Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:
An excellent article with videos has been published on Pedestrian protection that notes the failures by Tesla to offer pedestrian protection in the U.S. that it offers in Europe to meet EU NCAP. See article by Lloyd Alter at http://www.treehugger.com/cars/teslas-sold-europe-have-active-hood-protect-pedestrians-american-pedestrians-look-both-ways.html
The National Safety Council reports that in 2015 in the U.S. there were 6,700 pedestrian deaths and an estimated 160,000 pedestrian nonfatal injuries. See Injury Facts 2017, page 116.
Tesla has received from American taxpayers about $4.9 Billion. See article by Jerry Hirsch at
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-20150531-story.html
What can be done to make Tesla more responsible to Americans?
“Five institutional investors, including the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (Calstrs), the Connecticut Retirement Plans and Trust Funds, and CtW Investment Group, have signed a letter to Tesla director Antonio Gracias urging the company to seek board members that are independent of Elon Musk.
In addition to expanding the size of the Tesla board to include two new members that do not have ties with Musk, the group which manages a combined $721 billion in assets – Caslstrs is the second largest pension fund in America – is also advocating for annual elections for all board members. Presently, only one third of the directors are elected each year. Calstrs is one of the founders of Investor Stewardship Group, which includes several other major investors such as BlackRock Inc., State Street Corp., Vanguard Group, and T. Rowe Price Group. In January, that group formulated a new policy position that supports annual elections for all board members as a way of increasing the accountability of directors to shareholders.
The influential group of investors argue that “Directors should be held to a higher standard of independence given the conflicts of interest that permeate this board.”, according to a report by Bloomberg. “A thoroughly independent board would provide a critical check on possible dysfunctional group dynamics, such as groupthink.”
See https://www.teslarati.com/investor-group-urges-tesla-seek-board-members-independent-elon-musk/
As for NHTSA, maybe if we could get images of the children dying of pedestrian injuries in the U.S.A. nearly every day, President Trump and his daughter would be moved to act. NHTSA data shows 233 children under the age of 14 died of their injuries suffered as pedestrians in 2015 due to vehicle violence. See Table 2 at https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812375
Lou Lombardo
