Mr. MOYNIHAN. This is a clearly expensive matter in the Government, generally. In the Department of Defense, it becomes a very serious matter indeed. We would estimate that the direct cost to the Government in 1963 from motor vehicle accidents involving personnel of the Department of Defense was about $83 million, and the total direct and indirect cost of these accidents, perhaps $300 million. Senator RIBICOFF. So just taking the Government alone, and forgetting your own employees and the number of lives, you consider that there may be $8 million being spent on traffic safety, research, and auxiliary services for the whole Nation, and yet you have in 1963 a cost to the Government of $83 million and 1,541 lives lost? Mr. MOYNIHAN. That is correct, sir. Senator RIBICOFF. As a practical problem, a health problem, and an economic problem, we ought to be getting a little more involved in this problem. Mr. MOYNIHAN. It has been the experience of the 20th century that you get out of this kind of effort what you put into it. CENTRALIZATION OF RESPONSIBILITY IN ONE FEDERAL DEPARTMENT Senator RIBICOFF. Do you think that the problem of traffic safety ought to be centralized in one department of the Government? Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. Chairman, I think that I would want to answer that question in terms of what you wanted to do about the problem. I think that given the present level of Federal activity-which I think, in terms of our other efforts, is a limited level of activity-the Interdepartmental Highway Safety Board is perfectly capable of coordinating it and does a good job. If you were to envisage a quantum change in the proportion of that activity, the time would quickly come when you would have to ask whether you can do it in seven agencies, or in one? But I think before you ask the administrative question you would want to ask the substantive one: How much do you want to do? Senator RIBICOFF. Let's say we want to try to stem the trend or turn the trend; let's say we really want to bring some results, like Haddon was talking about. I intend to invite Dr. Haddon to come here and testify at an early meeting. From your own experience, from where you sit and where you have sat, what do you think might be considered-I use the word "considered" instead of "done"-what might be considered as a means to do something about this problem? Mr. MOYNIHAN. Sir, I could only speak as an individual. There is no Government view on this. Senator RIBICOFF. As an individual not making policy for the Secretary or the administration, as an individual? Mr. MOYNIHAN. Before coming to the Government, I gave a paper at the Conference on Passenger Car Design and Highway Safety, in which I proposed the establishment of a Federal automobile agency, which would bring together the very great number of activities in which the Federal Government necessarily is involved-the construction and regulation of highways, the problem of automobile design and use, as much as the Government might want to do. If it really wishes seriously to get involved in this, I would think it would have to answer this kind of question. Senator RIBICOFF. Would you be good enough to send us a copy of this paper which we could insert in the record at this point? Mr. MOYNIHAN. I should be happy to do so. (The paper referred to is as follows:) EXHIBIT 24 PASSENGER CAR DESIGN AND HIGHWAY SAFETY Proceedings of a Conference on Research Sponsored by the Association for the Aid of Crippled Children and Consumers Union of U. S., Inc. May 17, 1961 (291) THE LEGAL REGULATION OF AUTOMOBILE DESIGN -Daniel P. Moynihan, Ph.D. There are two guidelines that should direct any consideration of the question of legal regulation of automobile design. It should first be kept in mind that automobiles are but one of several common forms of transportation and that, although design regulation is somewhat the exception with specific regard to automobiles, it is the norm with regard to means of transportation in general. Furthermore, the regulation of other means of transportation is, on the whole, carried out at the federal level. A second consideration is that the administrative arrangements for the regulation of transportation facilities must be adapted to the specific situation: to be effective, the technical decision as to the form and procedure of design regulations must be related directly to the grounds on which the policy decision to impose them was adopted. Safety regulations take a great variety of forms and are to be encountered at every level of American government. Although directly concerned with the general welfare, they have normally been regarded as an unexceptional exercise of the police power of the state and have rarely encountered the fierce opposition which greeted the extension of government regulation on more general humanitarian grounds. (Hours of work on railroads, for example, were regulated by the federal government for purposes of safety at a time when the Supreme Court severely restricted the power of the states to impose similar regulations for purposes of health.) Safety regulations have but rarely raised either constitutional or philosophical issues; this has been rather a commonsense field of activity, and its proceedings have been uniformly, almost uninvitingly, practical. There is no easy measure of the proportions a problem must assume before a public decision is made to impose safety regulations. This is a political process, subject to the infinity of variables that affect that process. Commonly, the qualities of imagination and compassion have a greater effect on the course of events than do more readily defined factors. For example, in 1956 the federal government enacted a sweeping regulation of refrigerator door design for the purpose of preventing the suffocation of children trapped while playing in abandoned refrigerators. Only 