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GM responded by a campaign of harassment on Nader, which allegedly included intimidating phone calls and efforts by GM-hired private investigators to find evidence that would discredit him. When this was made public, GM President James Roche was forced (On March 22, 1966) to appear before a Senate subcommittee, and to apologize to Nader.
The book also claims that the road safety mantra, still used in the United States, called the three Es : "Engineering, Enforcement, Education" (expanded to four Es in the George W. Bush presidency with the addition of "Emergency") was created to distract attention from the real problems of vehicle safety, such as the fact that some were sold with tires that could not bear the weight of a fully loaded vehicle.
The book still has relevance today; it denounced what Nader perceived as the political meddling of the car industry to oppose new safety features. Some see parallels in contemporary debates over the mandatory fitting of air bags, in the United States, and industry efforts by the ACEA to delay the introduction of crash tests to assess vehicle front pedestrian protection in the European Union.
A similar book trading on the well-known title of Nader's is Unsafe At Any Height by John Godson, discussing air safety.