I. BA N G

Eve ry two miles, the ave rage dri ve rmakes four hundred observ a t i on s ,

f o rty decision s , and one mistake. O n c eeve ry five hundred miles, one of t h o s emistakes leads to a near coll i s i on , a n donce eve ry sixty - one thousand miles on eo f those mistakes leads to a cra s h .Wh e npeople dri ve, in other word s ,mistakes areendemic and accidents inev i t a b l e, a n dthat is the first and simplest explanationfor what happened to Robert Day on them o rning of Sa t u rd ay, Ap ril 9, 1 9 9 4 .H ewas driving a 1980 Jeep Wa goneer fromhis hom e, outside Ph i l a d e l ph i a , to spenda day working on train engines in Wi n s-l ow Tow n s h i p,New Jersey.He was forty -four years old, and made his living as aneditor for the Chilton Book Com p a ny.His ten-year-old son was next to him, i nthe passenger seat.It was a bri g h t ,b e a u t i-ful spring day. Vi s i b i l i ty was perfe c t ,a n dthe ro a d w ay was dry, although one of t h em a ny peculiarities of car crashes is thatt h ey happen more often under ideal ro a dc on d i t i ons than in bad weather. D ay’sroute took him down the Atlantic CityE x p re s s w ay to Fleming Pi k e, a tw o - l a n ec o u n t ry road that winds around a sharpc u rve and intersects, about a mile later,with Egg Harbor Road. In that fin a ls t re t ch of Fleming Pi k e, t h e re is a sca t-t e ring of houses and a fairly thick stand oft rees on either side of the ro a d ,o b s c u ri n ga ll sight lines to the left and ri g h t . As hea p p ro a ched the intersection , t h e n , D aycould not have seen a blue-and-gray 1993Fo rd Ae rostar minivan tra ve lling betw e e nf o rty and fifty miles per hour southboundon Egg Harb o r,nor a white 1984 Mazd a626 tra ve lling at approx i m a t e ly fifty milesper hour in the other dire c t i on . No r, a p-p a re n t ly, did he see the stop sign at thec o rn e r, or the sign a tenth of a mile beforet h a t , w a rning of the intersection ahead.

D ay’s son , in the confusing aft e rmath ofthe accident, told police that he was cer-tain his father had come to a stop at thec o rn e r. But the accident’s principal wit-ness s ays he never saw any brake lights onthe Wa gon e e r, a n d , b e s i d e s , t h e re is now ay that the Jeep could have done thedamage that it did from a standing start .Pe rhaps Day was distra c t e d .The witnesss ays that Day’s turn signal had been onsince he left the expre s s w ay. Pe rhaps hewas looking away and looked back at theroad at the wrong time, since there is ana re a , a few hundred yards before EggH a rbor Road, just on the near side of alittle ri d g e, w h e re the trees and housesmake it look as if Fleming Pike ran with-out interru p t i on well off into the distance.We will never know,and in any case it doesnot matter mu ch . D ay mere ly did whata ll of us do eve ry time we get in a ca r :h emade a mistake. I t’s just that he was un-l u cky enough that his mistake led himd i re c t ly into the path of two other ca r s .

The dri ver of the Fo rd Ae rostar wasSt e phen Capofe r ri , then thirty - n i n e .H ew o rked in the warehouse of Wh i t e h a llLa b o ra t o ri e s , in southern New Jersey.H ehad just had breakfast with his pare n t sand was on his way to the bank. T h ed ri ver of the Mazda was Elizabeth Wo l-f ru m . She was tw e n ty - f o u r. She work e das the manager of a liquor store . H e re i g h t e e n - year-old sister, J u l i e, was in thepassenger seat;a tw o - year-old girl was inthe back seat. B e cause of the ve g e t a t i onon either side of Fleming Pi k e,C a p o fe r ridid not see Day’s ve h i cle until it was juste i g h ty - five feet from the point of i m-p a c t ,and if we assume that Day was tra v-e lling at forty miles per hour, or fifty -nine feet per secon d , that means thatC a p o fe r ri had about 1.5 seconds to re a c t .That is sca rc e ly enough time. The ave r-age adult needs about that long simply tot ranslate an observ a t i on (“That car is

5 0 THE NEW YO R K E R, JUNE 11, 2001

A REPORTER AT LARGE

WRONG TURNHow the fight to make Am eri ca ’s highways safer went offc o u r s e.

BY MALCOLM GLADWELL

D e tail from Andy Wa r h o l’s “Five Deaths.”A d vo ca tes like Ralph Nad er focussed on thesecond collision,inside the ca r :“A crash without an injury.That idea was very powerf u l.”

going awfully fast”) into an action (“Iought to hit my bra k e” ) . C a p o fe r ri hitD ay bro a d s i d e,at a slight angle, the ri g h tpassenger side of the Ae rostar takingmost of the impact.The Jeep was pusheds i d ew i s e,but it kept going forw a rd ,p u ll i n go f f the gri lle and hood of the Ae ro s t a r,and sending it into a tw o - h u n d re d - a n d -s eve n ty - d e g ree countercl o ckwise spin.A sthe Jeep lurched across the intersection , i tslammed into the side of Wo l f ru m’sM a zd a . The cars slapped together, a n dthen skidded together across the intersec-t i on ,ending on the grass on the far, s o u t h-e a s t e rn co rn e r. Ac c o rding to documentsfiled by Elizabeth Wo l f ru m’s lawye r s ,Wo l f rum suffe red eighteen injuri e s , i n-cluding a ru p t u red spleen, multiple live rl a c e ra t i on s , b rain damage, and fra c t u re sto the legs, ri b s , a n k l e s , and nose. J u l i eWo lf rum was part i a lly ejected from theM a zda and her face hit the gro u n d . Sh es u b s e q u e n t ly underwent seventeen sepa-rate surgical pro c e d u res and remained ini n t e n s i ve ca re for forty-four days .In post-c rash ph o t o g ra ph s , their car looks as if i thad been dropped head first from an air-p l a n e .R o b e rt Day suffe red massive inter-nal injuries and was pronounced dead tw ohours later, at West Jersey Hospital. H i ss on was bruised and shaken up.C a p o fe r riwalked away largely unsca t h e d .

“Once the impact occurre d , I did as p i n , ” he re m e m b e r s .“I don’t re ca ll doingt h a t . I may have blacked out. It couldn’t

h a ve been for ve ry lon g. I wanted to geto u t .I was trying to judge how I was.I washaving a little trouble bre a t h i n g. But Ik n ew I could walk.My senses were gra d-u a lly coming back to norm a l . I’m pre t tys u re I went to Day’s ve h i cle fir s t .I went tothe dri ve r’s side. He was semi-con s c i o u s .He had blood coming out of his mouth.I tried to keep him awake.His son was inthe passenger seat.He had no injuri e s .H es a i d , ‘Is my father O. K . ? ’ I seem to re-member looking in the Mazd a . My fir s ti m p re s s i on was that they were dead, b e-cause the dri ve r’s side of the ve h i cle wasve ry badly smashed in.I think they neededthe ‘jaws of l i fe’ to get them out. T h e rewas a little girl in the back .She was cryi n g. ”

C a p o fe r ri has long black hair and ab e a rd and the build of a wre s t l e r. He is athoughtful man who chooses his word sca re f u lly.As he talked, he was driving hisTa u rus back tow a rd the scene of the acci-d e n t , and he was apologetic that he couldnot re ca ll more details of those mom e n t sleading up to the accident. But what ist h e re to remember? In the popular imag-i n a t i on — f u e lled by the car crashes ofH o llywood mov i e s , with their special ef-fects and com p l i cated stunts—an acci-dent is a pro t racted sequence, p l ayed outin slow motion , over many fra m e s . It isnot that way in real life . The time thatelapsed between the coll i s i on of C a p o-fe r ri and Day and Day and Wo l f rum wasp ro b a b ly no more than tw e n ty - five mil-

l i s e c on d s , faster than the blinking of a neye, and the time that elapsed betw e e nthe moment Capofe r ri stru ck Day and them oment his van came to a re s t , two hun-d red and seve n ty degrees later,was pro b-a b ly no more than a secon d . C a p o fe r risaid that a friend of h i s , who lived ri g h ton the corner where the accident hap-p e n e d , told him later that all the cra s h i n gand spinning and skidding sounded likean single, s h a rp explosion —ba n g !

