On Tue, 6 Jan 2004 12:08:38 +0000 (UTC),
(Paul Tomblin) wrote in Message-Id: :

In a previous article, "Tom Sixkiller" said:
Nader isn't a rocket scientist by any means...he's not even a engineer, and
certainly has never run any business other than his strong-arm organization
that would do the Mafia proud. Yet the scumbag raises $$millions and he got
5% of the vote...beating even the Libertarian candidate.

Yeah, he's such a scumbag because he forced companies to stop accepting a
few dozen deaths a year because it was cheaper to pay off lawsuits than to
add a few cents to the price of each car.

Paul, you seem to lack respect of laissez-faire capitalism. In the
USA, production of goods are determined by free market competition.
Competition in the marketplace dictates that a business reduce costs
lower than its competitors or face economic extinction.

If the people of the USA, represented by their government, and in this
case Ralph Nader, demand products that are designed with safety as
their paramount design criterion instead of absolute minimum price,
how are businesses supposed to remain competitive? With a
safety-first mandate, Ford and General Motors will surely fail soon.
:-)

Next time you're in a car that DOESN'T spray flaming gasoline all over you
when it's lightly rear-ended, remember that.

Incinerating a few hapless families due to the cost savings provided
by cost-reduction driven engineering, instead of safety as the primary
criterion, is just collateral damage along the road to business
profitability. Sacrifices must be made for the corporate bottom line.
:-)


But seriously...

Left to itself the auto industry would jettison auto safety in a
heartbeat. Ford produced Pintos with their exploding gas tanks and GM
pickups with side-saddle gas tanks located within the passenger
compartment burned to death over 750 people.

Thanks mostly to Ralph Nader, a graduate of Harvard Law School,
drivers in the USA are surrounded with costly seat belts, air bags,
anti-lock brakes, collapsible steering columns, roll-over protection
and steel 'I' beams in the doors. Despite these safety measures,
every 14 seconds someone is injured in a traffic crash, and every 14
minutes someone is killed. And according to the National Highway
Traffic Safety Administration, traffic crashes cost America more than
$150 billion a year – an average of $580 per person. Big business
would argue, "better these costs be paid by the American people than
us." It's another example of big business' exploitation for profit.


--
"I'm not proud. We really haven't done everything we could to protect
our customers. Our products just aren't engineered for security."
--Microsoft VP in charge of Windows OS Development, Brian Valentine.