Laura Christian, mother of a daughter killed in a defective GM vehicle, has launched a Detroit Billboard initiative memorializing the 174 dead – counted so far.
The Press Release and the Billboard design are attached.
Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:
Automotive News and Bloomberg reports on the VW scandal indicate that this scandal may be early steps toward a safer and healthier world. The contributions of auto emissions to early deaths are becoming clearer (53,000 each year in the U.S.A). And the atmospheric damage of automotive emissions to the planet endangering us all is also becoming clearer.Now more people are finally and forcefully acting.
Money
First, Automotive News carried the following Bloomberg (and Reuters) report:
“BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest money manager, is joining a growing list of investors and governments lining up to sue Volkswagen AG almost a year after the German carmaker admitted to duping emissions tests for as many as 11 million diesel cars.
“On behalf of their investors, a number of BlackRock-managed collective investment schemes are pursuing, alongside other institutional investors, legal action against Volkswagen,” BlackRock said Thursday in an e-mailed statement.”
Second, Automotive news carried an excellent article on impacts so far on Volkswagen.
SEATTLE — These days, Volkswagen executives talk more about winning back trust than market share.
It has been that way ever since the diesel emissions scandal cast the brand known for happy hippie-mobiles into a basket of deplorables, alongside Enron, Lance Armstrong and Bernie Madoff.
See http://www.autonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20160918/OEM/309199964
But this is just the beginning.
Health of Our Citizens and Our Planet
I believe we will find that on road emissions of all vehicles (not just diesels) is much higher than Federal emission tests indicate.
And citizens are now organizing to create a safer and healthier world. See https://www.careforcrashvictims.com/blog/blog-50yearsofairpollutionbyvehicles53000earlydeathsperyearinusatoday/
One result of existential threats is action – hopefully in time.
Hope is growing.
The Beginning:
And in “Federal Regulation Saves Millions of Lives” he describes the results. See https://blog.nader.org/2016/09/09/federal-regulation-saves-millions-of-lives/
And in his forthcoming Conference on “Breaking Through Power” he will help us look ahead as to how we can advance our “safety and happiness” by restoring our government “of, by, and for the people.” See https://www.breakingthroughpower.org/
With all the wrongdoing that has gone on, and continues to this day, we need to see and hear the people with the experience of righting wrongs.
Who has done more to right more wrongs than Ralph Nader?
Nader is devoting a day of his Conference on “Breaking Through Power” to Tort Law.
He is including Marianne Karth, the mother who lost two daughters in a truck underride crash. Marianne has worked tirelessly to convert her grief into good so that other Americans need not suffer such tragedies.She has been researching and writing about what happened, its consequences, the historical failures for decades to promulgate solutions, and what can be done to end preventable vehicle violence for all of us – forevermore. She obtained 20,000 signatures on a petition to President Obama for adoption of a National Vision Zero Goal and delivered them in March 2016. See http://annaleahmary.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Vision-Zero-Petition-Book-3rd-Edition.pdf
She has taught me to better appreciate the injustice and the inequality of corporate and Federal government policies of weighing people’s lives against corporate dollars.
Please see attached Release
For More Information or to arrange interviews with Ralph Nader
Contact: Hunter Jones or Todd Main
The National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Acts – Fiftieth Anniversary (1966-2016)
Nader Holds Four-Day Conference to Commemorate Fiftieth Anniversary Year of
the Publication of Unsafe at Any Speed
Today, September 9, 2016, marks the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s signing of the National Highway Traffic Safety Act, a result of Ralph Nader’s landmark book Unsafe at Any Speed, which was published the previous year. The book opened with the faulty rear suspension system of the General Motors Corvair, This defect could cause the Corvair to skid violently and roll over. The corporate negligence that had produced the various Corvair defects, Nader said, was “one of the greatest acts of industrial irresponsibility.” More broadly, Unsafe at Any Speed documented how Detroit habitually subordinated safety to style and marketing concerns. The main cause of automobile occupant injuries, Nader demonstrated, was not the “nut behind the wheel” so often blamed by the auto industry, but the inherent engineering and design deficiencies of motor vehicles that were woefully unsafe, especially in terms of “crashworthiness”—no seat belts, etc.
At the signing, President Johnson said, “I am proud of the 89th Congress, which took my proposals and brought forth these laws. And I’m proud at this moment to sign these bills—which promise, in the years to come, to cure the highway disease, to end the years of horror and give us hope.”
Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:
“Right now, too many people die on our roads – 35,200 last year alone – with 94 percent of those the result of human error or choice. Automated vehicles have the potential to save tens of thousands of lives each year. And right now, for too many senior citizens and Americans with disabilities, driving isn’t an option. Automated vehicles could change their lives.
Safer, more accessible driving. Less congested, less polluted roads. That’s what harnessing technology for good can look like. But we have to get it right. Americans deserve to know they’ll be safe today even as we develop and deploy the technologies oftomorrow.
That’s why my administration is rolling out new rules of the road for automated vehicles – guidance that the manufacturers developing self-driving cars should follow to keep us safe. And we’re asking them to sign a 15-point safety checklist showing not just the government, but every interested American, how they’re doing it.
We’re also giving guidance to states on how to wisely regulate these new technologies, so that when a self-driving car crosses from Ohio into Pennsylvania, its passengers can be confident that other vehicles will be just as responsibly deployed and just as safe.
Regulation can go too far. Government sometimes gets it wrong when it comes to rapidly changing technologies. That’s why this new policy is flexible and designed to evolve with new advances.” See http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/Op-Ed/2016/09/19/Barack-Obama-Self-driving-yes-but-also-safe/stories/201609200027
Joan Claybrook and Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety: Guidance Not Enough
“The Department of Transportation (DOT) must use its federal regulatory authority to assure the American public of the safety of autonomous cars. Safety performance standards encourage competition among automotive companies because they help to assure a market for the real innovators and suppliers. The manufacturers always complain about new federal protections, but autonomous cars are a whole new technology with great promise but also with the potential for serious public harm.
We are pleased that DOT is planning to address these issues and seeking public comment for this new system of transportation but it must not shy away from assuring public safety with minimum federal vehicle safety standards. It should not rely instead on mere guidance, including for the initial elements of automatic vehicle operation such as Automatic Emergency Brakes (AEB) that currently is only guided with a useless industry voluntary standard (it was the key element that failed in the Tesla fatal crashes.) Seehttps://saferoads.org/2018/10/04/advocates-statement-on-u-s-dot-3-0-av-guidelines/
Consumer Reports: Set Safety Standards
President Barack Obama, a strong advocate of driverless cars, voiced his support in an editorial published Tuesday in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
“Automated vehicles have the potential to save tens of thousands of lives each year,” he wrote. “And right now, for too many senior citizens and Americans with disabilities, driving isn’t an option. Automated vehicles could change their lives.
“But we have to get it right,” he continued. “Americans deserve to know they’ll be safe today even as we develop and deploy the technologies of tomorrow.”
Consumer Reports supports the development of autonomous technology but believes these cars won’t be widely accepted until consumers can trust they are safe. “We urge the Transportation Department to move quickly to put actual safety standards in place for how these systems are designed and tested, before these vehicles wind up on the road,” Tellado says.
Documents:
Thanks to Ben Kelley additional public documents are attached.
An excellent article in Forbes tells us of the need and the status of developments in saving kids from dying in hot cars. See
Twitter link: http://bit.ly/2cd9ZRu
Spread the word to save lives.
Lou
