Detroit's Double Talk on Safety

...And a most efficient pedestrian-injuring mechanism the car was in 1959, killing about 7,000 persons and injuring some 250,000 more...

...Forty-two per cent of young people between thirteen and twenty-five who died in a recent ten-year span died as a result of traffic accidents...

...When the automobile manufacturers were asked recently to comment on their practice of advertising—aimed at the young—which encourages unsafe driving, their replies were revealing...

...Magazine and television advertisements...

...Quite a start...

...But if a manufacturer purposely produces cars which violate government safety standards, he is not prosecuted, even for a misdemeanor...

...Not all advertising writers feel thus constrained—especially at Chrysler...

...Charger looks beautifully quick just standing still...

...Consider this Chrysler advertisement in a teen-age car magazine (Motor Trend, July, 1966) : "BOSS HOSS...

...According to the Automotive Safety Foundation—an institution founded, funded, and controlled by the car makers—drivers under age twenty-five, and the teenage drivers among them, cause a disproportionately high percentage of traffic accidents...

...Do that with one of these and you can start billing yourself as the Human Cannon Ball...

...But from a Dodge (Chrysler) teenage car advertisement: "Bring on the Mustangs, Wildcats, Impalas . . . We'll even squash a few Spyders while we are at it...

...And the optional Hemi V-8 supplies a kick to match, with 425 muscular horses...

...Try it—and if you still feel a red-hot performance car ought to ride like a dragster, even that needn't keep you out of an XL...

...We do report in newspaper and car buff books our victories in sanctioned races but we make a special point of telling the public that these racing cars are not available to them for purchases, that they are only especially equipped as modified for racing competition...

...Senator Abraham Ribicoff, Connecticut Democrat, heads the Senate subcommittee that focused national attention on many phases of the automobile safety issue...

...The industry has been so aware of this that it has heavily supported driver training for teen-agers and published pamphlets designed to encourage safe, courteous driving habits on the part of young people...

...From a Chrysler Corporation safe driving pamphlet: "Proper driving attitudes and habits, including the adhering to the rules of the road and driving with courtesy and consideration for others, are every driver's responsibility...

...Dodge Charger with a big, tough 426 Street Hemi up front makes other steeds look staid...

...Before examining Detroit's promotional approach to the teen-age market, consider the central fact that the automobile inflicts its worst damage on the young...

...We try to impress upon both buyers of our products and all car owners the importance of knowing and observing the rules of good driving...

...But from a Mercury (Ford) teen-age car advertisement: ". . . For get-away, there's a new 390 four barrel V-8 with a high lift cam...

...As one Chrysler Corporation public relations man explained, "I guess that it is true that some advertising writers get the feeling that Senator Ribicoff is looking over their shoulder as they write their copy...

...A manual for good drivers which we supply with all Ford-built passenger cars...

...But perhaps the biggest reason of all for such youth-oriented promotion is the knowledge of the car maker that teen-agers will soon be adults buying their own automobiles...

...It is all-important, then, to get them "hooked" on a given make of car as early as possible...

...If a motorist drives carelessly and kills someone, he can be criminally prosecuted for manslaughter...

...the portrait of Brute Force...

...But little by little he came to realize, in the words of some testimony he received on the very first day of his hearings, that 'in the case of automobile safety devices, the need is recognized and the design changes are known, but there the whole problem grinds to a discouraging halt.' The automobile industry did not oppose him...

...Was anything done about it...

...It is not a race car...

...it just ignored him...

...Up front there's big muscle...

...And we have a safety theme in all our advertising...

...We do not lay undue emphasis on performance but we do make some reference to the car's potential...

...We've had quite a campaign on safe driving tips...

...Just run the tires up to 70 pounds and hang on...

...We use almost every means of communication...

...You bet...

...As has long been reflected in insurance rates, the young are our most dangerous drivers...

...According to a press report coming out of Detroit this summer, "The auto industry has calmed down, at least, for the moment, its advertising emphasis on hot engines, high horse power, and get-up-and-go cars...

...But a Buick (General Motors) teenage car advertisement offers temptation: "Ever prodded a throttle with 445 feet of torque coiled tightly at the end of it...

...The response was described by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, former Assistant Secretary of Labor and brilliant intellectual-in-residence of the Kennedy-Johnson Administration: "Like so many of the physicians and engineers who appeared before him, [Roberts] . . . seem to have started with the assumption that the bare facts of the situation [concerning the unsafe design of American cars] pointed so dramatically to an obvious conclusion that the debate would be all over once they were made public...

...They just uncaged the Coronet...

...For Detroit's advertising of high power and jet-like speed puts on the highways, in the hands of youths and other drivers incited to recklessness, the cars that deliver unsafe speeds and attitudes—along with death and injuries...

...Unfortunately, Ford and the other car makers, through their irresponsible advertisements in teen-age car magazines, are also proving how the American car makers are deliberately working to make our highways unsafe for all Americans...

...More young people die from automobile accidents than from any other cause...

...This is the official pace car of the Indianapolis 500...

...Plymouth Fury, Pace Car...

...How, then does Chrysler explain this car advertisement directed to teenagers...

...Traffic accidents, in addition to killing a disproportionate number of the young, are the number one cause of death among youths and children...

...These are just a few examples of the many ways Ford Motor Company is working to make our highways safer and more enjoyable for all Americans...

...A spokesman for Chrysler said: "Chrysler does not feature speed or performance in advertising that is designed for teen-age consumption...

...How the industry works both sides of the street—the "safety education" side and the sell-more-cars side—is evident from the following comparisons of messages from good-driving pamphlets distributed by car makers with those appearing in teen-age hot rod magazines...

