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This chapter summarizes the conclusions and recommendations from the Task Force on interventions to reduce injuries to motor vehicle occupants. These include child safety seat laws, distribution and education programs, safety belt laws, minimum legal drinking age laws, sobriety checkpoints, and mass media campaigns.

This chapter focuses on the difference between free trade agreements with rules of origin and customs unions. The first part develops a model to assess the trade and production in intermediate and final goods under these two forms of preferential trading arrangements. The second part performs a cross-sectional econometric analysis of bilateral trade in finished motor vehicles and parts in the OECD area. The findings suggest that ROO can be an effective barrier against third-party suppliers of intermediate goods, and that the ‘border effect’ on trade is mitigated within customs unions.

The public health problem of motor-vehicle-related death and injury emerged in the 20th century with the advent of new technology-the automobile. In the past 100 years, more than 2.8 million persons have died and nearly 100 million persons have been injured on U.S. roads and highways. Despite these statistics, substantial gains in driver behavior, vehicle safety, and road design improved the safety of motor-vehicle travel despite increases in motorization, shifting demographics, and changing social patterns. This chapter defines the modern public health problem of motor-vehicle travel. It highlights the leadership of William Haddon in revolutionizing the approach to the prevention of motor-vehicle injuries, the role of community organizations such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving in changing social norms, and outlines governmental and private industry efforts to reduce the incidence of death and injury attributable to motor-vehicles. The chapter looks forward to the challenges of transportation safety in the 21st century.

By emphasizing the rigid character of centralized bargaining, many students of Sweden's political economy end up by wrongly characterizing its national industry as ‘Fordist’. By contrast, this chapter argues that the strategic responses to increased competitiveness actually varied across sectors. In motor vehicles and electrical engineering, the experience of diversity of market realities, heterogeneous institutions, and conflicting political goals forced enthusiastic proponents of Americanization to modify or abandon their view on the fundamentals of industrial efficiency. Pressure from customers for innovation, small batch production, adaptation, and successive upgrading of existing products created obstacles to standardization. It was not until increased liberalization of world trade and competitive pressures began to make themselves felt in export as well as domestic markets that the ambiguities of Swedish industrial practices became manifest, spurring national industry to redefine its identity through a process of strategic debate and selective adaptation.

In addition to an individual's personal blameworthiness, other reasons, such as force majeure and unavoidability of circumstances, may also play a role in the occurrence of damages to another individual's property and violations of their basic rights. Furthermore, these external factors will also influence the defendant's accountability for the aggravation of the said damages and the occurrence of acts of misdemeanour. This chapter discusses several scenarios that would determine an individual's level of culpability relating to legal violations that have been committed against another individual. The defendant's innocence and liability can be weighed based on liability for fault and strict liability. Moreover, the person's motive for performing a certain action or for opting for inaction will be accordingly classified as liability for intention or as liability for negligence. This chapter also covers liabilities and personal misconducts relating to motor vehicles, products, and activities that would impair the environment.

Movable objects often play an important role when someone causes personal injury or property damage to someone else. For this category, France even holds a general strict liability rule. This chapter looks at liability for damage caused by animals, products, motor vehicles, and dangerous substances. Whereas liability for the first two categories shows a number of similarities in the various legal systems in Europe and the European Union, liability in the two latter categories deviates strongly. In England, for example, liability for motor vehicles is still based on fault, whereas France holds a system of almost absolute liability. The efforts of the European Commission to bring more harmony in liability for road traffic accidents and for damage caused to the environment have almost entirely failed. Even in the most harmonised area, that of liability for defective products, important differences remain throughout the legal systems.

