FEDERAL REGULATORY MANAGEMENT OF THE AUTOMOBILE IN THE UNITED STATES,

19661988

by

LEE JARED VINSEL

DISSERTATION

Presented to the Faculty of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences of Carnegie Mellon University in

Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Carnegie Mellon University

May 2011

Dissertation Committee: Professor David A. Hounshell, Chair Professor Jay Aronson Professor John Soluri Professor Joel A. Tarr Professor Steven Usselman (Georgia Tech)

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2011 Lee Jared Vinsel

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Dedication

For the Vinsels, the McFaddens, and the Middletons

and

for Abigail, who held the ship steady

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Abstract

Federal Regulatory Management of the Automobile

in the United States, 19661988

by LEE JARED VINSEL

Dissertation Director:

Professor David A. Hounshell

Throughout the 20th century, the automobile became the great American machine, a

technological object that became inseparable from every level of American life and

culture from the cycles of the national economy to the passions of teen dating, from

the travails of labor struggles to the travels of soccer moms. Yet, the automobile

brought with it multiple dimensions of risk: crashes mangled bodies, tailpipes

spewed toxic exhausts, and engines guzzled increasingly limited fuel resources.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the United States Federal government created

institutionsprimarily the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration within

the Department of Transportation and the Office of Mobile Source

Pollution Control in the Environmental Protection Agencyto regulate the

automobile industry around three concerns, namely crash safety, fuel efficiency, and

control of emissions. This dissertation examines the growth of state institutions to

regulate these three concerns during the 1960s and 1970s through the 1980s when

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the state came under fire from new political forces and governmental bureaucracies

experienced large cutbacks in budgets and staff.

While most previous studies of regulation have focused either on biographies of

regulatory visionaries (a.k.a. policy entrepreneurs) or on legislative histories, this

dissertation examines how the federal government built bureaucratic organizations

and administrative capacity to regulate and force change in the automobile through

performance standards. Employees of these agencies helped shape automobile

design by creating routine regulatory procedures that intervened in the

longstanding traditions of automobile design. Only by examining these micro-

practices of governmental power, I argue, can we understand how regulatory

regimes have truly influenced their intended objects. My dissertation examines how

these institutions developed, learned, and evolved, with an eye to how these

transformations shaped technological change in the automobile industry. By

examining the mundane world of federal test procedures, scientific studies, agency

meetings, and administrative hearings, I will show how low-level bureaucrats

formed new networks between government and industry, established the state of

the art in automobile technology, and forced innovation in automobile design.

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Acknowledgments

Over the three years of this dissertations making, a number of institutions

have supported my research and writing. Two National Science Foundation grants

funded my research and studies early on, the grant that created the Climate Decision

Making Center and the grant titled The Socio-Political Construction of Technologies

under "Technology-Forcing" Regulations: A Tale of Two Automotive Technologies,

"One" Government and "One" Industry. I was pleased and honored to receive a

Dissertation Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation and the John

E. Rovensky Fellowship in American Business or Economic History for the 2009

2010 academic year. Two dissertation workshops helped me improve and winnow

down my work: Sheila Jasanoff and Clark Miller challenged me to clarify and refine

my thinking during the Social Science Research Council Dissertation Proposal

Development Fellowship in 2008. Pamela Laird, Mary OSullivan, and Steve Tolliday

also helped me consider new avenues of research and unexplored corners of my

topic at the Business History Conferences Oxford Journals Colloquium in Business

History in 2009. (Thanks, too, to Jenna Alden for organizing the BHC Colloquium in

Milan, Italy.) Finally, in 2008, a Ford Motor Company Research Funding grant

assisted my continuing work. Thanks also to the librarians at Carnegie Mellon,

especially Kara Kreger and Sue Collins, who always effectively answered my

questions.

A number of people inside and outside government helped me in locating

both people and records. The librarians and record managers David Doernberg

(Department of Transportation) and Kirk Nims (Environmental Protection Agency)

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led me to important archival discoveries. My work at the EPA may have gone

nowhere at all if not for Joseph Somers, who both shared recollections from his near

photographic memory and gave me the contact info of several retired EPA staff

members. The most important of these contacts was Eric Stork. Eric helped me in

innumerable ways, offering his time whenever I requested it, allowing me to

interview him several times, sharing his large collection of press clipping and

private papers, and reviewing my chapter drafts to ensure that I did not botch some

matter of fact. I owe him a great deal. Karl Hellman also helped by trusting me with

his memories and with his large collection of EPA memos and reports, which he

gave me in the summer of 2010. Thanks also to other present and former EPA staff

members who allowed me to interview them, including Ernie Rosenberg, Janet

Auerbach, Richard Lawrence, Joseph Merenda, Charles Gray, Rich Cook, and

Katherine A. Sargent. Though I chose in the end not to rely on oral histories in the

chapters on federal auto safety regulations, I could not have negotiated the

landscape of automotive crash safety without several interviews that gave me some

insight into the workings of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. I

am particularly indebted to Michael Finkelstein, Marilena Amoni, Joseph Kanianthra,

Sam Daniels, Clarke Harper, Harry Thompson, Jim Simons, and John Hinch. Through

interviews, Bill King and Richard Klimisch gave me insight into the auto industrys

side of the story, and Steve Plotkin helped me see the complexity of auto regulation.

It has become a convention for authors to list a number of commentators

who have improved their work, and then to write something like, All errors are

mine and mine alone. We should equally say this about our selves. I have been

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blessed to have many people (and institutions) in my life who have helped shape me

in positive waysincluding the part of me that wrote this dissertation. All

remaining errors (of self) are mine and mine alone.

At Carnegie Mellon, I benefited greatly from being a member of the Climate

Decision Making Center, an interdisciplinary group dedicated to studying climate

change policy- and decision-making under uncertainty. The professors and students

of that group formed my thinking in ways that I did not come to realize until much

later. I am indebted to Granger Morgan, Lester Lave, Marija Ilic, and Jay Apt. The

students of the CDMC always enlivened me and led me to think about new subjects.

I am particularly thankful to (and miss) Ins Azevedo, Vanessa Schweizer,

Constantine Samaras, Josh Stolaroff, and Andy Grieshop. I was also lucky to be able

to sit in on the seminars of SETChange (Strategy, Entrepreneurship, and

Technological Change). Being around Steven Klepper and Francisco Veloso taught

me a great deal, and their student Leonardo Reyes-Gonzalez left an indelible

impression. In the History Department, Steve Schlossman guided my early forays

into the archive in the graduate research seminar. Paul Eiss kept my theory chops

honed. Scott Sandage taught me not only about the arts of writing history and

teaching but also about the art of living. Its rare to find someone who can teach you

so much, and I cant thank him enough for it. Kevin Brown, Cian McMahon, Susan

Spellman, and Patrick Zimmerman have been true friends. Susan has frequently

tightened my prose, challenged my hazy thoughts, and, generally, kicked me when I

needed kicking. Thanks, sister. Thanks, finally, to the History Departments staff

members, especially Natalie Taylor and Gail Tooks.

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I am very lucky to have found such an excellent dissertation committee in

David Hounshell, Jay Aronson, John Soluri, Joel Tarr, and Steven Usselman. Jay led

me in an important guided reading on Science and Technology Studies and has

helped me along in other essential ways. John also carried out an extended guided

reading with me on global environmental history. John has always asked me very

hard and smart questions and has pushed me to broaden my thinking on all levels.

Joel has always encouraged my broad interests and searching mind. He honed my

historical skills by allowing me to assist his research and by teaching me what he

was thinking as I did so. I thank him for always being supportive. Joel will have

always been my intellectual grandfather . . . or, perhaps more appropriately,

Godfather.

As an undergraduate, I trained in philosophy and imagined that I would

always remain in that field. Then, fatefully, I happened upon a book called

Regulating Railroad Innovation by a man named Steven Usselman. Steve was kind to

reply a random fan letter from a kid in Chicago but kinder to become a mentor and

friend. His work continues to provide a model of great historical thinking. Steve put

me in touch with historians of technology in Chicago, who brought me into the fold.