...We will see you at the checkered flag...

...Said a spokesman for General Motors: "Our ads are by no means all in that unsafe vein...

...Asked about its teen-age car advertisements, a spokesman for Ford Motor Company stated: "We have not been making any substantial changes in our basic advertising philosophy despite the recent safety furor...

...But it has power to spare in its optional 4-barrel Commando 426 cubic-inch V-8 engine...

...Evidently, Ford will continue to advertise in teen-age magazines as it did in this classic appeal: "The VELVET BRUTE...

...In 1959, a standard textbook in medicine had stated, "If one were to attempt to produce a pedestrian-injuring mechanism, one of the most theoretically efficient designs which might be developed would closely approach that of the front of some present-day automobiles...

...A General Motors safe driving pamphlet advises: "For infantile motorists . . . with an unmuffled exhaust, normal driving is, of course, unthinkable...

...thus, the overriding importance of the teen-ager to the motor industry...

...But where is the safety theme in this GM teen-age car advertisement: "Nobody said a nice car can't play mean now and then...

...As long ago as 1956, then Congressman Kenneth A. Roberts, Alabama Democrat, held hearings on what was already considered by experts to be the flagrant lack of safety in American cars...

...The engine must be revved up at stops, not idled...

...In point of fact, for years there have been a great many lines of testimony in the Congressional Record and the record of hearings on Capitol Hill, pointing to the car makers' willful ignoring of safety...

...However, a check of the motor car magazines for teen-agers reveals a ratio of many stridently irresponsible General Motors advertisements for each one concentrating on safe driving tips...

...Detroit's Double Talk on Safety by JEFFREY O'CONNELL T~\uring the debate on the bill recently passed by Congress and signed by the President setting Federal safety standards for the production of automobiles, Congress rejected a provision calling for criminal penalties against the car makers for willful failure to comply with the new standards...

...Denying there was any need for criminal penalties, Senator Philip A. Hart, Michigan Democrat, said, "There isn't a line in the record that points to willful misconduct [by the car makers...

...Dodge has made it a little harder to survive in the asphalt jungle...

...Not a pony or a kitten in the bunch...

...Newspaper supplements...

...This year, Dr...

...We begin by designing and engineering extra safety into every vehicle we manufacture...

...Jack-rabbit starts are for Jack-rabbits or for a supervised drag strip...

...The automobile manufacturers have long readily admitted in private their knowledge of the lethal nature of the front-ends of present-day cars...

...This double standard for treatment of the driver and treatment of the car maker should be ended by amendment of the Federal Traffic Safety Act of 1966...

...A console-mounted transmission...

...But at the same time, while blaming the traffic carnage on reckless driving and trying to encourage safe driving habits, the car makers have also spent lavishly to encourage our worst drivers —the young—to drive recklessly...

...Put yourself in a Sport Fury soon...

...Drivers under twenty-five constitute nineteen per cent of all licensed drivers and cause thirty per cent of the accidents...

...An even more important motive for directing advertising toward teen-agers, however, is their influential —indeed, often controlling—voice in new car purchases by their parents...

...In addition, we create and distribute a wide variety of driver-education aids, including film strips, safety publications, and motion pictures...

...The optional four speed manual is especially geared for a glazing get-away...

...Both for show and go...

...Not only is the car maker's offense often more serious in itself, but it is multiplied thousands of times, with every model thus produced...

...From a Ford safe driving manual: "Take it easy when you pull away from a curb...

...The hot setup...

...The Senator never acknowledged receipt of my evidence...

...Questioned about the incitement to unsafe driving in the company's teenage car advertisements, Gail Smith, GM's general director of advertising and merchandising, stated: "Naturally, in those hot rod magazines we use jargon and have an ad appeal which is directed to the young audience...

...Detroit is well aware that our affluent society has developed an impressive amount of teen-age purchasing power, even for such expensive items as automobiles...

...Our efforts do not end here, however...

...As a corollary, the young not only suffer grievous damage from the automobile, but inflict it...

...Thus, contrary to Senator Hart's statement, there are items in the "record" that "point to willful misconduct" by the automobile industry...

...As appalling an example as there is of the car makers' willful misconduct with regard to safety is the manner of advertising their product to teenagers...

...The automobile manufacturers have often, and publicly, stated that the reason for teen-agers' frightful driving records is their "aggressive personality traits, unsound and immature judgment, lack of cooperative attitude, and willingness to take undue risks...

...Each year two of every five teenagers are involved in traffic accidents...

...And yet —willfully, in the interest of superficial design appeal—they have gone right on needlessly turning slight pedestrian injuries into serious ones, and serious ones into deaths...

...They do this by publishing glossy, glamourous advertisements designed to appeal to youngsters who read such magazines as Road Track, Hot Rod, Motor Trend, and Car and Driver...

...You can buy one just like it...

...That is only one example of many —of Detroit's contribution to injuries and fatalities—that have long been a matter of public record, within Congress and without...

...William Haddon, Jr., the newly-appointed Administrator of the Federal Traffic Safety Agency, at a White House conference held before the new law was passed, stated that annually more than a quarter million pedestrians in the United States are struck and killed or injured by vehicles "with front-end configurations whose design often closely approaches that of ideal injury-producing mechanisms...

...Earlier this year, the Ford Motor Company advertised: "Our efforts to make driving safer take more than one form at Ford Motor Company...

...As an example of the industry's indifference to the problem over the years, take the car from the point of view of the pedestrian...

...Starts must resemble a successful missile launching...

...The nature of such advertising was pointed out specifically to Senator Hart, in considerable detail, by me shortly before his statement that there was no evidence of "willful misconduct...