II. THE PASSIVE A P P ROAC H

In the middle part of the last century, aman named Wi lliam Haddon ch a n g e d

f o rever the way Am e ri cans think aboutcar accidents. H a d d on was,by tra i n i n g, am e d i cal doctor and an epidemiologist and,by tempera m e n t, a New Englander—talland re e d - t h i n , with a crewc u t , a starch e dwhite shirt , and a bow tie. He was exact-ing and cere b ra l , and so sensitive to cri t i-cism that it was said of him that he couldbe “b l i s t e red by moon b e a m s . ” He wouldnot eat mayon n a i s e,or anything else sub-ject to bacterial con t a m i n a t i on .He hatedl a w ye r s ,w h i ch was iron i c ,b e cause it wasl a w yers who became his biggest disciples.H a d d on was discove red by Daniel Pa t ri ckM oyn i h a n , when Moynihan was work-ing for Ave re ll Harri m a n , then the Dem-o c ratic gove rnor of New Yo rk St a t e . I twas 1958.M oynihan was ch a i ring a meet-ing on tra f fic safe ty, in Albany’s old state-exe c u t i ve - o f fice ch a m b e r s , and a yo u n gman at the back of the ro om kept askingpointed question s .“Wh a t’s your name?”M oynihan eve n t u a lly asked, c e rtain hehad coll a red a Republican spy. “H a d d on ,s i r, ” the young man answere d . He wasjust out of the Harv a rd School of Pu b-lic Health, and convinced that what thefield o f t ra f fic safe ty needed was the ri go ro f e p i d e m i o l o gy.H a d d on asked Moyn i-han what data he was using. M oyn i h a ns h ru g g e d.He wasn’t using any data at all .

H a d d on and Moynihan went acro s sthe street to Yez z i’s , a loca lw a t e ring hole,and Moynihan fe ll under Haddon’s spell .The ort h o d oxy of that time held thats a fe ty was about reducing accidents—ed-u cating dri ve r s , t raining them, m a k i n gthem slow dow n . To Haddon , this ap-p ro a ch made no sense.His goal was to re-duce the injuries that accidents ca u s e d .I np a rt i c u l a r, h e did not believe in safe tym e a s u res that depended on changing thebehavior of the dri ve r,since he con s i d e re d

“Would you mind el a b o rating on this section of the résumé,w h i ch claims that you’re my love ch i l d ? ”

the dri ver unre l i a b l e,h a rd to educa t e, a n dp rone to erro r.H a d d on believed the bests a fe ty measures were p a s s ive. “He was agentle man,” M oynihan re ca ll s .“ Qu i e t ,without being mu m .He never forgot thatwhat we were talking about were ch i l-d ren with their heads smashed and bro-ken bodies and dead people.”

Seve ral years later, M oynihan wasw o rking for President Joh n s on in the De-p a rtment of La b o r,and hired a young law-ye r out of H a rv a rd named Ra l ph Na d e rto work on tra f fic - s a fe ty issues.Na d e r, t o o,was a devotee of H a d d on’s ideas, and hec onve rted a young con g re s s i onal aidenamed Joan Clayb ro ok .In 1959,M oyn i-han wrote an enorm o u s ly influential art i-cl e, a rticulating Haddon’s pri n c i p l e s ,ca lled “Epidemic on the Highways . ” I n1 9 6 5 , Nader wrote his own homage tothe Haddon ph i l o s o phy, “U n s a fe at AnySp e e d , ”w h i ch became a best-sell e r,and in1966 the Haddon crusade swept Wa s h-i n g t on . In the House and the Se n a t e,t h e re were packed hearings on legislationto create a fe d e ral re g u l a t o ry agency fort ra f fic safe ty.M oynihan and Haddon tes-t i fie d , as did a liability lawyer from So u t hC a ro l i n a , in white shoes and a white suit,and a Teamsters offic i a l , Jimmy Hoffa,w h om Clayb ro ok remembers as a “f a b u-l o u s ”w i t n e s s . It used to be that, d u ring af rontal cra s h , s t e e ring columns in ca r sw e re pushed back through the passengerc om p a rt m e n t , p o t e n t i a lly impaling thed ri ve r.The advocates argued that columnsshould collapse inw a rd on impact. I n s t ru-ment panels ought to be padded, t h eys a i d , and knobs shouldn’t stick out,w h e ret h ey might cause injury. Doors ought toh a ve strengthened side-impact beams.R o o fs should be strong enough to with-stand a ro ll ove r. Seats should have headre s t raints to protect against neck injuri e s .Windshields ought to be glaze d ,so that ifyou hit them with your head at high speedyour face wasn’t cut to ri b b on s . The billsailed through both houses of C on g re s s ,and a re g u l a t o ry body, w h i ch eve n t u a llyb e came the Na t i onal Highway Tra f ficSa fe ty Ad m i n i s t ra t i on , was established.H a d d on was made its com m i s s i on e r,C l ayb ro ok his special assistant.“I re m e m-ber a Senate hearing we had with Wa r re nM a g n u s on , ” Nader re ca ll s . “He was lis-tening to a pediatrician who was one ofour all i e s , Seymour Charl e s , f rom NewJ e r s ey, and C h a rles was showing howt h e re were two cars that coll i d e d ,and on e

had a collapsible steering column and on ed i d n’t , and one dri ver walked away, t h eother was kill e d .An d , just like that,M a g-n u s on caught on . ‘You mean,’ he said,‘ you can have had a crash without an in-j u ry ? ’T h a t’s it! A crash without an injury.That idea was ve ry pow e rf u l . ”

T h e re is no question that the im-p rovements in auto design which Had-d on and his disciples pushed for save dcountless live s . T h ey changed the waycars were built, and put safe ty on the na-t i onal agenda. What they did not do,h ow eve r, is make Am e ri can highwaysthe safest in the worl d . In fact—and thisis the puzzling thing about the Haddonc ru s a d e—the opposite happened.U n i t e dStates auto-fatality rates were the low e s tin the world b ef o re H a d d on came alon g.B u t , since the late nineteen-seve n t i e s ,just as the original set of N . H . T. S . A .s a fe ty standards were having their biggesti m p a c t ,Am e ri ca’s safe ty re c o rd has fall e nto e l eventh place. Ac c o rding to ca l c u l a-ti ons by Le on a rd Evans, a longtime Gen-e ra l Motors re s e a rcher and one of t h ew o rl d’s leading experts on tra f fic safe ty, i fAm e ri can tra f fic fatalities had declined atthe same rate as Canada’s or Au s t ra l i a’s

b e tween 1979 and 1997, t h e re wouldh a ve been som ew h e re in the vicinity of ah u n d red and sixty thousand fewer tra f ficdeaths in that span.

