Question of the Day: Ralph Nader, Angel or Demon?
It’s Monday, so let’s start it off by ignoring the demands of your cruel overseers in The Man’s salt mines and turning to a subject that’s sure to get all automotive enthusiasts riled up: Ralph Nader!
First of all, we’re going to add the requirement that you don’t get to talk about the contents of Unsafe At Any Speed unless you’ve read the damn book first (if you do, you’ll find that the book has just one short chapter about the Corvair, sales of which were already in the toilet when the book came out in 1965 — mostly thanks to the American car-buying public’s preference for a more traditional compact Chevy). Second of all, this is about Ralph Nader as his activities relate to the automotive industry, so if you’re pissed off about those 97,421 Nader votes in Florida in 2000, too bad — you’ll need to tamp down your rage over Bush’s win and stick to car-related discussion here.
Nader — who likely would have have languished in obscurity had General Motors not attempted to smear him (in classic clumsy GM fashion) with all manner of Nixonian dirty tricks — pointed out many of Detroit’s shady practices in his book, including odometers set to read fast (to get cars out of warranty more quickly), and made the case that only government regulation could fix the problems of dangerous vehicles and janky consumer-ripoff business practices. Now we have plenty of such regulation on vehicles and a gigantic bureaucracy devoted to the subject. So, overall, do you think the revolution that Nader started was a net win or loss when it comes to what we drive today? Feel free to deliver table-pounding tirades and withering jeremiads, but keep in mind that anybody making personal attacks on other commenters — even those you know to be dangerously wrong — will be impaled on a ’59 Cadillac fin and banned, not necessarily in that order.
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Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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Yes, I think he had an impact on the safety of the motorist and I think he's an arrogant jerk. I suspect that many of the changes to the auto industry would have happened without his direct influence but it may have taken a few years longer. Ultimately, the dollars were spent on safety improvements.
The victim/boyfriend of Laura Bush's car accident happened to be driving a Corvair. In May 2000, a two-page police report pertaining to a fatal accident that had taken place near Midland, Texas, in 1963 was made public. It image: http://www.snopes.com/POLITICS/graphics/laura.jpg Laura Bush contained the information that 17-year-old Laura Welch had run a stop sign, causing the death of the sole occupant of the vehicle hers had struck. According to that report, the future First Lady had been driving her Chevrolet sedan to a local drive-in theater on a clear night shortly after 8 p.m. on 6 November 1963 when she entered an intersection without heeding the stop sign and there collided with the Corvair sedan driven by 17-year-old Michael Douglas. Also in the car with Laura Welch was her friend, 17-year-old Judy Dykes. Read more at http://www.snopes.com/POLITICS/bush/laura.asp#22EsWii1JJ703Pqg.99 It was the Consumer Rights movement led by Nader that have improved most household products and enhanced government and corporate accountability. Sensible regulation is not the Nanny state. However prior to the publication of Unsafe at any Speed in the late 50's there was a series of articles on auto safety by Daniel Patrick Moynahan in the Nation magazine that also had a impact on getting the feds to address auto safety and pass NHSTA in 1967. Autos have vastly improved and death rats have fallen. I say this as a big fan of the Corvair who helped friends restore them back in the late 70's. If only GM did the proposed 70 redesign, it would be their 911/Carrera. My grandparents owned two. A 62 Monza 4 dr 80 hp 3 speed in brown and a 65 500 series 4 dr 95 hp 3 speed in blue. They loved them but some relatives would occasionally nag them 'Read the Nader book!" They later upgraded to more modern GM products.