In May of 2004 I was studying to be a structural engineer at Colorado University. Nearby, on I-70 an overpass was being built from steel. In the coming years, I would become an expert at this very specific type of engineering and so I can speak as intelligently as just about anyone alive on the subject. In 2004 though, I didn’t know shit. Some other guys didn’t know shit either, and unfortunately they were in charge of building this bridge. A girder spanning the highway was incapable of supporting even it’s own weight without aid of some bracing that it didn’t have. Over the course of a few hours, it buckled and rolled over. This happened exactly as a Dodge Durango containing a family of three happened to be driving below at I-70 speeds. All three passengers were killed instantly when the top half of the car was sliced off of the chassis. The bottom half of the car and people rolled on to an anticlimactic, hushed stop as everyone in witness processed the horror before them. After the pause, we took action in the form of regulation.
This would not have been the first time this type of failure occurred. I can’t recall specific examples, but I’m sure construction workers have died from similar failures in our grand history of building shit. There is something about a tragedy which effects people seemingly at random, and particularly kids, which is unacceptable to us. Since that accident, it is no longer legal for a contractor to allow traffic below a bridge which has not been inspected by an engineer in the state of Colorado. An engineer could make a mistake of course, but this type of failure is well understood and easily preventable. We have effectively regulated this tragedy away, and we did so immediately after it happened.
Have you ever ridden in an old car? I don’t mean 10 years old, but I don’t mean 100 years old either. A really old car is only on the road because someone cares deeply about it. It gets driven safely and parked for display. I’m talking about a car that is the maximum age where it is possible for it to function despite near total neglect. That age has changed I suppose, since we don’t make ‘em like we used to, but for the sake of discussion I’ll put it at 25 years. When I was seven years old (in 1992), my Dad had a car which qualified. If it was 25 years old, then it was made in 1967 which feels close enough. It was a Toyota Land Cruiser which he acquired in a one-for-one trade for a shotgun. It didn’t have passenger seating at all, so my brother and I had to sit on the spare tire or a milk crate on our long mountainous drive to school. The entire dashboard was steel, with no padding of any kind. There were no seatbelts. The passenger door could not be reliably closed, and if we turned left sharp enough it swung open. I can remember going to school when this happened and my dad had to cling to my shirt to keep me in the car. Bottom line, it was a death trap. What’s interesting though is that it wasn’t a death trap because of the car’s age, but rather my age. I am old enough to have been in a car that was made prior to significant safety regulations that altered the way cars look. If you are a generation ahead of me, you are old enough to have been in a brand new car that was also a death trap.
Prior to the 1920s and 30s death and injury from an automobile accident was blamed on the accident itself, so to speak. It was considered an act of God or preventable only by superior driving skill. The people involved in car accidents were victims and only thoughts & prayers could save them. Nothing could be done to prevent such tragedies. Which is to say that we had a bit of a problem on our hands, but we didn’t really understand what it was and so we couldn’t solve it.
Two things happened around this time of note: the first is that we began requiring that people pass a test prior to receiving a license to drive a car. Rhode Island was the first state to adopt this idea in 1920. California came next in 1927, and slowly state-by-state this trend swept the nation. South Dakota was the last hold out, finally requiring an exam in 1959. Almost 40 years between the initial conception of a logical combatant to our problem, and total implementation. I wasn’t alive, but I can hazard a guess as to why this took so long. People would not have trusted the government to decide whether they were safe drivers. Some people might even have suspected that the government had a hidden agenda, nefarious plans to significantly reduce their ability to roam free across the land. The internet, if in existence, would’ve spread that sort of idea like fucking wildfire, and slowed progress perhaps even to a halt. But there was no internet, and sooner or later as a state became successful at implementing this new requirement the population of a neighboring state would have less of an unknown to fear. The last holdouts would’ve begun to realize that they knew way more people that died in car accidents than were defeated by the DMV.
