Search for Safety Comes to Congress
AS THE stock market teeters nervously downward and certain indicators point to trouble ahead in the economy the search for scapegoats is on. The auto manufacturers are offering up a most improbable candidate in 30-year-old Ralph Nader, a free-lance lawyer-journalist.</br></br>It is as though his book, Unsafe at Any Speed, had with a single blow punctured the boom. If only by their bungled attempts to discredit Mr. Nader the manufacturers succeeded in creating a David who with a single stone from his sling brought down the Goliath of American industry, representing over-all about one-sixth of the entire economy.</br></br>M.	Roche, president, and George Russell, executive vice president, of General Motors, the industrial colossus with more than half of the business, are walking the corridors of the Senate Office Buildings. Their immediate concern is twofoldÛÓthe criminal penalties for deliberate and willful violation of safety standards and the date when the standards shall be effective. They put their case gently and politely to Sen. Vance Hartke (D-Ind.), who has proposed, along with Rep. James A. Mac-kay (D-Ga.) in the House, amendments that toughen the Administration bill.</br></br>Mr. Nader is a singularly American phenomenonÛÓthe gadfly, the reformer with a singleness of purpose that gives him the strength of 10. So concentrated is his aim on the engineering safety of the car that even his backers on Capitol Hill are concerned lest other factors in the slaughter on the highways be lost sight of. And that slaughter is just now the reason for renewed agonizing.</br></br>THE CURVE of death and destruction had been going down. But for the first four months of this year 15,110 persons were killed as compared with 13,650 in the same period in 1965, an increase of 11 per cent. The jump in April with 4400 traffic fatalities was 20 per cent over April a year ago. So ominous is the rise that the president of the National Safety Council, Howard Pyle, warned of ÛÏtotals of tragedy far beyond anything in automotive history.Û This will help the push for a strong Federal safety standards bill. Whether the responsibility lies with the states or with the Federal Government is one of the bones of contention. For the industry state laws would be less of a problem, and until recently the claim of statesÛª rights might have been a convenient refuge from Federal regulation. But a special highway safety panel of the National Governors Conference meeting in Washington reported that auto safety standards were a Federal responsibility.