Ralph Nader – activist

If you’ve ever been involved with a people’s movement, or a consumer movement, it’s likely that you have heard the name of Ralph Nader. More so if you were growing up in the 1960s, the decade when people in many countries rose in protest against business malpractices, and even against the entire system of vested interests and governance, or mal-governance, as they saw it.

Not too many people talk about Nader these days. But back in the 1960s, Nader was among the most talked about persons in America, keenly followed by a large number of people in other countries too.

He was the man who sued General Motors. And won!

Nader, son of Lebanese immigrants to the US, studied at Princeton University and Harvard Law School. 

In 1959, he began his practice as a lawyer in Hartford, Connecticut, while also lecturing at the University of Hartford. He traveled to the Soviet Union, Chile, and Cuba, where he filed reports for the Christian Science Monitor and The Nation. 

He later moved to Washington, D.C., to work as a consultant to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, assistant secretary of labor in the US government. 

Nader came to the limelight in 1965  with the publication of his bestselling book Unsafe at Any Speed, a critique of the poor safety record of American car companies. 

What was his problem with General Motors?

Unsafe at Any Speed, which was a powerful expose of the US auto industry, argued that many American automobiles were generally unsafe. Nader had got his background material from more than 100 lawsuits then pending against General Motors' Chevrolet Corvair. 

People have described Nader as an ‘ascetic ... bordering on self-righteous’. And there is that bit of an ascetic in him, completely in line with his campaigns against waste. 

Although he is quite well off, he lives in a modest apartment and does not squander money. It is said that he spends little on himself, does most of his writing on a typewriter, does not own a TV set, and uses public transport. He is said to depend on clearance sales and outlet stores for his personal purchases of clothes and shoes. People have described his suits as being ‘wrinkled’, ‘rumpled’, and ‘style-less’. 

One newspaper even described Nader as a ‘conscientious objector to fashion’!

Nader has devoted his life to campaigning for companies to deliver better value to customers. His campaigns have been so hard-hitting and persistent that companies have tried hard to discredit him.

Created waves

Nader’s book, Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile, published in November 1965, began with these words: ‘For over half a century the automobile has brought death, injury and the most inestimable sorrow and deprivation to millions of people.’

While the book opened with a critique of the 1960-63 Chevrolet Corvair compact, it mostly examined a long list of safety issues the industry had ignored, from the poor performance of brakes to poor crash protection and the incidence of car drivers being run through by rigid steering wheels. 

The book drew the attention of influential senators, who invited Nader to testify before a senate subcommittee on automotive safety. Nader began to create waves.

In September 1966, barely 10 months after Nader’s book was published, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act, under which the National Highway Safety Bureau (NHSB) was created. That agency later became the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

Path-breaking changes

This was a path-breaking event because finally an unfettered auto industry began to face strong federal oversight. The result was a series of new or stronger safety requirements, sometimes in the face of stiff opposition from the auto industry. 

New technologies like airbags, anti-lock brakes, and electronic stability control earlier, and the more recent requirements of rearview cameras and automatic braking were a result that increased public as well as passenger safety.

The most important result of the consumer movement agitations led by Nader and others was a steep drop in deaths on American roads. The death rate due to car accidents dropped from about five deaths for every 100 million miles traveled in 1965 to one death every 100 million miles in 2014.

General Motors tried its best to discredit Nader. It went to the extent of hiring a private detective to follow Nader, who sued the company for invasion of his privacy. GM settled the case after admitting wrongdoing before a U.S. Senate committee, and paying damages. 

Nader used the funds he got from the case and, with the help of other activists, created several advocacy organizations. Among the best known of these was Public Citizen. Nader’s Raiders, as his associates came to be known, became involved in various issues, including nuclear safety, insecticide regulation, meat processing, pension reform, land use, banking, and international trade.

Nader and his associates were not the first people to champion consumer causes; but they transformed it with fact-finding research and analysis. They also lobbied the federal state governments to enact new laws on key consumer issues. 

Since 1990, when Life magazine included Nader in its list of 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century, Nader has been included in lists of the 100 most influential people in America by Time magazine (in 1999), The Atlantic (2006), the Britannica Guide (2008). 

In 1999 a New York University panel of journalists ranked Unsafe at Any Speed 38th among the top 100 pieces of journalism of the 20th century.

In 2016 Nader was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame. 

Nader was the 2016 recipient of the Gandhi Peace Award.

While there is no doubt about Nader success in advocating consumer issues, his several attempts to fight the US presidential elections came to naught. But that is perhaps more of a statement about the weaknesses of American democracy than the weaknesses of Ralph Nader as a potential US president.