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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?
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Half a Million VW Vehicles Dumped in Graveyards
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The last time I saw him he was walking down Lover's Lane holding his own hand.
-- Fred Allen
(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!