Category: Blog

Root Cause of Recalls & Remedies

June, 2015

The NY Times reports ahead of the June 2, 2015 House Hearing on Takata airbag recalls. “Those results contributed to Takata’s decision to stop manufacturing inflaters with the batwing-shaped propellant, the company said. But Takata maintains that it still has not pinned down a definitive root cause of the ruptures.

The problems with the airbags date to almost 15 years ago when drivers began lodging complaints about them with federal regulators. In November, The Times reported that Takata had ordered tests on the airbags in 2004 and found signs of defects, but did not convey the results to the regulators. Takata has disputed that report.

The first recall for the airbag issue came in November 2008 when Honda recalled 4,205 vehicles, a small number, with the Takata products. The company recalled an additional 510,000 cars six months later after a teenager was killed by an exploding airbag.

Those two recalls prompted regulators at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to open an investigation in 2009 into the two companies’ handling of the defect. Six months later, it closed the investigation without requiring that Takata turn over all of the documents that had been requested.

In the document officially closing the inquiry, the agency wrote that there was “insufficient information to suggest that Honda failed to make timely defect decisions on information it was provided….

“What concerns me today are multiyear safety investigations where we can identify a problem but a solution is nowhere in sight; where the preferred approaches are Band-Aids instead of an effective cure,” said Representative Fred Upton, the Republican from Michigan who is chairman of the committee.”  See 

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/02/business/takata-says-it-will-no-longer-make-side-inflater-linked-to-airbag-defect.html?ref=business&_r=0

As for the root cause of failures to protect the public in corporations and government regulatory agencies, consider money. 

“For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”  1 Timothy 6:10

Whether it be relentless cost cutting demands by OEMs or the corruption of government regulatory policy the root cause is money.

Whether it be airbags exploding dangerously, or airbags not deploying when needed examination will find money at the root of corporate and governmental failures to protect.  See report of June 2014 at

https://www.careforcrashvictims.com/blog-nhtsaexec2004.php

We can and must do better than this at protecting people before profits.

Child Safety Still A Problem – How Did NHTSA Fail To Protect American Children?

June, 2015

The NY Times reports on good work by the IIHS:

“Installing a child safety seat in a vehicle has been a confusing, sometimes difficult task for many parents. A new study released on Thursday has backed up many parents’ complaints, finding that only a handful of vehicles deserved the highest rating for ease of installation.

The study, conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, rated 102 vehicles for how easily a child safety seat could be installed. It focused on the vehicles’ so-called Latch system, which consists of three anchors that the seat is secured to.

Only three models received the highest rating of Good: the BMW 5 Series, Mercedes-Benz GL-Class and the Volkswagen Passat.”  See

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/19/business/few-vehicles-equipped-for-easy-child-safety-seat-installation-study-finds.html?emc=edit_tnt_20150618&nlid=37926955&tntemail0=y

NHTSA data on deaths of children in crashes restrained and unrestrained in fatal crashes (413 under age 8 in 2013) is at

http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/812154.pdf

For more than a century children have been dying in crashes restrained and unrestrained.

In 1980 NHTSA published a report on Automobile Occupant Crash Protection. (Disclosure: I edited this report that was cited by the Supreme Court in overturning the Reagan Administration’s rescission of the airbag rule.)  That report listed models of cars that had problems with child restraints.  See https://www.careforcrashvictims.com/assets/1980fullreport.pdf

When will NHTSA require all auto companies to design vehicles to better protect children?  Will it happen while the NHTSA Office of Crashworthiness Research and its Human Injury Research Program are both headed by former GM officials?

Lou

Congress on Auto Safety & Money

June, 2015

Lou

Will Congress Fix Auto Safety?

June, 2015

Bipartisan Legislation Introduced

Senate Commerce Committee’s New Report on Takata

June, 2015

Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:

“WASHINGTON, D.C. – Employee emails sounded dire warnings about safety and quality lapses years before Takata Corp. would fully acknowledge the threat posed by its defective airbags. 

The emails in question are among some 13,000 documents gathered by the Senate Commerce Committee as part of its ongoing investigation into defective airbags that so far have been linked to at least eight deaths and more than 100 injuries worldwide. 

They are cited by minority staff of the commerce panel who have produced a new report in the probe, as the full panel prepares to hear from Takata and federal regulators at a hearing tomorrow morning””

““The more evidence we see, the more it paints a troubling picture of a manufacturer that lacked concern,” said U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), the top Democrat on the Commerce Committee.

