Account of how and why cars kill, and why the automobile manufacturers have failed to make cars safe.

Combining superb investigative reporting with incisive analysis, Jerry Mashaw and David Harfst provide a compelling account of the attempt to regulate auto safety in America. Their penetrating look inside the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) spans two decades and reveals the complexities of regulating risk in a free society. Hoping to stem the tide of rising automobile deaths and injuries, Congress passed the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act in 1966. From that point on, automakers would build cars under the watchful eyes of the federal regulators at NHTSA. Curiously, however, the agency abandoned its safety mission of setting, monitoring, and enforcing performance standards in favor of the largely symbolic act of recalling defective autos. Mashaw and Harfst argue that the regulatory shift from rules to recalls was neither a response to a new vision of the public interest nor a result of pressure by the auto industry or other interest groups. Instead, the culprit was the legal environment surrounding NHTSA and other regulatory agencies such as the EPA, OSHA, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The authors show how NHTSA's decisions as well as its organization, processes, and personnel were reoriented in order to comply with the demands of a legal culture that proved surprisingly resistant to regulatory pressures. This broad-gauged view of NHTSA has much to say about political idealism and personal ambition, scientific commitment and professional competition, long-range vision and political opportunism. A fascinating illustration of America's ambivalence over whether government is a source of--or solution to--social ills, The Struggle for Auto Safety offers important lessons about the design and management of effective health and safety regulatory agencies today.

Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards - Rear Visibility (US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Regulation) (NHTSA) (2018 Edition) The Law Library presents the complete text of the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards - Rear Visibility (US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Regulation) (NHTSA) (2018 Edition). Updated as of May 29, 2018 To reduce the risk of devastating backover crashes involving vulnerable populations (including very young children) and to satisfy the mandate of the Cameron Gulbransen Kids Transportation Safety Act of 2007, NHTSA is issuing this final rule to expand the required field of view for all passenger cars, trucks, multipurpose passenger vehicles, buses, and low-speed vehicles with a gross vehicle weight of less than 10,000 pounds. The agency anticipates that today's final rule will significantly reduce backover crashes involving children, persons with disabilities, the elderly, and other pedestrians who currently have the highest risk associated with backover crashes. Specifically, today's final rule specifies an area behind the vehicle which must be visible to the driver when the vehicle is placed into reverse and other related performance requirements. The agency anticipates that, in the near term, vehicle manufacturers will use rearview video systems and in-vehicle visual displays to meet the requirements of this final rule. This book contains: - The complete text of the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards - Rear Visibility (US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Regulation) (NHTSA) (2018 Edition) - A table of contents with the page number of each section

Car Safety Wars is a gripping history of the hundred-year struggle to improve the safety of American automobiles and save lives on the highways. Described as the “equivalent of war” by the Supreme Court, the battle involved the automobile industry, unsung and long-forgotten safety heroes, at least six US Presidents, a reluctant Congress, new auto technologies, and, most of all, the mindset of the American public: would they demand and be willing to pay for safer cars? The “Car Safety Wars” were at first won by consumers and safety advocates. The major victory was the enactment in 1966 of a ground breaking federal safety law. The safety act was pushed through Congress over the bitter objections of car manufacturers by a major scandal involving General Motors, its private detectives, Ralph Nader, and a gutty cigar-chomping old politician. The act is a success story for government safety regulation. It has cut highway death and injury rates by over seventy percent in the years since its enactment, saving more than two million lives and billions of taxpayer dollars. But the car safety wars have never ended. GM has recently been charged with covering up deadly defects resulting in multiple ignition switch shut offs. Toyota has been fined for not reporting fatal unintended acceleration in many models. Honda and other companies have—for years—sold cars incorporating defective air bags. These current events, suggesting a failure of safety regulation, may serve to warn us that safety laws and agencies created with good intentions can be corrupted and strangled over time. This book suggests ways to avoid this result, but shows that safer cars and highways are a hard road to travel. We are only part of the way home.

Prevention, Policy, and Public Health provides a basic foundation for students, professionals, and researchers to be more effective in the policy arena. It offers information on the dynamics of the policymaking process, theoretical frameworks, analysis, and policy applications. It also offers coverage of advocacy and communication, the two most integral aspects of shaping policies for public health.