RALPH HOAR
IN MEMORIAM

Raging Hoar Moans
Is GM Bagging Airbags?

Documentation on the matter is clear: Earlier this century General Motors adopted a secret corporate policy to dismember rail public transportation systems throughout the country. Yogi Berra called it deja vu all over again.

Being less prosaic I'd just say, here we go again. It's beginning to look like GM thinks it's time, (again,) to deep-six airbags--this time with deniability.

Call me paranoid but bits and pieces keep surfacing to support the belief that, while publicly proclaiming support for airbags, GM is trying to undermine public confidence in the properly designed lifesaving devices.

Item: A few months ago when negative airbag stories began to appear in the press, a DC-based journalist slipped us an unflattering airbag chronology attributed to a GM operative. About the same time The Washington Post printed an airbag story that tracked the GM-attributed chronology theme-for-theme, point-for-point. The five-page chronology, which required substantial resources to assemble, seeks to cast GM as having early concerns about airbag hazards. The corporate or individual author of the chronology is not identified.

Item: At a National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) meeting on airbags, GM representative Harold Mertz made disparaging remarks about airbags that left at least one seasoned airbag researcher confused. After all GM says that it is supporting airbags.

Item: Leonard Evans, a longtime GM number cruncher and airbag detractor, wrote and published a widely circulated newspaper article that is highly critical of airbags. GM's press office put out a perfunctory statement distancing the company from its loyal employee's position. Does anyone really believe that GM encourages its employees to exercise their first amendment rights when they are at odds with company policy?

The same seasoned airbag researcher who was puzzled at the NTSB meeting, has watched GM for years. Months ago when asked what should have been done different to get airbags in cars, he responded: "We shouldn't have trusted the manufacturers to do the right thing." Here we go again.

OPTSF419

8/31/97