This is not to suggest, o f c o u r s e, t h a tH a d d on’s crusade is re s p onsible for a hun-d re d and sixty thousand highway deaths.Tra f fic safe ty is the most complex of ph e-n om e n a — f a t a l i ty rates can be measure din many ways , and re flect a hundred dif-fe rent variables—and in this period therew e re numerous factors that distinguishedthe United States from places like Canadaand Au s t ra l i a , i n cluding diffe rent tre n d sin drunk dri v i n g. Nor is it to say that theH a d d onites had anything but the highestm o t i ve s .St i ll ,E v a n s ’s fig u res raise a num-ber o f t roubling question s .H a d d on andNader and Clayb ro ok told us, a fter all ,that the best way to combat the epidemicon the highways was to shift attentionf rom the dri ver to the ve h i cl e . No otherc o u n t ry pursued the passive stra t e gy asv i go ro u s ly, and no other country had suchhigh expectations for its success. B u tAm e ri ca’s slipping re c o rd on auto safe tysuggests that som ew h e re in the logic ofthat appro a ch there was a mistake. An d ,i f s o, it necessari ly changes the way we

THE NEW YO R K E R, JUNE 11, 2001 5 3

“But when Mel Bro oks makes fun of every t h i n gand everybody the critics ch e er ! ”

• •

think about car crashes like the one thathappened seven years ago on the corn e ro f Fleming Pike and Egg Harbor Road.

“I think that the ph i l o s o ph i cal argu-ment behind the passive a p p ro a ch is as t rong on e, ” Evans says . A physicist byt ra i n i n g, he is a com p a c t ,s p ry man in hiss i x t i e s , with a trace in his voice of his na-t i ve No rt h e rn Ire l a n d .On the walls of h i so f fice in suburban Detroit is a lifetime ofa w a rds and cert i fica t i ons from safe ty re-s e a rch e r s ,b u t , like many tech n i cal typ e s ,he is embittered by h ow hard it has beento make his voice heard in the safe ty de-bates of the past thirty ye a r s . “Either yo ucan persuade people to boil their ow nwater because there is a typhoid epidemicor you can put ch l o rine in the water, ”h ewent on .“And the secon d ,p a s s i ve solutionis obv i o u s ly pre fe r red to the fir s t ,b e ca u s et h e re is no way you can persuade eve ryon eto act in a prudent way.But starting from

that ph i l o s o ph i cal principle and then ig-n o ring re a l i ty is a recipe for disaster. An dt h a t’s what happened.Why ? ”H e re Evansn e a rly leaped out of his ch a i r. “B e cau s et h ere isn’t any ch l o rine for tra f fic cra s h e s. ”

III. THE FIRST CO L L I S I O N

R o b e rt Day’s crash was not the acci-dent of a young man. He was hit

f rom the side,and adolescents and yo u n gadults usually have side-impact cra s h e swhen their cars slide off the road into afixed object like a tre e, o ften at re ck l e s ss p e e d s . Older people tend to have side-impact crashes at normal speeds, in in-t e r s e c t i on s , and as the result of e r ro r, n o tn e g l i g e n c e . In fact, D ay’s crash was notm e re ly typ i cal in form ; it was the result ofa com m on type of d ri ver erro r.He didn’tsee something he was supposed to see.

His mistake is,on one leve l ,d i f ficult to

u n d e r s t a n d .T h e re was a sign, cl e a rly vis-ible from the ro a d w ay, t e lling him of a ni n t e r s e c t i on ahead, and then another, i nb right re d ,t e lling him to stop.H ow couldhe have missed them both? From whatwe know of human perc e p t i on ,t h o u g h ,this kind of mistake happens all the time.I m a g i n e, for instance,that you were askedto look at the shape of a cro s s ,b ri e fly dis-p l ayed on a computer scre e n ,and re p o rt onw h i ch arm of the cross was lon g e r. A ft e ryou did this a few times, another object,like a word or a small colored square—what psychologists ca ll a cri t i cal stimu-l u s — flashes next to the cross on the scre e n ,right in front of your eye s .Would you seethe cri t i cal stimulus? Most of us woulds ay ye s .I n t u i t i ve ly,we believe that we “s e e”eve rything in our field of v i s i on — p a rt i c-u l a rly things right in front of u s — a n dthat the diffe rence between the things wep ay attention to and the things we don’t iss i m p ly that the things we focus on are thethings we become aware of. But whene x p e riments to test this assumption w e rec onducted re c e n t ly by Arien Mack ,a psy-chologist at the New Sch o o l, in NewYo rk ,she found,to her surp ri s e, that a sig-n i ficant port i on of her observers didn’t seethe second object at all : it was dire c t ly intheir field of v i s i on ,and ye t ,b e cause theira t t e n t i on was focussed on the cro s s ,t h eyw e re oblivious of i t .M a ck ca lls this ph e-n om e n on “i n a t t e n t i onal blindness.”

Daniel Si m on s ,a pro fessor of p s ych o l-o gy at Harv a rd ,has done a more dra m a t i cset of e x p e ri m e n t s ,f o ll owing on the samei d e a . He and a coll e a g u e, C h ri s t o ph e rC h a b ri s , re c e n t ly made a video of tw oteams of b a s k e tb a ll playe r s , one team inwhite shirts and the other in black ,e a chp l ayer in constant motion as two basket-b a lls are passed back and fort h .Ob s e rve r sw e re asked to count the number of p a s s e sc ompleted by the members of the whitet e a m . A fter about forty - five seconds ofp a s s e s ,a woman in a go ri lla suit walks intothe middle of the gro u p, stands in front ofthe ca m e ra , beats her chest vigo ro u s ly,and then walks away.“Fi fty per cent of t h epeople missed the go ri ll a , ” Si m ons says .“We got the most striking re a c t i on s .We’dask people, ‘Did you see anyone walkinga c ross the scre e n ? ’T h ey’d say no.Anyt h i n gat all? No.E ve n t u a lly,w e’d ask them,‘D i dyou notice the go ri ll a ? ’ And they’d say,‘The w h at?’ ” Si m on s ’s experiment is on eo f those psych o l o g i cal studies which areimpossible to believe in the abstra c t :i f yo u

5 4 THE NEW YO R K E R, JUNE 11, 2001

“I want to use our tax sav i n gs to buy a pair of boot-cut tro u s er s . ”

• •

l o ok at the video (ca lled “ G o ri llas in Ou rM i d s t”) when you know what’s com i n g,the woman in the go ri lla suit is inesca-p a b l e.H ow could anyone miss that? Butpeople do. In recent ye a r s ,t h e re has beenmu ch scientific re s e a rch on the fall i b i l i tyo f m e m o ry — on the fact that eyew i t-n e s s e s , for example,o ften distort or om i tc ri t i cal details when they re ca ll what theys a w.But the new re s e a rch points to som e-thing that is even m o re tro u b l i n g : it isn’tjust that our memory of what we see iss e l e c t i ve ;i t’s that seeing itself is selective .

