Excellent report from Bloomberg illuminates this scandal that has us breathing deadly air pollutants – for a decade.
“How Could VW’s Top Engineers Not Have Known?” Seehttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-21/how-could-volkswagen-s-top-engineers-not-have-known-
Lou
October, 2015
NY Times reports:
“A bipartisan coalition of attorneys general from at least 30 states and the District of Columbia has joined a fast-moving investigation into the possibilities of consumer fraud and environmental violations by the German automakerVolkswagen.
At least two of the attorneys general, from New York and Illinois, have served subpoenas on the company, according to people briefed on the investigations.” See
October, 2015
Excellent NY Times reporting reveals more. Seehttp://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/business/international/cozy-relations-complicate-europes-bid-for-new-car-tests.html?action=click&contentCollection=International%20Business&module=RelatedCoverage®ion=Marginalia&pgtype=article
October, 2015
An excellent article and comments produced to give us all important information on politics of truck safety has been published by Fair Warning. See http://www.fairwarning.org/2015/10/trucks/ This is a fine article. It shows the tragic consequences of crashes and campaign finances corrupting government to endanger all Americans here, now, and long into the future.
People can find the shocking number of crash fatalities for each congressional district over the past decade.
The number of lives destroyed in each district each year may help generate some empathy — at least among voters.
See https://www.careforcrashvictims.com/CrashDeathMappingTools.php
October, 2015
Here’s a way to get some health safety from harmful air pollutants and some justice for past injurious pollutants we are being forced to breathe.
October 19, 2015
Center for Auto Safety Sues Volkswagen & Audi Over Emission Violations Using Defeat Devices
The Center for Auto Safety (CAS) sued Volkswagen AG, Audi AG, et al in US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Unlike the numerous private class actions filed across the country that seek consumer damages over VW’s use of sophisticated computer software to cheat on emission tests run by the US EPA and CARB, CAS’ lawsuit seeks injunctive relief:
CAS Executive Director Clarence Ditlow said:
CAS has sued VW and Audi because they committed an unprecedented corporate crime and fraud on the public that requires injunctive relief to remedy the harm caused by their violations of state and federal environmental and consumer protection laws. Class actions and government enforcement actions result in headlines, penalties and settlements that do nothing to change underlying corporate behavior or remediate the underlying damage caused by illegal behavior. The independent monitors and auditors sanctioned by the Justice Department and federal agencies are nothing more than corporate law firms and employees who all too willing to sign off on the behavior of their employers in documents filled with withheld redactions. When so-called independent funds are set up as was done in the Toyota Unintended Acceleration class action, they go to auto company designed programs that benefit the auto maker, not the consumer.
CAS will use its integrity and skills acquired through 45 years of battling the auto industry to ensure that this litigation will reform VW and Audi once and for all and set a precedent for all other auto companies in the future.
# # #
CAS has a long history in working on motor vehicle fuel economy and emissions dating back to the early 1970’s. The Safe Climate Campaign headed by Dan Becker is a program of CAS. CAS is represented by Hausfeld LLP, 1700 K Street NW Ste 650, Washington DC 20006, 202.540.7200. Hausfeld is a leading global law firm with offices in Washington, DC; Philadelphia; San Francisco; Brussels; and London. The firm has a broad range of complex litigation expertise, particularly in consumer, antitrust/competition, financial services, sports and entertainment, environmental, mass torts, and human rights matters. For more information about the firm, please visit: www.hausfeld.com.
Center for Auto Safety v. Volkswagen – Complaint
Volkswagen Emissions Defeat Devices Violate EPA Emissions Rules
Clarence Ditlow
Executive Director
Center for Auto Safety
1825 Connecticut Ave NW #330
Washington DC 20009
October, 2015
“Cheating” is too weak a word to describe poisoning people for more than 4 decades by big auto and government policies.
The NY Times reports:
LONDON — Despite the cloud cast by the Volkswagen scandal, automakers are proposing that they be allowed a 70 percent increase in the nitrogen oxides their cars emit, unreleased documents show, as part of new European pollution tests.
Under the new plan, cars in Europe would for the first time be tested on the road, using portable monitoring equipment, in addition to laboratory testing.
The automakers, which include Volkswagen, General Motors, Daimler, BMW, Toyota, Renault, PSA Peugeot Citroën, Ford and Hyundai, are essentially conceding what outside groups have said for some time — that the industry cannot meet pollution regulations when cars are taken out of testing laboratories. The move is occurring as Volkswagen, the world’s largest automaker, grapples with fallout from the discovery that 11 million of its vehicles were equipped with software meant to cheat emissions tests.
Tests of car emissions required in the United States and Europe take place in laboratories, where vehicles are run through drills on a dynamometer, which is the automotive equivalent of a treadmill. Automakers have found ways to cheat the tests since emissions were first regulated in the early 1970s. Seehttp://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/03/business/automakers-ask-europe-for-leniency-in-emissions-testing.html?emc=edit_tnt_20151002&nlid=37926955&tntemail0=y&_r=0
Disclosure:
In the 1971 I blew the whistle on EPA changes in the emission test procedures to favor auto makers. I was fired and sued the National Academy of Sciences for access to information supporting my arguments. Judge Sirica and judges up to the Supreme Court ruled against me denying me access to the documents. See https://www.careforcrashvictims.com/assets/EPA-Whistle-Blow.pdf
Decades later the Nixon Tapes revealed what I did not know at the time. In April 1971, Henry Ford II and Lee Iacocca met with Nixon in the White House and pressed for relief on emission standards and had already met with EPA Administrator Ruckelshaus to change emission test procedures. See https://www.careforcrashvictims.com/assets/Nixon-Transcriptions.pdf
For more on history of emissions by companies and government failures to protect people, see the Center for Auto Safety statement:“The only way to change auto company behavior is to put the responsible executives in jail. After a flagrant pattern across the auto industry of violating US health and safety laws, the Center for Auto Safety calls on the Justice Department to move to put the responsible VW executives behind bars as it just did with peanut butter manufacturers.” Seehttp://www.autosafety.org/volkswagen-emissions-defeat-devices-violate-epa-emissions-rules
I am sorry to say that history teaches that we also have to hold government officials in all agencies and branches of government to the same standards of accountability.
Lou
October, 2015
But only one, Fiat Chrysler, requires that those using the discount give up their constitutional right to a jury trial in return for a few hundred bucks in savings.
“It’s like they’re doing you a favor and, by the way, they’re taking away your right to sue,” said Rosemary Shahan, president of the Sacramento advocacy group Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety. “This discount is like the piece of cheese on the trap that kills the mouse.”
See http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lazarus-20151016-column.html