39 children were known to have died on that account during the 21⁄2 years preceding the enactment, but the ghastly quality of death insinuating itself into the innocent play of children moved Congress to almost unanimous action. That year the state of New York forbade the installation of television sets in passenger automobiles, a hypothetical innovation which had not at that point worked any documented harm on the driving public but which easily aroused the imagination of the legislature as to what might happen! Although the political circumstances that lead to regulation vary, the conditions under which regulations are imposed may easily be classified under two headings: 1. The safety measures to be imposed are well enough known but have not been adopted, normally because they involve some real or imagined financial loss to some or all of the business enterprises concerned. Occasionally measures are taken to ensure the adoption of a worthwhile innovation or to prevent the introduction of an undesirable one (as in the case of automotive television). 2. The safety measures to be imposed are not known, or at least not thoroughly tested, but the seriousness of the problem urges that government do something to develop such measures. Clearly, different administrative courses will be adopted according to which set of conditions obtains. In the first instance, the task is simply to impose a set standard. In the second, the more complex task is first to develop a standard and then to impose it. Much government safety regulation in transportation has begun with the imposition of a limited number of established standards. The passenger automobile has been subject to this type of regulation, at the state level, for more than a quarter of a century. The second stage is for the government to begin developing standards of its own. This is a larger undertaking. Before considering the question of adopting this course, it is worth while to review the experience in this matter with other forms of transportation. For purposes of clarity, this review will be confined to the work of the federal government. FEDERAL REGULATION OF TRANSPORTATION At the present time, passenger automobiles and pipe lines are the only common forms of interstate transportation that are not regulated by the federal government for purposes of safety. A federal steamboat inspection service began in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Railroads came under surveillance at the end of the century, aircraft in the 1920's, trucks and buses in the 1930's. This process has not stopped. The current annual report of the Federal Power Commission, for example, urges safety regulations for the construction and operation of interstate gas pipe lines.1 Thus any discussion of extending federal regulation to automobile safety may take place in the context of extensive experience going back over a century. The most significant areas of this experience involve the railroad, trucking, and aircraft industries. 'Fortieth Annual Report of the Federal Power Commission, p. 18. Railroads From their very beginnings, railroads were a hazardous form of transportation and a singularly perilous form of employment. "During the decade of the [eighteen-] fifties and even later, a railroad passenger literally took his life in his hands. . . . An accident was considered an 'act of God' rather than negligence on the part of the railroad."2 Railroad injuries and deaths reached horrendous proportions: in 1888 some 5693 persons were killed and 27,898 injured. Of these, only a small proportion were passengers (barely 5 percent of those killed). The heaviest incidence was among brakemen. As the years passed, the view of railroad accidents as acts of God declined in favor among a small but significant group of persons who felt that safety devices existed which, if adopted, would prevent a considerable number of mishaps. The two of most immediate importance were the automatic coupler and the air brake. The prototype of the present automatic coupler was patented in 1868, that of the air brake in 1869. The Janney coupler, which replaced the manual (and bloody!) link-and-pin system, was well enough received on some roads such as the Pennsylvania, which made it standard equipment in 1876-77. The Westinghouse air brake, however, was not at all well received until it was finally tested and proved a decade later. By the outset of the 1890's these devices were in general use in passenger service but continued to be ignored in freight operations. Thus, a quarter of a century after their development, two major safety devices had still to be generally adopted by the railroad industry. It was widely held that this was due to the reluctance of the railroads to bear the expense of refitting. "So long as brakes cost more than trainmen," wrote the editor of Harper's, "we may expect the present sacrificial method of car coupling to be continued."3 Some states enacted laws requiring railroads to use certain safety devices, but these laws were not effective. In the words of the ICC, "It may be said of the earlier statutes that their greatest usefulness was probably in showing the railroad companies that public sentiment was earnest on the subject and required that something be accomplished."4 The establishment of the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1887 provided a focus for the railroad safety movement. The need for uniformity in equipment among the 500 independent roads in the nation was uppermost in the minds of the commissioners. Their third annual convention, in 1891, appointed a committee to urge upon 2 Harold Underwood Faulkner, American Economic History, Harper & Bros., New York, 1949, p. 289. 3 Quoted in Stewart H. Holbrook, The Story of American Railroads, Crown Publishers, New York, 1947, p. 293. 'Third Annual Report of the Interstate Commerce Commission, 1889, p.88. |