Category: Blog

Money At Root of Takata s Tragic History

Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:

NY Times publishes an excellent article on victims of vehicle violence due to air bag defects known for more than a decade.

“In the late 1990s, General Motors got an unexpected and enticing offer. A little-known Japanese supplier, Takata, had designed a much cheaper automotive airbag.

G.M. turned to its airbag supplier — the Swedish-American company Autoliv — and asked it to match the cheaper design or risk losing the automaker’s business, according to Linda Rink, who was a senior scientist at Autoliv assigned to the G.M. account at the time.

But when Autoliv’s scientists studied the Takata airbag, they found that it relied on a dangerously volatile compound in its inflater, a critical part that causes the airbag to expand.

“We just said, ‘No, we can’t do it. We’re not going to use it,’” said Robert Taylor, Autoliv’s head chemist until 2010.

Today, that compound is at the heart of the largest automotive safety recall in history. At least 14 people have been killed and more than 100 have been injured by faulty inflaters made by Takata. More than 100 million of its airbags have been installed in cars in the United States by General Motors and 16 other automakers.

Details of G.M.’s decision-making process almost 20 years ago, which has not been reported previously, suggest that a quest for savings of just a few dollars per airbag compromised a critical safety device, resulting in passenger deaths. The findings also indicate that automakers played a far more active role in the prelude to the crisis: Rather than being the victims of Takata’s missteps, automakers pressed their suppliers to put cost before all else.”

NY Times also publishes a useful article on what consumers can and should know and do.“Defective airbags made by Takata have been tied to at least 14 deaths and more than 100 injuries. The ensuing recall — the largest in automotive history — has turned out to be messy, confusing and frustrating for car owners.” http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/business/takata-airbag-recall-guide.html
These stories need to be widely shared.  They give us all useful information on the root of vehicle violence: money.
Lou
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____________________Lou Lombardowww.CareForCrashVictims.com

NHTSA Administrator Corrected By Safety Advocates – Again! Why?

Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:

Safety Advocates have had to correct NHTSA Administrator Mark Rosekind – once again.

“SANTA MONICA, Calif., July 28, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Auto safety advocates today told National Highway Traffic Administration (NHTSA) Administrator Mark Rosekind that “you inexcusably are rushing full speed ahead” to promote the deployment of self-driving robot car technology instead of developing adequate safety standards “crucial to ensuring imperfect technologies do not kill people by being introduced into vehicles before the technology matures.”

A letter to Rosekind from Joan Claybrook, former NHTSA administrator and President Emeritus of Public Citizen; Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety; Carmen Balber, executive director of Consumer Watchdog and John M. Simpson, Consumer Watchdog’s Privacy Project director, was in response to Rosekind’s recent assertion that NHTSA cannot “stand idly by while we wait for the perfect” before self-driving robot car technologies are deployed.

“This is a false dichotomy,” the advocates wrote. “The question is not whether autonomous technology must be perfect before it hits the road, but whether safety regulators should allow demonstrably dangerous technology with no minimum safety performance standards in place, to be deployed on American highways.”

Read the advocates’ letter here: http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/resources/ltrrosekind072816.pdf

Then the American people need to ask:  Dr. Rosekind clearly knows better, so why does this keep happening?
Lou Lombardo
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____________________Lou Lombardowww.CareForCrashVictims.com

Jeep Fatality

Actor’s Death is Latest Example of Inadequate Recall Response; CAS Lays Out Action Plan for Chrysler to Prevent Further Deaths and Injuries due to Transmission Defect

Star Trek actor Anton Yelchin was killed June 18 when his 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee pinned him against his mailbox in a rollaway incident.  Yelchin’s death is unfortunately the latest example of industry and government incompetence in the face of vehicle safety defects.

On April 22, 2016, Chrysler issued a recall of 2014-2015 Grand Cherokees, as well as 2012-14 Chrysler 300s and Dodge Chargers, in order to add an additional part to enhance the Jeeps’ monostable gear selector.  The design of the monostable gear selector has been the source of much confusion for Chrysler owners, resulting in hundreds of rollaway incidents reported to both Chrysler and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).  Chrysler notes in its chronology that as of April 12, 2016 “FCA US has identified approximately 700 field reports potentially related to this issue which includes 212 crashes, 308 claims of property damage and 41 injuries.”

