Relative Safety

In terms of safety the ideal car for today's superhighways is very likely an eight-wheeled box lined with foam rubber and plated with several feet of armor; the driver should be strapped in like an astronaut in a space capsule.

Detroit is not about to market such a monster. But General Motors President John F. Gordon grumbled last week that "amateur engineers" are trying to impose federal regulation of safety design that is just about as realistic.

"To begin with," said Gordon, addressing a meeting of the National Safety Congress in Chicago, "it is completely unrealistic even to talk about a foolproof and crashproof car. An automobile must still be something that people will want to buy and use. Safety, in any environment from a bathtub to a bomb shelter, is a relative term, not an absolute. In the case of the automobile, we can only design into it the greatest degree of safety that is consistent with other essential functional characteristics. Beyond that, we must depend on intelligent use."

Some of the "radical and ill-conceived" safety ideas include the thought that "we abandon hope of teaching drivers to avoid traffic accidents and concentrate on designing cars that will make collisions harmless." This, he said, "is a little like suggesting that we neglect good health habits in favor of reliance on miracle drugs--and on some method of compelling people to take them."

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