Is the private automobile (a) a public health menace, or (b) a technological embodiment of America's political freedom? This was the question that safety activists and vehicle manufacturers put to Congress in 1966 as they struggled over passage of the proposed National Motor Vehicle Safety Act. Without a single dissenting vote in either house, Congress chose answer (a). Henceforth automakers would build and market their automobiles under the watchful eye of scientifically sophisticated federal regulators. The job of these public health guardians was to" socialize" the output of an almost completely nonregulated industry—an industry whose" irresponsible" products were implicated in the deaths of fifty thousand Americans every year.

But as is often the case, the legislative process leading to the 1966 Motor Vehicle Safety Act had framed a defective question. The correct answer—"(c) both of the above"—was missing from the choices available. In the rush to ratify a vision of automobile safety that combined science with law to remake the world, answer (b)'s emphasis on freedom was rejected, suppressed, almost forgotten. But worlds are not so easily remade. The private motor car is more than just another" consumer durable." It has permitted an impatient people to conquer space and time and to display individual taste and social status while maintaining maximum personal privacy. That the automobile was, and should be, preeminently a" freedom machine" was not a notion easily tossed aside. Legislation can emphasize, even exalt, new ideas. But it cannot repeal history; nor can it long suppress deeply held social values. The 1966 act thus was not to be the culmination, and indeed was just the beginning, of the struggle for motor vehicle safety.