Automobile

SOME HISTORIANS argue that the impact of the automobile on the modern industrial age is as deep and broad as the French and Russian Revolutions or that the automobile has more profoundly influenced 20th-century American historical development than presidents or Progressives. Without a doubt, the automobile has radically changed the technological and social development of American and world history.

Henry Ford's mass production of cars marked the beginning of the motor age when the car changed from the toy of the rich to the essential transportation for the ordinary man. Trolley cars were displaced to make room for more cars. Brick streets were covered with asphalt to provide a smoother automobile ride. As more Americans owned cars, urbanization patterns changed and suburbs flourished. The U.S. government created a national highway system, and Americans became mobile, jumping into the car and going anywhere anytime.

The automobile changed social patterns as well. Young people enjoyed the freedom of the automobile and their parents feared that the automobile freed moral standards to an unacceptable level. After a century of using the automobile, the world is still experiencing and assessing the effects of internal combustion transportation. Nearly every aspect of modern life has developed around this technology. Americans are debating its impact on their physical, political, and moral environments. With the count at 500 million cars and steadily increasing worldwide, and over 150 million cars in the United States, not counting heavy vehicles such as trucks, buses, cranes and other commercial vehicles, people have forged a lasting alliance with the automobile.

Automobile safety versus the corporate bottom line is the most pressing problem that the automobile industry faces as the 21st century progresses. Factors like increasingly high speed limits, more highways and more cars clogging them, and human error and mechanical failures have kept these issues consistently newsworthy, although not necessarily new. The February 21, 1931, issue of Science News pointed out that according to a survey by statisticians of the Travelers Insurance Company, more Americans had been killed by automobile accidents than in World War I. During the 18 months that the American Expeditionary Forces had fought in World War I, about 50,510 soldiers had been killed in action or died of wounds. During the equivalent amount of time in 1930–31, 50,900 persons were killed in automobile accidents in the United States. The National Vital Statistics report for the year 2000 stated that 43,354 Americans were killed in motor vehicle crashes that year.

Automobile accidents began as soon as the first cars appeared on America's rutted, dirt roads that had been hewn for horses and foot traffic. A broken arm, acquired when cranking the engine to get it started, was one of the most common Model A and Model T injuries in the 1920s and 1930s. As the automobile industry grew with the decades, so did the technology and the concern for the corporate bottom line, which made the temptation to short-change the automobile consumer irresistible for most automakers. The shift to holding automobile manufacturers accountable for the safety of their vehicles began in the 1960s when lawyer Ralph Nader challenged General Motors in his book Unsafe at Any Speed. Although he was young and inexperienced, Nader permanently changed the course of the automobile industry by proving that General Motors automobiles were not as safe as they could be, and revealing that although company executives were aware that consumers were at risk from their unsafe automobiles, they were more concerned with profits that probity. Nader charged that the Chevrolet Corvair exemplified the General Motor's disregard for safety. Small, state-of-the-art, lightweight, [Page 66]and featuring an independent rear suspension, the Corvair proved to be popular and consumers rushed to buy the 1960 model. When data published by Nader revealed that the design of the Corvair made it unsafe and that hundreds of drivers had been injured in accidents, sales dipped correspondingly and General Motors attempted to discredit Nader. In response, he sued them, and won a $424,000 settlement, which he used to form a consumer group to monitor General Motors. Besides paying Nader a cash settlement, General Motors admitted its guilt, creating a front-page story for newspapers across the country.

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