Designing an efficient set of road user taxes and charges involves charging for scarce road space, setting corrective taxes for environmental externalities, and possibly employing additional taxes to improve the overall efficiency and equity of the tax system. As illustrated with data from the UK, congestion costs comprise the largest part of the efficient road user charge, with road damage costs and externalities a relatively small part. The best approach to internalising congestion costs is a cordon toll, although its efficient design turns out to be very complex. Road fuel taxes should probably be set at a level that accounts for the average long-run marginal cost of inter-urban roads for typical cars, with the vehicle excise duty set to adjust total payments by type of vehicle. Furthermore, the external cost of emissions of greenhouse gases, nitrogen oxides, and particulates can be reduced through tailpipe emission standards as well as met by differentially higher excises on, say, leaded than on unleaded petrol. An ad valorem tax on the component of car insurance that covers accident costs would internalise accident externalities. The study calculates the pure road charge and green tax elements in the UK at 0.60 euros/litre for petrol and 0.67 euros for diesel. If this applied generally across the EU, the Netherlands and Germany would be charging petrol at about the right rate and only the UK would be overcharging it. All countries except the UK are probably undercharging diesel. Overall, a strong argument can be made for revenue-neutral adjustments in total revenue from road use to improve efficiency by shifting over to better-targeted congestion taxes, such as cordon tolls and road pricing.

This chapter discusses liability for damage caused by animals, products, motor vehicles, and dangerous substances. Whereas liability for animals and products shows a number of similarities in the various legal systems, liability for motor vehicles and dangerous substances deviates sharply. For example, in England liability for motor vehicles is still based on negligence, whereas France has a system of almost absolute liability. The efforts of the European Commission to bring about more harmony to liability for road traffic accidents and for damage caused to the environment almost entirely failed. Even in the most harmonized area, that of liability for defective products, important differences remain across the legal systems.

This chapter concentrates on transportation finance. The enormous energy demands of the motor vehicle revolution prompts the central question of this chapter: Why did highways replace mass transit so completely and so rapidly in California? California imposed two gasoline taxes and increased motor vehicle registration and license fees in the 1920s. The gasoline tax and motor vehicle fees supported a wide-ranging governmental enterprise that, after education, constituted the largest single expense in the California budget during the late 1920s and the 1930s. The political impact of California's new financing program equaled the financial benefit of eliminating interest on bonds and enabling long-term financial planning. As with railroads in the nineteenth century, government assistance developed the highway network in ways that private capital never would have supported. Federal, state, and local governments directly subsidized highway expansion and granted generous tax exemptions to the “public” roads.

This chapter offers an inside look at how one company, Honda Motor Company Ltd., developed a remarkable new vehicle: the Element. First introduced in early 2003, this made a mark in the U.S. auto market, among both young drivers and older ones who are young at heart. Honda's work on the Element exemplifies best practice in the user-centered design and development methods advocated in this book. Although the chapter focuses on motor vehicles, the full extent of Honda's innovative culture can be appreciated only by looking at the full scope of its far-reaching enterprises. In 1965, for example, Honda introduced its first portable, fuel-efficient generator, the e300. Today, it has an entire line of generators for homeowners and tradespeople. Like its car engines—for which the company is famous—Honda generators feature fuel economy, reliability, and quietness at competitive prices. The company has also leveraged its engine technology into other fields.

The increasing globalization of the economy and the continued expansion of multinational corporations have triggered a variety of forms of union action across national frontiers. The chapter examines several forms of internationalism, including campaigns around strike solidarity, collective bargaining initiatives, and cross-border organizing drives. The chapter presents both survey data and case studies to illustrate these different forms and assesses their contribution to union revitalization.

Fixed assets are the only type of assets which contribute to the profitability of a business. This chapter discusses various types of fixed assets — land and buildings, factory shed location, plant and machinery, furniture and fixtures, and motor vehicles. A lender needs to make a thorough analysis of fixed assets of an enterprise as the ultimate repayment capacity of the borrower lies on the proper functioning of the fixed assets.

The earliest government regulations on the insurance industry were embodied in laws governing other economic activities, such as the Companies Ordinance and the Workmen's Compensation Ordinance. In the 1950s, the Hong Kong government set about laying down laws for the insurance sector. Hence, both the Third Party Ordinance and the Motor Vehicles Insurance Ordinance were enacted. In 1961, Hong Kong's legislature passed the Marine Insurance Ordinance, based on Britain's Marine Insurance Act of 1906, which was drafted by Sir Mackenzie Dalzell Chalmers, the parliamentary counsel to the Treasury. This act has stood as the model marine insurance act for many other countries. However, even before the mid-1970s, primarily reflecting its laissez faire economic policy, the government's supervision of the sector was rather lax. All it took to start a business was to show some cash, and not much for that matter.

