An excellent article describes tragedies. See “Mom Takes on Truckers After Highway Wreck Kills Daughters” at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-01/mom-takes-on-truckers-after-highway-wreck-kills-daughters.html
Lou
October, 2014
Another good article from the NY Times covering the GM saga. “Lawyers in sweeping class-action litigation against General Motors have significantly broadened their case against the embattled automaker, claiming that the company disregarded and concealed safety issues far beyond the defective ignition switch that is now linked to 27 deaths.”
Notes to NY Times: Why not add a Comment section? And help readers by giving them a link to the Master Complaint.
October, 2014
More NY Times good reporting – including documents – on airbag defects.
“Takata was alerted to the problem as early as 2004, when the airbag in a 2002 Honda Accord ruptured in Alabama, but neither Takata nor Honda told regulators, a New York Times investigationhas shown. The first recall for the airbags was issued by Honda in 2008, for about 4,200 vehicles.
“We are compelling Takata to produce documents and answer questions under oath relevant to our ongoing investigation into defective airbags they have produced,” David J. Friedman, the N.H.T.S.A.’s deputy administrator, said in a statement.” See
So will NHTSA now compel automakers “to produce documents and answer questions under oath”? Will NHTSA make the documents and answers public? Will NHTSA hold public hearings?
When will we see a grand jury investigation that puts NHTSA and auto company officials officials under oath for more than a decade of defective policies?
Just one example of NHTSA malfeasance. See attached FY 2013 NHTSA Budget Request authorized by former Administrator Strickland seeking a decrease in Defects Investigation budget. See pp 54, 59 – 61. Note: Mr. Strickland is now a lobbyist working for a company that represents Chrysler.
Other examples of “responsible” officials who have gone through the NHTSA and other governmental Revolving doors into and out of NHTSA are at https://www.careforcrashvictims.com/assets/CFCV-MonthlyReport-March2014.pdf
The American people can, and must, get to the bottom of this death and disability producing mess to protect themselves.
Lou
October, 2014
Finally! After 6 years in Office, the Obama Administration will conduct a review of NHTSA. This is after nearly 200,000 crash deaths, about 800,000 serious crash injuries, and $5 Trillion in losses in the U.S.A. under the Obama Administration. For data sources see http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/812013.pdf and http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/812055.pdf
Note: This was announced by a unnamed official, not President Obama.
But it remains to be seen whether or not we now get the hope and change we were promised and voted for in 2008 and 2012? Lou
October, 2014
Sean Kane has published additional important information.“Among the damning evidence in the trial were five test videos showing the re-designed ET-Plus end terminal catastrophically failing and a November 9, 2004 email authored by a retired Trinity vice-president, Steven Brown. He proposed changing the guide channel from five inches to four to make the terminal eight pounds lighter and save $2 a unit, without telling the FHWA, as it is required to do: “If [the Texas Transportation Institute] agrees, I’m feeling that we could make the change with no announcement.” TTI, an arm of Texas A & M University, invented the ET-2000 and the ET-Plus, and was responsible for conducting the testing that would be submitted to the federal government in support of its application for approval. TTI agreed to the change without telling the government, and drafted a test report that failed to reference the change to the guide channel and other changes to the original design, first approved in 1999….
William Boynton, a spokesman for the New Hampshire DOT, noted that “at this time, the NHDOT has no direct evidence that the terminal is ‘flawed.’”
On June 8, an Ohio couple was southbound on I-93 in Ashland New Hampshire, when the sedan left the roadway and struck an ET-Plus guardrail, which penetrated the Subaru Impreza at the passenger side wheel well, slicing the driver and her companion in the legs and knees. Both sustained serious injuries, requiring long hospitalizations and have undergone multiple surgeries to repair the damage.
Boynton said the NHDOT was aware of that crash.”
September, 2014
“Any life lost is one too many; anything that we can do to improve in a situation like this, we’ve got to do,” David Friedman, interim head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), tells TIME in his first interview since the hearing.”….“The agency was granted just over $10 million to investigate defects in 2014, a paltry sum considering the 250 million vehicles on the road in the United States. Overall, the agency devotes about $130 million annually to vehicle safety research—a total that outrages auto-safety advocate Ralph Nader. “It’s about the cost of three months of guarding the US embassy in Baghdad,” Nader tells TIME.”….
“Nader, along with others, says he is skeptical, but ultimately, external pressures may make the question of whether NHTSA officials want to change irrelevant.
“I think the agency will change,” says Joan Claybrook, who ran the agency during Jimmy Carter’s presidency. “If it doesn’t they’re in trouble.””
Nader is right to be skeptical and Claybrook is right they will be in trouble if the agency does not change for the better.
The latest NHTSA Org Chart (copy attached) still shows ex GM officials in positions of power and influence.
And all those people who have long been on the chess board of power and influence over the past decade have only changed positions – not their stripes – as they moved through revolving doors. See some of the major chess board positions and people involved in the failures to protect American lives over the past decade identified in attached March Monthly Report.
Remember there are still millions of unfixed defective vehicles on America’s roads and streets endangering us all.
Lou
September, 2014
Senator Markey has written an excellent article on the tragedies of crash deaths and serious injuries that have resulted over the past decade — and the hidden dangers that all Americans have faced and continue to face. Senator Markey wrote:
“In 2004, GM and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) had a secret meeting in which the attendees inexplicably agreed that cars that stalled on the road all by themselves was not necessarily a safety problem. Ten years later, the consequences of that meeting have been laid bare — the deaths of at least 21 people from a faulty ignition switch that caused Chevy Cobalts and Saturn Ions to turn off, causing cars to crash and preventing the deployment of airbags that could have saved lives.
NHTSA kept getting reports of fatal accidents caused by mysterious GM engine stalls — it even asked its contractors to investigate two of them in 2005 and 2006. But NHTSA did nothing with these reports, even though both of them found that the airbags did not deploy and that the engine was off at the time of the crashes.
In 2007, NHTSA asked for and received a secret document from GM related to the death of two Wisconsin teenagers. I made that document public for the first time at a May Senate hearing. It included a report by the Wisconsin State Patrol Academy that said that the ignition switch defect prevented airbags from deploying. It also found other examples of the same problem happening in other cars and identified a 2005 GM warning to dealers about the issue. That document correctly identified the safety defect, yet no action was taken by NHTSA” See
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-ed-markey/asleep-at-the-wheel_b_5900530.html
Preponderance of Evidence of NHTSA DUI I have documented people in major positions of power and influence over NHTSA policies over the past decade. To use Deputy NHTSA David Friedman’s term preponderance of evidence see the people, positions, and times of Federal, GM and other industry officials over the past decade. The American people are capable of connecting the dots and judging the guilt or innocence of NHTSA DUI. See https://www.careforcrashvictims.com/assets/CFCV-MonthlyReport-March2014.pdf
