School of Social and Political Science

Description

In the mid-1990s research done by a combination of government officials, insurance industry professionals, and automobile manufacturers determined that the air bags available in the United States at the time killed about as many women as they saved.  The strategy they proposed to resolve this problem was threefold: 1. Convince women to sit farther away from their air bags. 2. Do a quick redesign of air bag technology to make them less dangerous. 3. Develop new methods for better understanding how women specifically (rather than ‘people’ generally) are impacted in vehicle crashes.  Steps 1 and 2 were taken and proved to be reasonably successful.  Many auto safety critics, however, contend that step #3 has been largely ignored. This presentation will present the initial findings of a new research project to explore the past thirty years of discussions about the safety of women in automobiles and strategies to increase safety.

Jameson Wetmore is an associate professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and co-director of the Center for Engagement and Training in Science and Society at Arizona State University. His work combines the fields of science and technology studies, ethics, and public policy in order to better understand both the interconnected relationships between technology and society and the forces that change those relationships over time.