"GM was then the leader in air bag development," noted John Graham, a public health professor at Harvard and the author of a new book on the history of the air bag.
But Ford, the second-largest auto maker, was staunchly opposed to air bags, and in 1971 Henry Ford II and then-Ford President Lee A. Iacocca secretly met with President Nixon--in a session later revealed by the release of the Nixon White House tapes--and convinced him to delay the new, GM-backed safety standards on air bags by two years, until 1975.
GM Represented Industry
As Ford won delays, GM was also having a change of heart. When Cole, the only top-level air bag advocate in Detroit, retired at the end of 1974, GM's new management turned against air bags. GM virtually killed off its own air bag test program by reducing the number of cars involved and by doing little to market them. For years afterward, GM pointed to the poor sales of its mid-1970s air bag-equipped cars as proof that consumers didn't want them.
"When GM turned against air bags, that meant the whole industry was against them," observed Graham.
But just as the auto industry was uniting against government regulation, safety advocates were becoming increasingly committed to air bags.
Graham and other observers argue that some, like Claybrook, a Nader protege who took over as chief regulator of highway safety in the Carter Administration, became obsessed by air bags, blind to compromise and possible alternatives. "Claybrook came with a mission, and she felt her mission was air bags," said Graham.
Deep suspicions developed on all sides, and negotiations became almost impossible. The result was further fighting and delays.
Claybrook argues, however that compromise was impossible with the auto industry, which only wanted to delay air bags as long as possible. "We did reach out" to compromise, Claybrook said. "To search for errors in the regulatory process is silly because it worked. The industry just delayed."
Still, it wasn't until 1984--after the Reagan Administration killed air bags and a Supreme Court ruling revived them again--that a Dole's final compromise was hashed out, giving the industry time to phase air bags in over several years.
The compromise came just as consumer interest in health and safety was increasing; soon, the industry recognized that air bags were inevitable. Ford became the first domestic company to commit to air bags.
"Literally, within days of Dole's (compromise) decision, we decided passive restraints were here," said Ford's Petrauskas.
Now that it is over, those involved are starting to look for lessons to be learned from 20 years of waiting for air bags.
"I think the need to build consensus is what I take away from this," said Felrice of the federal highway safety agency. "If you don't have that consensus . . . it's going to drag on. . . . It becomes hard to accomplish anything."
