190 The Michigan Historical Review Lee Vinsel. Moving Violations: Automobiles, Experts, and Regulations in the United States. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019. Pp. 410. Bibliography. Illustrations. Index. Notes. Cloth: $64.95. Nearly every serious treatment of automotive history published in the last four decades deals in some way with the subject of Lee Vinsel’s new book: regulations. Broad surveys from John Rae, James Flink, John Heitmann, and others touch on everything from early traffic rules to safety and emissions standards. Specialized surveys of the environmental and safety movements have also appeared (from Tom McCarthy and Jeremy Packer, respectively), while histories of mechanics (Kevin Borg), traffic (Peter Norton), highway-building (Tom Lewis), consumers (Joe Corn), and even hot rods and salvage yards (my own work) all look at federal, state, and local regulations in their turn. What sets this book apart is its scope. Moving Violations is a sweeping survey of American automotive regulation in all its forms. More precisely, Vinsel focuses on the communities of experts—scientists, engineers, lawyers, agency bureaucrats—who coalesced around specific problems to develop new knowledge and promulgate new rules, fundamentally shaping the nature of automotive technology and automobility in the United States. Drawing on a broad range of archival and published primary sources, Vinsel begins with early efforts among local officials, safety advocates, and engineers to render driving safer by regulating behind-the-wheel behavior, traffic patterns and signals, and certain designs (headlights for glare, brakes for consistency). Through the 1920s, such efforts proceeded from the belief that the best way to mitigate the rising death toll associated with mass automobility was to regularize driving so as to avoid collisions. During the 1930s, however, many began to focus instead on “crashworthiness”: occupant safety in the event of a crash. Postwar researchers continued this trend. Building on the new science of impact biomechanics and borrowing heavily from aviation studies, a number of projects in the 1940s and 1950s—some gruesome, including experiments done at Wayne State on living dogs, others odd, like Colonel John Stapp’s rocket-sled impact work (in which Stapp subjected himself to extreme decelerative G-forces)—contributed to this approach. Car-crash outcomes, rather than causes, remained the chief concern for many years and informed the federal standards that emerged in the late 1960s. Vinsel then turns to tailpipe emissions. Here he examines the careers of well-known experts, like California’s A. J. Haagen-Smit, as well as those of lesser-known figures, like the many young scientists and engineers who Book Reviews 191 shaped the technology-forcing approach of the federal EPA. Somewhat briefer discussions of fuel economy standards and more recent developments, including self-driving cars, round out this useful and wideranging analysis. Vinsel’s focus on the US does leave one wondering how American expertise compared with that developed elsewhere—the notion that federal safety regulations in the 1960s–1980s were weaker than they might have been, for example, may prove less revealing when compared with developments in most of the rest of the world. Also, Vinsel’s concentration on communities of experts does not leave much room for the experiences of end-users: the new-car buyers who first encountered ignition interlocks, robotized “passive-restraint” seatbelts, and vacuumline -laden engine bays no longer amenable to do-it-yourself tune-ups. Still, Vinsel’s engaging and insightful work will appeal to all who study the history of the automobile, government regulations, engineering communities, and the production of knowledge. It is a welcome contribution. David N. Lucsko Auburn University ...