Perspective: Crashing jets. Dangerous strollers. Scary pork. That’s a world without regulators.
By Petula Dvorak Petula Dvorak Local columnist Email Bio Follow Columnist April 4 at 4:10 PM Lawn darts. Killer baby cribs. Pool drains that disemboweled children. Cars that exploded in low-speed fender benders.Even though consumer advocates got rid of those deathtraps years ago, U.S. industry is back with jet planes that fall from the sky, strollers that will smash your kid’s face in and — coming soon to a store near you — pork that may or may not have fecal contamination.
But the very fact that the display — which contains those awful lawn darts that maimed children of the ’60s and ’70s plus the model of the explosive Ford Pinto that was used in court to prove the deadly placement of the gas tanks — exists tells us something about the idea that the reckless disregard for customer safety for businesses was mostly a thing of the past.
The museum display of documents and photos of Ralph Nader tracking the Pinto case and the rise of consumer advocacy in America is, ridiculously, one of the most Washington things in there. Not as sexy as “The Star-Spangled Banner” or President Abraham Lincoln’s top hat. But what does wonky Washington do better than regulate, calculate and analyze?
It’s a trend that “may have unintended consequences for safety,” The Washington Post’s Michael Laris wrote last month, after the crash of a second Boeing jet within five months.
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