Line up the self-styled safety experts and critics of what’s wrong with today’s cars …the divergences of their opinions as to what should and must be done vary as from night and day.

The General Services Administration told the Senate Commerce committee that they were investigating 60 areas of auto safety for future standards. The National Safety Council lists 12 engineering changes which will make cars safer.

So let’s continue unabated the hue and cry about automobile safety … let’s rush pell-mell, willy-nilly into enacting legislation without truly careful study and solution.

It will leave us with a crippled auto industry.

Getting down to the basics, if all the safety features are to be incorporated into new cars, as our clamoring experts and Congress insist upon, these extras can push car prices so high that it will be beyond the purchasing power of the average buyer.

As the shouting and tumult about new safety features tapered off to a loud whisper ... it can become a roar again tomorrow … survey’s in dealers’ showrooms showed a distinct apathy to the proposed safety features. The new car buyer will not ask dealers to point out … one by one … each and every new safety device on that car. The buyer could care less! What he does want pointed out are style, appearance, speed, comfort—the old “reliables.”

Where does this leave the fleet buyer? With annual fall new car previews just around the corner … how many of the new safety features will show up in the ’67 models? And just how much will the “safety-expert ’67” auto cost the fleet operator?

Can the professional fleet man, undoubtedly more safety conscious than any other group … but ever conscious of cost saving economy … afford to buy new cars at an ever-increasing price?

Car prices must climb when government-jammed safety features are crammed down the auto industry’s throat. Someone has to pay the bill for all these safety ideas … whether 12 or 60.

Fleet administrators , in turn, will have to sell this initial higher cost to management … and also must assume that little of this extra cost will be recovered at resale time two years hence.

The time for fleet men to pass on their thoughts for more cost saving economy technology is at new car previews!

When everyone out of twelve cars is purchased by fleet operators … who control some 2,3000,000 cars traveling 28,400 miles, on an average, each year … Detroit might turn to the needs of the fleets representing American business.

As Henry Watkins, president of Universal CIT Credit Corporation, stated, “… organizations are significant in making opinions and aspirations known. I think you might make these opinions known a little longer and a little louder.”

Let’s raise our collective voices … SOUND OFF!