This is a com m on problem in dri v i n g.Talking on a cell ph one and trying tod ri ve, for instance, is not unlike trying to count passes in a basketb a ll game ands i mu l t a n e o u s ly keep tra ck of w a n d e ri n ga n i m a l s .“When you get into a ph one con-ve r s a t i on, i t’s diffe rent from the norm a lw ay we have ev o lved to intera c t , ”D a v i dSt raye r, a pro fessor of p s ych o l o gy at theU n i ve r s i ty of Ut a h ,s ays .“No rm a lly, c on-ve r s a t i on is face to face.T h e re are all kindso f c u e s . But when you are on the ph on eyou strip that away. I t’s virtual re a l i ty.Yo uattend to that virtual re a l i ty,and shut dow np rocessing of the here and now. ” St raye rhas done tests of people who were dri v i n gand talking on ph on e s , and found thatt h ey remember far fewer things than thosed riving without ph on e s .Their field of v i ewsh ri n k s . In one experi m e n t , he fla s h e dred and green lights at people while theyw e re dri v i n g, and those on the ph on emissed twice as many lights as the others,and re s p onded far more slow ly to thoselights they did see. “We tend to find thebiggest deficits in unexpected eve n t s , achild darting onto the ro a d , a light ch a n g-i n g, ” St rayer says . “ Som e one going intoyour lane.T h a t’s what you d o n’ts e e .T h e reis a part of d riving that is automatic andro u t i n e .T h e re is a second part of d ri v i n gthat is com p l e t e ly unpre d i c t a b l e, and thatis the part that re q u i res attention . ”This iswhat Si m ons found with his go ri ll a ,and itis the sca riest part of i n a t t e n t i onal blind-n e s s . People all ow themselves to be dis-t racted while driving because they thinkthat they will still be able to pay attentionto anom a l i e s . But it is pre c i s e ly thosea n omalous things, those dev i a t i ons fromthe expected scri p t ,w h i ch they won’t see.

M a rc Gre e n , a psychologist with ana c c i d e n t - c onsulting firm in To ron t o,once worked on a case w h e re a wom a nhit a bicyclist with her ca r. “ She wasp u lling into a gas station , ”G reen says .“I t

was five o’ cl o ck in the morn i n g. Sh e’dd one that almost eve ry day for a ye a r.She looks to the left , and then she hearsa thud.T h e re’s a bicyclist on the gro u n d .Sh e’d looked down that sidewalk nearlyeve ry day for a year and never seen any-b o d y. She adaptive ly learned to ignorewhat was on that sidewalk because it wasuseless inform a t i on . She may actuallyh a ve turned her eyes tow a rd him andfailed to see him.” G reen says that, on c eyou understand why the woman failed tosee the bicycl i s t , the crash comes to seemalmost inev i t a b l e .

I t’s the same con cl u s i on that Haddonre a ch e d , and that formed the basis for hisc onv i c t i on that Am e ri cans were spend-ing too mu ch time worrying about whathappened before an accident and notenough time worrying about what hap-p e n e d d u ring and after an accident.Som e t i m e s c rashes happen because peo-ple do stupid things that they shouldn’th a ve don e—like drink or speed or talk ontheir cell ph on e . But sometimes p e o p l edo stupid things that they ca n n o t h e l p,and it makes no sense to con s t ruct a safe typ ro g ram that does not re c o g n i ze humanf a ll i b i l i ty. Just imagine, for examp l e, t h a tyo u’re driving down a country ro a d .T h eradio is playi n g. Yo u’re talking to yo u rs on , next to yo u . T h e re is a highwayc rossing up ahead,but you ca n’t see it,n o rcan you see any cars on the ro a d w ay, b e-cause of a stand of t rees on both sides ofthe ro a d .M aybe you look away from thero a d , for a mom e n t , to change the dial onthe ra d i o, or something ca t ches your eyeo u t s i d e, and when you glance back ithappens to be at the ve ry moment whena tri ck of g e o g ra phy makes it look as ifyour road stre t ched without interru p t i onw e ll off into the distance. Su d d e n ly, u pa h e a d , right in front of your eyes looms ab ri g h t - red anomalous stop sign—as outo f place in the mom e n t a ry mental uni-verse that you have con s t ructed for yo u r-s e l f as a go ri lla in a basketb a ll game—a n d ,p re c i s e ly because it is so anom a l o u s ,it doesn’t re g i s t e r.T h e n —ba n g !H ow doyou prevent an accident like that?

I V. THE SECOND CO L L I S I O N

One day in 1968, a group of e n g i-neers from the Cleve l a n d - b a s e d

a u t o - p a rts manufacturer Eaton , Yale &Towne went to Wa s h i n g t on , D. C . , t osee Wi lliam Haddon.T h ey ca r ried with

them a secret pro t o type of what theyca lled the People Sa ve r. It was a nyl on airc u s h i on that inflated on impact, and thei n s t a n t H a d d on saw it he was smitten.“ O h , he was ecstatic, just ecstatic,”C l ay-b ro ok re ca ll s . “I think it was one of t h emost exciting moments of his life . ”

The air bag had been invented in thee a rly fifties by a man named John Het-ri ck , who became conv i n c e d , a fter ru n-ning his car into a ditch , that dri vers andpassengers would be mu ch safer if t h eycould be protected by some kind of a i rc u s h i on . But how could one inflate it inthe first few mill i s e c onds of a crash? Ashe pon d e red the pro b l e m , H e t ri ck re-m e m b e red a freak accident that had hap-pened during the war,when he was in theNavy working in a torp e d o - m a i n t e n a n c es h o p. To rpedos ca r ry a charge of c om-p ressed air, and one day a torpedo cov-e red in ca nvas accidentally released itsch a r g e . A ll at on c e, H e t ri ck re ca ll e dyears later, the ca nvas “shot up into thea i r, q u i cker than you could blink an eye . ”Thus was the idea for the air bag born .

In its earliest inca rn a t i on , the air bagwas a crude dev i c e ; one pre l i m i n a ry testi n a d ve rt e n t ly killed a baboon , and therew e re widespread worries about the safe tyo f d e t onating what was essentially as m a ll bomb inside a ca r. ( I n d e e d , as a re-sult of n u m e rous injuries to ch i l d ren ands m a ll adults, air bags have now been sub-s t a n t i a lly depow e red.) But to Haddonthe People Sa ver was the embodiment ofeve rything he believed in—it was thech l o rine in the water, and it solved ap roblem that had been vexing him forye a r s . The Haddonites had alw ays in-sisted that what was genera lly ca lled ac rash was actually two separate eve n t s .The first coll i s i on was the initial con t a c tb e tween two autom o b i l e s , and in ord e rto prevent the dangerous intru s i on ofone car into the passenger com p a rt m e n to f a n o t h e r, t h ey argued, cars ought to bebuilt with a pro t e c t i ve metal cage aro u n dthe front and back seats. The second col-l i s i on , t h o u g h , was even more impor-t a n t . That was the coll i s i on between theoccupants of a car and the inside of t h e i rown ve h i cl e . I f the dri ver and his pas-sengers were to surv i ve the abrupt im-pact of a cra s h , t h ey needed a secon ds a fe ty sys t e m ,w h i ch ca re f u lly and gra d-u a lly decelerated their bodies. The logi-cal choice for that task was seat belts,b u tH a d d on , with his back g round in public

THE NEW YO R K E R, JUNE 11, 2001 5 5

h e a l t h , d i d n’t trust safe ty measures thatdepended on an individual’s active co-o p e ra t i on .“The biggest problem we hadb a ck then was that on ly about tw e lveper cent of the public used seat belts,”C l ayb ro ok says . “T h ey were terri b ly de-s i g n e d , and people didn’t use them.”With the air bag, t h e re was no decisionto make. The Haddonites ca lled it a“ t e ch n o l o g i cal vaccine, ” and attacked itsdoubters in Detroit for showing “an ab-sence of m o ral and ethical leadership. ”The air bag, t h ey vow e d ,was going to re-place the seat belt. In “U n s a fe at AnySp e e d , ” Nader wro t e :

The seat belt should have been intro-duced in the twenties and re n d e red obsoleteby the early fifties, for it is only the first stept o w a rd a more rational passenger re s t r a i n tsystem which modern technology could de-velop and perfect for mass production. Sucha system ideally would not rely on the activep a rticipation of the passenger to take eff e c t ;it would be the superior p a s s i v e safety designwhich would come into use only whenneeded, and without active participation ofthe occupant. . . . Protection like this could beachieved by a kind of inflatable air bag re-straint which would be actuated to envelop apassenger before a crash.

