Automotive Air Bags Essay Research Paper American

Automotive Air Bags Essay, Research Paper

American politics, for better or worse, is prone to elitist control of

various issues, some of which affect the general public in significant

ways. This system is described by the distributive model of politics,

where people representing narrow segments of society with high stakes in a

particular issue influence public policy to a substantial degree. This

explanation of policy making can be effectively used to examine and

explain some political actions. However, the model is not without its

flaws, and other models have developed to explain policy changes that take

place under different circumstances, and with anomalous results. In areas

dealing with science and technology, the knowledge-driven approach is

often employed to explain policy transitions that do not fit the

distributive model. The knowledge-driven approach examines how

technological and scientific advances that favor diffuse interests can be

used by policy entrepreneurs to bring about broad change, often against

powerful and determined special interest groups. The case of air bag

regulation can be used to describe and examine both the distributive and

knowledge-driven models, as it originally fit distributive explanations,

and was eventually taken over by the knowledge-driven system. The

discussion of air bag regulation will include an overview of the relevant

events, an examination of the distributive system of auto safety, and an

explanation of the eventual changes ushered in under the knowledge-driven

system.

The issue of auto safety regulation began to receive attention in the

sixties, when death due to auto accidents rose from under 40,000 deaths in

1960 to nearly 55,000 in 1969 (Fortune, 100). In 1965 and 1966

congressional committees held hearings on specific incidents of automotive

safety neglect, which resulted in the passing of the Motor Vehicle Safety

Act of 1966 (Nader, Unsafe, xvii). This act was the first of its kind,

giving the federal government the right to impose automotive safety

regulations on the auto industry. The job of regulation was delegated to

the National Highway Safety Bureau (now the National Highway Traffic

Safety Administration), a division of the Department of Transportation.

This department was given the authority to impose safety regulations,

review industry compliance, and study automotive safety in general. In

1970 and 1971 the automotive industry began to discuss the use of passive

restraints in collisions to increase safety. Passive restraints are those

which do not require any actions on the part of the driver or passengers,

unlike seatbelts. The most popular and seemingly most feasible solution

was the air bag. This bag, placed in front of the driver, would deploy

automatically in an accident. Initially, the NHTSA planned on making air

bags mandatory on ^.all cars built in or imported into this country after

Jan. 1, 1973 (Wargo, 11).^. The auto industry responded negatively, saying

that there was not enough time to develop a working system, and that a

premature addition would open the auto industry up to excessive liability

suits. The NHTSA did not issue the controversial mandate for 1973, but

instead issued a mandate that all cars must have passive restraints by

1976. The safety regulations, continually attacked by auto industry

experts, were delayed time and again. The situation reached such a

standstill that Ralph Nader, policy entrepreneur, accused the NHTSA of ^.A

virtual de facto moratorium of its safety standards function (Nader,

Washington, 2).^. This continued until 1977, when President Carter

appointed former Ralph Nader lobbyist Joan Claybrook to head the NHTSA.

Claybrook actively sought to establish an effective safety restraint law,

and her efforts partially paid off when Transportation Secretary Brock

Adams ordered all new cars to have safety belts or air bags by 1984 (CQ,

1-2). Debates ensued between the NHTSA, Congress, the auto industry, and

eventually President Reagan. In 1981 the NHTSA repealed the regulation,

but the courts blocked this action. The case went before the Supreme

Court (State Farm Mutual vs. Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Administration),

where it was decided that NHTSA had arbitrarily, as a result of auto

industry influence (State Farm, 2, 3). The Supreme Court ordered the

Department of Transportation to reconsider the regulation. The Department

of Transportation issued new regulations ordering Auto producers to

install air bags between 1986 and 1989. But it left one loophole: If, by

1989, states comprising two thirds of the US population implemented

mandatory seat-belt use, the federal regulation would not apply. In 1991,

President Bush signed an act that required cars made after 1996 to have

air bags (CQ, 8). The measure went into effect successfully,

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