Thanks especially to Richard John, who trusted a stranger to assist his research and

taught me a great deal. And thanks to the regular attendees of the Newbery Librarys

seminar in the history of technology, particularly Tom Misa. I have benefited

immensely from being a member of that happy republic, the Society for the History

of Technology, and of the Business History Conference. Thanks particularly to Meg

Graham, Hugh Gorman, Bill Leslie, Daniel Holbrook, Chris Rosen, Arwen Mohun, and

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Bernie and Jane Carlson. I am blessed to have found an excellent group of peers in

these societiesmy own little intellectual school. Thanks to Hyungsub Choi,

Barbara Hahn, Eric Hintz, Eric Nystrom, Dominique Tobell, Ben Waterhouse, and

especially to my historical soul mate, Andy Russell.

Three men have been instrumental in mentoring my intellectual life. After a

random inquiry I made after watching the movie Clueless, my high school English

teacher, Mark Wilson, gave me some Nietzsche to read in my sophomore year. He

then mentored me as I moved through that irascible German to the existentialists

and, finally, by my senior year, the structuralists and post-structuralists. He

answered my every curiousity and counseled me in the life of the heart as well as

that of the mind. I know that I would not be who I am today were it not for Mr.

Wilson. In my days as an undergraduate, Professor Bill Schroeder became the

person who answered my long list of philosophical questions and who lectured with

such furious enthusiasm that I became assured of earlier inklings that I wanted to

get a PhD. Most of all, Bill taught me that study required the fire of passion as much

as it did the cool order-making of reason. He remains a fast friend who continues to

inspire me in important ways.

Finally, Professor David Hounshell has taught me in more ways than I can

enumerate. He has always patiently humored my whim and curiousity, while

fostering in me whatever discipline, rigor, and clarity I possess. His encyclopedic

knowledge of history and historiography answered my every query. Most

importantly, David took on a student who wrote broken and mangled prose and

turned him into someone who is occasionally capable of producing a clear English

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sentence. For all these things and many more (which he would happily itemize for

you), I owe David a great deal and thank him for allowing me to be his apprentice.

If my intellectual mentors have been men, all of my spiritual ones have been

women. I owe much to Rev. Deborah Warren, Rev. Mary Louise McCullough, Bonnie

Thurston, Rev. Maureen Dickman, Sr. Karen Freund, and my dear late friend Sandra

Mellen.

My hometown, Joliet, was a hard place that rarely fostered aspirations.

Several adults helped me along the way, however, including Mr. Michael Reilly, Carol

Sossong, the Coughlen family, and Pat McGuire. My friendsthe circusalways

gave me hope. I thank Ramon, Kahlil, Ben (HBH), Nina, Ellen, Eliot (forever), Jean,

Bill, Andrew, and my brothers, Mike and Casey. Since those days, I have been lucky

to befriend and be challenged and supported by Thom Moran, Darcy Bean, Dan

Pride, Matei Costinescu, Ben Wachter, Brian Beahan, and Sarah Ratermann Beahan.

Thanks to Sarah Ratermann Beahan and Emily Murphy for helping me edit my

dissertation at various points.

I dedicate this dissertation to my family, the Vinsels, the McFaddens, the

Middletons, and to my wife, Abigail Middleton. My parents provided a home that

encouraged learning, thinking, and the development of eccentricity. To them, I can

only say, thank you, knowing that no words will ever suffice. Much love to my

sisters, Hannah and Rachel, and especially to my brother, Jaco, who always lifts my

spirits. My nuclear family is the confluence of two wonderful streams. I thank the

Vinsels and McFaddens for always being there, and I dedicate my work especially to

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the memory of Grandma Lydia, Grandpa Loren, and Uncle Mike, and in tribute to my

namesake, my Uncle Lee. I hope I have done them proud.

Abigail, we met when we both knew that we wanted to pursue graduate

education but only had vague ideas of what that would entail. Thanks to the

Middletons and, especially, your parents for raising such a lovely daughter and for

supporting us in every way. Thank you for the quiet, private world we have built

together with Baron and Gypsy. Thank you for being strong and keeping my head

level as I threw myself into my work, and thanks, most of all, for loving me

regardless of the outcome it.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Dedication iii Abstract iv Acknowledgements vi Introduction 1 Chapter 1Making the Crash Barrier: Medical Authority, Engineering Culture, and Bureaucratic Practice in American Automotive Safety 30 Chapter 2Constructing Standard 201 and the Limiting of Federal Automotive Safety Regulations 62 Chapter 3The Banality of Justice 113 Chapter 4Organizing Federal Automotive Emissions Control: Bureaucratic Change as a Strategic Enterprise 194 Chapter 5Establishing the State of the Art: Administering the Clean Air Act of 1970, 1972-1973 265 Chapter 6 The Long Road to Federal Fuel Economy Standards: Capabilities-Building, Bureaucratic Self-Defense, and the Fine Art of Gamesmanship 323 Epilogue 380 Bibliography 406

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Introduction

Sometime during the week of January 16, 1967, in New York City, Henry Ford

II, the grandson of the founder of Ford Motor Company, gave a speech before the

National Retail Merchants Association, a trade group for retail businesses. Ford IIs

theme was the dangerous precedent that federal regulation was setting. He warned

the audience that there were strong signs that recently imposed regulations would

be only the beginning.1 The federal government was beginning to take control of

automobile design, he said.2 Soon these regulations could lead to a total ban on the

internal combustion engine, the development under government auspices of

alternative power sources, and public policies to force people in metropolitan areas

out of private cars and into public transit facilities, he cautioned. If audience

members were deluding themselves that this was only a problem in the auto

industry, they should wake up, Ford II insisted. Similar things are happening in the

food and drug industries, in finance and insurance, in advertising and retailing. In

virtually every industry, government looms increasingly large between business and

its customers, its employees, its shareholders, and the general public. Ford II

reminded the audience not to turn the matter into an issue of good guys vs. bad

guys. The point, he claimed, was to draw a firm line between the responsibilities of

1 The following statements of Henry Ford II are quoted from Ford Cites Strong Signs of New Federal Inroads, Automotive News, January 16, 1967. 2 The Automotive News ran several stories on the production of automobiles in the USSRs command-and-control economy during this period, often emphasizing that automobile design was state controlled in the Soviet Union. In this way, talk of the US government mandating automobile design could be tantamount to red-baiting, insinuating that federal programs were, in effect, socialism.

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government and the responsibilities of industry. In Ford IIs view, this line was the

very thing government was trying to undo.

A few weeks earlier, on January 2, 1967, Automotive News, a trade newspaper

whose primary audience was car dealers, announced that its editorial staff had

voted auto safety as the top news story of 1966.3 The second-place story of 1966

concerned Ralph Nader, a young lawyer who was a chief architect of federal auto

safety regulations. In 1965, Nader had published a book, Unsafe at Any Speed, an

expos about the lack of safety features and the presence of designed-in dangers in

automobiles. The book paid special attention to the Chevrolet Corvair, a sporty

coupe that Nader said had some remarkable characteristics: Its one of the few

cars I know that can do the Bossa Nova on dry pavement and the Watusi on wet.4

Passage of the federal auto safety law, the Traffic Safety Act of 1966, was virtually

guaranteed when Congress learned that General Motors had hired a private

investigator to examine Naders private life, including his sexuality and whether he

was anti-Semitic. The third-place story at Automotive News had to do with the

decline in car sales in 1966. A series written by Joseph M. Callahan, the engineering

editor of Automotive News, came in fourth. The series, titled The Billion-Dollar

Smog Hoax, eventually ran to over thirty pieces. In it, Callahan skewered what he

saw as the fraud science of smog and its health effects, claiming both that scientists

had not established the dangers of smog and that automotive emission controls

were unnecessary. Thus, three of the editors top four choices for 1966 were related

3 John K. Teahen Jr., Safety Voted Top News of 66, Automotive News, January 2, 1967. 4 Quoted from archival video footage of Nader speaking in the documentary film, An Unreasonable Man (2006).

