New Front for the Safety Furor

Detroit's caveats about the troublesome effects of legislated auto safety standards all but faded away after President Johnson signed the Highway Safety Act last September.* Now, though the first set of federal standards, which will be mandatory for 1968 models, are not due until next January, the furor is being revived--this time on the European front.

The Europeans are complaining about a preliminary list of 26 safety requirements, passed around by the U.S. Department of Commerce to give importers an idea of what the coming federal standards will be like. Britain's Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders has warned that for some automakers the new standards "could mean hardship, even disaster."

Time for Tooling. The prime complaint concerns the "lead time" necessary for making major changes. Unaccustomed to U.S.-style annual model changeovers, Europeans retool only every three or four years, sometimes let models run for ten years or more. "A change in models just to fulfill the annual change in safety standards," says a spokesman for Germany's Porsche, "would lead to bankruptcy." Ron P. Hickman, technical director of Britain's little Lotus Cars Ltd., says that "some items would take more like two years to introduce."

Even though the Europeans go along with most of Commerce's safety list, they find some items baffling, absurd or impractical. Britain's Society of Motor Manufacturers recoils at the idea of a uniform PRNDL sequence of automatic shift positions, points out that some makes have fancy variations, including "two D positions" and even "the sequence RN1234D." Germany's Porsche objects to having to prove the safety of its gas tanks in actual crash tests, "because with a production of only 50 cars a day, one car represents a tremendous value." Volkswagen fears that the famous beetle will be in for an untoward face lifting if its bumpers must be raised to a standard height to match the big cars from Detroit; the company wants to bolt on bumper guards instead.

Plea for Flexibility. Volkswagen is also puzzled over how to design an impact-absorbing steering column for its boxy Microbus, since the column is nearly vertical. One especially irksome item is a rear-window defroster. France's Renault complains that such a device would be "superfluous," since an outside mirror does the job adequately. An impossibility in many very small cars, such as Britain's Mini-Minor, is a requirement to have the front seat set back far enough so that in a collision passengers' heads will not snap down to the dashboard. One solution: shoulder as well as lap belts, to keep passengers in place. Air pollution control is another small-car problem, because exhaust-system devices can reduce the power of a 30-h.p. engine to 27 h.p.

The British press has hinted darkly --and erroneously--that the safety standards are merely hurdles designed to keep Europeans out of a market in which they sold 575,000 cars last year. With an eye for its vital exports, the British government has urged Washington to approach the issue with "flexibility." Actually, when the final standards are issued early next year, there probably will be concessions for manufacturers on both sides of the Atlantic.

*In the proud presence of Safety Crusader Ralph Nader (Unsafe at Any Speed), who last week sued General Motors and its sleuths for $26 million in damages ("harassment and intimidation") resulting from the G.M.-sponsored investigation of his life last spring.

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