[Mgs] Seat Belts

David Breneman david_breneman at yahoo.com
Sat Jul 2 16:58:37 MDT 2011


--- On Sat, 7/2/11, Murray Arundell <arundell at ghs.com.au> wrote:

> OK I'll
open up a can of worms
> here..... why is it that Americans were so
> opposed
to mandatory wearing of seat belts?  European,
> Australians, and pretty
>
well everyone else in the world just accepted it because it
> was
sensible......

After the 1940s, the design idioms of the US and Europe
diverged.  To Europeans, good car design meant that you
were better connected
to the experience of driving.  In
America, good car design meant that you were
isolated
from the experience of driving.  In an American car,
you sat on a
wide living room couch and turned a power-
numbed chrome wheel to make
suggestions to the car
where to go.  Anything that raised the suggestion that
there might be some danger in that activity went against
the design idiom, and
US car makers were loathe to raise
the topic.

In the 1920s, my grandfather
drove a solid-tire oil
truck over corduroy streets and sometimes in two
feet
of snow to make deliveries.  It's not surprising
that after a life like that,
he found the experience
of cruising in a Cadillac Coupe deVille the height of
automotive technology.  But of course, American car
companies didn't give him
anything to compare that with.

He passed away just one year before I bought
my first
car - a 10 year old MGB.  But then, I had been an exchange
student in
Germany so I had seen how fun driving could
really be.


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