Ed Bobit's Publisher's Page

The only freedom deserving the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper of his own health, whether bodily, or mental and spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest. John Stuart Mill: On Liberty, Chapter 1, 1859.

Whatever your view on automotive safety and seat restraints in particular, you may well be safer next year but you are sacrificing personal freedom in the new cars and you are going to pay for it.

The ignition interlock for seat belts will be a reality this fall and all the cussing you have encountered from fleet drivers on buzzers is hardly a sound from what you will hear from now on. Fleet mangers will be particularly sensitive since more than a million new cars will be purchased by fleets in the '74 model run-well over 40-percent of the total fleet car population. This compares with the overall consumer or average car owners who replace only average car owners who replace only eight percent of the total U.S. car population each year.

With the current buzzer system the sound can be deactivated by simply pulling the belt out of the retractor and stuffing it into the seat; or buckling it on. The new interlock system will not be as simple to by pass. It will have a logic unit that requires the load switch to be opened, and the belts to be buckled in sequence. Each time the driver sits on the seat (or possibly lifts up for his wallet), it will open the load switch and the belt must be buckled or the car will not start.

Chrysler's chief engineer for automotive safety, Roy Haeusler, describes the interlock system as a reminder and not a 'compeller' since you can still sit on the buckled belt but it must be reengaged each time you leave the seat.

Now most of us are for doing anything reasonable to save some of the more than 50,000 lives lost each year on the highways, as well as to lessen the additional injuries that the current buzzer system has 'forced' drivers to up their use of belts from less than five-percent to over 30-percent. That is some kind of progress.

Still, less than 10-percent are using the shoulder harnesses that continue to be mandatory and costly.

GM is opting to install air bags in part of their '74 production models even though the air bag system has been delayed as mandatory for an additional year. And these seem to be working. It saved an Eaton Corporation employee's life in the Chicago area when he was clocked on a radar unit at 68 miles per hour on impact when he hit a parked police car. With only the air bag, the Eaton driver broke a wrist and received some cuts and abrasions on his right leg and knee.

More recently, one of the GM furnished experimental air bag equipped cars for the Federal Parks police unit was traveling about 15 miles per hour and received a glancing blow behind the wheel well by another '72 car moving at about 35 miles per hour. The air bag deployed, and even though the collision caused severe damage to the left front door, the left front door window and the lower left windshield, the policeman was not injured thanks to the air bag.

Whether you side with Donald L. Schaffer, vice president and general counsel for Allstate Insurance Co., who says, "As we enter the second year of on-the-road testing of air-bag equipped cars, it is clear that the air bag is so reliable and effective as to be almost unbelievable," or you side with James S. Kemper, Jr., president of Kemper Insurance Group, who has called for a national commission to investigate and audit consumer groups exercising significant influence on the economy and who charged that Ralph Nader has "fallen heir to the same arrogant prejudice, dishonesty, irresponsibility and shoddy performance of which he accuses his targets," and who warned that Naderism can "wreck the consumer movement in America," both have benevolent self-interest as well as demonstrating an outlook for a better future.

The one certain thing in '74 is that fleet men will be hearing a lot more noise in the form of buzzers and the companies will be paying for this kind of automotive 'music.'