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to federal regulation. In the same January 2 issue, the publisher of the paper, Pete

Wemhoff, wrote an open letter to auto dealers, warning, The auto industry is in

troubledeep trouble, and not solely because of declining sales. The industry has

again become the favorite whipping boy of Washington politicians and

bureaucrats, do-gooders, and some elements of the press. He then admonished the

dealers to contact their congressmen. Todays crisis in the auto industry is not just

the makers problemits yours, too. Clearly, federal regulations threatened the

auto industryfrom the most powerful inheritor of an auto manufacturer to the

lowly auto dealer.

This dissertation examines the history of federal regulation of the automobile

in the United States around crash safety, emissions control, and fuel efficiency. It

builds on the work of other historians, who have been studying regulatory history

for decades.5 Where most previous histories of regulation have focused either on

the biographies of policy entrepreneurs, who imagine a new regulatory regime, or

on the legislation that enabled a regulation, this work takes a different tack: it

examines how federal civil servants managed the regulations with which they were

charged. I examine two aspects of this process, namely how federal administrators

built the capabilities of their agenciesboth human and physicaland then how

they used those capabilities to create and enforce regulations. I focus on two 5 Thomas McCraw Regulation in America: A Review Article, The Business History Review, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Summer, 1975), 159-183; idem., Prophets of Regulation: Charles Francis Adams, Louis D. Brandeis, James M. Landis, Alfred E. Kahn (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984); David Vogels The New Social Regulation in Historical and Comparative Perspective in Regulation in Perspective: Historical Essays, Thomas K. McCraw, ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), 155-185; Richard H. K. Vietor, Contrived Competition: Regulation and Deregulation in America (Cambridge, Mass.: The Harvard University Press, 1994); Stephen W. Usselman, Regulating Railroad Innovation: Business, Technology, and Politics in America, 18401920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

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regulatory agencies: a division of the Department of Transportation known as the

National Highway Safety Bureau (NHSB), which was renamed the National Highway

Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in 1970, and the Office of Mobile Source Air

Pollution Control, a bureau within the Environmental Protection Agency. Today,

this latter bureau is known as the Office of Transportation and Air Quality.

The Performance Standard as a Liberal Technology of Governance

The hazards of technique are a universal aspect of human experience. Fire,

one of the simplest of human tools, burned human hands, blackened lungs, and

polluted the air long before the rise of agriculture, let alone modern society. People

doubtlessly injured themselves while making stone tools, just as they were certainly

hurt while building ancient monumental structures, such as pyramids and temples.

The dangers of technology are as indifferent to political economy as they are to

history. Socialist countries have fouled their natural environments and disabled

their workers just as effectively and prolifically as capitalist ones. Air pollution has

never bothered to learn the distinction between constitutional monarchies and

republics. Images of Chinese citizens strolling through their cities while wearing

anti-pollution facemasks take their place next to photographs of Clevelands

Cuyahoga River ablaze.

Yet, each society in human history has chosen to control or regulate

technological risk differently. The opposite extremes of governance are banning a

technique or technology outright and allowing them to go on unfettered (permission

can equally be a kind of governance). But within this broad swath of limitation,

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governments, or states, have developed a wide-variety of tools to rein in

technology. From pouring money into researching safe technologies to creating

draconian laws against people who harm others, authorities have sought ways to

alleviate technologys problems while retaining its benefits.

In the United States, the car is the ultimate liberal technology. Liberalism is a

political philosophy founded on the centrality of the individual, on rights, or

freedom from coercion, the ability to make ones own decisions as long as those

decisions dont impinge on anothers ability to make his or her own decisions, and

so on. Implicit in this idea is an image of life lived independently. In the United

States, this image fostered a specific desire for a stand alone, single-family house

free of the density, noise, and dinginess of urban spaces. As transportation

technologies increasingly improved over the course of the late 19th and 20th

centuries, people began moving out of urban centers to suburbs, and the suburbs

became the great liberal geography. The streetcar suburbs were an early

development, preceded by strips built along rail lines, horse cars, and other

transportation systems.6 Wealthy businessmen, the only ones who could afford such

luxuries, began buying property in suburbs as the streetcar allowed them to

commute between their downtown workplaces and their distant homes in a

reasonable and formerly unthinkable amount of time. In the Post-World War II era,

however, suburban development was almost completely based around the

6 Sam Bass Warner, Street Car Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston, 18701900 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962); Clay McShane, The Horse in the City: Living Machines in the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2007).

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automobile. The car became a central pillar of the American Dream, embodying

home and land ownership and independence.

But the car is liberal beyond its ability to foster an independent life: it is also

a hallmark of individuality.7 In one of his radio addresses in the late-1970s, the

future president Ronald Reagan said, Personally Ive always believed the

automobile gave us one of the truly last great freedoms. For the first time the

ordinary man could go where he wanted to go, when he wanted to, choose his own

departure and arrival time free at last from timetables and fixed routes.8 If the

automobile played an important role in the financial economy, it was also a central

character in the libidinal economy. Once an object of wealthy conspicuous

consumption, the vehicle had become democratized. Teens learned to love in the

backseat of their parents cars. Cruising, or driving slowly up and down a towns

main drag, became a weekend pastime. Backyard mechanics built or modified cars,

creating hotrods and lowriders. The automobile became a central part of the how

people imagined freedom in the United States. Building on earlier ideas of the

frontier and the liberating potential of the railroad, in films and popular songs, the

paired technologies, the car and the open road, allowed one to escape the confines

of tradition, repressive community, and even the dysfunctional family. In his song

Thunder Road, songwriter Bruce Springsteen paints the picture of a young man

and woman living in a broken, stultifying, nowhere town. He sings,

7 For the automobiles deep connection to individualism, see James J. Flink, Three Stages of American Automobile Consciousness, American Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Oct., 1972), 451-473 8 Kiron K. Skinner, Annelise Anderson, and Martin Anderson, eds., Reagans Path to Victory: The Shaping of Ronald Reagans Vision: Selected Writings (New York: Free Press, 2004), 237.

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Well, now, I'm no hero That's understood All the redemption I can offer, girl Is beneath this dirty hood With a chance to make it good somehow Hey what else can we do now Except roll down the window And let the wind blow back your hair Well the night's busting open These two lanes will take us anywhere We got one last chance to make it real To trade in these wings on some wheels Climb in back Heaven's waiting down on the tracks Oh, oh, come take my hand Riding out tonight to case the promised land Oh, oh, Thunder Road, oh, Thunder Road

The male narrator of the song warns the woman he is wooing that if she does not

join him she will be left behind to nothingness, tonight well be free . . . Mary climb

in, this is a town full of losers, and Im pulling out of here.

How does a democratically-elected government attempt to control the

harmful aspects of a technology that is so central to a way of life, to how its

citizens imagine themselves? How does it regulate such a technology when the

government has a tradition of invading the activities of individuals and business

organizations as little as possible? In the United States, one form of technological

regulation that gained prominence in the 20th century was known as performance

standards. They were well fitted to the United States liberal society. Performance

standards are typically contrasted with design standards (also known as

technology standards), which specify the kinds of technologies firms should use to

solve a technical problem. Performance standards, on the other hand, simply set a

given criteria and allow the regulated firms to meet the criteria in whatever way

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they wish. If a performance standard is set at a level high enough that producers

cannot yet reach it and have to innovate to do so, they are known as technology-

forcing standards. Performance standards allow the government to curb targeted

risks without requiring too heavy a handthey are a liberal technology of

governance. The standards interfere minimally with the sovereignty of the

consumer or the driver; they place responsibility for reducing the technological

risks firmly on the shoulders of producers. But performance standards also regulate

producers in a way that allow them as much flexibility as possible. Firms can meet

the criteria established in the standards however they wish. Thus, this dissertation

examines on how the US federal government used performance standards to

regulate technological risks associated with automotive crash safety, emissions

control, and fuel efficiency.

Although we may look back at the history of auto regulation and see

moments set in stone, nothing could have prepared the auto industry, especially the

Big Three domestic automobile manufacturers, for the federal governments

decisive entry. Perhaps, then, it is best to begin the story just before the automobile

became the object of considerable federal regulation, that is, about 1960.

The Automobile in 1960

In 1960, the biggest story the self-styled The Newspaper of the Industry,

Automotive News, was the coming of the compact car. The Volkswagen Beetle was

making waves during the mid-to-late 1950s, and other foreign automakers,

including Opel, Volvo, and Fiat, were lining up to get a piece of the action. People

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wanteddemandedsmaller cars news stories and editorials said again and again.

