First seat belts, now headsets

Today California begins a ban on driving-while-talking, at least when it's on a cell phone without a headset. Otherwise, feel free to chat away, put on a tie, or fiddle with your headset. See what the editorial board thinks of the ban in today's editorial, and below, see what editorial boards past thought of two once-controversial automobile safety issues: seat belts and air bags.

The first mention of seat belts, already favorable, came in a dramatic 1950s editorial that, as anyone who has ever sat through driver's ed will notice, has a hint of " Red Asphalt":

Slaughter on the Holiday Week End, Sep. 4, 1954
Emergency hospitals are ready. Ambulances have been checked…. Highway first-aid stations have fresh stocks of bandages….All that remains to be done now is to wait for the victims--and they won't be long in coming…. [The Colorado State Medical Society's] investigation has led them to declare that deaths and injuries on Colorado highways would be cut from 70 to 90% overnight without any reduction in the accident rate if every motorist had available, and would wear, seat belts and shoulder straps anchored securely to the frame of his car….
Each holiday week end with its bloody toll serves as a spur toward renewed endeavors to lessen the prospect of sudden and unnecessary death.

Nine years later, the board again briefly mentioned its support for seat belts, this time while questioning the validity of drunk tests:

Gov. Brown's Highway Safety Program, Feb. 14, 1963
Five of Gov. Brown's proposals can be endorsed without reservation. They are obviously needed, and involve no unwarranted invasion of the rights of the citizen.
But the sixth proposal, providing for mandatory chemical tests of suspected drunken drivers, will cause some qualms….the approval of the chemical test for drunken driving, enforced by the threat of license loss, ought to wait until it can be shown that it is not a violation of civil rights.

In 1966, the board detailed the not-too-enthusiastic public response to proposed safety features:

Drivers and Auto Safety, May 12, 1966
The United States is a nation on wheels…. Once a luxury, the auto can now be considered virtually a necessity.
It can also be considered an instrument of mass destruction….
Years ago the industry, on a selective basis, attempted to interest the public in safety features. The response was a loud yawn, and a drop in sales of the cars which had the safety devices. The industry concluded, perhaps prematurely, that safety doesn't sell. So, it decided instead to give the public what the public appeared to want: frills, fancy styling, bizazz (sic)….
Unless there is public cooperation, and tougher laws to deal with traffic offenders, little will really be accomplished.
It will do little good, for example, to install seat belts in autos if the public won't go to the trouble of putting them on.

But even if drivers and passengers weren't wearing them, the board urged Congress to require seat belts to be installed in all cars. And it seemed to work: that is the year seat belts were required as standard features on all cars:

Seat Belts for Greater Auto Safety, July 28, 1966
At its next session the Legislature should enact a law requiring that seat belts be in ALL cars, new and used. Certainly this can be done, and easily enforced, by making installation of seat belts a condition to transfer of title or registration renewal….
Getting people to wear seat belts is, of course, a far bigger problem, perhaps one in which insurance companies and the courts might play a major role…. [I]t does seem clear that the greatest inducement to have seat belts used--greater even, as has been demonstrated, than the threat of loss of life--is the threat of financial penalty.

Air bags didn't get their first mention until 1972, but it was quite unequivocal. Eight years after seat belts became the standard, air bags struck the board as redundant:

Air Bags Are Overblown, Jan. 10, 1972
The new devices sought by the government are called "passive restraints." As the name suggests, they would require no action by anyone in a vehicle for them to become operative as safety measures…. The main passive restraint being talked about, and the most controversial, is the air bag…. Presumably, the bags would provide cushioning to break the forward motion of bodies and thus prevent serious injuries. Well, we wonder. To begin with, there is no evidence that the bags will do anything that seat and shoulder belts, properly used, won't do….
And what of reliability? There is always a chance, slim perhaps but hardly implausible, of a malfunction in the activating device of an air bag at some point, say when a car is being driven at 65 m.p.h. along a freeway. A graphic description of what might then happen isn't required.
Finally, there is the cost of the system, perhaps several hundred dollars, on top of additional costs that are coming for pollution control devices and other safety measures.

And four years later the board still hadn't changed its tune on air bags, even as it favored harsher seat belt rules:

Bags or Belts (Pick One), Aug. 5, 1976
Polls indicate that Americans would not like mandatory seat-belt-usage laws. But the decision on whether to use belts is not simply something that affects the individual alone. Auto deaths and injuries involve enormous social costs that are shared by nearly everyone: rising insurance premiums, demands on medical services, lost working days, welfare benefits. The stubborn auto-safety negligence of some is paid for by all.
We don't think that air bags are the answer to this problem…. We do think that the existing safety-belt system, properly used, is the answer….

Six years later (almost to the day), the board seemed pleased with a Reagan administration move to stop requiring cars to install passive restraints:

Hazardous to Health, Aug. 6, 1982
The Administration rescinded the passive restraint requirement in the belief, which we agree with, that existing devices work just as well if only people would use them….The government can order the installation of safety equipment, but it can't enforce its use either with existing devices or with passive restraints. That being the case, it is best to stick with what we have now, and step up efforts to encourage proper usage.

But within a year the board seemed to change its tune on passive restraints and the Reagan Administration decision, even if it was still generally opposed to air bags:

Restraint in Car Restraints, June 28, 1983
The U.S. Supreme Court has told the federal Transportation Department that it acted illegally when it decided not to require such passive restraint safety devices as air bags in future-model cars. The department's action in 1981 to abandon the safety regulation, the court said, was arbitrary and without convincing justification. The words are strong, but the comment is fair. The action, which was motivated primarily by the Reagan Administration's deregulatory zeal, was in fact based on notably specious reasoning….
[The] cost will be a lot higher if air bags are used instead of automatic safety belts. That's one reason for opposing air bags. Another is that the bags are of limited effectiveness. They pop out of the steering column and dashboard only in front-end collisions, providing no protection when a car is rear-ended or hit from the side.

And two years after that, the board urged California to enforce seat belt rules:

Big Brothers Aren't All Bad, April 22, 1985
Big Brother government is everywhere. It's what forces construction crews to wear hard hats so that steel beams won't crush their skulls, it's what puts a railing around shop machinery to protect workers from getting mangled, it's what keeps typhoid carriers out of restaurant kitchens. A vicious thing, this kind of Big Brotherism….
How far the government should go to try to protect people from dangers, including those brought on by their own carelessness, is a fair question. Requiring seat belts in cars certainly is legitimate. Making their use mandatory, as New York's recent experience proves, will save additional lives…. The common-sense course is to encourage the use of seat belts by imposing fines on those who fail to do so.

And in case you're curious, the board didn't come around to favor air bags till 1997, mostly because the government decided to let drivers switch off air bags:

The Air Bag Is No Enemy, Nov. 20, 1997
The federal government has taken the risky but necessary step of allowing motorists the option of turning off the air bags in their cars, trucks, vans and sport utility vehicles….
More than 80 small children and adults have died from the explosive deployment of the bags. But about 2,600 lives have been saved by air bags since they were introduced in the United States, authorities estimate, and the bags can prevent serious head and chest injuries.
Such statistics ought to make motorists pause before they take steps to turn off their air bags. Automotive and medical studies show there are few situations in which the air bags should be disabled. And the danger posed by the bags often can be reduced in less drastic ways.

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