8. Personal interview conducted by author, June-Sept., 1976. 9. Personal interview conducted by author, June-Sept., 1976. 10. Personal interview conducted by author, June-Sept., 1976. 11. Personal interview conducted by author, June-Sept., 1976. 12. The Effectiveness of Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, General Accounting Office. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1976. 13. Personal interview conducted by author, June-Sept., 1976. A further indication of NHTSA's disinterest in cost-benefit analysis has been its slowness in developing an adequate data base on the causes of accidents-an essential ingredient for effective cost-benefit analysis. A 1974 GAO Report entitled Need to Improve Benefit-Cost Analysis in Setting Motor Vehicle Safety Standards was critical of the fact that it would be fourteen years after NHTSA's creation before such data was established: The need to know the causes of motor vehicle accidents is crucial to the Safety Administration's ability to develop programs and standards which will allow it to carry out its mission to save lives and reduce injuries. We question whether a program which may not provide the needed data until 1980 represents a level of effort in keeping with the Safety Administration's mission, p. 18. 14. Personal interview conducted by author, June-Sept., 1976. 15. An alternative, but not wholly incompatible, explanation for the T.V.A. behavior is presented by Phillip Selznick in his classic study T. V.A. and the Grass Roots. 16. The NHTSA administrators and their tenure are as follows: William Haddon, 1966-1968 Interim Acting Administrator 1969 Douglas Toms 1970-1972 James Gregory 1972-1976 John Snow 1976-1977 Joan Claybrook 1977-present 17. Hugh Heclo, A Government of Strangers: Executive Politics in Washington. (Washington: Brookings Institution) 1977. 18. Personal interview conducted by author, June-Sept., 1976. 19. Personal interview conducted by author, June-Sept., 1976. 20. Personal interview conducted by author, June-Sept., 1976. 21. Personal interview conducted by author, June-Sept., 1976. 22. Personal interview conducted by author, June-Sept., 1976. 23. FederalRegister, Vol. 41, No. 115, June 14, 1976, p. 2402. 24. U.S. Office of Science and Technology, RECAT Report, 1972. The RECA T Report also criticized an over-emphasis on technology: Regulation should not be based upon a blind faith in technology. Establishing standards beyond the known stateof-the-art on the theory that industry can do anything if enough pressure is put on it is not likely to result in wise governmental decision making or to provide the greatest net benefits to society.... The regulation of the automobile is not a game in which higher costs are imposed on the industry, it is the public which must bear the costs.