In this chapter, Timothy Sturgeon, John Humphrey, and Gary Gereffi analyze the co-evolutionary character of market making, in which the initial trials with global sourcing in the 1970s and 1980s by a few retailers helped spur the development of an increasingly competent group of contract manufacturers mainly located in East Asia. These contractors acquired the capabilities necessary to produce products to the specifications of leading firms in the West. Some of the early deals were made directly with Asian manufacturers, whereas others relied on Asian intermediaries (for example, trading firms) to organize and coordinate production in Asia. These early moves provided both an example and a ready-made supply base for other retailers and branded marketers not yet engaged in global sourcing. The increasing competence of these contract manufacturers also dovetailed with a trend toward outsourcing by manufacturing firms in the USA, including leading companies in technology-intensive sectors such as electronics, accelerating the creation of a global supply base of contract manufacturers. In the 1990s, as retailers and brand-name merchandisers passed more responsibility on to contract manufacturers for process development, material sourcing, and even some aspects of product design, the global supply base began to be populated by large, “full-package” contractors with a full range of capabilities. Today, the depth and breadth of the global manufacturing supply base, along with new internet-based tools for buyer–supplier matchmaking and operational coordination, may be opening a new stage in the development of global sourcing.

This chapter chronicles the numbers of motor vehicle accidents in the United States during the early years of the motor car and looks at how this affected safety regulations for motorists. With over 200,000 people killed in accidents in the 1920s, automobiles were seen as a menace. Several campaigns were launched in order to increase public safety, and conferences such as the First Cooperative Safety Congress—which evolved into the National Safety Council—were held in order to address these issues. One particular individual noted to have played a major role in promoting public safety was Charles Price. The chapter illustrates the anger that America experienced over traffic safety.

The four countries—Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Romania—were incorporated into the international economy via the logic of exchange, international trade, and production. The significance of international trade increased, with the level of merchandise trade exceeding 100 per cent of GDP in the Czech Republic and Hungary. Trade was largely within the European Union, and increasingly comprised intermediate products. Multinationals, especially German, invested heavily in production facilities in the four countries. The degree of autonomy granted to multinational subsidiaries differed according to corporate strategies and organizational characteristics, including nationality of ownership. This chapter examines motor vehicles, electronics, clothing (especially in Romania and Poland), and pharmaceuticals (especially in Hungary) to illustrate different patterns of integration. Although the technological spillover from multinationals to domestically owned enterprises was limited, economies were segmented rather than dualist, with dualism more evident in Romania than elsewhere.

This chapter first discusses the downward trend in crime during the last three decades, and the possible explanations for it, including increases in private security. It then considers the incentives and consequences of private prevention activities; sketches the conceptual issues; and notes that private action can be either socially beneficial or harmful. The chapter looks at motor vehicle theft as a case wherein increasingly effective private action, resulting from technical innovation and government regulation, appears particularly beneficial. It considers the extent to which citizens voluntarily report crimes to the police and cooperate with the investigation; and the costs and benefits of business improvement districts (BIDs), reporting results on the effects of BIDs in Los Angeles.

This introductory chapter discusses developments in transportation in New York and New Jersey in the 20th century. In 1901, New York became the first state to require registration of motor vehicles, with New Jersey following in 1903. In January 1906, Henry Ford introduced his Model N at the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers Automobile Show in Madison Square Garden. This car marked a watershed advance in automobile development due to its simplicity of design, practicality, and above all, low cost. By the time construction began on the Holland Tunnel in 1920, New York had 676,205 total registrations, including 125,401 trucks, while New Jersey had 227,737 total registrations. Before the Holland Tunnel opened, there was no road or highway to carry the ever-increasing vehicular traffic between the nation's largest city and New Jersey. Ferries owned and operated by railroad corporations carried almost all passenger automobiles, trucks, and horse-drawn vehicles that crossed the Hudson River into or out of Manhattan.