The U.S. Government as Business Partner

The government spends billions of your dollars to assure airline safety.

The government spends as little as possible to assure your driving safety.

Why?

Why are the nation's roads in such terrible condition? It's good for so many businesses that motor vehicles are smashed up, messed up, destroyed. Think of the amount of money made by the businesses that build new cars and by replacing those cars and trucks, by repairing them, by re-painting them and replacing their broken parts, by making them look good again. Think of money made by the insurance companies and the medical industry. How much money is made on Pacheco Pass in California, the long-lived site of automotive destruction. Fire department budgets are enhanced by the need to rush to Pachico Pass. That's true for police departments. Ambulance companies and tow-truck companies love Pachico Pass. Why is there no Driver education program and no driver testing program - or at the very least - why are State programs not created equal? The reason? Because inexperienced untrained drivers smash up more vehicles than well trained drivers.

Why is Consumers Union doing the government's work in automotive safety testing? Because the government won't be helping its business partners by doing that, silly. It's not repairing the roads, developing country-wide road building standards, unified signage, break-away light-poles, non-skid roads over bridges and myriad other tasks that need to be performed by government to reduce and even eliminate automotive collisions.

Now be aware that we are talking about the vehicles and not the people in them, We need for the people to crash and drive another day. Safety for people is in high demand, People pay for cars and not the other way around. Safety belts, baby seats, and airbags, are OK. Front and rear radar systems that warn against a crash are not! Impact frame absorbtion is good. But so are blackened rear windows that prevent early warning of what's ahead of the vehicle ahead of you, are not! Eliminating dark windows means eliminating some crashing, don't you know? And who among you has ever received a citation for not signalling?

So how come the nation's commercial air fleet is in such amazingly good condition and pilots are trained and tested to the highest possible standards and aircraft mechanics the same? Because no one would fly if planes crashed, dummy!