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Unsafe at Any Speed [Paperback]

Ralph Nader (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)


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Product Details

  • Paperback: 367 pages
  • Publisher: Knightsbridge Pub Co Mass; 25th Anniversary edition (March 1991)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1561290505
  • ISBN-13: 978-1561290505
  • Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,743,826 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Named by The Atlantic as one of the hundred most influential figures in American history, and by Time and Life magazines as one of the most influential Americans of the twentieth century, Ralph Nader has helped us drive safer cars, eat healthier food, breathe better air, drink cleaner water, and work in safer environments for more than four decades.

The crusading attorney first made headlines in 1965 with his book Unsafe at Any Speed, a scathing indictment that lambasted the auto industry for producing unsafe vehicles. The book led to congressional hearings and automobile safety laws passed in 1966, including the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act. He was instrumental in the creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CSPC), and the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA). Many lives have been saved by Nader's involvement in the recall of millions of unsafe consumer products, including defective motor vehicles, and in the protection of laborers and the environment. By starting dozens of citizen groups, Ralph Nader has created an atmosphere of corporate and governmental accountability.

Ralph Nader's most popular books include, from Seven Stories, In Pursuit of Justice and The Ralph Nader Reader. His most recent bestselling books were The Good Fight (2004) and The Seventeen Traditions (2007), both published by HarperCollins. "Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!" is Nader's first work of imagination. It will be published by Seven Stories Press on September 22, 2009.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
20 of 21 people found the following review helpful
A MUST !!! June 27, 2008
Format:Hardcover
As a Traffic Safety Specialist, this book is a MUST, this old book needs to be mandatory reading for any person interested in Road Safety, Ralph documented the resistance of car companies to the introduction of safety features, like safety belts, that looks timely today, for example with the lobby that produce a delay in the mandatory fitting of air bags. Also you will learn how the primitive road safety components, still used in USA, called the three E's (Engineering, Enforcement, Education ) was born as a device to direct the efforts to the community away from the real problems of safety of the vehicles, some of the that was sell with tires that don't resist the weight of the fully loaded vehicle !.

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.
Was this review helpful to you?
20 of 23 people found the following review helpful
Format:Unknown Binding
As a Traffic Safety Specialist, this book is a MUST, this old book needs to be mandatory reading for any person interested in Road Safety, Ralph documented the resistance of car companies to the introduction of safety features, like safety belts, that looks timely today, for example with the lobby that produce a delay in the mandatory fitting of air bags. Also you will learn how the primitive road safety components, still used in USA, called the three E's (Engineering, Enforcement, Education ) was born as a device to direct the efforts to the community away from the real problems of safety of the vehicles, some of the that was sell with tires that don't resist the weight of the fully loaded vehicle !.

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.

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Was this review helpful to you?
17 of 20 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
This is one of the best books you will ever read as a consumer or environmentalist. You will love the way Nader brings to shame the Automotive Industries of the 50s and 60s on the issues of saftey and health (which should be the most important, duh!). His persuasive skill to make logic so obvious is fantasic.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
The Bible of Auto Safety
This great work continues to this day to inspire progress in auto safety. Unsafe at Any Speed is a classic, that changed the world for the better. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Angel
Pleased
I read 'Unsafe at Any Speed' when it first came out. My dad purchased used Corvairs for $100 . . . that would last six months or so. Read more
Published 19 months ago by Victoria M. Wall
The Crusade for Auto Safety
The first section tells about the events since this book was published in 1965. Cars were built without any safety standards or to keep repair costs low (p.42). Read more
Published on October 21, 2008 by Acute Observer
Revealing but very dated
Listed by Human Events as a "(dis)honorable mention" the "Most Harmful Books of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries", Ralph Nader's "Unsafe at Any Speed" remains the most famous... Read more
Published on October 7, 2008 by mianfei
A MUST !!!
As a Traffic Safety Specialist, this book is a MUST, this old book needs to be mandatory reading for any person interested in Road Safety, Ralph documented the resistance of car... Read more
Published on June 27, 2008 by Milton Bertin Jones
A MUST !!!
As a Traffic Safety Specialist, this book is a MUST, this old book needs to be mandatory reading for any person interested in Road Safety, Ralph documented the resistance of car... Read more
Published on June 27, 2008 by Milton Bertin Jones
Oldie, but goodie
Nader hit the nail right on the head with this book, exposing engineering problems in what was supposed to be a major new automobile. Read more
Published on August 23, 2007 by Linda J. Manson
good book for auto safety
this is a good book for anyone interested in auto safety. for the record though, Mr. Nader's explanation that the wheels "tuck under" is impossible. Read more
Published on November 20, 2005 by Pierre Bourgon
Landmark Publication
This is a book that should be on every high school curriculum, along with Huck Finn, Anne of Green Gables, the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Hamlet, and The Wealth of... Read more
Published on May 15, 2005 by Demosthenes
Questioning Power!
This book does a brilliant job of questioning corporate power, and the interests that put the consumer's at risk for the sake of the bottom line. Read more
Published on September 5, 2004 by endeavor8000
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Book Extras from Other Websites

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Introduction (From Wikipedia)

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.

Theme (From Wikipedia)

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.

Attribution: The information appearing above in this tab is from Wikipedia: Unsafe at Any Speed. Amazon is not affiliated with, and neither endorses, nor is endorsed by Wikipedia or any of the authors who contributed to this article. The Wikipedia content may be available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, version 3.0 or any later version, available at: CC BY-SA. Additional or other terms may apply. See Wikipedia Terms of Use for details.

Criticisms (From Wikipedia)

Industry response

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]

Other criticisms

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.

Attribution: The information appearing above in this tab is from Wikipedia: Unsafe at Any Speed. Amazon is not affiliated with, and neither endorses, nor is endorsed by Wikipedia or any of the authors who contributed to this article. The Wikipedia content may be available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, version 3.0 or any later version, available at: CC BY-SA. Additional or other terms may apply. See Wikipedia Terms of Use for details.

Further reading (From Wikipedia)

  • Unsafe at Any Speed The Designed-In Dangers of The American Automobile (1965 ) Grossman Publishers, New York LC # 65-16856
  • Interview With Dr. Jorg Beckmann of the ETSC. "Safety experts and the motor car lobby meet head on in Brussels." TEC, Traffic Engineering and Control, Vol 44 N°7 July/August 2003 Hemming Group ISSN 0041 0683
  • Still Unsafe at Any Speed Auto Defects That Cause Wrongful Deaths and Catastrophic Injuries (2009) Equalizer Books, Newport Beach ISBN 978-1-61584-575-052999
Attribution: The information appearing above in this tab is from Wikipedia: Unsafe at Any Speed. Amazon is not affiliated with, and neither endorses, nor is endorsed by Wikipedia or any of the authors who contributed to this article. The Wikipedia content may be available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, version 3.0 or any later version, available at: CC BY-SA. Additional or other terms may apply. See Wikipedia Terms of Use for details.
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