Market Braces for Compact Storm, an article warned.9 Automotive News was no fan

of the new, smaller cars. This is the compact age, a staff editorial admitted, and it

is foolish to stay in business unless you have the opportunity to offer what the

public wants. But the paper warned, Undeniably, the compact cars have caught the

imagination of the public. But the compact car is not the answer to every automotive

need.10 Another staff editorial cautioned, Dealers surveyed by Automotive News

predict that compact cars will take an increasing share of the market. But dont sell

your big car yet.11 A cartoon depicted a car so tiny that a male drivers and wifes

derrieres stuck out the back of a burst open trunk. American Motors Corporation

(AMC), formed out of the merger of Nash and Hudson Motor Company, had

pioneered the first domestic compact car. The AMC Rambler made its appearance in

1954, giving birth to a new market segment. Columnists sang praises of George

Romney, President of AMC, for saving the troubled company. The respite was brief,

however. Within a few years, the company would be troubled again. Fears that

Americans would forfeit their large cars in favor of more economical ones also

proved a bit premature.

In many ways, the modern domestic auto industry, as we know it today, had

only emerged about 1960. In 1957, a recession had set in, and it killed many of

smaller automakers, including Kaiser Motors and Packard, all of whom had

struggled for years. Nash and Hudson might have joined that crowd had they not 9 Robert M. Lienart, Market Braces for Compact Storm: Fierce Competitive Clash Feared . . . Automotive News, July 11, 1960, 1. 10 As Dealers Eye the Changes in U.S. Auto Market, Automotive News, April 25, 1960. 11 Capsule Comment, Automotive News, March 7, 1960, 12. Italics in original.

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merged a few years earlier. It was a late-date shake out, and the hungry beast of

efficiency had feasted on these smaller firms. The winds of creative destruction

left only the Big ThreeGeneral Motors, Ford, and Chryslerand a few small

firms, including American Motors, Lark, and Studebaker-Packard. Moreover,

Chrysler, the Big Threes red-headed step child, faced bankruptcy. It would not be

the companys last experience with such matters. Most small automakers crashed on

the rocks. Bigness won. Columnists made rosy predictions for the decade. There

would be new stability after shake out. For all the talk of compact cars, the Big

Three automakers formed the backbone of a muscular industry that made muscular

machines.

In 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower still held the White House, and the

automakers did not fear government. Indeed, the auto companies put a great deal of

faith in the federal government, particularly in road construction, which found its

strongest embodiment in the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 . Many heralded the

increased construction of highways as a major factor in pulling the nation out of the

recession of 5758. All members of the industry took great comfort in this

automotive Keynesianism. Automakers knew the importance of roads. The

National Highway Users Conference, which Automotive News called an important

arm of the automotive industry, put continual pressure on the President and both

houses of Congress.12 Chairman emeritus Alfred P. Sloan, the former and famous

head of General Motors, and other elites within the automakers continued to steer

the group, but it had been joined by an increasing number of ancillary businesses, 12 William Ullman, Highway Administration Angers Road Users, Automotive News, May 23, 1960, 10.

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including oil and tire interests, National Automobile Dealers Assn., truckers, and

manufacturers who use trucks to haul their products.13 Municipalities, real estate

agents, and land developers were also important members. The National Highway

Users Group had been a major pressure group behind the passage of the Federal-Aid

Highway Act of 1956, and it continued to press the Department of Commerce, the

agency responsible for implementing the Act.

William S. Richardson, the chairman of the group and a director of B.F.

Goodrich Co., said that he was never very enthusiastic about the Department of

Commerce being responsible for the Highway Act, claiming Personally, I had hoped

the United States Commerce would have established a National Highway Board.14

This vision of an agency dedicated only to transportation issues was in the air. James

M. Landis, who President-elect John F. Kennedy had asked to write a report on

regulatory agencies, suggested the creation of ministry of transportation.15 But the

idea would have to wait six more years until the Johnson administration created the

Department of Transportation.

But the government did not require a centralized authority to make one thing

true: the car-dependent suburbs marched outward.16 Earlier transportation

technologiessuch as the street-car and even the railroad itselfhad assisted

homebuyers who sought single-family houses, yards as large as possible, clean air,

and other benefits difficult to find in the dirty and smoky city. The automobile 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 William Ullman, Ray of Hope Penetrates Economic Forecasts, Automotive News, November 28, 1960, 13. 16 Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and Rise of American Environmentalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

12

allowed consumers and developers to hastenand democratizethis process. The

veterans of World War II streamed into suburban subdivisions, most famously

Levittown, New York, a completely planned, fabricated town.

Home-building and suburban development were important engines of

economic growth. And though the automobile had its part in this expansion of

wealth and increased quality of living, the car was an engine of economic growth in

its own right. This fact had been realized much earlier. By the late 1920s, the

National Automobile Chamber of Commerce, which was formed in 1913 and

renamed the Automobile Manufacturers Association in 1934, began publicizing facts

about the cars vital role in the overall economy. As the historian Daniel M. Albert

writes, By 1928, automobile manufacturing used 18 percent of the nations steel, 19

percent of its wood, 23 percent of its aluminum, 74 percent of its glass, and 85

percent of its rubber.17 Not only those employed directly by the automobile

manufacturers but also a huge number of people throughout the nation (and around

the world) owed their livelihood to the US automobile industry. But these figures

were not merely boosterism for the auto industry; professional economists also

realized the centrality of the industry in the US economy. In 1939, Charles F. Roos

penned work a titled The Dynamics of Automobile Demand.18 Only two years earlier,

Roos had published another book, NRA Economic Planning, in which he ruminated

on his experiences as the director of research of the National Recovery

17 Daniel Marc Albert, Order Out of Chaos: Automobile Safety, Technology, and Society, 1925 to 1965, (Ph.D. Diss., University of Michigan, 1997), 9. 18 Charles Frederick Roos, The Dynamics of Automobile Demand (New York: General Motors Corporation, 1939).

13

Administration (which the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional in 1935).19 In

The Dynamics of Automobile Demand, Roos, who originated the notion of disposable

personal income, examined trends and explanations for consumer demand for

automobiles. His analysis fit into the emerging Keynesian belief that demand would

drive economic recovery. Although Roos did not emphasize the automobiles

importance to the nations economy, his book was a symptom of it. The auto

industry was also an important center of employment. Since Henry Ford instituted

the five-dollar day in 1914, the auto industry had been an important site for the

shaping of labor policy, trade unionism, and the philosophy that laborers also played

a critical role as consumers.20 Under the leadership of William Reuther, the United

Auto Workers rose to previously unimagined power after World War II.21 The

notion that the nations financial health depended on the auto industry found its

apogee in the phrase, Whats good for General Motors is good for America,

famously misattributed to Charles E. Wilson, as he moved from being the head of GM

to being Eisenhowers Secretary of Defense in 1953. Eisenhowers appointment of

Wilson was echoed less than a decade later, when John F. Kennedy appointed Ford

president Robert McNamara to the same position. The auto industry, the federal

government, and the national economy were all tightly interwoven.

Yet, the industry was also changing. New production techniques entered the

industry, most famously forms of automation, which threatened and, therefore,

19 Charles Frederick Roos, NRA Economic Planning (Bloomington, Ind.: The Principia Press, 1937). 20 Stephen Meyer, The Five Dollar Day: Labor, Management, and Social Control in the Ford Motor Company, 19081921 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1981). 21 Nelson Lichtenstein, The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit: Walter Reuther and Fate of American Labor (New York: Basic Books, 1995).

14

angered workers.22 In the post-War period, automakers quickly moved to

monocoque, or unitized body, construction in which the vehicles external shell

provided its structural support, rather than an internal frame. Throughout the

period, the domestic automakers and others continued to experiment with

alternative engines, such as electric engines, the Wankel (or rotary) engine, the

stratified charge engine, the gas turbine, and the Rankine engine. Yet, most the

automakers innovative activity went into the so-called horsepower wars, a Cold

War-style arms race to see which of the automakers could make the most

powerful, high-performing, and quickest car on the market.23 Meanwhile, a host of

industries vied for a piece of the American automotive industry. Aluminum

manufacturers and steel makers squared off over whose product made the ideal

material for bumpers. Plastics corporations spun out a plethora of new applications

for the car. The auto industry was giant customer. Winning its business was winning

big.

