Local author gets into the guts of your shiny new car

HOW SAFE do you feel when you get behind the wheel of your car? If it’s a tried and trusted model and from and a “trusted” manufacturer the thought likely doesn’t cross your mind.

The glossy brochure that you read in the showroom, will have highlighted the safety benefits of the car, along with all its push button technology. But recent revelations show  that some major life threatening problems have been around for years, and you, the consumer, may never hear about them or you could end up, like hundreds of others, on a mortuary slab.

Panama is home to a writer who has spent much of his life uncovering secrets from under the hoods of the glamorized car industry, with his annual Lemon Aid books.

Phil Edmonston, one of only two American’s who have been elected to the Canadian Parliament. was a disciple of corporate iconoclast Ralph Nader, and  is still peeling of the  glitz from the spin merchants of the vehicle industry, He has fought  successful court battles againsr corporate giants and recently  produced another must read guide for those who believe, that the customer is not always wrong. His latest contribution is The Art of Complaining.

That sent me on a search, to see what Ralph Nader was up to these days and I found this article in USA Today

LAST WEEK was filled with revelations of General Motors' ignition switch defect. GM knew about this faulty part in 2004 but failed to warn regulators or the public about it because, as one GM manager put it, "None of the solutions represents an acceptable business case." The ignition switch has been linked to 303 deaths, based on a survey of crashes by the Friedman Research Corp. GM has recognized 13 fatalities.

Last month, it was Toyota's unintended acceleration disaster. Toyota's cover-up resulted in a $1.2 billion criminal fine. According to court documents, FBI investigators found that, after a meeting between Toyota and regulators, a Toyota employee exclaimed, "Idiots! Someone will go to jail if lies are repeatedly told. I can't support this."

These are merely the latest examples of a long and grievous tradition among multinational corporations: the coverup of product dangers. This tradition includes, among many tragedies, the Dalkon Shield, Ford and Firestone tires, asbestos, tobacco, Guidant heart defibrillators, Bayer's Trasylol and Ford Pintos.

Predictable tragedy

These disasters happen when product managers know that they are selling a dangerous or deadly product, but decline to recall the product or warn the public and their regulators.

In some ways, these disasters are entirely predictable. They are the collision of the drive to maximize profits, weak protections for consumers and the complex reality of modern products in large, diffuse, corporate bureaucracies.

Many of today's products are intricate; that's true of cars and a million other products created with advanced and quickly evolving technologies. It is worth remembering that with such complexity comes an increased likelihood that something latent could go wrong. Complexity invites unintended consequences.

Conservatives know that what is new is not always what is best. As the famous conservative scholar Russell Kirk wrote, "Hasty innovation may be a devouring conflagration, rather than a torch of progress."

This is part of the hidden story behind some product safety disasters. They are the predictable result of an oft-repeated systems failure: Sometimes, product supervisors sell products that they know are dangerous, or should know if their subordinates have incentives to tell them in time.

This systemic problem requires a systemic solution.

The crucial thing is to set the incentives right, such that product managers are strongly predisposed to make their products safe before sale or to swiftly disclose to the public and regulators any product dangers. Strong incentives will bring strong protections for consumers and the companies' longer-term interests.

Criminal penalties

Several years ago, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., introduced the Dangerous Products Warning Act to create criminal liability for product supervisors who know of serious dangers but fail to warn federal regulators or affected parties. Under the act, such warnings must be made within 15 days after discovery of the danger or immediately if there is an imminent risk of serious bodily injury or death. It has languished ever since.

In some ways, the duty to warn is just part of the Golden Rule: to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It is common decency. If you make something that turns out to be dangerous, you should warn others of it.

Product safety shouldn't be an ideological Republican or a Democratic issue. It ought to unite us all. Unsafe products take the lives of people of all political parties, of all ages, in every state, at random.

Laura Christian, birth mother of Amber Marie Rose, a 16-year-old who died in a Chevrolet Cobalt with a defective ignition switch, said, "Our husbands, wives and children … were the cost of doing business, GM style." We should not again have to hear a mother utter such a lament.

We owe it to all the mothers and fathers of those killed in product safety disasters to say, "Never again."

Ralph Nader is author of Unsafe at Any Speed