How Ralph Nader Changed Car Safety in America

Ralph Nader was a little-known 31-year-old lawyer living in a Washington, D.C., boarding house in 1965 when he published Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile. The book not only made him famous—it transformed car safety in America and helped launch the modern consumer protection movement.

Nader had been obsessed with automobile safety since law school, amassing evidence, writing articles and speaking publicly about the issue. He argued that automakers knew how to build safer cars but chose flashy styling over safety to attract buyers. As one engineer told him, “A square foot of chrome sells ten times more cars than the best safety door latch.”

By the time a small book publisher came calling—which wasn’t easy because Nader shared a hallway telephone at his boarding house—he was ready to play David to the Goliaths of the auto industry.

Unsafe at Any Speed sold modestly at first. Then General Motors made a catastrophic public-relations mistake.

Nader’s book criticized all four major U.S. automakers: American Motors, Chrysler, Ford and General Motors. But its sharpest attack focused on GM’s Chevrolet Corvair, a sporty rear-engine compact that had become notorious for its handling problems. Nader accused the company of covering up dangerous flaws rather than fixing them, calling the Corvair “one of the greatest acts of industrial irresponsibility in the present century.”

GM responded by hiring private investigators to follow Nader and dig up damaging information about him. The investigators struck out—the closest thing Nader had to a vice was a sweet tooth. Instead, the surveillance campaign backfired on GM, becoming a national scandal.

Nader alerted The Washington Post and The New Republic magazine, and soon news outlets across the country were reporting that he’d been tailed. The New York Times reported that Nader “had received a series of harassing telephone calls and that women had sought to lure him into apparently compromising situations.” One memorable episode, according to The New Republic, involved “a girl, blonde and wearing slacks” who had unsuccessfully tried to lure him away from the cookie aisle of his local Safeway supermarket.

General Motors eventually admitted to investigating Nader, though it insisted the inquiry was “routine” and denied intending to harass him. The company also argued it wanted to determine whether Nader represented plaintiffs suing over the Corvair, which could have posed legal ethics issues.

The revelation outraged Senator Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut, whose Committee on Government Operations had recently heard Nader testify about traffic safety. Ribicoff hauled GM executives—including then-CEO James Roche—before Congress, where the company was publicly rebuked and Nader emerged as the hearing’s clear winner.

“That evening Nader was on all the network news shows,” Justin Martin wrote in his 2002 biography Nader: Crusader, Spoiler, Icon. “The next morning, he was featured in front-page stories all over the country. Nader had been transformed into a public figure.”

Nader later sued GM for invasion of privacy. After years of wrangling, the company agreed in 1970 to a $425,000 out-of-court settlement, without admitting guilt.

Nader’s book and congressional testimony helped spur passage of the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966, which required the federal government to establish automobile safety standards, starting with 1968 models.

Safety features now taken for granted—including lap and shoulder belts, padded dashboards, collapsible steering columns and shatter-resistant windshields—might eventually have become standard. But Nader’s campaign accelerated their adoption, helping save countless lives, Martin says.

Nader soon broadened his campaign beyond car safety. Meat inspection came first, leading to the Wholesome Meat Act of 1967. Then, in short order, came natural gas pipeline safety, radiation health and safety, as well as coal mine health and safety, all of which helped spur major federal laws between 1968 and 1970. He didn’t just take on industries, but the government itself, singling out regulatory agencies like the Federal Trade Commission and Food and Drug Administration that he believed were shirking their duty to protect consumers.

Martin characterizes 1969 to 1976 as Nader’s “golden age.” “He could place a call to The Washington Post or New York Times about an issue and see it splashed on the front page the next day,” Martin says. “Any congressman would take his calls.”

At the same time, Nader founded organizations including the Center for the Study of Responsive Law, Public Citizen and the national and state Public Interest Research Groups, known as PIRGs. He hired idealistic young lawyers, soon nicknamed Nader’s Raiders, to help carry the movement forward. By 1972, Martin says, he had more than 1,000 people working for him. That year, Nader placed seventh on the Gallup Poll’s annual list of the men Americans most admired, one spot ahead of Pope Paul VI. He ranked seventh again the following year.

By the late 1970s, Martin writes, Nader’s “tactics were growing stale”—and his influence had begun to wane. When his bid to create a federal consumer protection agency collapsed in 1978, many blamed his unwillingness to compromise on the legislation—and his public attacks on members of Congress he said weren’t doing enough to support it. Martin refers to this as his Waterloo.

And as consumer protection became a mainstream political issue, lawmakers, journalists and new advocacy groups increasingly took up work he had once championed almost single-handedly. His uncompromising style also made it harder to build political coalitions. The movement he created was moving on.

Nader and his organizations continued their work, winning victories on a wide range of consumer issues. But increasingly, he turned his attention to presidential politics, a move that alienated many of his former admirers and complicated his public legacy—particularly in the 2000 election, when he was accused of siphoning enough votes from Al Gore to swing the election to George W. Bush.

But his impact on consumer protection remains undisputed. By forcing Congress, regulators and automakers to confront safety as a public responsibility rather than a marketing choice, he permanently changed Americans’ expectations of corporate accountability. As Martin puts it, “He showed that an individual can really make a difference in a democracy, by more than just voting.”