Requires ‘Passive Restraints’ as Well as Seat-Belt Use : Air-Bag Bill Clouds Detroit’s Plans
The seat-belt bill expected to be enacted in California isn’t exactly what the auto industry had in mind when it began lobbying for a law. In fact, the bill seeks to undercut the industry’s state-by-state campaign to avoid a federal requirement for “passive restraints,” such as air bags, in its cars.
Still, the industry considers the bill just one more twist in a fast-moving and unpredictable game being played nationwide, one in which the rules already dictate that producers must equip 10% of their cars with passive restraints starting next summer.
Industry officials are convinced that so much will happen nationally in the next few years that it won’t be faced with the potential problem posed by the California bill: a requirement that four years hence it would have to build its cars equipped with passive restraints only for the California market.
“There are so many variables that the extra difficulty imposed at the moment by a potential California law is not that critical to us,” said Roger Maugh, director of Ford Motor’s automotive safety office, the only auto executive willing to discuss the ramifications of the California legislation. “It is impossible to know what’s going to happen.”
The U.S. government set the game in motion when it mandated that all cars built as of the 1990 model year have passive restraints--and then offered the industry a loophole to escape that regulation: If, before the 1990 model year, states whose residents add up to at least two-thirds of the national population enact seat-belt laws, the requirement would be dropped.
Accordingly, the auto industry, worried about sales that might be lost because of the extra cost of cars with bags or automatic seat belts, has been lobbying hard. California would be the 16th state to enact a seat-belt law.
But the California bill, expected to win final legislative approval after lawmakers return in mid-August and to be signed by Gov. George Deukmejian, contains both good news and bad news for car makers.
It orders motorists and passengers to buckle up starting Jan. 1, and that would bring to about 50% the share of the population covered by seat-belt laws. But the same bill also requires that all cars sold here after Sept. 1, 1989, have passive restraints as well, regardless of the law elsewhere.
For good measure, it also declares that California can’t be counted toward the two-thirds population threshold at which the national requirement of passive restraints would be voided. However, the U.S. Department of Transportation, not the California Legislature, decides that.
To the insurance industry and other proponents of automatic restraints, the unique California approach is a nifty tactic likely to be tried in other states.
Says Brian O’Neill, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in Washington: “I would like to see it spread. I’d like DOT to get a very clear signal that the states don’t want to be used to eliminate the need for passive restraints.”
California, as the nation’s most populous state, is clearly a vital market to the auto makers. But if it becomes the only state requiring that cars be equipped with automatic restraints, Ford’s Maugh says, “I don’t think it’s feasible for that kind of situation to exist for a long period of time.
“Automatic belts and air bags are so integral to the design of a vehicle that we don’t want (the requirement) to exist in just one niche of the market,” he says. “If California had the requirement and nobody else did, the first thing to happen is somebody would test it in court.”
So the industry’s lobbyists withdrew their opposition to the bill months ago. For now, they are delighted to get California in the seat-belt camp. And their long experience in successfully fighting air bags has taught them to take the long view.
By the time California’s automatic-restraint mandate takes effect four years from now, Maugh says, court decisions, the political landscape and federal directives could well have changed the ground rules that gave rise to the bill now pending in Sacramento.
Court Challenge Promised
More important, he says, the public will have gained experience with seat-belt laws and passive restraints--and public opinion will determine the outcome here and elsewhere.
The industry vows to challenge the California law in court on the grounds that a state can’t preempt federal guidelines. But it also is betting that seat-belt laws will drastically reduce road fatalities and serious injuries and that buyers will dislike the automatic restraints that will be installed on some cars in the interim. Both factors, it believes, will undermine public support for mandatory passive restraints.
The topic now livening the agendas of state legislatures across the country is only the latest chapter in a debate that has raged at the national level for 20 years. At issue is how best to protect people in cars: by requiring them to use existing seat belts or to order that new cars be equipped with passive, or automatic, restraints that work without any initiative by drivers or passengers.
While it is commonly described as an air-bag issue, the inflatable bag is just one type of passive restraint. The other--the one expected to be most widely installed--is a belt that automatically closes around passengers when the door is closed. The automatic belt can cost anywhere from $50 to $350, depending on how sophisticated it is, while air bags can cost $800. The customer will pay, though costs would come down sharply if the devices were widely used.
The auto industry and the safety lobby agree on the need for mandatory seat-belt use, a step that can be immediately implemented on virtually all of the 100-million-plus cars now on the road. They also agree that seat belts are needed even in cars equipped with air bags. But the auto lobby, worried about loss of sales resulting from the higher prices for cars with passive restraints, is opposed to requiring the automatic devices.
After her predecessor’s effort to kill a pending air-bag requirement was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, Secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Hanford Dole last year ordered the installation of passive restraints on 10% of all cars built in the 1987 model year, 20% of 1988 models, 40% of 1989 models and 100% of 1990 cars. But she stipulated that the whole program will be dropped if the necessary state seat-belt laws are passed before April, 1989.
It is up to her department to decide whether a given state’s seat-belt law is acceptable for voiding the passive-restraint mandate, and each law has its oddities. The California measure, for instance, was drafted with provisions for a $20 fine, $5 less than the minimum suggested by Dole’s guidelines, in an apparent effort to disqualify California from the tally. Anti-air-bag states, by contrast, would automatically repeal their seat-belt laws if passive restraints are ultimately required.
‘Lot of Game Playing’
“There’s been a lot of game playing in this thing,” said O’Neill of the Insurance Institute. “The government invited the game playing when it set this up.”
One high-stakes game will be played out in the marketing departments of the car companies beginning next year, when 10% of 1987 model cars must be equipped with passive restraints. Each firm’s choice of systems and of the models in which to install them are a big competitive secret, and the industry’s dearth of experience in peddling such equipment makes it something of a crap shoot. More importantly, the industry’s approach will go a long way toward determining public acceptance of the devices--and of the whole notion of making them mandatory in all cars.
“This is one time where a regulatory climate is going to turn into a competitive free-for-all,” says Maugh, predicting a mixture of bags and automatic belts. “It’s going to be a real donnybrook.”