For the next tw e n ty ye a r s , H a d d on ,Na d e r, and Clayb ro ok were con s u m e dby the battle to force a reluctant Detro i tto make the air bag mandatory equip-m e n t . T h e re were lawsuits, and heatedd e b a t e s , a n d b u re a u c ratic infig h t i n g.The autom a k e r s , mindful of cost andother con c e rn s , argued that the emph a-sis ought to be on seat belts. B u t , to theH a d d on i t e s , D e t roit was hopelessly inthe grip of the old paradigm on autos a fe ty. His oppon e n t s , H a d d on wro t e,with typ i cal hauteur, w e re like “M a l i-n ow s k i’s natives in their appro a ches tothe haza rds out the re e f w h i ch they didnot understand.” Their attitudes were“redolent of the extra n a t u ra l , s u p e rn a t-u ral and the pre - s c i e n t i fic . ” In 1991, t h eH a d d onites won . That ye a r, a law waspassed re q u i ring air bags in eve ry newcar by the end of the deca d e . It soundedlike a great victory. But was it?

V. HADDO N ’S MISTA K E

When St e phen Capofe r ri’s Ae ro s t a rhit Robert Day’s Jeep Wa gon e e r,

C a p o fe r ri’s seat belt lay loose across hiships and ch e s t . His shoulder belt pro b a-b ly had about two inches of s l a ck . At

5 6 THE NEW YO R K E R, JUNE 11, 2001

SHOWCASE

AMERICANBEAUTY

Ma ry Ellen Mark ph o t o g ra ph e dthese teen-agers one summer day

a few years ago, at the Bri g h t on Beachend of C on ey Island,b e cause she foundthem “s e d u c t i ve—innocent but noti n n o c e n t . ” Like Ti ny, the fourt e e n -year-old prostitute in Seattle who is thesubject of one of M a rk ’s most famousi m a g e s , the two girls on the ri g h tc on f ront the ca m e ra head on ,a l m o s td e fia n t ly.T h ey seem convinced of t h e i ra t t ra c t i ve n e s s , and not bothered by thea n omalous juxtaposition of their natura lb e a u ty with the broken sidewalk andg ra f fit i , the skimpy bra tops and cutoffj e a n s . Ap l om b, or a bra ve attempt at it,in an impove rished landscape is one ofthe themes of “M a ry Ellen Mark :Am e ri can Odys s ey, ” a re t ro s p e c t i ve o f the ph o t o g ra ph e r’s work from 1963to 1999 that is now at the uptow nb ra n ch of the Intern a t i onal Center ofPh o t o g ra phy. (It is the final show atthat loca t i on ,w h i ch is about to becom ea grand private house again.) Mark isf o ll owing Walker Evans,R o b e rt Fra n k ,and Diane Arb u s , who also madeo d ys s eys through Am e ri ca .T h ey foundpoor but noble farm e r s ,m e l a n ch o lyw a i t resses in diners, and various fre a k s .M a rk finds the inmates of a mentali n s t i t u t i on ,t ra n s ve s t i t e s , a club ofobese wom e n , white supre m a c i s t s ,ch i l d ren with guns, and dru g - a d d i c t e dp a re n t s .This is, as she writes in anA ft e rw o rd to the show’s ca t a l o g u e,“g ri m” subject matter,“on the edge o f or outside the mainstream of o u rc u l t u re, ”but the best of the work — f o ri n s t a n c e, the sad sequence of p i c t u res o f Ti ny’s family in Se a t t l e, taken over a period of years—is leavened with an un-Arbus-like com p a s s i on . La s tm on t h ,M a rk re c e i ved I.C.P.’s secon dannual Corn e ll Capa Aw a rd fordistinguished ach i eve m e n t .The fir s tone went to Robert Fra n k .

— S h a ron DeLano

i m p a c t , his car decelera t e d , but Capo-fe r ri’s body kept moving forw a rd , a n dwithin thirty mill i s e c onds the slack in hisseat belts was gon e . In the language ofe n g i n e e r s , he “l o a d e d” his re s t ra i n t s .Under the force of C a p o fe r ri’s on ru s h-ing weight, his belts began to stre t ch —the fabric giving by as mu ch as sixi n ch e s . As his shoulder belt grew taut, i tdug into his ch e s t ,c om p ressing it by an-other two inch e s , and if you had seenC a p o fe r ri at the moment of m a x i mu mf o rw a rd tra j e c t o ry his shoulder belta round his chest would have looked likea rubber band around a ball o on . Si mu l-t a n e o u s ly,within those first few mill i s e c-on d s , his air bag exploded and rose tomeet him at more than a hundred milesper hour.Fo rty to fifty mill i s e c onds aft e ri m p a c t , it had enveloped his face, n e ck ,and upper ch e s t . A fra c t i on of a secon dl a t e r, the bag deflated. C a p o fe r ri wast h rown back against his seat. Total timee l a p s e d : one hundred mill i s e c on d s .

Would Capofe r ri have lived withoutan air bag? Pro b a b ly. He would haves t re t ched his seat belt so far that his headwould have hit the steering wheel. B u this belts would have slowed him dow nenough that he might on ly have brok e nhis nose or cut his forehead or suffe red amild con c u s s i on .The other way aro u n d ,h ow eve r, with an air bag but not a seatb e l t , his fate would have been mu chm o re uncert a i n . In the absence of s e a tb e l t s , air bags work best when one ca rhits another square ly, so that the dri ve rp i t ches forw a rd dire c t ly into the path ofthe on c oming bag. But Capofe r ri hit

D ay at a slight angle.The fron t - p a s s e n g e rside of the Ae rostar sustained mored a m a g e than the dri ve r’s side, w h i chmeans that without his belts holdinghim in place he would have been throw na w ay from the air bag off to the side, t o-w a rd the re a rv i ew mirror or perhaps eve nthe front-passenger “A”p i ll a r.C a p o fe r ri’sair bag protected him on ly because hewas wearing his seat belt.C a r - c rash sta-tistics show this to be the ru l e . We a ri n ga seat belt cuts your chances of d ying inan accident by forty - t h ree per cent. I fyou add the pro t e c t i on of an air bag,your fatality risk is cut by forty - s eve nper cent. But an air bag by itself re d u c e sthe risk of d ying in an accident by justt h i rteen per cent.

