Killer Mandate: The Tragedy of Kids and Air Bags
December 22, 1996
BY HENRY PAYNE
Copyright 1996 Scripps Howard News Service

On Nov. 25, Rebecca Blackmun's 1996 Volkswagon Jetta collided with another car in a Boise, Idaho mall parking lot. The accident occurred at low speed, but the frontal impact deployed the Jetta's dual front air bags at 200 mph, decapitating Blackmun's one-year-old daughter, Alexandra, tossing her head through a side window and onto the pavement. "It otherwise would have been a minor traffic accident," commented a police lieutenant at the scene.

Consumer groups will tell you that Alexandra's untimely death was her mother's fault. Her forward-facing car seat was not belted in. But Alexandra's death - and those of 31 other children under age 10 - are the direct result of 25 years of hubris and cover-up by the U.S. government and consumer groups concerning the safety of federally mandated air bags.

While politicians tell us that government is about protecting children against everything from cigarettes to dirty air, the horrible story of children and air bags proves that what often matters most in Washington is not public health, but political ideology.

Beginning in the late 1960s, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), a federal agency, began to define a "passive restraint" standard for automobiles. Passive restraints deploy automatically and were determined necessary to replace "active" measures like buckling a seatbelt, thereby protecting forgetful passengers. Egged on by Washington's powerful army of consumer advocacy groups, the government endorsed the air bag as its passive restraint of choice.

The automotive industry was less enamored of the air bag. A 1969 General Motors report, while confirming the air bag's success in protecting average-size adults, warned that because "the air cushion deployment must be extremely rapid to provide the necessary protection in the available time interval . . . a small child close to the instrument panel may be severely injured or even killed."

A 1974 study by Volvo concluded that "an out-of-position passenger of the size of a child 3-6 years of age could be (fatally) injured by air bag inflation." Industry urged government to conduct a demonstration program for passive restraints rather than blindly mandating them.

But ideology would not be denied.

Activist groups and government became one in 1977 with the appointment of air bag lobbyist Joan Claybrook as NHTSA administrator. She immediately mandated for all cars a passive restraint system, preferably air bags, by September 1983. Her decree inaugurated an extensive program to sell the public on the nirvana of air bag protection.

But even as NHTSA embarked on a major public safety campaign, Claybrook was suppressing information challenging the air bag as panacea. One of NHTSA's own scientists, Thomas Glenn, had conducted tests showing that air bags were far less effective than seat belts in preventing injury. But when Glenn publicized the tests, his superiors threatened him with reprisals.

A House investigation into the matter reprimanded Claybrook, declaring "her attack on this man is unwarranted and beyond the bounds of reason and professionalism." Said Sen. Robert Griffin, R-Mich., after reading the report: "NHTSA's blatant disregard for the public interest is both appalling and disgraceful. It demonstrates an unreasoned determination to force air bags into all new cars regardless of the facts."

But Claybrook persevered. A second NHTSA report, an analysis of 10,000 GM cars sold with air bags between 1974 and 1976 found "NHTSA's safety claim for air bags is overstated. . . . the actual number of deaths is at least four times as high as the expected number." Again, NHTSA withheld the report from Congress, releasing it only under threat of court order.

What is most damning about NHTSA and Claybrook's advocacy was their marketing of the air bag as infallible. They believed consumers would reject air bags if the devices were judged imperfect.

In a 1977 public brochure, Claybrook's NHTSA declared: "Passive restraints are systems that protect automobile occupants from collision injuries automatically, WITHOUT THE NEED TO FASTEN SEAT BELTS OR TO TAKE ANY OTHER ACTION" (emphasis mine). And in a 1983 television debate, Ms. Claybrook assured the public "(air bags) would protect ALL FRONT SEAT OCCUPANTS." Passive restraints, after all, were supposed to preclude the need for active measures like buckling a seat belt.

But this November, facing the fatal consequences of her ill-considered words, Claybrook - president of Public Citizen activist group since leaving NHTSA in 1980 - tried to cover her tracks: "The safest place for children 12 and younger is in the back seat, with safety belts buckled," she said without batting an eye. " All drivers of any age, weight or size should use safety belts at all times. These common-sense precautions increase safety immediately, in all kinds of crashes, with or without airbags."

