22nd Mar 2008
Driver’s Safety Films Books: Unsafe At Any Speed
Let’s start off with some film: the 1960 promotional film, The Corvair In Action. Did you know a Corvair could drive twenty miles through a (shallow) river? I didn’t!
Today, the Corvair is best known as the car targeted by Ralph Nader in his 1965 book, Unsafe At Any Speed. Both Nader and the book have their flaws; however, those problems were used to attempt to completely dismiss the criticisms of the automotive industry. It’s especially amusing to hear the response, “The Corvair was just as safe as many other cars on the market at the same time!” Uh, true, but all you’ve proved is that more than one model of unsafe car was on the road.
Nader’s central thesis was that the automotive industry concentrated on design instead of safety, lagging behind and ignoring evidence instead of leading the drive for safe, clean cars. And they still do… The Ford/Firestone tire under-inflation fiasco was a remarkable echo of the Corvair’s under-inflation problems from four decades earlier. CAFE standards are whined about endlessly.
But watch some of those old auto safety films… on the whole, cars are better than they used to be. Drivers are about the same 
I want a Corvair for three reasons:
1) I find the simple design very attractive
2) My parents owned one before I was born
3) Ralph Nader is an asshole
And if you can find a Corvair in good shape these days, they go for a lot of money.
Nader’s “Car’s aren’t made as safe as they could be,” statement still annoys me. As my dad would say, “Sure! Why put an engine into it? It would be much safer without one.”