The Struggle for Auto Safety / Jerry L. Mashaw, David L. Harfst.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mashaw, Jerry L., author.

Harfst, David L., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Automobiles--Safety regulations--United States.

Automobiles.

Automobiles--United States--Safety measures.

Product recall--Law and legislation--United States.

Product recall.

SOCIAL SCIENCE / General.

Local Subjects:

Automobiles--Safety regulations--United States.

Automobiles--United States--Safety measures.

Product recall--Law and legislation--United States.

SOCIAL SCIENCE / General.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (296 p.)

Edition:

Reprint 2014

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2014]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Combining superb investigative reporting with incisive analysis, Jerry Mashaw and David Harfst provide a compelling account of the attempt to regulate auto safety in America. Their penetrating look inside the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) spans two decades and reveals the complexities of regulating risk in a free society. Hoping to stem the tide of rising automobile deaths and injuries, Congress passed the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act in 1966. From that point on, automakers would build cars under the watchful eyes of the federal regulators at NHTSA. Curiously, however, the agency abandoned its safety mission of setting, monitoring, and enforcing performance standards in favor of the largely symbolic act of recalling defective autos. Mashaw and Harfst argue that the regulatory shift from rules to recalls was neither a response to a new vision of the public interest nor a result of pressure by the auto industry or other interest groups. Instead, the culprit was the legal environment surrounding NHTSA and other regulatory agencies such as the EPA, OSHA, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The authors show how NHTSA's decisions as well as its organization, processes, and personnel were reoriented in order to comply with the demands of a legal culture that proved surprisingly resistant to regulatory pressures. This broad-gauged view of NHTSA has much to say about political idealism and personal ambition, scientific commitment and professional competition, long-range vision and political opportunism. A fascinating illustration of America's ambivalence over whether government is a source of--or solution to--social ills, The Struggle for Auto Safety offers important lessons about the design and management of effective health and safety regulatory agencies today.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

One. Regulation and Legal Culture

Two. The Law of a Mobile Society

Three. Science, Safety, and the Politics of Righteousness

Four. Promise and Performance

Five. The Great Leap Forward

Six. The Crumbling Consensus

Seven. Legislating Liberty

Eight. Regulation as Recalls

Nine. Inside NHTSA

Ten. Regulation for an Ambivalent Polity

Eleven. Law, Politics, and Regulatory Strategy

Notes / Index

Notes

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Mai 2019)

ISBN:

0-674-42347-X

OCLC:

1013935904