Nader, Ralph

The postwar economic boom brought the automobile within the reach of more people than ever before but the American automobile culture was attacked in the late 1950s by Vance Packard and in 1965 by Ralph Nader in a book called Unsafe at any Speed. Growing safety concerns led to the passing of the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act in 1968. 

Dr. Chenea, as many authors do, leaves us with the problem of what is "excessive" and what is "reasonable". One has a strong feeling that "excessive" is what does not make sense to General Motors. But suppose it is not seen as excessive to the regulator, a senator, Ralph Nader, or car drivers I am reminded of one of those cute, catchy signs you see on peoples desks -BE REASONABLE, DO IT MY WAY. While that may be humorous, the problem of distinguishing between "reasonable" and "excessive" is a very serious one. The literature is silent. 

Ironically, Ralph Nader, the leader of the antinuclear activists, stated very early in the battle that the way to stop nuclear power was to make the costs escalate to the point where utilities could not afford to build them. I must admit that he fought a better battle than we nuclear scientists, and he won, very decisively. Unfortunately, the public has been the real loser from the victory of this so-called public advocate. ... 

Association for the Advancement of Fat Acceptance, and Public Citizen, the advocacy group founded by consumer advocate Ralph Nader. 

James Love, director of the Ralph Nader-founded Consumer Project on Technology in Washington, D.C., is one of the angriest of the consumer advocates. To tear apart the high cost estimates, he focuses on human clinical trials, by far the most expensive part of the R D process. 

That same year - 1965 - Ralph Nader published Unsafe at Any Speed - charging that the US automobile industry was knowingly selling unnecessarily dangerous cars to an unsuspecting public. General Motors Corporation (CM) hired a detective to shadow Mr Nader, who then sued CM, winning a monetary settlement. Mr Nader invested the proceeds to form the Center for Study of Responsive Law and the consumer safety branch of the environmental movement was born. 

Ralph Nader expanded the new consumer safety movement (whose origins could be traced back to the founding of the National Safety Council in 1913 and Consumers Union in 1936), which came to be known as the public interest research movement . 

In 2014, General Motors Corporation faced multiple lawsuits arising from the fact that, between 2001 and 2014, millions of GM cars were sold with ignition switches that some GM employees knew for years were defective. As of May 15, 2015, the GM Ignition Compensation Claims Administrator had accepted that defective switches were implicated in 104 fatalities, with 26 death claims still under review. Reflecting on this situation, consumer advocate Ralph Nader made the following suggestion to Mary T. Barra, GM s CEO ... 

Coscarelli, Joe. (2014). Ralph Nader on the General Motors Disaster and How to End Cover-Your-Ass Corporate Culture, New York Magazine, April 3, 2014, http //nymag.eom/daily/intelligencer/2014/04/ralph-nader-interview-on-general-motors.html... 

Ralph Nader, Unsafe at Any Speed The Designed-in Dangers of the American Automobile (New York Grossman, 1965). 

Under pressure from the Traffic Safety Administration and Ralph Nader, Ford eventually recalled 1.5 million vehicles in 1978 and scrapped the brand in 1980. They had initially decided to tolerate the risk. 

Another misconception was the belief that vehicle manufacturers pay any costs of the safety standards. Consumers, however, bear part and perhaps even most of the costs. The distribution of the added cost depends on the shift in demand due to the safety standards and the responsiveness (elasticity) of demand and supply to vehicle price. Ralph Nader observed that the gap between existing design and technolomcally attainable crashworthiness was wide and the attainable level was rising What he did not say is that if the new technology involves more than a trivial cost and substantial share is borne by the consumer, then additional safety involves difficult choices for consumers, manufacturers and regulators. All are concerned about consumer reaction to the additional costs which accompany the additional safety equipment. 

Ralph Nader, who was way ahead of his time, in his saninal 1950s book Unsafe at Any Speed, pressed the automobile industry to accept that it should guide its design of vehicles by assuming that fools and drunkards will drive than. For his trouble he was hounded by the industry, which only served to give enormous public attention to his book and accelerate the introduction of safety design standards on a reluctant industry ... 

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