The second thing of note which happened in this era was a revolution in thinking, generally credited to a man named Claire Straith. He was the first person to realize that a car accident was only an inciting event, and what really caused our problem was the collision between the passengers and the inside of the car itself. This is such an obvious idea, but amazingly we didn’t think about car accidents in this way until then. Mr. Straith was not a car manufacturer or designer, he was a plastic surgeon. The guy that you went to see after your face got mauled by the glass and steel found inside your own car, assuming you were alive and able to see him at all. Throughout the 30s and 40s manufacturers began using safety glass, recessing and rubberizing the control knobs, and padding the dashboards. In 1956 Ford introduced the Lifeguard safety package. Spurred on by research from Robert McNamara this safety package came complete with: steering wheels designed to prevent the steer column from impaling the driver, doors that stayed closed and prevented occupants from being ejected, rear view mirrors which didn’t shatter, seat belts (still just lap belts), and a padded dashboard. Consumers could purchase versions of Ford cars with these features, or not. Their call. They did not. As Henry Ford II said “Mcnamara is selling safety, but Chevrolet is selling cars.”
Capitalism: 1 Safety: 0.
If there is a flaw with the way a libertarian sees the world, it is this: they put way too much faith in people to think clearly with a dollar bill or two in their hands. Lord knows I can’t do it. So, around the time Ford realized they couldn’t sell safety the government started to say that they had to anyway. There are probably many examples of instances where government regulation caused our society harm. Unless you happen to be fatalistic enough to believe that high death rates are good—the story of regulation within the auto industry is a beacon of hope for all Americans. Manufacturers, within the bounds of our evolving regulations, significantly altered the inside of all cars.
Seatbelts tell that story best. The first time they made an appearance in an automobile was 1949, but people didn’t want them so they generally didn’t make it into our cars or got removed when they did. Eventually they were mandated by law. Then we improved the design to the 3-point version we all know today. Eventually that version got mandated by law. Then came my favorite part: the part where the government started passing laws (1980s) requiring you to actually wear the damn thing. People did NOT like that. According to a Gallup poll from July ‘84 ⅔ of Americans opposed mandatory seat belt laws. Despite clear evidence to the contrary, people thought they were ineffective and many people argued that it was safer to be thrown from the car than to be trapped inside. This is my favorite part because it sounds so fucking familiar. Eventually, logic won out and now we all basically agree that it is foolish to avoid seatbelts. I like to think that this conclusion was inevitable but I have plenty of days where I suspect it wasn’t. Without government regulation, I’m not sure we would even have enough seatbelts in our cars for logic and science to have won an argument about them.
What we’ve gained is clear: less people die in cars now.
What we’ve lost though, might not be as clear. If, like me, you don’t really care about your car or the driving experience then you probably haven’t lost anything. Not everyone is like that though, and it would be dismissive to ignore that the driving experience has changed and continues to change. Our relationship with the vehicle we drive has become more disconnected over time, and the future looks pretty grim for anyone with an affinity for this particular connection. It is inevitable that our cars will drive themselves soon. If you want to drive your own car, some classic thing of beauty, you will probably still be allowed to. But… your grandkids might not, and they probably won’t even care. Public perception will evolve, just like it did with the seatbelt. Being in control of the vehicle will eventually seem foolish. An argument based on logic and science cannot address the intangible feeling that some people get when they downshift, perfectly timing the clutch, and punch through a joyous turn while a well tuned engine hums monstrously ahead. I can’t grasp it either, I don’t like cars much—I like rock climbing.
Rock climbing is not regulated, really at all. There are standards for our equipment, like how strong the rope needs to be and how much load a cam must be able to take. These standards are not really the same as regulation though, because the use of the equipment is entirely dependent on the user. There is no requirement about where you place a cam or a bolt, how long the bolt must last, what type of rock you can climb on, etc. This reality is, in general, one of the things that makes rock climbing attractive to some people, and repellant to most. As an engineer, I have designed many bolts. I must adhere to many requirements when doing so. The bolt itself must be made to withstand certain environmental conditions, and it’s strength in all conditions must be factored into my design. The installation of the bolt must be done by a qualified individual, and per my instructions. I went to school for years so that I could determine the basic facts of this bolt and what will be asked of it. Sometimes a situation might arise where I can’t - so I add two bolts, or three, or four. This is not how bolts are installed on a sport climb. Yet, this is acceptable to me. We engineer our own safety nets and we also accept the idea that if they fail it is our own fault. I like that, and the freedom such an environment contains. I enjoy an understanding of the tools that I have at my disposal, and the choice of how (or even if) I use them.