No one suffered troubled sleep over the thought of serious, strict federal

regulation of the automobile, or at least they did not confess to it. In 1960, the US

Congress had carried out the first major hearings on automotive emissions, but

these hearings received no detailed coverage from the press. The Automotive News

22 David F. Noble, Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984); David A. Hounshell, Planning and Executing Automation at Ford Motor Company, 194565: The Cleveland Engine Plant and Its Consequences in Fordism Transformed: The Development of Production Methods in the Automobile Industry, Haruhito Shiomi and Kazuo Wada, eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 4986. 23 On the horsepower race, see David A. Hounshell, Planning and Executing Automation at Ford Motor Company, 7576. In the economic literature, the now classic article by Franklin M. Fisher, Zvi Grilliches, and Carl Kaysen, The Costs of Automobile Model Changes since 1949, The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 70, No. 5 (Oct., 1962), 433451 gave rise to an extended discussion of the issue of the horsepower race and annual model changes.

15

staff noted weakly, Witnesses clash at air-pollution hearings in Washington. Not all

the smog is in Los Angeles.24 This statement, perhaps a play on words suggesting

that the Congressional hearing room was itself a site of smog production, was true

enough: Cities around the country were coming to realize that they had serious air

pollution problems. Similarly, California had passed the nations first automotive

emissions regulations, but few outside the state saw these regulations as a big deal,

and the industry took the news with a shrug.

In 1960, the automakers, their suppliers, and all those tied to the industry

looked forward with expectantly. They had no inkling of what awaited them.

How Cars Became Problems

For decades now, sociologists, thinkers in Science, Technology, and Society

studies, and other scholars have examined how issues become problems in

society. 25 A core assumption of such analyses is that problems do not simply arise

on their own; problems are not natural. Rather, a host of different social,

economic, political, and media factors come together to focus the publics mind on a

problem, or if the issue is dire enough, a crisis.

24 Capsule Comment, Automotive News, March 7, 1960, 12. 25 Joseph R. Gusfield, The Culture of Public Problems: Drinking-driving and the Symbolic Order (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). The historian of technology Thomas Hughes has emphasized the role of problem-formation in his examination of technological change. See Hughes, Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 18801930 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983). Joseph W. Schneider and Peter Conrad give a beautiful phenomenological reconstruction of how people come to realize that they have epilepsy, a disease whose very nature often involves blackouts that prevent the sufferer from forming memories of the event. Their description has wider applicability to problems that are not immediately perceivable. Schneider and Conrad, Having Epilepsy: The Experience and Control of Illness (Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1985).

16

Following this train of thought leads one to ask, how and when did cars

become problems? The answer to this question is clear enough: cars have always

been problems. From their inception, cars have been hazardous, and some people

have always seen them as such.

Early cars were dangerous.26 Their chassis and axles broke while the cars were

moving at full speed. Early vehicles were open-bodied; seatbelts were non-existent.

When cars crashed, drivers and passengers were often thrown from the vehicle. The risk

of driving, however, emerged simultaneously with a masculine culture based on proving

ones manhood through feats of speed and daring. Early drivers, almost all men, were

people who embraced being risk-takers.27 Automobile manufacturers won attention

and good press through auto races and hill-climbing competitions. This marketing of risk 26 The earliest and now classic history of automotive safety is Joel W. Eastman, Safety vs. Styling: The American Automobile Industry and the Development of Automotive Safety, 19001966 (Lanham: University Press of America, 1984). Other classic works include James J. Flink, The Automobile Age (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1988) and William J. Abernathy, The Productivity Dilemma: Roadblock to Innovation in the Automobile Industry (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978). The work of John D. Graham, though coming primarily from a public health and policy studies perspective, provides a number of important historical insights. See, John D. Graham, Automobile Safety: An Investigation of Occupant Protection Policies, Ph.D. diss. Carnegie Mellon University, 1983; idem., Saving Gasoline and Lives in Risk versus Risk: Tradeoffs in Protecting Health and the Environment, John D. Graham and Jonathan Baert Wiener, eds. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995); idem., Auto Safety: Assessing Americas Performance (Dover, Mass.: Auburn House Publishing Company, 1989); John D. Graham, ed., Preventing Automobile Injury: New Findings from Evaluation Research (Dover, Mass.: Auburn House Publishing Company, 1988). However problematic, the best legal history of auto safety is Jerry L. Mashaw and David L. Harfst, The Struggle for Auto Safety (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990). Today, automotive history is a burgeoning field with recent works including Jeremy Packer, Mobility without Mayhem: Safety, Cars, and Citizenship (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008); David Blanke, Hell on Wheels: The Promise and Peril of Americas Car Culture, 19001940 (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2007); and Peter D. Norton, Street Rivals: Jay Walking and the Invention of the Motor Age Street, Technology and Culture, Vol. 48, No. 2 (April 2007), 331359. 27 Sally H. Clarke, Trust and Power: Consumers, the Modern Corporation, and the Making of the United States Automobile Market (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 40-49. In the first chapterThe Arrogance of Wealthof his book Auto Mania, Tom McCarthy emphasizes that early drivers were wealthy as well as being risk-takers. Owning and using a car were some of the grandest forms of conspicuous consumption during the early days of the automobile. Of course, luxury cars continue that tradition to this day. Tom McCarthy, Auto Mania: Cars, Consumers, and the Environment (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007). In her work, Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age (New York: Free Press, 1991), Virginia Scharff describes how Suffragists and other early female drivers challenged the eras dominant notion of womanhood, a passive, frail, and easily traumatized femininity.

17

could expand the market only so far, however. If the automakers wanted to sell large

quantities of cars, consumers would need to find everyday, practical uses for their

product, and they would need to feel relatively safe while doing so.

Many different actorsincluding traffic engineers, traffic police, forensic

psychiatrists, and driving educatorsshaped the automobiles new safety regime. 28

Traffic signals and laws regulated the vehicles use. Mandatory driver education and

driver licensing created a base of competency around the vehicle. Yet, most of these

rules and requirements were pointed at the driver and placed responsibility firmly on the

drivers shoulders. 29 By 1960, automakers had placed few safety features in their

vehicles. Earlier, when Robert McNamara headed a division of the larger Ford Motor

Company, he had attempted to include safety features in vehicles and to make safety a

selling point, but his efforts failed, reinforcing the old Detroit mantra that safety doesnt

sell.30 At the same time, the transportation system of roads and highways was growing

increasingly complex. In 1966, Lyndon Baines Johnson explained this complexity in his

signing statement for the creation of the Department of Transportation. In 1946, 31

million motor vehicles crisscrossed the nations roadways; by 1966, the number had

increased to 90 million, and government agencies estimated the number would grow to

120 million by 1975. With this growth in vehicle use came a great increase in collisions,

28 Daniel Marc Albert, Order Out of Chaos: Automobile Safety, Technology, and Society, 1925 to 1965, (Ph.D. Diss., University of Michigan, 1997), especially chapters 2 and 5. 29 Jameson Wetmore, Systems of Restraint: Redistributing Responsibilities for Automobile Safety in the United States Since the 1960s, (Ph.D. Diss., Cornell University, 2003). 30 John A. Byrne, The Whiz Kids: The Founding Fathers of American Businessand the Legacy They Left Us (New York: Doubleday, 1993), ch. 17. The quotation is typically attributed to General Motors long-time President Alfred Sloan.

18

and every year tens of thousands of people died on the road. Johnson called this situation

an epidemic. 31

The car safety epidemic had become more acute in the publics consciousness a

year earlier with the publication of Ralph Naders Unsafe at Any Speed.32 Automakers

had already been under considerable pressure from politicians and public interest groups.