T h at the effe c t i veness of an air bagdepended on the use of a seat belt was ac oncept that the Haddon i t e s , in thosee a rly days , n ever pro p e rly understood.T h ey wanted the air bag to replace theseat belt when in fact it was capable on lyo f supplementing it, and they clung tothat belief, even in the face of m o u n t i n gevidence to the con t ra ry.D on Huelke, al ongtime safe ty re s e a rcher at the Uni-ve r s i ty of M i ch i g a n , remembers beingon an N.H.T. S . A . a d v i s o ry com m i t t e ein the early nineteen-seve n t i e s , w h e npeople at the agency were trying toc ome up with statistics for the public on the value of air bags. “Their esti-mates were that something like tw e n ty -eight thousand people a year could bes a ved by the air bags,” he re ca ll s , “a n dthen som e one pointed out to them that t h e re were n’t that many dri ver fatalities

in frontal crashes in a ye a r. It was kind o f like ‘ O o p s .’ So the estimates werere d u c e d .” In 1977, C l ayb ro ok beca m ethe head of N . H . T. S . A . and re n ew e dthe push for air bags. The agency’s esti-mate now was that air bags would cut ad ri ve r’s risk of d ying in a crash by fortyper cent—a more modest but still im-plausible fig u re . “In 1973, t h e re was astudy in the open litera t u re, p e rf o rm e dat G.M., that estimated that the air bag would reduce the fatality risk to anunbelted dri ver by eighteen per cent,”Le on a rd Evans says . “N . H . T. S . A . h a dthis inform a t i on and dismissed it.Why ?B e cause it was from the autom o b i l ei n d u s t ry. ”

The truth is that even today it is seat belts, not air bags, that are prov i d -ing the most important new safe ty ad-v a n c e s . Had Capofe r ri been driving alate-model Fo rd minivan, for example,his seat belt would have had what isca lled a pre t e n s i on e r : a tiny explosive de-vice that would have taken the slack outo f the belt just after the moment of i m-p a c t . Without the pre t e n s i on e r,St e ph e nK o za k , an engineer at Fo rd , e x p l a i n s ,“ you start to accelerate before you hit theb e l t .You get the clothesline effe c t .”Wi t hi t , C a p o fe r ri’s decelera t i on would havebeen a bit more gra d u a l . At the samet i m e,belts are now being designed whichcut down on chest com p re s s i on. C a p o-fe r ri’s chest wall was pushed in tw oi n ch e s , and had he been a mu ch olderm a n , with less resilient b ones and ca rt i-l a g e, that tw o - i n ch com p re s s i on mighth a ve been enough to fra c t u re three orfour ri b s . So belts now “p ay out” e x t rawebbing after a certain point: as Capo-fe r ri stre t ched forw a rd , his belt wouldh a ve been lengthened by seve ral inch e s ,re l i eving the pre s s u re on his ch e s t .T h enext stage in seat-belt design is pro b a b lyto offer car buyers the option of what isca lled a four-point belt—two shoulderbelts that run down the ch e s t , like sus-penders attached to a lap belt. Fo rds h owed a four-point pro t o type at theauto shows this spri n g, and early esti-mates are that it might cut fatality ri s kby another ten per cent—which wouldmake seat belts ro u g h ly five times moree f fe c t i ve in saving lives than air bags byt h e m s e lve s .“The best solution is to pro-vide automatic pro t e c t i on ,i n cluding airb a g s , as baseline pro t e c t i on for eve ryon e,with seat belts as a supplement for those“ I t’s for you.”

who will use them,” H a d d on wro t e i n1 9 8 4 . In putting air bags first and seatbelts secon d , he had things back w a rd .

R o b e rt Day suffe red a ve ry diffe r -ent kind of accident from St e ph e n

C a p o fe r ri’s :he was hit from the side, a n dthe physics of a side-impact crash arenot nearly so forgiving. I m a g i n e, for in-s t a n c e, that you punched a bri ck wall ash a rd as you could. I f your fist was bare,yo u’d break your hand. I f you had a glovewith two inches of p a d d i n g, your handwould sting. I f you had a glove with sixi n ches of p a d d i n g, you might not fe e lmu ch of a nyt h i n g. The more energy -a b s o rbing material—the more space—you can put between your body and thew a ll , the better off you are . An autom o-bile accident is no diffe re n t . C a p o fe r ril i ve d , in part ,b e cause he had lots of s p a c eb e tween himself and Day’s Wa gon e e r.Cars have steel rails connecting the pas-senger com p a rtment with the bumper,and each of those rails is engineered withwhat are ca lled conv o l u t i on s — a c c o rd i on-like folds designed to absorb, s l ow ly andeve n ly, the impact of a coll i s i on . C a p o-fe r ri’s van was engineered with tw e n ty -s even inches of c rumple ro om , and atthe speed he was tra ve lling he pro b a b lyused about tw e n ty - one inches of t h a t .But Day had four inch e s , no more, b e-tween his body and the door,and perh a p sanother five to six inches in the door it-s e l f. C a p o fe r ri hit the wall with a box i n gg l ove .D ay punched it with his bare hand.

D ay’s problems were compounded bythe fact that he was not wearing his seatb e l t .The ri g h t - f ront fender of C a p o fe r ri’sAe rostar stru ck his Wa goneer square lyon the dri ve r’s door, pushing the Jeeps i d ew i s e, and if D ay had been belted hewould have moved with his ve h i cl e, a w ayf rom the on rushing Ae ro s t a r. But hew a s n’t , and so the Jeep moved out fromunder him: within fifteen mill i s e c on d s ,the four inches of space between his bodyand the side of the Jeep was gon e .T h eimpact of the Ae rostar slammed thed ri ve r’s door against his ribs and spleen.

D ay could easily have been ejectedf rom his ve h i cle at that point. The im-pact of C a p o fe r ri’s van shattered theglass in Day’s door, and a Wa gon e e r, l i k emost sport s - u t i l i ty ve h i cl e s , has a lowbelt line—meaning that the side win-d ows are so large that with the glass gon et h e re’s a hole big enough for an unre-

s t rained body to fly thro u g h . This iswhat it means to be “ t h rown cl e a r” o f ac ra s h , although when that ph rase is usedin the popular litera t u re it is som e t i m e ssaid as if it were a good thing, when ofcourse to be “ t h rown cl e a r” o f a crash ism e re ly to be thrown into some otherh a rd and even more lethal object, like thep a vement or a tree or another ca r. D ay,for whatever re a s on ,was not thrown cl e a r,and in that narrow sense he was luck y.This advantage, h ow eve r, amounted tol i t t l e . D ay’s door was dri ven into himlike a sledgehammer.

Would a front air bag have save dR o b e rt Day? Not at all . He wasn’t mov-ing forw a rd into the steering wheel. H ewas moving sidewise into the door.Som ecars now have additional air bags that areintended to protect the head as it hitsthe top of the door frame in a side-impact cra s h . But Day didn’t die of h e a di n j u ri e s . He died of a b d ominal injuri e s .C on c e i v a b ly, a side-impact bag mighth a ve offe red his abdomen some slightp ro t e c t i on .But Day’s best chance of s u r-viving the accident would have been towear his seat belt. It would have held himin place in those first few mill i s e c onds ofi m p a c t . It would have pre s e rved som ep a rt of the space separating him from thed o o r,diminishing the impact of t h e Ae ro-s t a r.D ay made two mistakes that morn-i n g, t h e n , the second of w h i ch was notb u ckling up. But this is a point on whichthe Haddonites were in error as well ,b e cause the com p a n i on to their obsessionwith air bags was the equally false beliefthat encouraging dri vers to wear their

seat belts was a largely futile endeavor.In the early nineteen-seve n t i e s , just at

