888
Stevens, J., dissenting
that possibility. It is, however, quite clear to me that Congress neither enacted any such rule itself nor authorized the Secretary of Transportation to do so. It is equally clear to me that the objectives that the Secretary intended to achieve through the adoption of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 208 would not be frustrated one whit by allowing state courts to determine whether in 1987 the lifesaving advantages of airbags had become sufficiently obvious that their omission might constitute a design defect in some new cars. Finally, I submit that the Court is quite wrong to characterize its rejection of the presumption against pre-emption, and its reliance on history and regulatory commentary rather than either statutory or regulatory text, as "ordi-nary experience-proved principles of conflict pre-emption." Ante, at 874.
I
The question presented is whether either the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966 (Safety Act or Act), 80 Stat. 718, 15 U. S. C. § 1381 et seq. (1988 ed.),1 or
the version of Standard 208 promulgated by the Secretary of Transportation in 1984, 49 CFR § 571.208, S4.1.3-S4.1.4 (1998), pre-empts common-law tort claims that an automobile manufactured in 1987 was negligently and defectively designed because it lacked "an effective and safe passive restraint system, including, but not limited to, airbags." App. 3. In Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Assn. of United States, Inc. v. State Farm Mut. Automobile Ins. Co., 463 U. S. 29, 34-38 (1983), we reviewed the first chapters of the "complex and convoluted history" of Standard 208. It was the "unaccept-ably high" rate of deaths and injuries caused by automobile accidents that led to the enactment of the Safety Act in 1966. Id., at 33. The purpose of the Act, as stated by Congress,
1 In 1994, the Safety Act was recodified at 49 U. S. C. § 30101 et seq. Because the changes made to the Act as part of the recodification process were not intended to be substantive, throughout this opinion I shall refer to the pre-1994 version of the statute, as did the Court of Appeals.
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