Yet, mistakes will be made. People will die, currently about 30 people worldwide, every year. Often, when a death occurs it is followed by some debate as to how the death might’ve been prevented. Perhaps more bolts. Perhaps more shame surrounding the particular style with which the individual climbed or rappelled. Perhaps more instructional opportunities. More standards, more redundances, or more rules. It is in our nature to consider how we might prevent a tragedy. What may be gained is obvious. What may be lost, less so. We will undoubtedly continue to police ourselves, and in doing so our culture will slowly shift toward a safer experience. Despite that, years from now as a climber builds a 5 or 6 piece anchor, they will suddenly find themselves sharing a belay ledge with a free soloist for a brief moment. They will remark at their insanity, laugh, and continue about their business. The safety net will remain ours to build, or not. This is an environment in which the risks an individual takes come with consequences only for the individual (direct consequences, anyway—indirectly any accident effects an untold amount of people). The death of a rock climber, while participating in a dangerous activity of which they have full understanding, is not a big problem for our society at large. It is a relatively rare occurrence, which effects a small sliver of willing participants within our population.
What if it wasn’t though? What if in the US alone over 42,000 people died rock climbing each year, like with automobiles. Something would have to be done about that. Our society requires cars to function, so we can’t exactly abandon them outright like we could with rock climbing. If 42,000 people died rock climbing this next year, I think we probably just wouldn’t have rock climbing any more. It was fun while it lasted but they don’t make juice worth squeezing 42,000 people for. I wouldn’t be excited about it, but I would be convinced to hand in my cams if I was staring down a death rate of that magnitude. Thankfully, that’s not the reality we live in. 42,000 people don’t die every year rock climbing. They do from guns though.
Over 45,000 people died from gun related injuries in the US in 2020.
54% of them were suicide. That might complicate things for you, I don’t know. The other 46% died in murders, unintentionally, by law enforcement, or in some other undetermined way. You might argue (unsuccessfully) that all of those suicides were inevitable, gun or not. You won’t catch me arguing the opposite either though. Some of those deaths are only related to guns because guns were convenient. If you throw them all out, that leaves over 20,000 deaths by gun. That sure seems like a number big enough to be indicative of a problem. If only we knew how we might solve it.
What might be gained by regulation is clear. What might be lost, less so. How can we allow a repeating tragedy of our most reviled type with such a clear alternative path? Clearly, we have trouble defining what might be lost by regulations of the gun variety. I suspect that for many people, sweeping and complete regulation of guns would go largely unnoticed. We do ourselves no favors by ignoring the passionate minority though. Someone out there likes guns the way I like rock climbing, or the way someone else likes driving a car. 20,000 rock climbing deaths per year might persuade me to throw out my cams, but I can easily imagine the internal struggle I might face in doing so. Passion isn’t the whole truth though, is it?
The great equalizer, they first called it. The idea being that prior to the gun you had your skill and cunning to get by on should the worst happen. After the gun? These attributes became a secondary concern. “Oh thank God” exclaimed the unskilled and foolish.
That’s what might be lost.
It seems to me, there are some low hanging fruit—like the driver’s license was or the seat belt. It should be harder to get a gun. I’m not saying it should be impossible, but it is obviously too easy. You should need to pass a test. You should need to provide a safe place to store the gun. There should be legal and financial consequences if your gun is used in a crime, even if you weren’t there. There are certain guns for which there is no real need beyond warfare, and for which existence within regular society is illogical. Whatever test you had to pass to get the gun, you should have to pass it again from time to time. Gun violence should be researched and understood to an extent commiserate with the death rate (so on par with a car) that we might better understand the problem we so clearly have. See what type of person finds the low hanging fruit offensive. Do they benefit from the equalizer? How much fear is in their heart?
More important than any of that is to remember that despite clear evidence to the contrary, people thought seatbelts were ineffective. Eventually, logic won out.
I like to think that this conclusion was inevitable but I have plenty of days where I suspect it wasn’t.
Images:
AI generated with the following prompt: an old toyota land cruiser in really bad shape with a mural painted on it.
Derek Hersey in Eldorado Canyon. Derek died rock climbing, and embodies that particular flavor of tragedy as well as anyone.
AI generated with the following prompt: a gun.
Great article. Wasn’t sure where you were headed at first but loved the thoughtful conclusions ❤️👍👏