In 1964, the auto companies voluntarily adopted seatbelts as standard equipment to head

off possible legislation.33 This move did not appease safety advocates. As the media

began to investigate accusations of the auto industrys using private investigators to spy

on Nader, momentum gathered for federal legislation and standardization. This

movement eventually came to fruition in the Highway Safety Act of 1966, which created

the National Highway Safety Bureau (NHSB), which in turn became the National

Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in 1970. The NHSB promulgated

twenty standards in its first two years. Though the NHSB and the NHTSA have

experienced moments of strength and weakness, the Highway Safety Act created a lasting

institution to develop and support crash safety regulations.

The battle against automotive emissions has roots in the much longer and broader

history of urban smoke control efforts.34 Ironically, the car was seen as a relatively clean

technology when it was first introduced. In 1901, Ransom Olds advertised his gas-buggy

31 The White House Message on Transportation, page 1, NARA, Record Group 416, Finding Aid UD-UP-3, Box 1, Folder 2. 32 Ralph Nader, Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile (New York: Grossman, 1965). 33 Stan Luger, Corporate Power, American Democracy, and the Automobile Industry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 66. 34 David Stradling, Smokestacks and Progressives: Environmentalists, Engineers, and Air Quality in America, 1881-1951 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999).

19

as Odorless, Noiseless, Safe.35 It did not spew the smoke that formed the basis of suits

and movements against railroads. Nor did cars produce the odorous effluent particular to

horses.36 In matters of air pollution, the state of California led the nation on almost every

front.37 The Los Angeles basin had been seen as a paradise for motorists, but its natural

tendency toward inversions and unchecked development transformed Southern California

into the Smog Capital of North America.38 The science of smog arose from the work

of A. J. Haagen-Smit and other California-based scientists, and the California Air

Resources Board (CARB) developed the earliest auto emissions standards. The federal

government entered the scene primarily through the Clean Air Act of 1965. This law,

however, set a very low bar for emissions controls, and the US manufacturers were able

to meet the standards by making minor adjustments to their engines, leaning the fuel mix,

thereby, emitting fewer of the regulated pollutants. The federal governments powers

were considerably strengthened through the Clean Air Amendments of 1970, also called

the Muskie Act in recognition of Maine Senator Edmund S. Muskies intense support of

the bill. A small office within the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare had

administered the Clean Air Act of 1965, but the 1970 Act made automotive emissions

control part of the newly organized Environmental Protection Agency, which

35 Quoted in Clarke, Trust and Power, 34. Emphasis added. 36 Joel A. Tarr, Urban Pollution: Many Long Years Ago, American Heritage Magazine 22 (October 1971), 6569. See also, Clay McShane and Joel A. Tarr, The Horse in the City: Living Machines in the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007) and Ann Norton Greene, Horses at Work: Harnessing Power in Industrial America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008). 37 James E. Krier and Edmund Ursin, Pollution and Policy: A Case Essay on California and Federal Experience with Motor Vehicle Air Pollution, 1940-1975 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977). 38 Scott Hamilton Dewey, Dont Breathe the Air: Air Pollution and U.S. Environmental Politics, 1945-1970 (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2000), 38.

20

reinvigorated already existing programs and considerably expanded new ones in the

Office of Mobile Source Pollution Control.39

Automotive fuel efficiency has the thinnest history and historiography of these

three domains. Fuel shortages around World War I drove research into ways of using

poorer quality petroleum. Charles Boss Ketterings and Thomas Midgleys discovery

of tetraethyl lead was partly a response to this situation.40 And fuel economy was always

a concern and topic of conversation for drivers. From 1936 to 1968, the Mobil Oil

Corporation sponsored the Mobil Economy Run, a coast-to-coast road test that carefully

monitored the fuel economy of stock cars. Until the 1970s, however, Americans enjoyed

the fruits of cheap fuel, and their lifestyle became dependent upon it.41 For most of that

time, the United States rather large domestic petroleum sources provided most of the

nations energy demand. Over time, however, the United States became more dependent

on foreign sources. This dependence became increasingly true as the so-called

horsepower race took off throughout the 1950s and 1960s, wherein, domestic

automakers greatly increased engine size and performance, also causing fuel

consumption to expand markedly.42 By 1973, the United States produced roughly eleven

million barrels of oil a day, but it was importing over six million barrels of crude, about

39 See Krier and Ursin, Pollution and Policy, especially chapters 10 and 11; Luger, Corporate Power, 8788. 40 For a treatment of Ketterings creation of tetraethyl lead, see Stuart W. Leslie, Boss Kettering (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983). On the history and hazards ot tetraethyl lead, see Christopher C. Sellers, Hazards of the Job: From Industrial Disease to Environmental Health Science (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1997) and Christian Warren, A Brush with Death: A Social History of Lead Poisoning (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000). 41 David Nye has argued that the energy crisis of the 1970s was, in fact, a crisis of middle class culture since shortages threatened the American way of life. David Nye, The Energy Crisis of the 1970s as a Cultural Crisis in Living with America, 1946-1996, Ed. Rob Kroes and Cristina Giorcelli (Amsterdam: VU Press, 1997). 42 See Hounshell, Planning and Executing Automation at Ford Motor Company, 194565, 7576.

21

thirty-five percent of the nations demand.43 When the OPEC oil embargo began on

October 17, 1973, policy makers in the United States began to scramble for ways to

conserve energy and produce new supplies. They used many means to attain this end. In

1975, Congress enacted the Energy Policy Conservation Act, which contained a section

titled, Improving Automotive Efficiency. The standards formed from this act

eventually became known as the Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFE) standards.44

The management of fuel economy standards has always been a complex affair. NHTSA

technically creates and enforces the standards, but the EPA measures the cars fuel

efficiency as part of the agencys emissions control efforts, and the Department of Energy

publishes the automotive fuel efficiency statistics as part of its energy information

efforts.45

Expertise and Bureaucracy During the Postwar Period of Institution-Building

Both the New Deal and World War II had shown people the power of the

federal government to induce change. Socially and technologically, war efforts had

an enormous influence on the status quo. Yet, by the end of the war, the zeal for

institution-building and for state intervention in society had waned.46 President

43 Statistics from the Energy Information Administration: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/txt/ptb0501.html 44 The CAFE program has always faced a number of criticisms, especially the criticism that it decreases the safety of automobiles. For a representative conservative criticism of CAFE from one of the libertarian Cato Institutes publications, see Andrew N. Kleit, CAFE Changes, By the Numbers, Regulation, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Fall 2002). Additionally, many economists and policy-analysts agree that the best way to spur a decrease in driving and an increase in fuel-efficient vehicles would be to levy a substantial tax on gasoline. But many also believe that such a tax is politically impossible. 45 On the federal governments creation of energy statistics and forecasting, Lee Vinsel, Every Week We Find a New Devil: The Crusade for Credible Energy Information and Analysis in an Era of Great Mistrust, 1973-77, History and Technology, revise and resubmit. 46 Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (New York: Vintage Books, 1996).

22

Dwight D. Eisenhower had little love for the civil service, believing that its ranks had

been infiltrated and colonized by New Dealers and other pro-spending forces.47

Eisenhower began policies that allowed him to push political appointees deeper into

federal agencies, ensuring the loyalty of people who held key positions. Eisenhower

had little faith in the supposedly detached objectivity of experts in the civil service.

This mindset nearly inverted with the election of John F. Kennedy, and he

began a movement towards using government to protect consumers and workers.

The historian Lizbeth Cohen has listed over forty-two laws passed from 1960 to

1977 that were aimed at protecting consumers.48 Kennedy loved and surrounded

himself with expertsthe best and the brightest, as David Halberstram

memorably called them.49 The White House was hip-deep in Ivy League mandarins.

Kennedys appointment of Robert McNamara as Secretary of Defense was one

notable example. McNamara held an MBA from Harvard Business School and, as a

faculty member there, specialized in accounting methods. He applied his

considerable quantitative skills as a Captain in the Air Forces Office of Statistical

Control during World War II. The Office of Statistical Control would become an

important seedbed for ways of applying mathematical methodologies to an

increasing number of problems. George Dantzig, the father of Operations Research

in the United States, also worked at the office. After the war, McNamara went on to

apply these methods at Ford Motor Company, becoming one of Henry Ford IIs so-

47 Francis E. Rourke, Responsiveness and Neutral Competence in American Bureaucracy, Public Administration Review, Vol. 52, No. 6 (Nov. Dec. 1992), 539546. 48 Lizbeth Cohen, A Consumers Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Vintage Books, 2003), 360. 49 David Halberstram, The Best and the Brightest (New York: Random House, 1972).

