Category: Blog

DOT “Sees” No Problem on Guard Rail Hazards


DOT “Sees” No Problem on Guard Rail Hazards

March, 2015

Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:

DOT, with our tax dollars and with Highway lobby support, says to the American people: RIP.

See http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/12/business/federal-agency-finds-no-evidence-that-trinity-industries-altered-design-of-its-guardrails.html?ref=business

Nader and Ditlow were right.  On deadly roads too.

See http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/opinion/weak-oversight-deadly-cars.html

The DOT and the Highway lobby partner to give a unique meaning to Vision Zero.   

“From Secretary Foxx:
Today, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) joined the National Strategy on Highway Safety Toward Zero Deaths (TZD) effort, a vision for eliminating fatalities on the nation’s roadways.
AASHTO has long been a valued partner the Department, and this aggressive approach to safety —DOT’s number one priority— will only strengthen that partnership…”

See http://www.transportation.gov/fastlane/tzd

If Secretary Foxx and his team have their eyes on the Revolving Door, it would be difficult to “see” Guard Rail hazards. See  http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/02/25/nhtsa-revolving-door-cronyism-highway-column/23966219/

Lou

 

President Obama and Secretary Foxx Announce Grow America Bill – Crash Deaths To Grow


President Obama and Secretary Foxx Announce Grow America Bill – Crash Deaths To Grow

March, 2015

Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:

Obama Administration proposes endless tragic years ahead for Americans.

Please read this DOT Announcement and watch this DOT video at http://www.dot.gov/grow-america

Can you hear or read the word “safety”?

“The FY 2016 budget proposes $478 billion funding for a 6-year surface transportation reauthorization proposal that invests in modernizing our infrastructure.”  

Buried in a more detailed list of this proposal there is a document on improving safety updated yesterday at http://www.dot.gov/grow-america/fact-sheets/safety
It notes: “In 2013, vehicle crashes killed 32,719 Americans and injured more than 2.3 million people.”
Let’s compare the deaths and dollars proposed with the DOT Policy Guidance on valuing deaths and injuries in dollars.  The DOT Policy for 2013 attached places a value of $9.1 million. “On the basis of the best available evidence, this guidance identifies $9.1 million as the value of a statistical life to be used for Department of Transportation analyses assessing the benefits of preventing fatalities and using abase year of 2012.”
So if DOT Secretary Foxx had taken out a calculator and multiplied the 2013 fatalities of 32,719 crash deaths times the $9.1 million in the DOT Guidelines he would find the math to amount to $297 billion.
So how does that $297 billion in one year compare with the $478 billion, or $80 billion per year, that he is proposing over the next six years?
If the number of deaths continue over the next 6 years at about 32,000 per year (as I expect is likely) another 192,000 Americans will die of crash injuries.  And our crash death clock will exceed 3,855,000 American crash deaths.  See https://www.careforcrashvictims.com/clock.php
In our Declaration of Independence it stated that “it is the Right of the People to alter …as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety”
The Obama Administration’s current proposal is “Unsafe” – far less safe than it needs to be.
Lou

 

Author Dies of Crash Injuries in a 2013 Corvette


Author Dies of Crash Injuries in a 2013 Corvette

March, 2015

Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:

NY Times carries Reuters report:“Thomas J. Stanley, author of the best-selling book, “The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America’s Wealthy,” has died in a car crash near his home in suburban Atlanta, police said on Monday. He was 71.” Seehttp://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2015/03/02/arts/02reuters-usa-crash-millionaire.html?action=click&contentCollection=Your%20Money&module=RelatedCoverage&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article

CBS46 reports:

“A spokesperson with Cobb County police said that Thomas Stanley, 71, of Marietta, was driving a 2013 Chevrolet Corvette westbound on Paper Mill Road when he was cut off by another man who was driving behind him.

When Stanley slowed down to make a left turn onto Atlanta Country Road, police said that 45-year-old Jeffrey Fettig, who was driving a 2006 Acura MDX, pulled up behind Stanley, cut to his left and crossed the yellow line into the opposite lanes of of traffic.

Police said they do not know why Fettig cut to Stanley’s left.

After Fettig collided with the font-left side of the Corvette Stanley was driving, both cars crashed into the yard of a nearby house. 

Stanley was taken to Wellstar Kennestone Hospital where he died due to injuries from the crash.”

