WOI: News Clip 417

Ralph Nader has written a new book unsafe at any speed and I think everyone probably knows him because he has been a very active and well the safety of cars and trying to to do something about this do you have any comments right at the very first as to how much progress has been made since you started perhaps we might just say being critical well I think progress is in two areas one is that the public is much more aware now the role of the vehicle in causing accidents and more importantly in causing injuries once accidents occur I think the second major area of progress is that there's now a federal law that requires the government to set safety standards for all new vehicles and by 1969 for used vehicles as well as well as a number of other areas in traffic safety which will receive greater attention and money from the federal government as a great deal of attention has been given I know and a great deal of time you have given toward the design of the car and I wonder though how much have you been concerned with the individuals driving the car yes well my book was on the motor vehicle aspect of traffic safety obviously drivers have a part to play as well I think it's important however to note that we can't put the majority of our emphasis only on the driver because the driver is much more difficult to control than to design the vehicle and that although we must continue to improve our driving performance and better highways as the vehicle is the single most controllable factor that will cut the causal chain between the contributing factor to the accident and the injury the best example I know of that is that when an accident occurs the only way people are killed or injured is the way they interact with the inside of the car sharp edges in an instrument panel the door pops open on them they're thrown out the steering column ramrods back into the driver and so forth and so once accidents do occur as they will unfortunately again and again the vehicle is the only thing that can save the people in the car from being injured or killed in the accident so the vehicle is a wonderful second line of defense if it is designed to be crash worthy enough to protect people in collisions that are now not survivable but certainly should be if the manufacturers wanted them to be now should somebody take up the crusade however to do something about better educating our drivers well the law which was passed last year provides for large federal support for driver training programs in the 50 states I think our driver education programs are too much classroom oriented and not enough behind the wheel oriented I know in Iowa for example 30 hours are devoted to classroom education only six hours behind the wheel I think that recently has been changed to I believe 12 hours but even so the ratio is totally inadequate far more important to get them behind the wheel with adequate equipment and techniques so that they know how to behave in an emergency situation in a skid and other situations that will confront them and do we have proper legislation that takes care of the the difficulties as human beings that we have with sight and some of these afflictions that make us not prime car drivers yes that again is a a area which will receive greater emphasis that is people who have physical disabilities will be checked periodically particularly eyesight in fact everybody is going to be checked for eyesight every four years in order to determine whether they are still capable of driving a car adequately if they're not they're licensed unfortunate will have to be taken away from them what about reaction time reaction time is more difficult to measure the the problem of clear vision is something you can determine with some precision reaction time however is something which you can't particular draw a line to as easily as you can envision but I'm sure they're gonna have to take that into account you can't be too strict you can't be too strict on this because if you are you'll find yourself stripping half the drivers of their license and if you do that you'll find half our industry breaking down because nobody can reach them to go to work well and of course reaction time even with the normal person a normal healthy person is going to vary from one hour to the next that's right in many cases now reaction time for elderly drivers is quite important there's where you get a gradual deterioration until a certain point is reached where it simply is totally inadequate reaction time so for older drivers this will be an important measurement of periodic driver's license driver testing now it is my understanding and I don't want to get us off this but as my understanding that you are also concerned now about our meat industry oh yes well I think everybody should be concerned about the meat industry at least all people meat eat eat meat what particularly bothers you well roughly 25% of all meat processed in this country is processed within state boundaries therefore it escapes federal inspection us department of Agriculture does not have the jurisdiction to go into these in state plants and over the years there has been a series of of gross grossly unsanitary problems arising the use of 4d animals dead dying diseased disabled animals unsanitary conditions in the plants and the use of federally banned chemical injections colouring agents preservatives to make (inaudible) the meat more acceptable to the consumer six years ago congressman Neal Smith from Des Moines introduced a bill in the house to expand federal inspection service to include of these plants now we have had hearings this year in a house level and there's a little question about that next year we will have a law passed that will lead toward the improvement of this extremely discomforting if not revolting situation and so that this would affect the rather than just affecting the interstate it should fact in fact affect the intrastate and interstate thats right see much of the substandard meat that diseased meat finds its way into processed meat products such as hot dogs Bologna and other similar products and unfortunately with the genius of modern chemistry the meat buyer can't even tell the difference it's colored preserved seasoned everything is camouflaged well is this going to be something that the large meat packers cooperate well most meat large meat packers are federally inspected but even the largest ones have some plants operating within state boundaries that escape inspection and that have all the problems that occur with some of the smaller meat packers so it's not entirely a problem of the medium or smaller meat packers well but now their products cannot carry then if it is not packed I always not expected it cannot carry the seal and does not now carry the seal that's right but unfortunately some unscrupulous firms will will fake the seal so that they deceive people into thinking they have the USDA seal but that is still the best the best cue for the meat buyer if he sees that USDA seal he can be sure that it's a federally inspected well now is he going to put his plant number on it if it is faked there are different versions no obviously he's not gonna identify his plant number because many of these plants don't have plant numbers because they're not inspected but I mean the one that as you say it's the one that is the large Packer that has the off not the off-brand but the other brand and that you can identify this many times by the stamp with the number now if it has this stamp and number on it it has been inspected yes generally speaking there are some clever deceptions of the label but generally speaking it has been inspected unfortunately the entire media industries opposing strengthening the law both large and small packers well this will be interesting to follow and at the same time I'm sure that everybody will be interested in your comments and unsafe at any speed which is your latest book isn't it thank you this is Ralph Nader (singing) Marie McGuire is special assistant on problems of the elderly housing and urban urban development with the federal government mrs. McGuire how long and how did you happen to become interested in this field well if I say it was before the war that sounds like