23

called Whiz Kids and eventually rising to the presidency of the company, the

position he had held for only a month when Kennedy asked him to become

Secretary of Defense.50

This trust in experts only increased when Lyndon Baines Johnson took over

the presidency after Kennedys assassination.51 Johnson idealized Franklin Delano

Roosevelts New Deal, and he believed in the power of government to improve

society. Although, in the days and months after Kennedys assassination, Johnson

attempted maintain a balance that honored Kennedys earlier work, he slowly began

to move towards his more activist conception of the governments role in society. In

January 1964, in his first State of the Union Address, Johnson declared a War on

Poverty. On May 22, 1964, only six months after Kennedys death, Johnson

delivered a speech at the University of Michigan in which he put forward his vision

of the Great Society. Johnsons Great Society was comprehensive, holistic, and

synthetic. For just reasons, historians have tended to focus on the Civil Rights

efforts during this period. Certainly, the Civil Rights movement of the time was the

most important social shift of the era, and Johnsons signing of the Civil Rights Act of

1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is his greatest legacy. But such single-

minded treatments fail to explain the how Johnsons other programs fit within the

larger whole. Johnson did mention race during his Great Society speech, but he also

50 John A. Byrne, The Whiz Kids: The Founding Fathers of American Businessand the Legacy They Left Us (New York: Doubleday Business, 1993). 51 Robert Dallek, Lyndon B. Johnson: Portrait of a President (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Bruce J. Schulman, Lyndon B. Johnson and American Liberalism: A Brief Biography with Documents (Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martins Press, 1995).

24

mentioned education, suburban sprawl, lack of available housing, inadequate

transportation systems, environmental degradation, and poverty.

Johnson, a master legislator in the US Senate before becoming Vice President,

put forward an ambitious platform of laws, many of which included new executive

branch agencies. With Johnsons blessing, the 89th Congress, which ran from 1965

to 1967 and which many people believe was the most liberal, or progressive,

congressional session in the nations history, began passing a fleet of (for the United

States) left-leaning laws. These laws included Medicaid, Medicare, the Housing and

Urban Development Act [which created the Department of Housing and Urban

Development (HUD)], important education laws, the Freedom of Information Act,

the act that established the Department of Transportation, and two laws that deeply

influenced the automobile, the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act and the

Motor Vehicle Pollution Control Act. Outside of the New Deal, this was the moment

of institution-building in the United States.

Another marker of this transition to a more active role of the state was the

changing place of think tanks in society. As historians, such as David Jardini and

Jennifer S. Light, examined, throughout this period, think tanks, especially the RAND

Corporation, moved, as Light put it, from Warfare to Welfare.52 Following an arc

similar to the one that took McNamara from the Air Force to studying production

problems at Ford, researchers at RAND saw the broader applications of the 52 David R. Jardini, Out of the Blue Yonder: The RAND Corporations Diversification into Social Welfare Research, 19461968, PhD diss., Carnegie Mellon University, 1996; idem., Out of the Blue Yonder: The Transfer of Systems Thinking from the Pentagon to the Great Society, 19611965 in Agatha C. Hughes and Thomas Parke Hughes, Systems, Experts, and Computers: The Systems Approach in Management and Engineering, Word War II and After (Cambridge, Mass.; MIT Press, 2000); Jennifer S. Light, From Warfare to Welfare: Defense Intellectuals and Urban Problems in Cold War America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005).

25

techniques that they were developing. As the Kennedy and Johnson administrations

allocated more resources towards social problems, think tanks saw an opportunity

and stepped in to reap the reward. These people put a great deal of faith in the

power of mathematical techniques, models, and systems analyses, and they

convinced many people in government to take great faith in them. The staff

members of RAND and other analytical think tanks moved in and out of the federal

government, bringing their quantitative conceptions of organizing the world with

them. In this way, a changing and emboldened notion of expertise accompanied the

institution-building of the 1960s.

The Nixon and Ford administrations that followed Johnson did not share his

ardor for expanding the role of government, but they were also institution-builders.

Through the congressionally-mandated Economic Stabilization Act of 1970, Nixon

famously froze prices and wages, which made free market conservatives (whom I

discuss in the epilogue) rabidly angry. Nixon also oversaw the creation of important

executive-branch agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the

Occupational Safety and Health Administration. In response to the energy crisis

brought on by the OPEC Oil Embargo, Nixon also created the Federal Energy Agency,

whose organization was mostly overseen by Ford after Nixon resigned. Although

Fords administration created fewer agencies than had Nixons, he oversaw

important expansions of federal power, including the creation of federal fuel

efficiency standards.

In 1977, Jimmy Carter entered the White House on a campaign that distanced

itself from the corruption of Watergate, the horrors of Vietnam, and the Nixon

26

pardon. Carter intended to bring a different sensibility to the White House. Although

both Nixon and Ford had both been institution-builders in their own ways, neither

relished that role. In the early days of his presidency, Carter symbolized return to

the pro-government, pro-planning ethos of the Johnson administration. He created

new agencies, including the Department of Education and the Department of

Energy.53

All of the events covered in this dissertation took place during this period of

institution-building, when politicians, both Democratic and Republican, believed

that government could regulate the more heinous aspects of technological risk,

including those inherent in the automobile, and also believed that it was in the

publics interest to do so. In the Epilogue, I briefly consider what happened to auto

regulation when the era of institution-building came to an end, when a new, anti-

government philosophy called neoliberalism came to reign. The developments

described in this dissertation simply would not have been possible under Ronald

Reagans neoliberal leadership, and he sought to undo the developments that had

come before him. Ultimately, his destructive efforts were limited, however. The

institutions I describe in the following pages remain, though perhaps their value can

be questioned.

The Plan of this Dissertation

This dissertation proceeds in a roughly chronological order. In the first

chapter, I examine the formation of the National Highway Safety Bureau (NHSB), the 53 The Department of Education was split off of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, the remaining portions of which became the Department of Health and Human Services.

27

agency charged with managing the federal auto safety standards. Several different

professional communitiesincluding law, medicine, and engineeringwere vying

to lead agency, giving it their own distinctive vision of what traffic safety entailed

and how it could be accomplished. Ralph Nader, who was in many ways the

visionary behind the Traffic Safety Act, had a distinctly legal idea of how the agency

should functionan idea that would have involved lawyers running it. But

President Lyndon Johnson appointed a public health expert to the lead as the

agencys director. The Johnson administration cast highway accidents as a disease;

doctors became objective experts who would cure it. Yet, engineers eventually

came to dominate the agency. I examine the organizational reasons why this

happened and describe how the visions of engineers differed from those of the

medical community.

In Chapter Two, I describe how the NHSB built the first national safety

standards. I focus on the most controversial of this first wave of standards, entitled

Standard 201, which was meant to lessen damage to drivers and passengers when

they collided with the vehicles interior during a crash. But the automakers fought

back against the agency, claiming that the standard was unreasonable, unfair, and

unworkable. The agency and the automakers then entered a heated, adversarial

process, through which the matter was finally settled and the standard was

constructed. In this way, I examine how the agencys inability to make a standard

that was as stringent as it wanted created a precedent of limited power that

hemmed in the agencys most ardent advocates of tough safety regulations.

28

In the third chapter, I describe the process through which the NHSB forced

the automaker, Fiat, to recall thousands of vehicles and eventually pay a civil penalty

for safety violations. I emphasize the role that mundane labor plays in enforcing and

sustaining regulatory standards. After a contractor for the agency found that the

steering wheels in some of Fiats cars were defective, the agency began a process

which eventually took more than a yearto make Fiat conform to the standard. In

this chapter, I focus on the central role of testingin this case, crash testingin

regulatory enforcement.