With Ronald Reagan's election in 1980, government agencies undertook a sweeping review of federal regulations. The air bag mandate was deflated. Meanwhile, the auto industry threw its weight behind a national campaign for state seat belt use laws. Sneered at by NHTSA ("only a small minority of Americans favor such laws"), the campaign was enormously successful. Seat belt use has risen from just 14% in 1978 to 68% today. It's an irony of the air bag debate that were it not for industry-backed seat belt laws in the 1980s, the death toll from the 1990's air bag mandate would certainly be much higher.

But even as seat belt use increased, the air bag myth endured. Spurring this, ironically, were auto companies offering driver-side air bags in late-1980s model cars. They were a moderate success. Studies show that air bags increased lives saved by 11%. Though this fell far short of the 40% predicted by NHTSA, advocates claimed vindication and media outlets cheered.

Washington's liberal reporters rarely contradict consumer activists, assuming their ideological soulmates to be white knights keeping evil industry in check (this cozy relationship was embarrassingly demonstrated in 1992 when NBC contracted with a consumer advocate to rig an allegedly unsafe GM truck with explosives). Despite enduring evidence that air bags might harm kids, the media watchdog didn't bark until it was too late.

As for industry, the success of the seat belt campaign had eased its concerns about air bags. "We were optimistic that . . . with higher belt usage the potential for injuries wouldn't come to fruition," says Phil Haseltine of the industry-supported American Coalition for Traffic Safety. When a Democratic administration resurrected the air bag mandate in 1993, industry went along under the condition that air bags would carry warning labels.

On the verge of winning their long-sought mandate, activists opposed even this. In 1993, the Coalition for Consumer Health and Safety fought industry efforts for a special notice, arguing "that it would be counterproductive to present this information by way of unnecessarily alarming statements." (Don't confuse 'em with the facts!) The sides finally agreed to the meager warning labels found in today's vehicles.

The tragedy of children and air bags is a case study in the folly of federal mandates. Certain they alone knew the answer to auto safety, government bureaucrats insisted on one-size-fits-all regulations. The result was a device that carried widely different consequences depending on the type of passenger and car.

This December, current NHTSA chief Ricardo Martinez stubbornly defended the mandate even as he approved air bag deactivation. "The new policy would permit families . . . who have reasonable concerns about a potential danger to turn the air bag off," he said. But why not address these concerns by giving car buyers the option of air bags in the first place?

Government should serve the broad needs of its citizens, not the narrow demands of an ideology. When that lesson is learned, children like Alexandra will not have died in vain.

During the summer of 1996, 10 children were killed by automobile air bags, bringing to 32 the number of tykes terminated by the safety device. One measure of the vacuity of the year's presidential campaign that neither "deregulation candidate" Bob Dole, nor "pro-child candidate" Bill Clinton ever ever discussed why a government-mandated device was actually killing babies and young children.

Especially for Dole, supposed advocate of a less intrusive government, the failure to cite the mandate as an example of how federal regulation can go horribly wrong was a critical missed opportunity - as much for his campaign as for the national good.

Let's be clear. No one opposes air bags. Without them, many Americans would never have escaped their mangled metal tombs. What is at issue is the government's mandate of dual air bags for every vehicle on the road. The air bag tragedy is a case study in the peril of substituting rigid government decree for a free market flexible to consumers' needs. If Washington had allowed air bags to develop as an optional consumer item, today we would have fewer dead children - and better air bags.

Most federal mandates, such as the 1990 Nutrition Labeling and Education Act (requiring the redesign of food nutrition labels), fall on employers; and although such mandates can severely impact business operations, costs are rarely felt DIRECTLY by consumers. The air bag mandate is an exception. It impacts Americans where they feel it most - on their children's lives.

When Joan Claybrook, chief of the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) under Jimmy Carter, mandated air bags in 1977, she made the bureaucrat's mistake of assuming that human behavior, like the law of gravity, was a constant. At that time, only 14 percent of America's drivers buckled their seat belts, and Claybrook seemed to believe that that proportion was fixed. Yet by the time the mandate took effect, seat belt use had changed dramatically.

