Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-in Dangers of the American Automobile.

Ralph Nader's Unsafe At Any Speed: The Designed-in Dangers of the American Automobile, a blistering attack on the Chevrolet Corvair and the whole American auto industry, was the first assault of the consumerist movement. Published in 1965, this book had an immediate impact on the American political scene. General Motors was immediately placed in the spotlight, and within a year Congress enacted the Motor Vehicle Safety Act. Spurred on by his victory, Nader redoubled his assaults against America's producers and innovators, pushing a spate of regulatory initiatives. Congress, in turn, passed the Wholesome Meat Act, the Comprehensive Occupational Health and Safety Act, the National Gas Pipeline Act, the Radiation Control for Health and Safety Act, anymore. For the next three decades, American automobiles, as well as other consumer products, would increasingly be designed by politicians rather than corporate engineers.

The significance of Nader's book goes beyond its direct political ramifications. Nader's work profoundly changed the way risk and safety were viewed in the American polity. Regulators and consumer activists were immediately cast as noble crusaders who sought a safe, clean, healthy world--thwarted by those willing to place a price tag on a human life, to assign a dollar value to a clean environment. Health, safety, and environmental risks, Americans came to believe, could only be addressed by pervasive political controls. Laws mandating "safety" at any cost have accounted for much of the growth in government for the last three decades.

Aaron Wildavsky in Searching for Safety sought to reframe this debate--to reexamine the argument that the choice was one of safety vs. profits. A safer world, he noted, often reflects the adoption of "unsafe" products that are safer than the products they displace. Fire was--and remains--a highly risky technology, but a fireless world faces even greater risks. Society must create institutions that balance risks against risks--the risks of allowing a certain product or technology to be used versus the risks of banning that product'

Wildavsky pointed out that societies cannot anticipate all the possible risks that an uncertain world entails, and rather should strive to increase wealth and knowledge so as to become more resilient, more able to overcome dangers of whatever sort. Wealthier societies, Wildavsky also noted, are safer (and healthier and cleaner) societies. Political regulators aren't engaged in easy morality plays but rather complex risk-balancing tasks in which the risks reduced by their regulations must be contrasted with the direct and wealth-reduction risks stemming from their actions. This is a fact that Nader and his followers have yet to learn.

Unlike Nader's book, Wildavsky's writings have not yet led to massive changes in the political landscape, but his work provides the intellectual basis for current risk reform efforts. Sadly, Aaron died earlier this year at the age of 63. His Searching for Safety is one of the most important, and tragically under-read, books of the post-war period.