RALPH HOAR
IN MEMORIAM

Raging Hoar Moans
It's enough to make your blood boil!

Last week, I met a friend for lunch downtown at one of those DC power eateries. On the other side of the dining room sat a former senior NHTSA official who now works for the auto industry. 

I mentioned to my lunch date, a retired lobbyist for a large professional organization, how virtually every senior official who has left NHTSA in recent years now works for the auto industry. "That's DC," she said. "And that's why I live south of the Potomac and lob artillery rounds across the river," was about all I could muster. We moved on to other interests. At that moment, it was easy to let it pass as though it didn't matter.

But now the papers bring news of 11 children who have died this summer in the trucks of cars, trapped in perambulating 140 degree ovens with no means of escape. Fourteen years ago a citizen mechanic, asked his government, in handwritten eloquence, to provide a possibility of escape "before there are any tragedies...." He was dismissed with what can only be viewed as cynicism and arrogance. Now comes a housewife, driven by her memory of being held prisoner for hours in the trunk of her car, who with no resources other than her determination has documented 645 incidents of people being trapped in vehicle trunks.

Barry Felrice, you remember him, NHTSA's former chief rulemaker), who told us he would never say that no one in this town has a better reputation for integrity than he has, told the mechanic to go away 14 years ago. Now, at least 11 dead children later and getting paid by the auto industry, Felrice cites himself to tell the housewife to go away. She won't. She knows it matters.

This week, I discovered the temperature at which my blood boils: 140 degrees.

OPTSF364

8/13/98