Air bags – Lee Iacocca

"The Issue is in the bag for auto safety crusader"

"A former English professor who was dubbed the 'mother of the nation's lemon laws' for her activism in California, Shahan brought her auto-consumer crusade to Washington last year·The air-bag issue put Shahan on Iacocca's tail in Washington. In April, she confronted the Chrysler chief at a local auto show, where he unveiled his company's 'cars of the future.' 'Unfortunately,' said the soft-spoken Shahan, 'his cars of the future didn't contain air bags.'

Shahan was also on hand in mid-July, when a group launched a drive to draft Iacocca for president. She distributed to reporters transcripts of a 1971 Oval Office meeting, at which Iacocca, then president of Ford Motor Co., successfully urged President Nixon to scrap a pending rule requiring air bags in passenger cars.

Auto industry observers are reluctant to bet against her, given her success in getting the California legislature to introduce the first lemon law in 1980."

–The Detroit News, January 11, 1987

 

"Auto activist steers the fight for air bags"

"Last spring, [CARS founder Shahan] sent reporters transcripts of an April 1971 Oval Office meeting at which Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacocca, then president of Ford, successfully pressed President Nixon to abandon a pending rule requiring air bags in passenger cars. On the 15th anniversary of that Iacocca-Nixon meeting, she convinced about a dozen parents whose teenage children had been killed or maimed in car accidents to picket Chrysler's downtown Washington offices.

Shahan got what she wanted: Media publicity for air bags and an invitation to meet with Chrysler representatives.

It would be wonderful not to have to do that [a boycott]. I mean, wouldn't it be wonderful to get someone as visible as Lee Iacocca on our side?' "

– Detroit Free Press, January 11, 1987