If you wanted to assert that safe, quality cars would be built w/o any regulations, you should have asserted that, instead of "no one forced you to buy a car". So, why would safe, quality cars be built without regulations, given that back when we didn't have regulations, the automakers didn't build safe cars? Has something changed? barfo
hell, even when a car company back in the day HAD built their cars with safety in mind (Volvos of the 50's and 60's), American cars didn't change their product at all. Saab and Volvo were one of the earliest cars to have seat belts mandatory, but the US didn't make it law until 68. Damn those regulations! (ooh, I know..seat belts bad!) When Japanese cars came over to the US and got better gas mileage, outside of a few cars, Americas response was MORE HORSE POWER!!!!!! just imagine how awesome our cars would've been had the government not put the regulations on them back then! They would've been getting 40 MPG and been as safe as they are now!
It's this thing called "technology". Heard of it? Semi conductors? Integrated circuits? Ring a bell? Are you SERIOUSLY trying to compare the safety of cars of today to the 60's and making the assumption that regulations are the reason things have gotten better? REALLY? SERIOUSLY?
Do you think anti-lock breaks, or traction control do? And actually, yes, the seatbelts of today do require semiconductors. Nice example.
you seem to be missing a point here. All these new technologies and what not..WHY THE FUCK DID THEY NEED THEM? because of regulations. It wasn't like GM thought "hm...our trucks blow up when you hit them on the side..lets fix them all on our own!" or Ford went "you know, the Pinto blows up when you are hit in the back. It's a shame all these technologies we have sitting around aren't being used" You seem to be arguing that it's the advancements in production (that apparently manifested on their own) that have improved cars, and not the car companies having to improve their cars to meet standards and regulations.
Really? People don't want to buy the safer car of various options? That seems like a pretty ridiculous argument to start, but be my guest. Clearly, it is actually you, that is missing the point.
Ford knew the Pinto gas tank was subject to rupture, but they didn't want to spend the $100 or whatever it was to make it safer. You'd have us believe that customers liked it that way? No, customers just didn't know about it. barfo
its an equation if (estimated number of failures) x (estimated monetary settlement per failure) < (total cost of a recall) , then they dont do one thank you chuck palahniuk
The owners found out about it the hard way, by blowing up. I'm not sure when or how the government found out. Only later was it revealed that Ford knew it all along. The point being that the car company did not just 'do the right thing', as you'd like to believe. They just 'did the wrong thing', because they could make a little more profit that way. barfo
people wanted to buy the chevrolet pickup, and chevrolet knew it was dangerous. people wanted to buy the mustang yet it wasn't safe. If people aren't TOLD about it, how will they know about it? And if car companies didn't have to tell us or make their cars safe, they wouldn't. I could understand if you thought FROM THIS POINT FORWARD cars could self regulate. I just disagree. They'd be making cars w/more HP, more gaudy and not safer.
That doesn't make the point you think it does. maybe the government found out, and thought "if you're going to use our highways, you need to have certain safety regulations". If the government didn't have a set of regulations out there (for car safety lets say), the car companies figured out how much it would cost them to shut people up. Obviously the pinto (and mustang for a year or two) having gas tank issues didn't kill the company. Just as having regulations (or standards) that they have to meet doesn't kill the company either.