The vehicles involved had been under investigation by NHTSA since August 20, 2015, when the agency opened PE15-030.  When NHTSA upgraded the investigation to EA16-002 on February 3, 2016, the agency noted 121 crashes and 30 injury incidents in its opening memo.

Despite a clear defect affecting hundreds of owners with injury and potential death, Chrysler issued a Part 577 interim notification letter to owners promising to develop a fix by the 4th quarter of 2016. Just how quickly this fix would be available to owners is unknown, and given Chrysler’s recent recall efforts in fire-prone Jeeps, owners would be potentially subject to lengthy delays when seeking a remedy.

In a letter to Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne, CAS Executive Director wrote: The Center for Auto Safety calls on Chrysler to: · Notify owners not to drive these vehicles until repaired under the safety recall. · Provide free loaner or rental cars of comparable value to all owners until the vehicles are repaired under the safety recall. · For owners who cannot wait until a recall repair is available, buy the recalled vehicles by at original purchase or lease cost with deduction for use as is done under state lemon laws where the defect exists on the day the vehicle was bought. · Provide a detailed public timeline within 10 days of what is being done to make a recall remedy available, when parts will be available for all vehicles and who is doing the engineering for the recall. · Sergio Marchionne should publicly go and apologize to the family of Anton Yelchin.

#     #     #

CAS Letter to Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne

CAS Letter to NHTSA Administrator Rosekind

16V-240 Part 573

16V-240 Amended Part 573

16V-240 Amended Part 573 Chronology

16V-240 Part 577

PE15-030 Closing Resume

Redacted Chrysler PowerPoint Presentation to NHTSA

EA16-002 Opening Resume

Chrysler Consent Agreement with NHTSA on Recall Performance

Anton Yelchin Death: Jeep Grand Cherokees Were Recalled for Rollaway Risk– 6/19/16

CAS FOIA: Missing Chrysler PE15-030 Documents

CAS FOIA: Missing Chrysler EA16-002 Documents

List of Chrysler Transmission Rollaway Recalls

Clarence Ditlow

Executive Director

Center for Auto Safety

1825 Connecticut Ave NW #330

Washington DC 20009

Gun Violence and Vehicle Violence – Thoughts on Fathers Day 2016

Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:
We need an end to both gun violence and vehicle violence.

Gun Violence Statistics

Brady Campaign reports:

Every Day on Average (all ages)

Every day, 297 people in America are shot in murders, assaults, suicides & suicide attempts, unintentional shootings, and police intervention.

Every day, 89 people die from gun violence: 

  • 31 are murdered
  • 55 kill themselves
  • 2 are killed unintentionally
  • 1 is killed by police intervention
  • 1 intent unknown.

Every day, 208 people are shot and survive:

  • 151 shot in an assault
  • 10 survive a suicide attempt
  • 45 are shot unintentionally
  • 2 are shot in a police intervention

See http://www.bradycampaign.org/key-gun-violence-statistics

Vehicle Violence Statistics
Every average day nearly 100 people in America die from vehicle violence.

Every average day nearly 400 people in America suffer serious injuries from vehicle violence.

Every average day nearly $2 Billion in losses result from vehicle violence in America.

See http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/812013.pdf

President Obama’s Views Concern Crash Victims
Crash victims seek reasonable and doable actions by the President such as setting a national Vision Zero Goal.  See
President Obama’s Fathers Day Message:“Like all dads, I worry about my girls’ safety all the time.  Especially when we see preventable violence in places our sons and daughters go every day – their schools and houses of worship, movie theaters, nightclubs, as they get older.” https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/weekly-address
Why?
So why does the President, that I voted for twice, continue to miss talking about vehicle violence after nearly 250,000 vehicle deaths and 1 million serious vehicle injuries under his administration?
We need an end to this strange indifference to vehicle violence.  See http://www.fairwarning.org/2012/09/a-strange-indifference-to-highway-carnage/
We can and must do better than this.
Lou

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____________________Lou Lombardowww.CareForCrashVictims.com

Inventors Seek Crowd Sourced Funding For Improving Rescue of Crash Victims

Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:

Please see this entrepreneurial effort to save lives.  Inventors Paul and David Smart are experienced fire rescue workers who have patented a system to provide fire fighters with information in real time to help extricate crash victims faster and safer.  This is a technology that is needed all across the U.S.A. today.

