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Cars, Boats, Planes, and Trains - How Did Ralph Nader's Book Unsafe At Any Speed Contribute To The Demise Of The Corvair Automobile?

How did Ralph Nader's book Unsafe at Any Speed contribute to the demise of the Corvair automobile?

Consumer and environmental advocate Ralph Nader entered the public policy arena in 1964 as a staff member for Senator Abraham Ribicoff and a consultant to the U.S. Department of Labor. In 1965, Nader wrote a best-selling book called Unsafe at Any Speed, which criticized Detroit automobile manufacturers, principally General Motors. He claimed the automobile companies were marketing cars they knew to be unsafe because their desire for profit outweighed all other considerations. In the first chapter of his book, Nader focused on one car he believed to be particularly unsafe, the Corvair, which was manufactured by General Motors.

At the time of the book's publication, Ribicoff was chair of a Senate subcommittee that was crafting a bill to establish safety standards for automobile design. Thus...

[The entire page is 256 words long]

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