the moment when Haddon and Clay-b ro ok were pushing hardest for air bags,the Au s t ralian state of Vi c t o ria passedthe worl d’s first mandatory seat-belt l e g i s l a t i on , and the law was an immedi-ate success. With an aggre s s i ve public-e d u ca t i on ca m p a i g n , rates of seat-belt usejumped from tw e n ty to eighty per cent.Du ring the next seve ral ye a r s , C a n a d a ,New Ze a l a n d , G e rm a ny, Fra n c e, a n dothers foll owed suit. But a similar move-ment in the United States in the earlys eventies stall e d . James Gre go ry, w h oheaded the N.H.T. S . A .d u ring the Fo rdye a r s , s ays that if Nader had advoca t e dm a n d a t o ry belt laws they might haveca r ried the day. But Na d e r, then at theheight of his fame and influ e n c e, d i d n’tthink that belt laws would work in thisc o u n t ry. “You push mandatory belts, yo umight get a ve ry adverse re a c t i on , ”Na d e rs ays today of his thinking back then.“M i n dless re a c t i on . And how many tick-ets do you give out a day? What aboutb a ck seats? At what point do you re q u i rea seat belt for small kids? And it’s ad-m i n i s t ra t i ve ly difficult when people cro s sstate lines. T h a t’s why I alw ays focussedon the passive . We have a libert a ri a ns t reak that Europe doesn’t have . ” R i ch-a rd Pe e t , a con g re s s i onal staffer whohelped dra ft legislation in Con g ress giv-ing states financial incentives to pass beltl a w s , founded an organiza t i on in the earlyseventies to promote belt-weari n g. “A f -ter I did that, s ome of the people whow o rked for Na d e r’s organiza t i on went

THE NEW YO R K E R, JUNE 11, 2001 5 9

“I am standing up stra i g h t ! ”

• •

a fter me, s aying that I was selling out the air-bag move m e n t , ” Peet re ca ll s .“That pissed me off. I thought the safe tym ovement was the safe ty move m e n tand we were all working together forc om m on aims.” In “Auto Sa fe ty, ” a his-t o ry of a u t o - s a fe ty re g u l a t i on ,J ohn Gra-h a m , o f the Harv a rd School of Pu b l i cH e a l t h , writes of C l ayb ro ok ’s time atthe N.H.T. S . A . :

Her lack of aggressive leadership onsafety belt use was a major source of irr i t a-tion among belt use advocates, auto industryo fficials, and officials from state safety pro-grams. They saw her pessimistic attitudes asa self-fulfilling pro p h e c y. One of Claybro o k ’saides at N.H.T.S.A. who worked with stateagencies acknowledged: “It is fair to say thatC l a y b rook never made a dedicated eff o rt toget mandatory belt-use laws.” Another aideo ff e red the following explanation of her phi-losophy: “Joan didn’t do much on manda-t o ry belt use because her primary intere s t sw e re in vehicle regulation. She was fond ofsaying ‘it is easier to get twenty auto compa-nies to do something than to get 200 millionAmericans to do something.’”

C l ayb ro ok says that while at theN . H . T. S . A . she mailed a letter to all thestate gove rnors encouraging them to p a s sm a n d a t o ry seat-belt legislation , and “n o tone gove rnor would help us.” It is cl e a rthat she had low expectations for her ef-f o rt s .E ven as late as 1984,C l ayb ro ok wass t i ll insisting that trying to encourage seat-

belt use was a fool’s erra n d .“It is not likelythat mandatory seat belt usage laws willbe either enacted or found acceptable tothe public in large numbers,” C l ayb ro okwro t e .“T h e re is massive public re s i s t a n c eto adult safe ty belt usage.” In the ve ryyear her words were published, h ow eve r,a coalition of m e d i ca lg roups fin a lly man-aged to pass the country’s first mandatoryseat-belt law, in New Yo rk , and the re s u l t sw e re dra m a t i c . One state after anothers o on did likew i s e, and public opinionabout belts underwent what the poll s t e rG a ry La wrence has ca lled “one of t h emost ph e n omenal shifts in attitudes eve rm e a s u re d . ”Am e ri ca n s , it turned out, d i dnot have a cultural ave r s i on to seat belts.T h ey just needed some encoura g e m e n t .“I t’s not a big Freudian thing whetheryou buckle up or not,” s ays B. J. C a m p-b e ll , a former safe ty re s e a rcher at the Uni-ve r s i ty of No rth Caro l i n a , who was on eo f the ve t e rans of the seat-belt move-m e n t . “I t’s just a habit, and either yo u’rein the habit of doing it or yo u’re not.”

To d ay,b e l t - w e a ring rates in the UnitedStates are just over seve n ty per cent, a n deve ry year they inch up a little more .B u ti f the seat-belt campaign had begun inthe nineteen-seve n t i e s , instead of t h en i n e t e e n - e i g h t i e s , the use rate in thisc o u n t ry would be higher right now, a n din the intervening years an awful lot of

car accidents might have turned out dif-fe re n t ly, i n cluding one at the intersectiono f Egg Harbor Road and Fleming Pi k e .

VI. CRASH TES T

W i lliam Haddon died in 1985, o fk i d n ey disease, at the age of fi fty -

e i g h t . From the time he left gove rn m e n tuntil his death, he headed an influ e n t i a lre s e a rch group ca lled the Insurance In-stitute for Highway Sa fe ty.

Joan Clayb ro ok left the N.H.T. S . A .in 1980 and went on to run Ra l phNa d e r’s advoca cy group Public Citize n ,w h e re she has been a pow e rful voice onauto safe ty ever since. In an interv i ewthis spri n g, C l ayb ro ok listed the thingsthat she would do if she were back as thec o u n t ry’s tra f fic - s a fe ty cza r. “I’d issue aro ll over standard , and have a thirty -miles-per-hour test for air bags,” she said.“U p g rade the seating stru c t u re .I n t e g ra t ethe head re s t raint better. U p g rade thet i re - s a fe ty standard . Provide mu ch morec onsumer inform a t i on .And also do morec rash testing,whether it’s ro ll over or off-set crash testing and re a r - c rash testing. ”The most effe c t i ve way to reduce auto-mobile fatalities, she went on , would beto focus on ro ll ove r s — l ow e ring the cen-ter of g ra v i ty in S.U.V. s , s t re n g t h e n i n gdoors and ro o fs . In the course of o u t l i n-ing her agenda, C l ayb ro ok did not on c em e n t i on the words “seat belt.”

Ra l ph Na d e r, for his part , spends ag reat deal of time speaking at coll e g ecampuses about political activism.He re-mains a distinctive fig u re, t a ll and slightlys t o o p e d , with a bundle of papers underhis arm . His interests have widened inrecent ye a r s , but he is still passion a t eabout his first cru s a d e . “H a d d on was allb u s i n e s s — n ever made a jok e,d i d n’t toler-ate fools easily, ” Nader said not long ago,when he was asked about the early days .He has a deep,rumbling pre s s - c on fe re n c ev o i c e, and speaks in sentence fra g m e n t s ,punctuated with long pauses. “Ve ry ded-i ca t e d . He influenced us all . ” The auto-s a fe ty ca m p a i g n ,he went on ,“was a spec-tacular success of the fe d e ra l - gove rn m e n tm i s s i on . When the re g u l a t i ons were al-l ow e d , t h ey work e d . And it worked be-cause it deals with tech n o l o gy rather thanhuman behavior. ” Nader had just beenspeaking in Detro i t ,at Wayne State Uni-ve r s i ty, and was on the plane back toWa s h i n g t on , D. C . He was folded into

6 0 THE NEW YO R K E R, JUNE 11, 2001

“I want to sta rt dating other zhlubs.”