They ask:

“I’m writing to announce the launch of our Kickstarter page today. If we’re successful, we’ll raise 15K to have Chop Dawg Studios (www.chopdawg.com) create the demonstration prototype of our program that potential investors have been asking to see.

This will be a HUGE step towards helping us to help rescuers do their jobs and save more lives of crash victims. Here is the page:
Would you please share, forward, visit, post on FB, Twitter, etc. to help us get the word out? We need all the help we can get to raise 15K July 23rd. If we fall short, we get nothing. If we meet our goal, we could have our tech in recuers’ hands by the end of the year.”
If auto companies had hearts, they would be racing to help develop and deploy this technology.
Lou
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____________________Lou Lombardowww.CareForCrashVictims.com

NHTSA Problems Counting Deaths

Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:

Thanks to Randy Whitfield of Quality Control Systems Corp. who has written an important note to us on this subject.   He offers us a particular, and recent, instance of NHTSA’s failure to count deaths – tire related deaths – in a rulemaking process once considered sacrosanct.  

“You wrote:
…Time after time and safety hazard after safety hazard, inaccurate NHTSA death and injury databases are failing the American public and leading to inadequate safety measures to prevent needless deaths and injuries on the roads and driveways of America.
For example, tire-related deaths…
According to the official NHTSA press release…
“… each year there are almost 200 fatalities as a result of tire-related crashes”
But in fact, even the FARS data show the count in 2014 was 596.
Why would NHTSA’s tire safety rulemaking be guided (that is to say, brought to a halt) by a sample-based estimate of the number of persons who die in tire-related crashes which undercounts the figure derived from FARS by two-thirds?
See…
(And, of course, the FARS-based result is itself sure to be an underestimate.)
You wrote:  “More Americans must ask themselves: What strings hold back Federal auto safety actions by the President?”
To put it more bluntly, why would Federal auto safety officials knowingly mislead the public about important public health issues?”
See more of Randy’s excellent work at http://www.quality-control.us/
America is fortunate to have Randy’s organization working to save lives.
But America is not fortunate to have had NHTSA become a captive regulatory agency.  See NY Times article and readers comments at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/opinion/weak-oversight-deadly-cars.html
Lou

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____________________Lou Lombardowww.CareForCrashVictims.com

NHTSA Still Not Counting Many People’s Deaths

Dear Care For Crash Victims Community Members:

The Center for Auto Safety has just sent a letter to NHTSA Administrator Rosekind finding:“NHTSA’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) is supposed to be a census of fatal motor vehicle crashes but it is not. The National Safety Council historically comes up with 2,000 more motor vehicle deaths each year. Much of the difference is due to deaths occurring in non-traffic incidents such as hyperthermia or by definitional restrictions on FARS such as not counting off-roadway crashes or deaths beyond 30 days after the crash. For the past 15 years, we have documented our efforts on the Center’s “Missing in FARS” campaign, available at http://www.autosafety.org/missing-in-fars/ …. Until August 10, 2011, NHTSA insisted there were only 3 to 5 drowning deaths each year but was then forced to admit that there were actually 384 deaths each year on average…. This NHTSA conclusion is most telling because it admits that certain types of deaths cannot be measured by FARS. Another such type of death is seat back collapse where FARS does not contain any information on seat back collapse as CAS pointed out in its March 9, 2016 submission to NHTSA in support of the Cantor Petition to upgrade FMVSS 207. Time after time and safety hazard after safety hazard, inaccurate NHTSA death and injury databases are failing the American public and leading to inadequate safety measures to prevent needless deaths and injuries on the roads and driveways of America.”

Is it any wonder that crash survivors are justifiably upset?  Marianne Karth, articulating what many might agree, just wrote:“Are we doing enough, as a nation, to work on solutions to those things which could be prevented? I don’t think so and I have been calling for our leaders to adopt aNational Vision Zero Goal, to set up a National Vision Zero Task Force, to adopt Vision Zero rulemaking policies, and to appoint a National Traffic Safety Ombudsman.”

See http://annaleahmary.com/2016/06/the-anger-and-frustration-in-the-aftermath-of-a-truck-crash-are-not-easily-resolved/

More Americans must ask themselves: What strings hold back Federal auto safety actions by the President?

Lou