another era doesn't it but actually it was in 1941 just before World War two that I became interested in in the problem of community growth and low income people in particular this led me to return to school go to the University of Texas and take a school of architecture to be a little more knowledgeable about how we were going to bring about communities during a war period which was very imminent I think we all knew it sensed it with the dislocation and relocation of so many family groups and yet have a good environment for children while fathers and mothers were involved in war housing I mean in war war industry and so this study led me to the low rent housing field and of course in this field of housing automatically we come into contact with many older people because so many of our older people are in fact in the poverty sector yes now we seem to have also a general growing interest in the aging problem in the older citizen do you have any ideas to why this is happening oh it's not only growing it's growing so massively that we have a whole new profession right here with us today that didn't exist ten years ago even so long a short time ago is ten years it's growing I think primarily in response to the fact the fact that the population itself is growing so rapidly that is in the older age groups this is due primarily to good medical science research we know how better to take care of ourselves today and we've found the answer to some of the great killers of the past and so with this this growing number of older people some 18 million today expected to be about 30 million people over 65 years of age by the time we reach nineteen seventy two or three I think the forecast is with this coming on they are beginning to rather the older people are beginning to represent and a bigger and bigger group group in our society this has caused us to stop think a little bit and say all right what about this do people retire to rocking chairs into uselessness and to loneliness and abandonment by the rest of society or do we put our good thoughts together and see what is the role of the older person and how we develop responsive answers from the general society to their needs well in many attempts to develop responsive programs there have been a number of programs that have developed now is this sanctioning separation from the families or sanctioning lack of family responsibilities or does this involve something more oh no not at all I don't think we have any basis whatsoever to indicate or to say with any validity that sons and daughters love their parents less or that there's less feeling of responsibility for one's older older members of one's family indeed it's quite the shoes on the other foot it's the older people themselves who want so to live that they don't have to be dependent on their children that in short the mother doesn't want to sit by the hearth of her daughter as her role in life particularly since she has 15 20 or maybe thirty years after she's a great-grandmother to live along a while and she wants a definite and he wants a definite role in society for himself a fulfilling role a creative one a one for different opportunity and different excitement retraining re-education all the alive vivid lively things of life rather than than the retirement into loneliness despair and perhaps dependence on one's family what has really happened is that the community now is taking up the role and fulfilling the spaces in life that the family once did when it was a normal thing to have older or several generations living under one roof the house was big enough there was a role for the older person not just babysitting which is certainly not fulfilling for anyone as a full-time pursuit so the community organizations the churches the recreation groups the volunteer groups of all kinds in addition to government all of these are by coming together now to develop significant enriching and fulfilling roles for older people and society generally of course will be the beneficiary well since there are not the family units that have either under the same roof or within you know down the street a couple houses the entire span of the generations are we replacing this with housing units that that house only given sectors of the population in other words separate units for the elderly which are apart from the other community is this good or do you have any comments to make about this yes I do because it's a matter of great concern to many people that as the price sometimes of good housing within the paying ability of older people we put a group of people together all of one age let's say a group from 65 to 85 or 65 up and many people are troubled about this removal a seeming removal of older people from the general population is a very bad thing not only for the older person as a matter of identity and so on and for his own own self-esteem and status in society but also it removes them from from their affect their good effect on younger people well I can't agree with this in relation to your question which has to do with housing design housing types first we start with the fact that all people are have diverse interests older people certainly have diverse interests and tastes and desires we should build enough housing and enough variety to respond to each person's desire but if if you are putting people let us say in a high-rise apartment building and you're putting families next to older people and older people just under where family lives overhead and so on it becomes a very chaotic and awful situation for the older person for instance the older person may now now that he has the leisure may want to sleep until nine o'clock every morning but he has to wake up and get up at 6:00 because that's when the baby cries next-door or he likes to go to bed early or she does and the teenager is dancing until 2:00 in the morning well it seems to me if there's anything we have earned the right to once we have reached our later years it's to have our own pattern and schedule of living this is not possible when you bring all age groups together and so I say we must insulate in our housing programs the older person from the patterns of life of the younger but we must not isolate them from the younger people or from the community which is just as important I think probably a good way to do is to have a high-rise its high-rise or cottage or two-story buildings for older people but separated a bit a bit from the younger but within reach of them but within reach and within individual communion with them now can the community centers then serve part of the span of the ages then if they serve more than one group well the community center presents something in the same idea but for a different reason we've had some wonderful research done in recent years in this country and abroad trying to decide whether it's better to have a community center since the community center program you know is emerging is one of the very interesting expressions of the growing urban culture in this country particularly whether these community centers should again serve all age groups and at different times or at the same time and the studies that have been done primarily at Western Reserve University have indicated very definitely that if we try to combine older age groups with younger in an active in activity centers older people will look on and will enjoy it but they will not participate and so again we say they don't want to be in competition mentally or physically with younger people and this is understandable so that if we want participation if that's the goal then let's have people age peers together rather than a great diversity of age this is interesting and as I said I'm sure that we can't say in 10 minutes that which you make of a lifetime work now so thank you very much for sharing some of these provocative thoughts with us and this has been Marie McGuire special assistant on problems of the elderly Housing and Urban Development with the federal government thank you very much mrs. mcguire it's been a joy being here (inaudible) although they're real good because they waive these around they'll find you you know you do something so that they know that you've seen it listen what is the key to (inaudible)