renault Dauphine—along with a second generation Corvair with revised suspension design. The subsequent 143-page report (PB 211-015, available from NTIS) reviewed a series of actual handling tests designed to evaluate the handling and stability under extreme conditions; a review of national accident data compiled by insurance companies and traffic authorities for the cars in the test—and a review of related General Motors/Chevrolet internal letters, memos, tests, reports, etc. regarding the Corvair's handling. NHTSA went on to contract a three man advisory panel of independent professional engineers to review the scope and competency of their tests. This review panel then issued its own 24-page report (PB 211-014, available from NTIS), which concluded that "the 1960-63 Corvair compares favorably with contemporary vehicles used in the tests...the handling and stability performance of the 1960-63 Corvair does not result in an abnormal potential for loss of control or rollover, and it is at least as good as the performance of some contemporary vehicles both foreign and domestic."
Former GM executive John DeLorean asserted in On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors (1979) that Nader's criticisms were valid. [page needed] Former Ford and Chrysler President Lee Iacocca said the Corvair was 'unsafe' and a 'terrible' car in his book, Iacocca: An Autobiography.
Thomas Sowell argued in The Vision of the Anointed (1995) that Nader was ignorant and dismissive of the trade-off between safety and affordability. According to Sowell, Nader also did not pay much attention to the fact that motor vehicle death rates per million passenger miles fell over the years from 17.9 in 1925 to 5.5 in 1965.
Journalist David E. Davis, in a 2009 article in Automobile Magazine, criticized Nader for purportedly focusing on the Corvair while ignoring other contemporary vehicles with swing-axle rear suspensions, including cars from Porsche, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen, notwithstanding the fact that Nader's Center for Auto Safety had published a book critical of the Beetle. Furthermore, Motor Trend magazine has noted handling problems with the 50's era Mercedes 300SL Gullwing.
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