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Comment by martincmartin | Hacker News Reader

"Unsafe at Any Speed" is the name of Ralph Nader's book on car manufacturers resisting car safety measures. It resulted in the creation of the United States Department of Transportation in 1966 and the predecessor agencies of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 1970.

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Which makes this article's reference to such an extreme situation a bit click-baity. Generally not something I'd expect of ACM, though maybe I don't read it enough to know if its descended into that realm on a more regular basis.

Nader's book was also click bait. The Corvair was not any more dangerous in practice than any of its contemporaries.

Perhaps "any speed" was exaggerated but I wouldn't call the thing click bait when it legitimately called out manufacturing practices and reluctance to put resources into safety which thereby resulted in trivially preventable deaths.

The greater awareness of safety factors brought to light by the book resulted in a culture of safety around automobiles & consumer buying practices that made safety features primary marketing & selling points.

That's all a pretty high bar to reach when using "unsafe at any speed" in the context of address spaces.

So long as you kept the tires inflated. It had a strange motorcycle-like difference between rear and front tires. I don't know if you could feel the handling get bad if that wasn't preserved or if it would surprise you in extreme situations.

I have a much dimmer view of the ACM than you. This is exactly the kind of crank, throwaway op-ed I’d expect out of them (and Poul-Henning Kamp in particular — notable for loudly conflating Judaism and the Israeli government).

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