NHTSA Deputy Administrator Acknowledges Need to Improve
September, 2014
“Any life lost is one too many; anything that we can do to improve in a situation like this, we’ve got to do,” David Friedman, interim head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), tells TIME in his first interview since the hearing.”….“The agency was granted just over $10 million to investigate defects in 2014, a paltry sum considering the 250 million vehicles on the road in the United States. Overall, the agency devotes about $130 million annually to vehicle safety research—a total that outrages auto-safety advocate Ralph Nader. “It’s about the cost of three months of guarding the US embassy in Baghdad,” Nader tells TIME.”….
“Nader, along with others, says he is skeptical, but ultimately, external pressures may make the question of whether NHTSA officials want to change irrelevant.
“I think the agency will change,” says Joan Claybrook, who ran the agency during Jimmy Carter’s presidency. “If it doesn’t they’re in trouble.””
Nader is right to be skeptical and Claybrook is right they will be in trouble if the agency does not change for the better.
The latest NHTSA Org Chart (copy attached) still shows ex GM officials in positions of power and influence.
And all those people who have long been on the chess board of power and influence over the past decade have only changed positions – not their stripes – as they moved through revolving doors. See some of the major chess board positions and people involved in the failures to protect American lives over the past decade identified in attached March Monthly Report.
Remember there are still millions of unfixed defective vehicles on America’s roads and streets endangering us all.
Lou