By 1994, seat belt laws enforced in 49 of 50 states had pushed belt usage to 68 percent. But like a fossil imprinted on stone, the air bag mandate had changed not a whit. That is, the speed at which an air bag deployed was still set to save an unbelted adult male _ never mind that seat-belt use precluded the need for a 200 mph inflation. A small child subjected to this force, however, faced grave danger.

As far back as 1969, the industry had warned of tots' vulnerabilities to seat belts. Not only did the government, hot to mandate the air bag, fail to publicize such safety concerns; it ignored them when drafting its mandate. William Carey, the proverbial father of the air bag, calls them "the way to go." But, he says, " the problems started when the government tried to jam them down people's throats."

This November, with kids' bodies piling up, former NHTSA administrator Claybrook was asked whether the mandate should be lifted. Her answer was an unequivocable no.

"Look," she said, "the most exciting thing that's going on today is because there is a mandate. The technology development is bubbling up and bursting out all over."

"Bubbling up?" responds the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Sam Kazman, a mandate opponent. "Why mandate something when you still haven't fully developed the technology?" Imagine, for example, the government approving - much less mandating - a new cancer drug before it had been thoroughly tested for side effects.

By requiring air bags instead of letting industry test them as a buyer option, the government inadvertently consigned 32 children to death. By contrast, the states mandated seat belts - embodying much simpler technology - only after many years of voluntary usage proved the device reliable.

America's motorists are a diverse lot. They are single and married with kids; they like station wagons and pick-up trucks, they are car owners and car renters, etc. Their driving habits demand different features, which carmakers try to provide as options (e.g, sun roofs, anti-lock brakes, stick shifts, etc). But air bags were not optional; the government forced them into all vehicles beginning in 1994.

For a childless driver, this posed no problem; drivers with kids, however, faced a frightening scenario, as events have proven.

A government-drafted warning label and the owner's manual in every bag-equipped car explicitly cautions against placing a rear-facing child safety seat in the vehicle's front seat. But how about a small, buckled child? Okay, says the owner's manual - but the seat must be in the full rear position. Let's say you just dropped your husband off at work, and the seven-year-old wants to ride up front with you. Did you remember to put the seat all the way back?

Or say your family has rented a vacation car. Have you read the entire owner's manual? If you usually drive an older car, will you know not to put the baby in the front seat?

Children, states the manual, "should never lean over with their faces near the air bag cover when the vehicle is moving." What does that mean? Children can't look for a toy in the glove compartment? They can't adjust the radio? Is this realistic? (At least one 7-year old did, in fact, die because the air bag deployed as she was operating the radio dial.) And what if you own a pickup truck or a sports car without a rear seat? The 1995 Mazda RX-7, for example. Where do you put your child?

Today, there is a growing consensus among auto makers and consumer groups that government regulations be amended to "depower" - i.e., reduce the explosive force of - air bags. Without the air bag mandate, this would almost certainly have occurred years ago as industry adapted to the buckling-up trend that swept the country.

In a recent letter to the Washington Post urging that air bags be depowered, three ex-NHTSA administrators wrote: "Recently, some people have sharply criticized the auto industry for bringing air bags to market knowing that they pose some danger to children. Ironically, these same critics previously dismissed the industry's concerns about air bags . . . and helped force the current overly aggressive federal air bag standard."

The history of the air bag mandate reveals a government hostile to the industry it oversees. "If the government had worked together with the auto companies," sighs Carey, " we'd be seeing less problems."

The air bag mandate, despite its flaws, is likely to stay. Industry, which once opposed it, has invested too much money satisfying the rule to abandon dual air bags now. Still, as passenger-side air bags occasionally go off in minor incidents, their replacement cost of $1000 - and the subsequent insurance premium hike - may further ire consumers.

As it happens, another sure-fire safety device has come under scrutiny this year. Anti-lock brake systems, one study found, are sometimes ineffective because drivers do not know how to use them. Fortunately, because government doesn't mandate anti-lock brakes, concerned buyers can choose a car with traditional brakes.

As the air bag experience demonstrates, life cannot be made risk-free. Government cannot decree away all danger. The next time bureaucrats pretend otherwise, Americans should remember the tragic summer of 1996, even if their politicians don't.