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Comment by adamcharnock | Hacker News Reader

The Fog of War is definitely worth a watch. It was a fairly harrowing experience when I saw it. Actually, it is probably one of the hardest films I have watched. He clearly details the war crimes he presided over, and is open about the fact that he would have been tried as a war criminal had they lost.

He also pioneered the use of seat belts while at Ford. Which does make the morality-math a little more unusual.

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To be clear, while McNamara was an advocate for seat belts, he wasn’t particularly instrumental in their development or adoption. In 1955 he introduced a paid option for Ford vehicles that included seat belts. But the option wasn’t popular with consumers, only 2% of new Fords the following year had it installed.

Saab was the first to include them as standard equipment in 1958, with Volvo introducing the modern 3-point seatbelts as standard equipment the following year. They remained unpopular in the US until after Ralph Nader’s 1965 book Unsafe At Any Speed which became a bestseller and prompted congress to pass the National Traffic & Motor Safety Act in 1966, and ultimately were made compulsory by states (presumably under a lot of lobbying pressure from insurers) starting in 1970.

> He also pioneered the use of seat belts while at Ford. Which does make the morality-math a little more unusual.

Is it unusual? A surviving driver from a car wreck needs a new car. Dead ones don't.

Lee Iococca from Chrysler wrote his seatbelt campaign can be countered by an anecdote of a person safely ejected into the grass and car falling off a cliff. I swear some brands are thriving on warm feelings.

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