Category: Blog

Victim’s Mother and Consumer Advocates Call for Reforms in Auto Safety Recalls


Victim’s Mother and Consumer Advocates Call for Reforms in Auto Safety Recalls

February, 2015

Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:
A major Maryland auto dealer joins consumers supporting State legislation.

“The outrageous delays in getting cars with serious safety flaws recalled are putting the lives of our customers at risk,” Jack Fitzgerald notes. “Dealers need to make sure safety recalls happen much more quickly. We need to make it possible for our customers to get the warranty and repair work they need done, when they need it done.”

The reform package comes after a record 64 million U.S. vehicles were recalled to address safety and repair problems in 2014. In the case of the GM ignition switch failures, and in many of the other recalls, the safety fixes now underway come many years, sometimes more than a decade, after manufacturers knew the cars carried serious safety flaws.

“People are losing their lives on the road because manufactures are hiding safety problems, delaying recalls, and forcing dealers to withhold critical information,” Fitzgerald said.

At least 56 people have died, and hundreds have suffered devastating injuries in crashes that could have been prevented if the flawed GM ignition switches had been repaired in a timely fashion.

Laura Christian knows the pain those losses caused first hand, after her daughter Amber lost her life when the airbag in her new Chevy Cobalt failed to inflate when she struck a tree on July 29, 2005.”

See http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/victims-mother-and-consumer-advocates-call-for-reforms-in-auto-safety-recalls-300039501.html 

Lou

 


Safety of Consumers Under Attack

February, 2015

Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:

Respected Safety Advocate Rosemary Shahan has asked us to help get the word out warning us all of this NJ anti-safety legislative initiative.   Warning: it may spread to other States too.

“Attached is a letter from CARS and the National Association of Consumer Advocates, opposing legislation now pending in New Jersey — backed by car dealers — that would for the first time allow dealers to sell unsafe, recalled used cars to consumers, without ensuring that the cars are safe prior to delivery, if they merely provide “disclosure” — shifting liability onto their victims. The Assembly bill passed 68-0 before members of the legislature realized the implications. The Senate companion bill has not yet been heard.  Now there is growing awareness about how harmful they would be. But it remains to be seen if they can be stopped, before they go to Gov. Christie’s desk. If they pass out of the legislature, he would likely sign them into law.”

Please help get the word out because it may spread to other States too.
Lou

 

White Cars Are About 10% Safer Report


White Cars Are About 10% Safer Report

February, 2015

Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:

The link I gave to the Australian study on white cars being safer has been taken down.  Looks like the auto industry did not like that Report being available to the public that stated:

“Results of the analysis identified a clear statistically significant relationship between vehicle colour and crash risk. Compared to
white vehicles, a number of colours were associated with higher crash risk. These colours are generally those lower on the visibility
index and include black, blue, grey, green, red and silver. No colour was statistically significantly safer than white although a number of other colours could not be distinguished from white statistically in terms of relative crash risk. The association between vehicle colour and crash risk was strongest during daylight hours where relative
crash risks were higher for the colours listed compared to white by up to around 10%.”

So here for your files is the actual report attached.

Consumers have a right to life saving information.
Lou

 

Close the NHTSA Revolving Door In and Out of NHTSA


Close the NHTSA Revolving Door In and Out of NHTSA

February, 2015

Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:

USA Today has an excellent Op-Ed on NHTSA’s Revolving Door.

It calls for closing the NHTSA Revolving Door.

See http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/02/25/nhtsa-revolving-door-cronyism-highway-column/23966219/

Corporate cronies have come in and out of NHTSA for way too long.  And corporate policies have come out of NHTSA for way too long. Because nearly 100 American lives and 400 serious injuries each day depend on it, let’s hope and help this happen.

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