The idea that Ralph Nader is responsible for seat belts is based on the ridiculous notion that laws mandating them weren't inevitably going to happen anyway, and that auto manufacturers wouldn't install them in cars today even if they weren't mandatory. Which are both absurd.
So your argument is that no advocate should ever get credit for helping something come to fruition because someone else will probably do it years later? That's like saying Isaac Newton shouldn't get credit for inventing calculus because Gottfried Leibniz would have done it too.
Even if you're right that seat belts were "inevitably going to happen," that still ignores all the people's lives who would have been saved between the time that seat belts DID happen and when they would have happened. Considering how many people get in car accidents each year, that's a lot of people.
Anyway, I agree with shua for the main topic here. It sounds more like he was making an analysis about American history than giving his personal views.
