Drive for Safety

The junior U.S. Senator from New York leaned over the hearing-room table and spoke harshly to the head of the largest manufacturing company in the world. Said Bobby Kennedy to General Motors Board Chairman Frederic Donner: "How can you appear before this committee and not even know about that?"

What seemed to upset Kennedy was that none of the top G.M. executives who appeared last week before a Senate Government Operations subcommittee investigating auto safety had ever seen a Cornell University survey that critically compared G.M.'s door-hinge design with others. In auto collisions, Cornell reported, 5.1% of G.M. cars lost their doors, compared to 0.8% of Chrysler and 0.6% of Ford cars. No one was sure how Kennedy could have expected G.M.'s highest policymakers to know the details of a relatively obscure report,* but his questioning typified the hostile, guilty-until-proven-innocent atmosphere of the hearings. The auto executives were placed in a bad light by other committee questions. Donner, for instance, could not tell Kennedy precisely how much G.M. spends for safety. G.M. at week's end estimated that the 1964 expenditure had been $124 million.

Force-Feeding. The major contention of the Senate subcommittee was that the automen, with little loss in profits, could make cars safer, reduce the highway death toll that this year will be about 50,000. The hearings were called to consider several bills, some of which would force the companies to build safety devices into cars. Industry leaders argued that they have already done much, and are doing more to increase safety, but that consumers are unwilling to pay for safety features. "If we were to force on people things that they are not prepared to buy," said Donner, "we would face a customer revolt."

The automen had some imaginative proposals of their own. American Motors President Roy Abernethy suggested that the industry "force-feed" safety to the public by including effective if still unpopular safety items as "delete options"--that is, standard equipment unless the customer specifically asks to have them removed. He also proposed uniform, nationwide traffic laws.

Latching the Door. Donner announced a $1 million G.M. grant to M.I.T. for a four-year study of traffic safety. Chrysler Vice President Harry Chesebrough disclosed that his company's 1966 models will have a new door latch that will substantially reduce the chances of car doors opening in an accident; he also called for the creation of a federal automobile center to coordinate safety programs. All of the executives promised that their 1966 models would have many of the safety devices that the Government has begun to require on its own cars.

For all their acrimony, the hearings may well serve the worthwhile purpose of arousing concern on the part of companies, consumers and Government agencies. Since the Senate subcommittee began investigating in March, New York state has named a board to build a prototype safety-car, Maryland has tightened its standards for tires, and other states have begun to consider stricter safety rules. A recent nation-wide poll shows that traffic safety is now one of the half-dozen problems Americans worry about most.

* The company later said that the figures were misleading, that the study involved old as well as new cars, and that G.M. door hinges for the 1959-65 model years "more than satisfy 1967 [federal] requirements."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.