In the summer of 1974, I was driving east on I-70 in St. Louis when a ladder fell off the truck in front of me. Steering to avoid the ladder, I drove over it, and a piece of it locked my wheels. I crashed head-on into a bridge abutment at about 70 mph. While a 1969 federal law mandated guardrails to prevent head-on crashes into bridge abutments, retrofitting the entire United States highway network proved to be a massive, multi-decade undertaking, and there was no guardrail where I crashed.) Wearing my seat belt prevented me from being ejected from the car, but not using the shoulder harness (the pieces were separate in my Dad’s 1971 Plymouth), I was thrown forward, breaking my jaw and being knocked unconscious.
Fortunately, my car had a breakaway (or collapsible) steering column, a crucial vehicle safety system designed to shorten or compress forward during a frontal crash, preventing the driver from severe impact or impalement against the steering wheel. Before this innovation, the steering column was a solid, rigid steel rod. In a front-end crash, the engine cabin collapsed, forcing that steel rod straight back into the driver’s chest like a spear. In my accident, I would have been impaled and killed instantly.
This design became an industry-wide requirement in the United States starting with the 1968 model year due to federal safety regulations. Needless to say, the government had to force car manufacturers to install this design just as they had to coerce them to add seat belts, airbags, and many other safety devices that make cars today safer than ever. Naturally, the automakers fought all these safety devices.
Prof. Messerly, you and I were very lucky to be born and come of age during an unusual period in the USA’s philosophy of governance.
The idea that the government should act and regulate for the common good was actually fairly short lived. It could be argued that it flourished 1933 to about the mid 70’s. By the time Reagan began his first term, this philosophy was starting to buckle from years of criticism and the perceived radicalness of the late sixties/early seventies.
I can’t prove it, but I do think had Nader written “Unsafe at Any Speed”, or had Carson written “Silent Spring” in today’s political environment, they would barely move the needle.
I recently re-read Timothy Snyder’s “On Freedom”. one of his themes was ‘positive freedom’ vs ‘negative freedom’ (with references/credits to Isaiah Berlin).
The fact you survived this accident, to me, is an excellent illustration of “positive freedom” made possible by an activist federal government.
It is unlikely any of the safety features that saved your life would have been voluntarily taken by the manufacturer. They would have exercised their “negative freedom” to make the car and sell it at profit. Your driving it, without external interference to your right to do so, was this same kind of freedom.
Only the action of others….government legislators and regulators,… created the “positive freedoms” that allowed you the greatest freedom, life itself.
I can be somewhat obsessed with the concept of limiting suffering.
The activist government of that period limited a great deal of suffering: the anguish of your parents, your siblings, and all who loved you.
And they created a Greater Good….you were able to live a full life.
And you have influenced untold thousands by doing so.
Thank you for sharing this personal story and tying it to Mr. Nader and the sane decency of government we once had.
Lyle
Thanks for your comments. I agree with everything you say here, especially about the period from FDR through Carter. (Even Nixon created the EPA and seriously considered universal child care.) But once Reagan came along–fired the air traffic controllers, cut taxes on the wealthy, merged with the religious fanatics, and removed Carter’s solar panels–I knew a new era was upon us. We are living in a time whose seeds were planted in the 1980s. It is sad what has happened to our country. Hopefully the evil insanity will soon expire. Thanks again, JGM