After VW was outed for falsifying environmental data in its cars hundreds of thousand of VW vehicles were taken off the road now sitting in storage sites. Hundreds of thousands of cars now lie in lots in the Mojave Desert, a shuttered suburban Detroit football stadium, and a former Minnesota paper mill in America alone. These vehicles are now in the open slowly breaking down with pollutants entering the environment. Is the the modern cost of corporate greed? What can we do to ensure this never happens again?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Whoever on Saturday December 08 2018, @05:40PM (9 children)
Tell us something we don't know. This was obvious from the start, because none of the other car companies ratted out VW. They must have known.
No one force VW to sell diesel cars. Furthermore, many of the cars have now been modified to comply, so the goals were not unreasonable.
I don't think it is the DRLs that are to blame for that. Instead, it is the illumination of the dashboard when the headlights are off (or just the DRLs are on) that I believe is the cause of so many people driving without putting on their lights.
No going to argue with you on that one. But note that red turn signals are not mandated by laws or regulations. Amber turn signals are legal, so it's more of an example that a lack of regulations allows car manufacturers to make less safe choices in vehicle design.
The real point of ABS is that it allows you to steer around an obstruction under heavy braking.
Without government involvement, we would likely still not have seat belts.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Saturday December 08 2018, @06:50PM (7 children)
Seatbelts were standard equipment in automobiles long, long, LONG before government mandated their use. That mandate is a tangled web of insurance industry coercion, and federal government corruption. The STATE governments resisted seat belt laws for decades, literally. The feds were bribed, coerced, and otherwise motivated by the insurance industry to force the states to pass seatbelt laws.
However wise you might consider seatbelt laws to be, you don't owe any thanks to government for those laws.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 09 2018, @12:56AM (6 children)
Once again our dear Runaway is factually incorrect. He also is wrong. And somewhat ignorant. They let this bozo drive an eighteen-wheeler? I somehow feel less safe on the roads.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Sunday December 09 2018, @01:20AM (5 children)
It's your ignorance that is flapping in the wind, little anonymous coward.
https://itstillruns.com/history-seat-belts-5110697.html [itstillruns.com]
Seat belts were standard equipment when I was a young child. No one used them, but they were there. Many vehicles didn't have seat belts in the rear seat. If you know anyone with a car from the sixties, ask if you can poke around, looking for the seat belts. You won't find a shoulder harness - all you'll find is the belt. You'll probably have to reach down behind the seat cushion to find it, unless it is used frequently. There is nothing to prevent it sliding down behind the seat.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Whoever on Sunday December 09 2018, @01:49AM (4 children)
You are conflating two separate issues:
1. When did fitment of seat belts as standard equipment become mandatory
2. When was wearing seat belts mandatory.
As far as I can tell, the fitment of seat belts started to become mandatory in 1961 (Wisconsin) and was fully mandatory in 1966. In 1961, the fitment of seat belts was by no means universal. It took legislation or the threat of legislation to make seat belts standard equipment on all cars. The histories that I can find credit Ralph Nader for the 1966 legislation, not the set of lobbying interests that you list. But who cares? It took legislation to make them standard equipment on all cars.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday December 09 2018, @02:06AM (3 children)
I don't think I conflated anything. Please re-read my original post - https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=28965&page=1&cid=771619#commentwrap [soylentnews.org] The post I replied to implied that seat belts wouldn't exist without government action. The fact is, seat belts existed long before the feds or the states mandated it. Seat belt usage is a whole 'nother story. And, those usage laws were almost universally passed at the behest and coercion of the insurance industry.
I will acknowledge that first some states, then the federal government did pass laws requiring seat belts in all seats, eventually. Those laws ended any options for vehicles to be equipped with belts, or not be equipped. In my opinion, it seems that the laws trailed well behind efforts by the insurance industry, and auto manufacturer's willingness to install those seat belts. Ralph Nader had a lot to do with auto safety, but let's remember that he used the court of public opinion as effectively as he used the court of law.
(Score: 4, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday December 09 2018, @02:56AM
Well by no means should you allow pesky facts to get in the way of your "opinion."
The long quotation you provided in a previous post states that manufacturers were mostly providing belts by 1962 or 1963, while the federal government didn't mandate them until later. Thus, I guess, your "opinion" is that manufacturers adopted then with no government prodding.
Except your source conveniently omits the fact that states started mandating them in 1961. By 1962, six states mandated them, and over the course of 1963, that grew to 23 states. At that point, it no longer made sense for manufacturers to insist on keeping them "optional" to try to create distinctions between markets to save a few bucks.
Perhaps manufacturers would have eventually adopted them as standard anyway (and some manufacturers were headed in that direction), but claiming government pressure had no role here is simply factually wrong... Regardless of your "opinion."
(Score: 5, Informative) by Whoever on Sunday December 09 2018, @04:05AM (1 child)
Let me quote from your post:
"Seatbelts were standard equipment in automobiles long, long, LONG before government mandated their use."
See that: on the one hand installation, on the other use. That's two separate issues that you are conflating.
If your post should be read as mandating their installation, then your post is at best a misrepresentation and at worst false. They were not standard equipment in cars for a long time before they were required by law. Except for one or two smaller manufacturers, almost no manufacturers installed them as standard equipment in the late '50s. In other words, a niche, not widely installed. Even Nash did not install seat belts in all its models.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 09 2018, @10:16PM
That's our Runaway! Dumber than a bag 'o hammers, that one!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 08 2018, @06:54PM
And we would still be driving Ford Pintos, or at least rear-ending them just to watch them burn, and cutting off Chevy Corvairs, just to watch them flip over for no reason. You know, if it wasn't for Volvo and the three-point restraint system, . . .