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The Politics of Automobile Passenger Protection. The Case of Automobile Occupant Crash Protection. For nearly a generation, deaths and injuries to occupants in car crashes have been a well-documented social problem;
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The Case of Automobile Occupant Crash Protection • For nearly a generation, deaths and injuries to occupants in car crashes have been a well-documented social problem; • Short of preventing crashes altogether, there are several complementary ways of providing the necessary protection: • Reducing the speed of vehicles at impact; • Designing vehicle structures capable of dissipating much of the energy of impact and preventing collapse of the passenger compartment; • Securing the doors and windshield so that occupants are not ejected; • Substituting energy-absorbing steering assemblies, windshields and instrument panels for conventional rigid structures; • Restraining drivers and passengers with belts or other devices.
The Case of Automobile Occupant Crash Protection (cont.) • Occupant restraint was among the more practical of these measures. • It also promised benefits exceeding those of any other known means of reducing traffic accident fatalities and injuries. • The slow pace at which seat belts and other measures were adopted led the federal government in 1966 to adopt a policy. • The policy attempted to reduce the risks to motorists of having a collision and of being killed or injured in the event the crash occurred. • The government has taken a series of discrete actions in the form of regulations to address this social problem.
Two Types of Occupant Restrain Measures • As a result of government regulation, belts were installed in all seating positions of cars manufactured and sold in the United States. • However, a large majority of American motorists have failed to use belts consistently. • The government’s actions represent two different approaches to occupant restraint: • It has tried to persuade, induce, or compel motorists to protect themselves by using seat belts; • It has required manufacturers to install equipment or make design changes that directly provide greater protection. • These two approaches entail different costs for individuals and producers.
Two Types of Occupant Restrain Measures (cont.) • Proposals to improve vehicle safety have repeatedly generated proposals to increase belt use. • Federal government regulators have adopted measures directly or indirectly regulating motorists. • Congress has intervened to suspend only actions regulating motorists. • This distinction is between measures intended to change the behavior of individuals who are at risk and measures intended to change thephysical environmentin order to reduce the risk. • Government-imposed environmental measures change the behavior of a small number of manufacturers without directly influencing the conduct of millions of motorists.
Behavioral Measures Educational programs and advertising messages; Buzzer-light reminder system; Compulsory belt use laws. Environmental Measures Lap belts; Shoulder belts; Automatic restraints; Air bags and passive belts; Structural modification of the vehicle to provide crash protection at higher speed (e.g 45-50 mph). Two Types of Occupant Restrain Measures (cont.)
Partisan Alignments • The behavioral and environmental categories reveal reasonably stable coalitions of producers and professionals supporting each approach to occupant crash protection. • Although both manufacturers and professionals have occasionally split over particular measures, the most important change in 20 years of debate has been not a realignment of partisans but an expansion of both coalitions. • Consumer interest representatives established a group of professional advocates specializing in auto safety issues.
Partisan Alignments (cont.) • Insurance industry perceived an economic stake in reducing accident costs and, among other actions, transformed a public relations body into a professional automobile and highway research institute. • Foreign automobile manufacturers and importers organized trade associations and hired lobbyists as their share of American market increased. • Domestic seat belt producers also organized to protect their market. • Crash-injury researchers confirmed the limitations of lap belts alone in preventing serious injuries, they proposed to add an upper torso restraint that would permit flexibility under normal driving conditions.
Partisan Alignments (cont.) • In part because safety is an important social value and also because other strategies have been available, the automobile industry has rarely opposed environmental measures outright. • Instead, it has consistently attempted to delay their adoption or to weaken federal requirements relating to them. • The manufacturers voluntarily implemented one measure, front seat lap belts on 1965 model cars, but only after several states had passed laws requiring the equipment on cars sold in their jurisdiction. • In 1970, GM, Chrysler and Ford each advised the federal agency of plans to produce air bag systems “in volume” or to make them available as options on all models by 1975.
Partisan Alignments (cont.) • Behavioral measures have lacked organized opposition. • Professional groups have often supported educational efforts and belt use laws, if less actively than they have environmental measures. • The principal allies of the automobile companies in promoting the use of belts since their adoption have been the manufacturers of seat belts and their trade association, the American Safety Belt Council. • Air bag producers have been more cautious advocates of their introduction as standard equipment. • It appears that suppliers of safety components to the automobile industry are more aggressive in retaining an established market than in creating a new one.
Acceptability to Decision Makers • Other important political differences between behavioral and environmental measures are the speed and facility of their adoption by individuals who are in positions to make binding decisions and maintain them afterwards. • In automobile and highway safety, decision making authority is shared, not unitary, and the reasons are constitutional, statutory, and political. • In regulating vehicle traffic (by enforcing seal belt use), the state’s police power is primary, the role of Congress and the federal executive branch secondary.