Read more: http://www.cbs46.com/story/28229986/man-killed-in-marietta-crash#ixzz3ThnoasVM The Car Book 2013 rated the 2013 Corvette a 2 out of 10 (1 = Worst, 10 = Best) on Safety Features.  

The Car Book 2015 also rated the 2015 Corvette a 2 out of 10 (10 = Best) on Safety Features.  
Could this tragedy have been avoided had the struck vehicle been a vehicle with a 10 rating for Safety Features such as the 2013 Volvo S60?   Perhaps.
Companies need to learn to incorporate safety.   And consumers need to wisely choose safety.
Lou

 

GM Pays to Protect Mary Barra & Other GM Executives


GM Pays to Protect Mary Barra & Other GM Executives

March, 2015

Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:

The NY Times reports:“In a notable victory for General Motors, a lawsuit that helped spur the biggest safety crisis in the company’s history has been withdrawn in exchange for a settlement from its compensation program, according to two people briefed on the agreement.

The lawsuit was the second brought by the family of a Georgia woman, Brooke Melton, who died in 2010 in a car with a faulty ignition switch that has now been linked to at least 64 deaths.

For G.M., the agreement removes the significant legal threat of senior officials, including Mary T. Barra, the automaker’s chief executive, being questioned under oath about the company’s failure for years to recall the defective vehicles.

It was depositions in the Meltons’ first lawsuit that exposed the dangerous flaw in millions of small cars.

“The attorneys for the Melton family may have uncovered additional information that suggested G.M. did too little to protect consumer safety,” said Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor who has been closely following G.M. safety issues.”

“The terms of the settlement were not disclosed. A G.M. spokesman confirmed that the case had been resolved, but declined to provide other details.”   See http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/14/business/general-motors-ignition-flaw-victim-settlement.html?hpw&rref=automobiles&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0
Who has the monetary resources of GM (much of which was and is provided by U.S. taxpayers)to protect all other crash victims? Past, present, and future crash victims?
Politically?
Legally?
The scales of Justice are skewed.  Unlimited corporate money on one side and very limited money on the side of crash victims.   The result: lives will continue to be lost and damaged needlessly far into the future of America – and the world.
Lou  

 

Empowering Consumers to Protect Themselves From Crash Deaths and Serious Injuries


Empowering Consumers to Protect Themselves From Crash Deaths and Serious Injuries

February, 2015

Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:

Attached is the January 2015 Monthly Report.  

Automotive News reports chances for Auto Safety legislation are fading.  See http://www.autonews.com/article/20150216/OEM11/302169998/safety-crisis-fades-off-congress-radar

And sadly President Obama failed again in the State of the Union to issue a Vision Zero Goal for the nation to achieve zero deaths and serious injuries in, or by, a new vehicle in a decade.  Seehttps://www.careforcrashvictims.com/blog-state15goal.php

Thankfully, the Car Book 2015 has now been published that empowers consumers to better protect themselves – physically and financially.

We need to, and can, do better protecting ourselves.

Lou

 

The Priorities of Foundations Need to Improve for Americans


The Priorities of Foundations Need to Improve for Americans

February, 2015

Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:

Nader asks large foundations to rethink priorities.  Nader notes the Center for Auto Safety:“One aviation safety group of long-proven merit, the Aviation Consumer Action Project, had to close down, while another, the Center for Auto Safety, has worked wonders but on a tiny budget.”  Seehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ralph-nader/large-foundations-rethink_b_6648102.html

As usual, Nader is right on a subject of life or death importance.

Foundations have “sequestered” billions of dollars made, and tax sheltered, in America.  Yet here in America we are still struggling to get out of the Great Recession while foundations spend huge amounts of money elsewhere.   Just one example, in an interview in 2010, Melinda Gates was interviewed:Q. “Why don’t you direct more of your philanthropy toward the United States, where your foundation could create jobs for the unemployed, or try to solve the health care crisis? A. “As a foundation, first of all, you have to focus. But we absolutely do focus on the United States. We have three large programs: global health, global development and U.S. programs. About 20 percent goes to U.S. programs.”  See http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/magazine/24fob-q4-t.html

