Automotive Air Bags
American politics, for better or worse, is prone to elitist control of various issues, some of which affect the general public in significant ways. This system is described by the distributive model of politics, where people representing narrow segments of society with high stakes in a particular issue influence public policy to a substantial degree. This explanation of policy making can be effectively used to examine and explain some political actions. However, the model is not without its flaws, and other models have developed to explain policy changes that take place under different circumstances, and with anomalous results. In areas dealing with science and technology, the knowledge-driven approach is often employed to explain policy transitions that do not fit the distributive model. The knowledge-driven approach examines how technological and scientific advances that favor diffuse interests can be used by policy entrepreneurs to bring about broad change, often against powerful and determined special interest groups. The case of air bag regulation can be used to describe and examine both the distributive and knowledge-driven models, as it originally fit distributive explanations, and was eventually taken over by the knowledge-driven system. The discussion of air bag regulation will include an overview of the relevant events, an examination of the distributive system of auto safety, and an explanation of the eventual changes ushered in under the knowledge-driven system.
The issue of auto safety regulation began to receive attention in the sixties, when death due to auto accidents rose from under 40,000 deaths in 1960 to nearly 55,000 in 1969 (Fortune, 100). In 1965 and 1966 congressional committees held hearings on specific incidents of automotive safety neglect, which resulted in the passing of the Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966 (Nader, Unsafe, xvii). This act was the first of its kind, giving the federal...
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