Nader Becomes Institutionalized

Daily Observer

May 5, 1921

Ralph Nader was a folk hero when he was naught but a lone-raider being followed by gum shoes hired by General Motors. I never could understand how a corporate entity the size of General Motors could be so afraid of a noisy little outraged lawyer that it felt it had to stake him out.. But General Motors got caught and Nader caught on. His itch was reasonable. That the consumer had rights that automobiles were built carelessly; that the purchaser had the right of redress if something went wrong.

However something went wrong with Naderism during the last few years. It’s hard to define exactly but I suspect he suffered the same fate as General Motors. He became too big. When Ralph Nader became Naderism we knew that the great consumer advocate had himself become consumed; Ralph Nader had become institutionalized.

What does it mean to become institutionalized? It means that Naderism became as powerful a force as General Motors in some ways. One gets the impression that the auto industry caved in whenever the Nader group issued a critique.

Now there is nothing wrong with David smiting Goliath, and as a matter of fact Nader besting General Motors was the first freshening breeze to stir up the industrial doldrums in a long while. It was never a secret that Detroit always did and still does build cars less safe to drive than they might be. But although the consumer thrust has pointed accurate fingers at the Firestone 500 and the Pinto, some of the new ideas that were not invented by Detroit but became industry-wide innovations nonetheless should have been resisted by the automakers.

The first of course, is the placement of the rear view mirror. There was a time when it was relatively inconspicuous and could only be faulted as a potential weapon if the car you were driving happened to have a head-on. But now on all the cars, the rear-view mirror is planted 45 degrees off center so that when the driver looks to his right he sees his own face instead of oncoming traffic. This no doubt is responsible for some accidents. After all there must be some alternatives to a mirror that is a potential weapon, and a mirror that obstructs vision. Which is the more dangerous?

The other problem I have with Detroit’s response to Naderism is the combination of seat belts and door locks that won’t swing open on impact. There was a time, before seat belts became de rigueur, that auto doors would spring open during an accident and the driver would be hurled like a projectile into a nearby tree or perhaps onto an opposing traffic lane.

Clearly an unacceptable condition. Detroit corrected this by making door locks that don’t spring open on impact. But unfortunately the new autos seem prone to catch fire. Thus, drivers and their passengers are dying in the flames of the wreck. Because the doors do not spring open, and the chassis crumbles, the doors are wedged shut so that rescue squads must have special teams trained to cut victims out of the twisted steel.

It would certainly seem sensible since we are tying the driver into the automobile that we build cars the old way, with doors that spring open on impact so that during a wreck we can get the passenger out without loss of precious time.

Of course if Detroit would build a perfectly round car all collisions would be tangential and if the round bumpers were set on ball bearings all that would happen is that they would spin and that the spinning bumper would absorb the impact. That might reduce the number or deaths (50,000) and injured (500,000) that swell our medical budget.

But even Ralph Nader isn’t ready for changes in auto design that would radically increase safety.