ABSTRACT
Two streams of scholarship consider traffic safety as a textbook case in the United States. The first draws on the work of legal scholars and political scientists to highlight the strategies and quiet politics of economic interest groups to define accident reduction policies. The second builds on social history and sociology, to focus on the loud and visible protests and social movements that pushed traffic accidents as a public issue. This chapter articulates these two research traditions to examine how US insurers promoted their own agenda for automobile regulation from the end of the 1950s to the mid-1970s. It emphasizes their ability to control unexpected changes in the arenas of debate on traffic safety and to switch between bureaucratic discretion, legal struggle, scientific controversy, or media exposure as needed. These findings shed light on a long-lasting source of power for economic elites, not to prevent any debate on automobile regulation but rather to respond neatly to ever-changing threats to their demands, through the constant monitoring of emerging criticism and day-to-day work to enroll and support either vocal or discreet allies.