Acceptability to Decision Makers (cont.) • Under the 1966 Highway Safety Act, the Secretary of Transportation and the Administrator issued standards requiring states to enact and enforce traffic regulations, but their only sanction was to withhold financial assistance for highway safety programs and highway construction. • In addition, Congress may order that a particular standard be issued or withdrawn. • The Secretary and the Administrator have strong incentives to consult states before standards are drafted, to seek voluntary compliance once they become effective, and to impose sanctions for noncompliance.
Acceptability to Decision Makers (cont.) • In regulating the safety of vehicles, Congress has largely preempted the power of the states and delegated broad authority to the Executive Agency, but left manufacturers considerable discretion. • The 1966 National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act authorizes the Secretary to issue minimum vehicle safety standards which manufacturers may exceed if they choose. • A vehicle standard may explicitly give the manufacturer quite different options such as installing either belt or automatic restraint system. • Within these limits, automobile company executives are decision makers as well as partisans.
Acceptability to Decision Makers (cont.) • Federal regulations are subject to formal and informal negotiation between the agency and the manufacturers. • Actions having the broadest effect include decisions by Congress, the Secretary and the Administrator, the automobile company executives, but not by individual states. • Behavioral measures have been much more readily adopted by public and corporate decision makers than have environmental measures. • Most behavioral measures have been adopted within two or three years.
Acceptability to Decision Makers (cont.) • Environmental measures have been considered and debated for ten years or longer. • The implementation of environmental measures has also been characterized by extreme gradualism and frequent setbacks. • When the automobile companies were under pressure to install lap belts, they agreed first to offer them as optional extra-cost equipment, then to install attachments points, all before making belts standard equipment in front seat positions.
Acceptability to Decision Makers (cont.) • Congress has rarely resorted to legislation to compel executive agencies to issue new regulations, but in recent years it has frequently intervened to restrict the uses of appropriated funds, reserve to its committees or to one or both Houses the right to veto future actions, and repeal regulations already in effect. • What is noteworthy in the case of occupant restraint is that Congress has acted almost exclusively against behavioral measures.
Acceptability to Decision Makers of Occupant Restraint Measures
Acceptability to Decision Makers of Occupant Restraint Measures
Feasibility and Effectiveness • Even if Congress had not stipulated that federal safety standards “shall be practicable” and “shall meet the need for vehicle safety”, practical and political factors would dictate that decision makers consider the technical feasibility and effectiveness of proposed occupant restraint measures. • Problems encountered in research and development do not account for longer delays of environmental measures. • However, decision makers appear to demand considerably more evidence that environmental measures will reduce deaths and injuries than that behavioral measures will increase belt use.
Behavioral versus Environmental Measures • Behavioral and environmental measures have been introduced gradually. • The pattern in both cases is a classic example of incremental decision making, whereby changes of policy differ only marginally from existing policies as a consequence of decision makers\efforts to cope with limited information, capability, and financial resources, as well as with conflicting values. • Behavioral and environmental approaches are compatible and complimentary. • The crucial additional factor is that behavioral and environmental measures are not advanced independently of each other.
Behavioral versus Environmental Measures (cont.) • On a series of occasions, proposals originating from research and development to change vehicle design in order to increase protection of occupants have actually generated counter-proposals to induce motorists to protect themselves. • Neither behavioral, not environmental approaches have been pursued exclusively and implemented simultaneously. • Not only does the advancement of one type of measure encourage opponents to pursue the other, but also controversy about one can favorably or adversely affect the acceptability of the other.
Behavioral versus Environmental Measures (cont.) • Industry opposition to air bags and public opposition to the starter-interlock adopted as a substitute have generated considerable controversy about both environmental and behavioral methods of increasing occupant crash protection. • The conflict appears to have exhausted the behavioral remedies, leaving federal regulators the choice only of whether or not to proceed to require automatic restraints. • Having decided to do so, Secretary Adams for a time faced the possibility of an unprecedented congressional veto of an environmental measure.
Benefits and Costs • Occupant crash protection has become more controversial as its benefits and costs have increased. • The most vigorously criticized measures, air bags, belt laws, and the ignition interlock, appear to be more effective that previous measures in reducing deaths and injuries. • According to DoT estimates, front seat automatic restraints will save an additional 9,000 lives and prevent a much greater number of serious injuries annually when all automobiles are so equipped.
Benefits and Costs (cont.) • Belt systems could produce substantial if not equal savings with usage rates of 70% or more, a result achievable only by enforcement of belt use laws. • Air bags, belt laws. And interlock systems also impose greater costs of various types than previous measures. • Compared with previous efforts to encourage belt use, the interlock system and enforced use impose relatively severe sanctions on affected individuals who neglect or decline to comply. • Behavioral and environmental measures entail different kinds of costs differently distributed between producers and the general population and differently perceived by them.
Benefits and Costs (cont.) • The economic burden of changes in vehicle design and equipment falls ultimately on the consumer, but most immediately and perceptibly on the manufacturer. • Behavioral measures command personal attention. They occupy time, irritate, prevent driving, or carry the possibility of a fine or other legal sanctions. They are far more repetitive than price increases and allow individuals little choice as to whether they will be affected. • The more obtrusive but apparently not the more expensive the measure, the more strongly the public has resisted it.