• •

his seat, his knees butting up against thetray table in front of h i m ,and from time totime he looked env i o u s ly over at the peoples t re t ching their legs in the exit row.Did heh a ve any re g rets? Ye s ,he said.He wishedthat back in 1966 he had succeeded inkeeping the criminal-penalties prov i s i onin the auto-safe ty bill that Con g re s spassed that summer. “That would havegone right to the exe c u t i ve suite, ”he said.

T h e re were things, he admitted, t h a thad puzzled him over the ye a r s . H ec o u l d n’t believe the strides that had beenmade against drunk dri v i n g. “Yo u’ve go tto hand it to M A D D. It took me by sur-p ri s e . The dru n k - d riving culture isd e e p ly embedded. I thought it was tooi n g ra i n e d . ” And then there was whathad happened with seat belts.“Use ra t e sa re up sharp ly, ” he said. “T h ey’re a lothigher than I thought they would be. Ithought it would be ve ry hard to hit fiftyper cent. The most unlikely people nowb u ckle up. ” He shook his head, m a rve l-l i n g. He had alw ays been a belt user, a n dre c ommends belts to others, but whok n ew they would ca t ch on ?

Other safe ty activists, who had seenwhat had happened to dri ver behavior inE u rope and Au s t ralia in the seve n t i e s ,w e re n’t so surp ri s e d ,o f c o u r s e .But Na d e rwas never the kind of activist who hadg reat faith in the people whose lives hewas trying to pro t e c t . He and the otherH a d d onites were sworn to a theory thatsaid that the way to prevent typhoid is toch l o rinate the water, even though therea re cl e a rly instances where ch l o rine willnot do the tri ck.This is the blindness ofi d e o l o gy. It is what happens when p u b l i cp o l i cy is conducted by those who ca n n o tc on c e i ve that human beings will do will-i n g ly what is in their own intere s t .Wh a twas the tru ly poignant thing about R o b-e rt Day, a fter all? Not just that he was acl i ck away from saving his on ly life butthat his son , sitting right next to him,w a s w e a ri n g his seat belt. In the Days ’Jeep Wa gon e e r, a fight that experts as-sumed was futile was already half w on .

One day this spri n g, a team of e n g i-neers at Fo rd conducted a cra s h

test on a 2003 Merc u ry. This was atFo rd’s test facility in Dearb o rn , a lon g,rectangular white steel stru c t u re, b i-sected by a five - h u n d re d - a n d - fifty - f o o tru nw ay.Fo rd crashes as many as two ca r sa day there, ramming them with spe-

c i a lly designed sleds or dragging themd own the ru nw ay with a cable into atw e n ty-foot cube o f c on c re t e .A l ong theside of the tra ck were the twisted hulkso f p revious experi m e n t s : a Fo rd Fo c u sw a gon up on block s ; a mangled BMWS . U . V. that had been cra s h e d , out ofc om p e t i t i ve curi o s i ty, the previous week;a Fo rd Explorer that looked as though ithad been thrown into a blender. In aro om at the back ,t h e re were fifty or sixtyc rash-test dummies, p ropped up on ta-bles and ch a i r s , in a dozen or more con-fig u ra t i on s —s ome in Converse sneak-e r s , s ome in patent-leather shoes, s om ewithout feet and legs at all ,e a ch one cov-e red with multiple electronic sensors, a lldesigned to measure the kinds of i n-j u ries possible in a cra s h .

The seve ri ty of a ny accident is mea-s u red not by the speed of the car at the moment of impact but by what isk n own as the delta V—the diffe rence be-tween how fast a car is going at the mo-ment of impact and how fast it is mov i n ga fter the accident.C a p o fe r ri’s delta V wasabout tw e n ty - five miles per hour, s eve nmiles per hour higher than the accidenta ve ra g e .The delta V of the Merc u ry test,t h o u g h , was to be thirty - five miles perh o u r, w h i ch is the equivalent of h i t t i n gan identical parked car at seve n ty milesper hour.The occupants were two adult-s i ze dummies in orange short s . T h e i rfaces were cove red in wet paint, red abovethe upper jaw and blue below it, to markw h e re their faces hit on the air bag. T h eb a ck seat ca r ried a full ca r go of c om p u t-ers and video ca m e ra s .A series of ye ll owlights began fla s h i n g. An engineer stoodto the side, holding an abort button .Then a bank of stage lights came on ,d i-re c t ly above the point of i m p a c t . Si x t e e nvideo ca m e ras began ro ll i n g. A voicecame over a loudspeaker,counting dow n :five, f o u r, t h re e . . . T h e re was a blur as the Merc u ry swept by—then ba n g,as the car hit the barrier and the dualf ront air bags exploded. A plastic lightb ra cket skittered across the flo o r, and

the long warehouse was suddenly still .It was a moment of e x t ra o rd i n a ry

v i o l e n c e, yet it was also stra n g e ly com-p e ll i n g. This was perf o rmance art, a na b s t ract and ri t u a l i zed re n d e ring of re a l-i ty, g i ven in a con c rete-and-steel gall e ry.The front end of the Merc u ry was per-fe c t ly com p re s s e d ; the car was thirtyi n ches shorter than it had been a mo-ment before . The windshield was un-t o u ch e d . The “A” p i llars and ro o fli n ew e re intact. The passenger cabin wasw h o l e . In the dead center of the defla t e dair bags, right where they were supposedto be, w e re perfect blue-and-red painti m p rints of the dummies’ f a c e s .

But it was on ly a perf o rm a n c e, a n dthat was the hard thing to re m e m b e r.In the real worl d , people ra re ly have p e rfe c t ly square frontal coll i s i on s , s i t -ting ra m rod straight and ideally posi-t i on e d ;people ra re ly have accidents thatso perfe c t ly showcase the minor tal-ents of the air bag. A crash test is beau-t i f u l . In the sequence we have all seenover and over in automobile com m e r-c i a l s , the dummy rises magica lly to meetthe swelling cushion , a lw ays in slow m o t i on , the bang replaced by Moza rt ,and on those theatri cal terms the dowd yf a b ric strips of the seat belt cannot com-pete with the bill owing folds of the air bag. This is the image that seducedWi lliam Haddon when the men fromE a t on ,Yale showed him the People Sa ve rso many years ago, and the image thatw a rped auto safe ty for tw e n ty long ye a r s .But real accidents are seldom like this.T h ey are ugly and com p l i ca t e d ,s h a p e dby the messy geom e t ries of the eve ryd ayw o rld and by the infinite vari e ty ofhuman fra i l ty. A man looks away fromthe road at the wrong time. He does notsee what he ought to see. Another mandoes not have time to re a c t . The tw ocars coll i d e, but at a slight angle. T h e re is a tw o - h u n d re d - a n d - s eve n ty - d e g re es p i n . T h e re is skidding and banging. Abelt presses deep into one man’s ch e s t —and that saves his life . The other man’su n re s t rained body smashes against thecar door—and that kills him.

“T h ey left pre t ty early, about eight,nine in the morn i n g, ” Susan Day, R o b -e rt Day’s widow, re ca ll s . “I was at hom ewhen the hospital ca ll e d . I went to see mys on fir s t . He was pre t ty mu ch O. K . ,h a da lot of b ru i s i n g.Then they came in ands a i d , ‘Your husband didn’t make it.’ ” ♦

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