David L. Harfst’s scientific contributions

... 48,49 These gains are particularly important given the limited degree of seat belt use and public skepticism about seat belt laws during the 1970s and 1980s. 50 As Schmid et al summarized, "It is unreasonable to expect large proportions of the population to make individual behavior changes that are discouraged by the environment and existing social norms." 1 ...

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Distilling the Fundamentals of Evidence-Based Public Health Policy

... As the harmonization of the changing cultural context and automakers' claims in support of cost-benefit analysis increased, this growing cultural consonance allowed such claims to resonate more positively with Congress, public opinion, and the courts. In this way, cost-benefit analysis attained broad acceptance, serving to effectively transform the law's original meaning-from ensuring every citizen's moral right to safety to a pragmatic calculation of the costs and benefits associated with safety features (Mashaw and Harfst 1990). ...

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On the Relationship Between Firms and Their Legal Environment: The Role of Cultural Consonance

... Today's market for automobiles contains many regulations and constraints for manufacturers. These current legal restrictions did not arise accidentally: in the United States, they are partially the result of activism to produce the "political and media forces necessary to achieve the goals of the 1966 motor vehicle safety law" (Nader, 1991). To generate similar forces for better user experiences requires a reconsideration of current practice. ...

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Everyone everywhere: A distributed and embedded paradigm for usability