Cite as: 529 U. S. 861 (2000)
Stevens, J., dissenting
potential tort liability would not frustrate the Secretary's desire to encourage both experimentation with better passive restraint systems and public acceptance of airbags.
Third, despite its acknowledgment that the saving clause "preserves those actions that seek to establish greater safety than the minimum safety achieved by a federal regulation intended to provide a floor," ante, at 870, the Court completely ignores the important fact that by definition all of the standards established under the Safety Act—like the British regulations that governed the number and capacity of lifeboats aboard the Titanic 19—impose minimum, rather than fixed or maximum, requirements. 15 U. S. C. § 1391(2); see Norfolk Southern R. Co. v. Shanklin, ante, at 359 (Breyer, J., concurring) ("[F]ederal minimum safety standards should not pre-empt a state tort action"); Hillsborough County v. Automated Medical Laboratories, Inc., 471 U. S. 707, 721 (1985). The phase-in program authorized by Standard 208 thus set minimum percentage requirements for the installation of passive restraints, increasing in annual stages of 10, 25, 40, and 100%. Those requirements were not ceilings, and it is obvious that the Secretary favored a more rapid increase. The possibility that exposure to potential tort lia-have reduced the foreseeable risks of harm posed by the product. See Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability § 2(b), and Comment d (1997); id., § 1, Comment a (noting that § 2(b) is rooted in concepts of both negligence and strict liability). Such a verdict obviously does not fore-close the possibility that more than one alternative design exists the use of which would render the vehicle reasonably safe and satisfy the manufacturer's duty of due care. Thus, the Court is quite wrong to suggest that, as a consequence of such a verdict, only the installation of airbags would enable manufacturers to avoid liability in the future.
19 Statutory Rules and Orders 1018-1021, 1033 (1908). See Nader & Page, Automobile-Design Liability and Compliance with Federal Standards, 64 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 415, 459 (1996) (noting that the Titanic "com-plied with British governmental regulations setting minimum requirements for lifeboats when it left port on its final, fateful voyage with boats capable of carrying only about [half] of the people on board"); W. Wade, The Titanic: End of a Dream 68 (1986).
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