It is an "Arrogance of Power" thing, I suspect. People that are smart sometimes can have suffer from excessive ego. While the safety record of cars has undoubted improved as a result of his years of industry criticism, he would not let factual problems with his arguments stop the message nor, as far as I know, disavow any incorrect information.
"Unsafe at Any Speed" was about the car industry in general, but in parts about the Corvair specifically, was probably unfair in many regards. While it was true that the Corvair had problems in early models, many of these were recognized as design flaws on a new type of car, from which many modern sedans share multiple design elements with this vehicle.
Chevy had continuously improved the design with innovations from the racing industry such as turbo chargers, flat air cooled engines, rear engine, rear wheel drive, tuned exhaust, and fully independent suspension. All modern cars have many of these elements in their design today. At least for the American car companies, it was radical.
The rear engine is novel and people that have driven rear engine, rear wheel drive know that they have performance idiosyncrasies. That doesn't mean "bad" necessarily, more like "different". I know people who love Corvairs (frequently racers) and their love is justified from what I've seen done with these vehicles.
If you learned how to drive a conventional 2 wheel rear-drive front engine vehicles, some emergency steering details are reversed with rear engined cars. This was never considered.
So, by looking at statistics alone on accidents, you ignore driver competency elements. This is part of the problem with modern SUVs. So many people learned how to drive front wheel drive sedans, that when they first drive a rigid axle, rear wheel drive vehicle with a high center of gravity, they are almost certain to drive incorrectly in emergencies.
For example, anti-lock breaks on a sedan allow you to swerve through traffic, maintaining control. On trucks, though, the effect is very different. The vehicle won't tend to spin as much but the ABS system tells the vehicle to make all the wheels move at the same speed. If someone swerves in a high GG truck, the immediate increase in traction in combination with the turn makes all the wheels stop too fast relative to forward movement, effectively "tripping" the vehicle and causing it to role over.
I'm in favor of product safety laws, but when Nader got the story wrong in some parts, he didn't disavow those, but adhered to the entire principle that the Corvair was 'Unsafe at Any Speed'. This is why he'd be fine in a Cabinet position, where his authority is delegated and not absolute.
If he'd said that the lack of seat belts is attributable to bad injury rates in cars, that would have been 100% correct. The problem was that he made an argument that many people who knew more about it than Mr. Nader, found rather ludicrous. |
