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When the US Government Built Ultra-Safe Cars
Jalopnik has a piece on a mostly forgotten piece of automotive history: the US government built a fleet of ultra-safe cars in the 1970s. The "RSV" cars were designed to keep four passengers safe in a front or side collision at 50 mph (80 kph) — without seat belts — and they got 32 miles to the gallon. They had front and side airbags, anti-lock brakes, and gull-wing doors. Lorne Greene was hired to flack for the program. All this was quickly dismantled in the Reagan years, and in 1990 the mothballed cars were all destroyed, though two prototypes survived in private hands. "Then-NHTSA chief Jerry Curry [in 1990] contended the vehicles were obsolete, and that anyone who could have learned something from them had done so by then. Claybrook, the NHTSA chief who'd overseen the RSV cars through 1980, told Congress the destruction compared to the Nazis burning books. ... 'I thought they were intentionally destroying the evidence that you could do much better,' said [the manager of one of the vehicles' manufacturers]."
Thank you, libertarians.
Nobody in the 1970s was all that interested in a "safe" car except maybe a very small minority. And while these cars might have been safe, nobody is talking about what they cost or what sort of performance they had.
The "right" thing probably would have been for the US Government to nationalize the Big Three automakers and mandate that nobody could buy anything except an official US Government produced car. They could have then made the cars safe and high mileage. Nobody would have anything to compare them to and if they cost $50,000 each that would have just further reduced the dependence on automobiles. The could have used the highways right-of-way for rail lines and torn up most of the concrete.
All we really need is a truely benvolent dictator to tell us what the right way is and shove it down everyone's throats. We might actually be on the road to that, especially if the carbon tax goes through. We won't have to worry about consumer choice anymore - all of those complex decisions will be made for us.
Be careful what you wish for, in a Progressive/Liberal government world you just might get it.
Ronald Reagan was a senile old coot they propped up to look good on TV but otherwise he did nothing for the United States.
You think I'm kidding? The current debt crisis starting hitting us under his watch. Nixon may have been a crook, but at least he was parsimonious. Reagan never saw a military spending bill he didn't like...except ones that were too small. Tax cuts? He had plenty. Spending Cuts? I remember what the BRAC was. People protested it.
It's true. People will protest spending cuts. They will protest higher taxes.
Accordingly, people are stupid.
Well I don't know if "people" are stupid, but you sure are, Bub. Reagan pulled us out of a godawful economic train wreck known as the Carter administration. He did this while also TERMINATING the Soviet Union because they couldn't come close to matching American productivity. It was imbeciles such as Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2, and now Obama who have wrecked the US economy by exporting all production and building a collossal all encompassing welfare state.
Twits like you who belittle Reagan's intellect obviously have never listened to those who knew him personally during that period. People from both sides of the political spectrum. They uniformly found him a physically and mentally very active and vital individual.
I'm a big-government supporter myself, but my guess is that the people whom you refer to actually *like it* when everything goes to shit. That's the way it looks to me, anyway. Those people prefer to have a problem than to allow the government to solve it.
I suggest you move to an EU member state, if you happen to be in the US. I hear things are going great over there. Enjoy the scenic riots and the long march towards chaos as their unsustainable economies collapse under their own weight!
Ahaha. I love misplaced sarcasm. I said "long march". And Germany's screwed too.
Christ, I thought the US had problems but we're pretty far down in the list of Debt/GDP ratios.
The EU will come crashing down, denying this is simply willful idiocy. Some of the states will come out better than others, but there's going to be a shitload of upheaval no matter what.