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One of the examples of the book was General Motors' Chevrolet Corvair, which had a suspension that made it liable to roll over.
GM responded in two ways, by trying to silence Nader and also by improving the Corvair's suspension. GM President James Roche was forced (on March 22, 1966) to appear before a Senate subcommittee, and to apologize to Nader for the company's campaign of harassment and intimidation.
The book also claims that the road safety mantra, still used in USA, called the three Es ("Engineering, Enforcement, Education", expanded to four Es in the George W. Bush first presidency with the addition of "Emergency") was created to distract attention from the real problems of vehicle safety, such as the fact that some were sold with tires that could not bear the weight of a fully loaded vehicle.
Some say that the book still has relevance today; it denounced what Nader perceived as the political meddling of the car industry to oppose new safety features. Some see parallels in contemporary debates over the mandatory fitting of air bags, in the United States, and industry efforts by the ACEA to delay the introduction of crash tests to assess vehicle front pedestrian protection in the European Union.
A similar book trading on the well-known title of Nader's is Unsafe at Any Height by John Godson , discussing air safety.