20 percent!  How do Americans make that “20 percent” as infamous as either Romney’s 47% or the 99% of Inequality in America infamy?
Since 2010, when fellow American Melinda Gates uttered that “about 20 percent”,  about 120,000 fellow Americans died of their crash injuries and about another 500,000 fellow Americans suffered serious crash injuries.  And as the latest NHTSA report shows the estimated value of societal harm in America now amounts to nearly a trillion dollars each year.  See http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/812013.pdf
We who care for crash victims — and know that we can adopt a Vision Zero deaths and serious injuries goal for all new cars in a decade — need to ask:  Why?  And Why not?
For starters imagine closing the loophole in IRS rules that allow foundations to include foreign travel expenses as part of the foundations “charitable” expenditures.
American foundations need to be more patriotic.
And Americans need to do better demanding it.  Yes we can!
Lou

PS  Since I wrote this earlier, I realized I had underestimated the number of crash deaths since October 2010 and a reader sent me the following article by another colossal foundation spending big money made in America and tax sheltered in America but spent elsewhere rather than on Americans here in the U.S.A.  

Former mayor of NYC Bloomberg who did not have a Vision Zero Goal of crash deaths in NY city for years has “decided” to give $125 million over 5 years to improve road safety elsewhere around the world.  Seehttp://www.bloomberg.org/press/releases/bloomberg-philanthropies-global-road-safety-program-inviting-select-cities-countries-compete-funding-support/   And the Bloomberg programs sound like the programs President Coolidge and Secretary Herbert Hoover advocated in the 1920s.  See https://www.careforcrashvictims.com/assets/24P11.pdf It is as though fellow American Bloomberg never read Nader’s “Unsafe at Any Speed” that pointed out the need for auto safety technologies to be developed and applied.  Auto safety technologies, required by law, spurred by Nader’s work in the 1960s have now been estimated to have saved more than 600,000 American lives.  See http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/812069.pdf

At least Bloomberg’s successor NY City Mayor De Blasio has set a Vision Zero Safety Goal for NYC.  See https://www.careforcrashvictims.com/blog-race.php

Hopefully, these fellow Americans will act more patriotically in the future and help build a safer America before spending more elsewhere all over the world.

The American people deserve better than they are getting.

Lou

 

When Government and Industry Fail To Protect Us, Tragedies Continue


When Government and Industry Fail To Protect Us, Tragedies Continue

February, 2015

Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:
NHTSA Still Protecting Automakers
The NY Times has provided excellent investigative reporting on the failures of NHTSA and automakers to protect us from defects for decades.  Christopher Jensen reports:

“The auto industry recalled almost 64 million vehicles for safety problems last year, a record, according to figures released on Thursday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The number of recalled vehicles exceeded the total for the previous three years combined.

The agency and automakers faced intense scrutiny in 2014 and sometimes scorching criticism from Congress about whether safety defects were being investigated properly and vehicles recalled promptly….”

“An investigation last year by The New York Times of the N.H.T.S.A. found that the agency had frequently been slow to identify problems, tentative to act and reluctant to employ its full legal powers against companies….” “In a departure from its practice in previous years, N.H.T.S.A. did not release the number of recalls by manufacturer. But General Motors accounted for almost 27 million of the recalled vehicles, the automaker said.” See 

AP reporter Tom Krisher writes an excellent in depth article on a tragic Jeep crash.“As Kayla White slowed her SUV behind two other cars to exit a suburban Detroit freeway on Veterans Day, it was rammed from behind by a Cadillac STS. Her red 2003 Jeep Liberty bounced off a Nissan in front of it, rolled onto its side and exploded in flames.

Other drivers ran to help but were forced back by the heat. Firefighters arrived in just three minutes but were too late. White, a 23-year-old restaurant hostess who was eight months pregnant, died of burns and smoke inhalation….

“Heath had no alcohol in his system and wasn’t texting or distracted by his cellphone, says Cooper, the prosecutor. He faces up to a year in jail. Cooper says White’s “horribly tragic” death was the result of Heath’s careless driving.

But Douglas Hampton, Heath’s attorney, isn’t so sure. He has more investigating to do but will probably argue that White’s death was caused by the vulnerable fuel tank and that Heath shouldn’t be charged with causing her death.

“If it wasn’t for the gas tank, that would be an appropriate charge,” Hampton says.”

See http://www.pddnet.com/news/2015/02/fire-deaths-continue-after-fuel-tank-recall 

Blame the little guy rather than the big corporations, and we all continue to be in danger – needlessly.
Lou