Among the minority report’s other key findings: 

• ·     An unknown number of replacement parts might be defective as well.

• ·     Despite being in the midst of what would become the largest auto recall in U.S. history, an April 2011 email from a Takata senior vice president noted that “Global safety audits had stopped for financial reasons for last 2 years.” 

• ·     Federal regulators failed to “promptly investigate” early reports of the defective airbags.

“Had Takata maintained a more robust culture of safety, it is likely that many of these defects could have been discovered much sooner,” the report concluded.  “Similarly, had NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) promptly undertaken more aggressive steps to investigate the Takata airbag ruptures, it is possible that this defect could have been addressed years earlier.””  Source:

http://www.commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=1e0f311a-2ebb-4069-8332-f6b6f1e8a9cc

Clarence Ditlow Statement and Documents on DOT OIG Audit of NHTSA Safety Defects Program

June, 2015

*  Lack of NHTSA Will“Statement on DOT Inspector General Report on NHTSA’s Efforts to Identify & Investigate Vehicle Safety Concerns     The Inspector General’s stinging report on NHTSA’s Defect Investigation process reveals three fundamental flaws: lack of resources, lack of transparency and accountability, and lack of will to take on major defects.

• Lack of resources appears in all too many areas: having just one person to initially screen all the complaints, a few seconds for each, amounts to nothing more than sorting the mail.  Not having funds for software that can read manufacturer EWR reports means defect data go unread.  Investigators must have training and training costs money the agency doesn’t have.  Although not pointed out by the IG, NHTSA doesn’t even have its own research facility like other agencies; instead it must rent space from Honda.
• Lack of transparency and accountability means no one knows why investigations aren’t opened and no one is held accountable for not opening an investigation.  People die due to unopened investigations. NHTSA must be transparent and accountable both externally and internally.  Staff have to know when and why an investigation is opened or not.  The public can provide an important check and balance on agency action and inaction.
• Lack of will to take on major defects means NHTSA doesn’t get the hard job done.  Instead the agency concentrates on small, inadequate investigations like the Equipment Query into Webasto sunroofs that generated over a hundred recalls by small shops over a defect with no known deaths or serious injuries.  Lack of will means settling for inadequate Service Campaigns or geographic recalls instead of needed national Safety Recalls when a manufacturer balks at doing anything more.

    NHTSA must be given adequate resources but it has to become a forceful regulator that is transparent and accountable to the public.  All the people who have died from safety defects in the past and all the people who can be saved from safety defects in the future deserve nothing less than an agency that is willing and able to take on any defect.”

See documents at

http://www.autosafety.org/statement-cas-executive-director-clarence-ditlow-dot-inspector-general-nhtsa-audit-report

Lou

Takata Airbag Recall Deaths – How many? And How many more?

June, 2015

Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:

Important questionsraised:  How many deaths have occurred and how many more will occur before all defective airbags are replaced?

A lawsuit has been filed on a recent tragedy.

“The mother of a Lafayette woman killed in an April accident on Johnston Street has filed suit against Honda Motor Company and the maker of an air bag installed in Kylan Rae Langlinais’ 2005 Civic, claiming the companies knew years ago the air bag was defective and prone to spraying deadly shrapnel during a crash.

Langlinais died April 9 in a Lafayette hospital, four days after she drove her Honda into a utility pole in the 2000 block of Johnston Street.

Langlinais, who was one month shy of turning 23, was the only person involved in the 4 a.m. accident.

Kenneth St. Pé, one of two attorneys for the Langlinais family, saidTuesday the death was made doubly tragic when the recall notice for the Takata Corporation air bag system arrived in Langlinais’ mailbox two days after the crash, while she was lying in a hospital bed. She died two days after getting the notice.

St. Pé said the only serious injury that doctors who examined Langlinais could find was a severed carotid artery. That injury was consistent with other victims whose Takata air bags exploded and sent bits of metal flying, he said.

Related Documents

• Air bag lawsuit

“As a result, (Langlinais) sustained a penetrating injury to the right side of her neck, causing an immediate and profuse loss of blood,” the lawsuit states….

St. Pé said the number of deaths caused by the air bags might be more than the numbers cited in studies.

“It makes you wonder how many people have died at the scene of the accident from injuries like this that don’t get to the hospital. The doctors don’t look at them, and nobody does an autopsy.” St. Pé said. “They just figured they died in a car wreck.”  See

http://theadvocate.com/news/12603876-123/lafayette-mother-files-lawsuit-against

Lou