BOOK REVIEW. The nuts and bolts of car safety

Max Mosley had been associated with Formula One for many decades. But the Englishman would be less known for his contributions in the field of motorsports and would probably be more well-known for his activism in the field of automotive safety.

The automotive industry around the world (including the one in our part of the world) would love to hate Mosley — a man whose blunt, often acerbic, criticism of the lack of passenger safety has shaken many a car’s prospects at the showroom.

As has been witnessed in the past (in Europe, Latin America and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations or ASEAN) car makers have always been reluctant to improve the safety standards of their cars, often under the pretext of becoming uncompetitive or that the current road conditions don’t need expensive, new safety technologies.

In India, we are still waiting for the transition to fully take effect, where the government and the car manufacturers jointly take concrete measures to improve the safety of the car’s occupants and that of the other road users.

The Global NCAP (new car assessment programmes) results of 2014 which exposed the defects and lack of safety in many popular Indian cars shook us all. Finally, there is some traction and the United Nation regulations on road safety would be introduced by 2017.

Mosley as chairman of Global NCAP has been at the forefront of spreading awareness about the need for higher safety standards in the car industry.

His decades old association with Formula One and the horrific crashes that killed some of the sports’ greatest drivers such as Ayrton Senna — a Brazilian racing driver who won three Formula One world championships — inspired Mosley to take up road safety as a cause.

In his autobiography, Formula One and Beyond , Mosley attempts to set the record straight about this passion for safety, his first love of motorsports and many of the other controversies that had rocked his tenure as the head of the sport’s governing body.

Controversy and public scrutiny started for Mosley right from when he was just weeks old, when his parents Diana and Oswald Mosley were interned during the Second World War due to their political beliefs.

In the autobiography, Mosley recounts the fascinating twists and turns that his life took after he abandoned a blooming career at the Bar — he is a qualified barrister — to follow his heart into motor racing.

A late-entrant driver, who didn’t win many championships, Mosley nevertheless stayed in the limelight during his days in Formula Two and later as a team owner in Formula One.

His first experiences with race organisers and their pathetic attitudes to driver safety, stayed with Mosley through the rest of his career in Formula One and made him even more determined to change the game when he became the President of the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile) — the Paris-based governing body for many auto racing events.

Mosley’s book, divided into 37 chapters, is a near chronological retelling of his life till date.

But, with the breadth of information about motor racing, its various formats and the organisations that are involved in the development and regulation of the sport, the book, in many sections, reads like a primer on the subject.

Motor racing and his tug-of-war-like relationship with F1 boss and British business tycoon Bernie Ecclestone dominate the book’s many chapters.

That said, it is fascinating to get an insider perspective on so many of the controversies, disputes and progress that Formula One has seen over the years.

Also, even for someone who closely follows F1, the book throws new light on how the sport works and about how Ecclestone has a bit of a human side and is not just a shrewd businessman milking its phenomenal global success.

Into his mid-70s, age hasn’t diminished Mosley’s sharp tongue, and in the book he is often critical, offering a blunt assessment about a number of current day officials, politicians and celebrities.

Very much like the way he extended the need for higher safety in F1 cars into road cars too, he talks about the time when he used the opportunity to attack ‘tabloidism’ and seek wider regulation to protect people’s privacy when Rupert Murdoch’s now-defunct tabloid paper, News of the World , attempted a salacious story about one of his private sexual encounters.

Mosley’s autobiography is not a light read. In places the narrative can even seem a bit tiring, but it is never boring. Though he is not a celebrity or administrator who is recognised outside of motor racing, anybody who has the faintest interest in the machinations of the sport will find the book interesting.

Mosley’s inspired activism and his contributions to the setting up of numerous NCAPs find sizeable mention in his autobiography.

One of the points that he raises in the chapter titled “Crashing the car industry” is moot and worth noting even for the car makers in India. For instance, Mosley says “The conventional wisdom that ‘safety doesn’t sell’ has long been discredited”.

The statistics speak for themselves. Across the European Union since 2000, road fatalities have dropped by just under 50 per cent, resulting in a reduction of over 100,000 deaths that would have occurred had things continued without the implementation of the 1998 EU crash-test standards and the setting up of Euro-NCAP.

Mosley also says “You never meet the people who are alive and uninjured as a direct result of all that effort, but you know they are out there and that is deeply satisfying.”

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