THAT most typical product of American civilization—1 the auto—brings joy, jobs, mobility, freedom. It also brings economic waste and human pain. Death and destruction on the highway are now the subject of muckraking books, rock-'n'-roll ballads, congressional inquiry, and serious self-examination in Detroit. The auto represents power, speed and progress—and each of these elements involves risk. As long as men move, there will be accidents. But need there be so much human cost? Clearly the answer is no.
Asked not long ago why his industry did not design more safety into its products, Ford Group Vice President Lee Jacocca replied: "Styling sells cars and safety does not." But the mood of carmakers and their customers is shifting drastically. The industry is rushing to build safety devices into cars, partly because the public is becoming aroused, and partly because the manufacturers are afraid that the federal and state governments will devise strict safety standards and force them on the industry. Washington already has safety and performance standards for every major form of transportation—except the automobile. U.S. Senators Abraham Ribicoff, Robert Kennedy, Gaylord Nelson and others, who continued some well-publicized hearings last week (see U.S. BUSINESS), are pressing Congress to establish minimum safety requirements for cars, and prohibit from interstate commerce any vehicles or parts that fail to meet them, beginning with the 1967 models. President Johnson wants that too, but is willing to give the automakers until Model-Year 1970 voluntarily to comply with federal standards—and he will doubtless get his way. Meanwhile the courts have begun, under the doctrine of "strict liability," to hold the automakers liable for crash damages resulting from defective or dangerous car design.
The Sinister Superlatives
The statistics of malignant motoring are hard to face. One American is killed in traffic every eleven minutes. More than one-quarter of all U.S. autos are at some time involved in an injury-producing smashup. Since the auto was invented, it has killed 1,500,000 Americans, more than the toll in all the nation's wars. The number of fatalities has jumped 29% since 1961. Though the death rate has been cut by two-thirds since the 1930s, to 5.6 per 100 million vehicle miles last year, car travel is still substantially more dangerous than commercial plane travel.* The U.S. Air Force in 1965 lost nearly as many men in car crashes as in air crashes, including Viet Nam combat. In the U.S. last year, 20 million cars were involved in 14 million accidents. They killed 49,000 people, injured 1,800,000 others, and permanently disabled 200,000. The economic cost: $8.1 billion in lost wages, property damage, medical and insurance payments—a sum equal to 10 for every mile driven, or 1.2% of the gross national product. Auto accidents are the biggest cause of death and injury among American children, teen-agers and adults under 35. Unless the rate is reduced, one out of every two living Americans will some day be injured by a car, and one out of 72 will be killed.