Chapter Four treats the development of the Office of Mobile Source Air

Pollution Control within the Environmental Protection Agency. In the 1960s, the

National Air Pollution Control Administration (NAPCA), a department within the

Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, managed the nations auto emissions

control program. But NAPCA was famously weak, and its mission was diffuse, even

confused. Centrally, because it had to base its standards on available technology,

the agency had an significant research and development component. Because very

stringent emission standards were built into Clean Air Act amendments of 1970, the

EPAs Office of Mobile Sources moved in a different direction, focusing on

technology assessment instead of R&D. In this chapter, I demonstrate how Eric

Stork, the head of the Office of Mobile Sources, reshaped federal auto pollution

control efforts to fit his vision of the new agencys mission.

The hearings that the EPA held in 1972 and 1973 to determine whether it

should suspend for one year the standards set in the Clean Air Act amendments of

1970 provide the focus of Chapter Five. I argue that, contrary to the neoclassical or

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neoliberal view that regulation hinders innovation, these hearings helped produce,

aggregate, and disseminate important new knowledge of many different kinds. I

focus particularly on how the EPA learned about the industrial organization of the

auto industry, how both the regulators and the automakers learned about the

meaning of the law through judicial review, and how the hearings became a space

for learning about the state of the art in automotive emissions control technologies.

In the final chapter, I describe the prehistory of federal fuel economy

standards at the EPA. First, I explain why the agency began measuring automotive

fuel economy in the early 1970s: it sought to protect itself from critics, both

automakers and consumers, who claimed that emission controls were greatly

reducing fuel efficiency. Once the OPEC Oil Embargo set in, however, and gas prices

spiked, other agencies became very interested in the issue of automotive fuel

economy. Moreover, some representatives of the auto industry wanted the

economy measurement program to be moved to a more pro-industry executive

branch agency. Thus, the EPA, particularly its Office of Mobile Sources, struggled

with both other executive branch agencies and the automakers and to maintain a

hold on the fuel economy program. This dissertation concludes with an epilogue.

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Chapter OneMaking the Crash Barrier: Medical Authority, Engineering Culture, and Bureaucratic Practice in American Automotive Safety

In 1966, the Traffic Safety Act (TSA) and its sister statute, the Highway Safety

Act (HAS), became law. The TSA created the nations first significant and binding

mandate that all automobiles in the United States had to conform to safety criteria.

The combined acts also created a new agency, the National Highway Safety Bureau

(NHSB), later renamed the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

(NHTSA), charged with creating automotive safety standards and enforcing them.

This dissertation focuses on how regulatory agencies have developed practices to

shape the auto industry and its products, or, in other words, how regulatory practice

both induces and influences technological innovation. In my view, these practices,

along with the regulators beliefs, ideas, and routines, form an organizational

culture that has important ramifications for regulations effectiveness.

In this chapter, I seek to answer partly one question: why did the NHSB

become a society of engineers? Or, more precisely, why did engineering culture

dominate the agencys actions and self-understanding? Like nearly all federal

agencies, in the beginning, NHTSA had many possibilities. It was anything but rigid.

An eager, reformist spirit possessed its employees, and the agencys potential was

open and flexible. So how did this openness close? I focus on how leadership shaped

this outcome. I argue that, although William Haddon, an eminent MD and expert in

public health, led the NHSB as its first administrator, his deputy, Robert Brenner, an

engineer and scholar in the expanding field of traffic studies at UCLA, played a

greater role in managing the agency and shaping its ultimate character. I suggest

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that these men had very different notions of what kind of expertise the agencys

employees should typify and that, in the end, Brenners conception won out. Thus,

the chapter focuses on the intellectual biographies of these men, on what comprised

their thinking, and how that thought shaped the day-to-day events at NHSB,

including management and decision making.1 Too often people have argued that,

because Haddon was the first administrator of the agency, the NHSB closely

conformed to his ideas and values. The NHSBs archival record, which covers the

broad sweep of the agencys activities, simply does not support this interpretation

A plethora of factors, both dependent and independent, determined the

agencys character. No sufficient proximal cause lies behind the others. If such a

thing did exist, we cannot discern it. Leadership queues up with other influences,

but it holds the central place. This brings us to the thorny intersection between

intellectual biography and history, between theory and praxis. On the one hand,

when we consider the history of experts, of trust in numbers and knowers, and of

scientists and their role in governance, we should attend to how these people shape

their and others everyday behaviors and how these behaviors in turn shape the

world. On the other hand, although as historians we can and should focus on

concrete practices, we should not neglect the role that decision-makers play in

fostering and developing those practices. Practices and leadership can be

overemphasized to the exclusion of the other. I focus on this dual dynamic here.

1 Parenthetically, I believe that this history reconfirms the picture that Andrew Delano Abbott paints in his The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988): professions do not expand in some endless void. They vie for turf, and government regulation creates new spaces for the back-and-forth of disciplinary opportunism.

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This chapter begins in a, perhaps, counter-intuitive place: the intellectual

biography of the worlds most famous consumer advocate Ralph Nader. If, as I

argue, Haddon acted less as the manager of the NHSB than as its figurehead, we can

only wonder why he was chosen. I argue that the choice of Haddon only makes

sense in the context of national debates around auto safety. Consumer advocates,

like Nader, acted as the prime movers of these debates: they brought attention to

the issue and framed early discussions on it. Yet, they portrayed auto safety as a

redistribution of power. This politicization of the issue chafed the Johnson

administration, which sought to diminish technological risk while remaining

friendly to industry. In this way, William Haddons apolitical, medical vision of auto

safety appeared as a less dangerous alternative. After spelling out Haddons vision

of accident prevention, I turn to Robert Brenners role in founding and managing the

agency.

At the opening of the first session of the 89th Congress, Abraham Ribicoff,

chairman of the Subcommittee on Executive Reorganization, was feeling around for

issues to put before the committee.2 He considered a number of topics but returned

consistently to an issue that he had worked on since his time as the Governor of

Connecticut (1955-1961), namely automotive and highway safety. Not long after

Jerome Sonosky, the committees staff director and general counsel, began to

2 Perhaps, we could characterize this not as solutions in search of a problem as in the famous Garbage Can Model but rather as problem-solvers in search of a problem to which they would create the, no doubt definitive, solution (thereby, winning applause). On the Garbage Can Model, see Michael D. Cohen, James G. March, and Johan P. Olsen, A Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 17, No. 1 (March 1972), 125.

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research auto safety for Ribicoff, an attorney stopped in to make a few suggestions

to him. This man was Ralph Nader. At the time, he was writing the book that would

become Unsafe at Any Speed, the now-classic work of muckraking that brought the

designed-in dangers of automobiles to the publics attention. Sonosky found Nader

to be extremely knowledgeable about auto safety, and since Nader was willing to

work anonymously on the issue, allowing the Senators to take credit for the labor,

Sonosky invited him to help draft an auto safety bill, the bill that would eventually

the Traffic Safety Act of 1966.3 In this way, Nader played a dual part in the rise of

federal auto safety regulation: he acted both as the (co-)author of the law and as the

issues most important publicist. While Unsafe at Any Speed experienced only

moderate sales during its initial release in late 1965, it became an overnight

blockbuster after the Washington Post unveiled that General Motors (GM) had hired

private investigators to snoop on Nader, looking into his sex life and his stance on

hot-button issues, like anti-semitism. GM President James M. Roche confessed this

rapacious indiscretion before Ribicoffs committee, guaranteeing nearly unanimous

passage of the act.

Though Nader has been the subject of several popular biographies and at

least one documentary film, we know rather little about his intellectual biography.

Some of this is deliberate on his part. He has avoided making many large-scale

philosophical statements, claiming that there is too much Athens in present day

3 Charles McCarry, Citizen Nader (New York: Saturday Review Press, 1972), 17-8.

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Washington.4 But, as I will show, Naders comments on philosophizing belie his

engagement with the thought of his day.

Naders understanding of auto safety was centrally political, and his politics

arose from an allergic reaction to the theory of pluralism that ruled the liberal

philosophy of the day. At its core, pluralism applied the economic theories of

capitalism to politics, viewing interests as competing in the political realm as

firms compete in the market place. Nader echoed John Kenneth Galbraitha

chief theorist of pluralismwhen he asked, What avenues for reform, for the

reduction of these [social] costs, are available to the citizenry when the diversity of

competing, countervailing or penali