April 26, 2011
Nearly a quarter of a century ago, the National Transportation Safety Board recommended that motor coaches be equipped with seat belts. And for nearly a quarter of a century, bus manufacturers have been quite adept at ensuring that never happens. Compartmentalization, don’t you know. No need. Envelope of safety, and all that.
In August, however, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced a proposed rulemaking that would require new motor coaches to have lap-shoulder belts. Specifically, the new regulation would establish a new definition for motor coaches and amend FMVSS 208, Occupant Crash Protection, to require the installation of lap/shoulder belts at all driver and passenger seating positions, and the installation of lap/shoulder belts at driver seating positions of large school buses. (Six states, Florida, Texas, California, Louisiana, New Jersey and New York, and some municipalities currently require seat belts on school buses.)
April 14, 2011
We all know that car salesmen are whizzes at those back-of-the-envelope calculations on monthly payments and trade-ins, but when it comes to more sophisticated data analysis – they’re not there yet. To wit, Edmund’s most recent foray into numbers crunching: Edmunds.com Finds Uptick of Traffic Deaths Among 51-to-65-Year-Old Men Since 2000 What, you say? Who […]
April 4, 2011
Too bad Martin Truex Jr.’s Toyota NASCAR wasn’t equipped with an electronic throttle. ‘Cause if it did, no way would he have taken that hard hit in the turn at the Martinsville Speedway yesterday. The veteran NASCAR driver emerged from his flaming Toyota unscathed – and puzzled. “We had a throttle stuck wide open – […]
April 1, 2011
It took a hot New York minute for Toyota to announce on its website that it had won a “key” unintended acceleration case. Today, a New York jury in the Eastern District of New York delivered a favorable verdict to Toyota in the case of Dr. Amir Sitafalwalla, who claimed an errant floor mat responsible […]
March 31, 2011
This month, the Insurance Institute on Highway Safety reignited efforts to address the underride problem and petitioned the federal government to “require stronger underride guards that will remain in place during a crash and to mandate guards for more large trucks and trailers.”
The Institute based its latest effort on a study using the Large Truck Crash Causation Study, a federal database of roughly 1,000 real-world crashes in 2001-03. The organization examined crash patterns leading to rear underride of heavy trucks and semi-trailers with and without guards and found that underride was a common outcome of the 115 crashes involving a passenger vehicle striking the back of a heavy truck or semi-trailer. Only 22 percent of the crashes didn’t involve underride or had only negligible underride, which they indicated was consistent with prior studies. The study noted that “In 23 of the 28 cases in which someone in the passenger vehicle died, there was severe or catastrophic underride damage, meaning the entire front end or more of the vehicle slid beneath the truck.”
March 23, 2011
Fuel “spit-back” through the filler neck has been a longstanding problem in several Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep models, caused by the Inlet Check Valve (ICV) mounted in the fuel tank. Despite some limited recalls and at least one extended lifetime warranty, this defect, which first surfaced in 2001, continues to plague a number of models. Tens of thousands of vehicles are outside of any campaign, forcing owners to pay for a repair that requires replacement of the entire tank assembly.
Numerous Dodge Durango owners have complained to NHTSA and Chrysler. Others have commiserated about “spit back” on Internet blogs and enthusiast websites, and posted dramatic video footage showing geysers of gasoline or significant fuel dumps into the concrete around the pump.
The video below was captured by David Trebacz, the owner of a 2007 Dodge Durango.
February 24, 2011
Dear Toyota:
Why did you buy back Tim Scott’s 2007 Lexus RX? We mean, really? You gave him a bunch of different reasons, but he doesn’t believe you. (We’re finding it a little hard to swallow, too.)
Awaiting your reply,
SRS
Here’s Tim Scott’s story. In early December, as NHTSA and NASA were putting the finishing touches on their reports saying that there is nothing wrong with Toyota’s electronics or software, Scott experienced an unintended acceleration event in his 2007 Lexus RX350, on his way home from the gym. Here’s the narrative that Scott, 46, the chief financial officer for the International Union of Police Associations, wrote:
February 22, 2011
Today, Safety Research & Strategies called on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the industry to correct a longstanding safety problem: seat heaters that injure disabled drivers and passengers. With no government or industry-wide standards, manufacturers have installed a variety of seat heater systems – some that reach temperatures significantly above human tolerances or […]
February 17, 2011
Last week, NHTSA pitched its two technical tomes on Toyota unintended acceleration at a pack of reporters, declared that the automaker’s electronics were fine, and ran away. Our esteemed Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood then made the media rounds, grousing that the critics hadn’t read the report, which leads us to ask: Did Ray?
We’ve been reading it and re-reading it, and conferring with a wide range of technical experts – some of whom have extensive experience in engine management control design, validation and testing. And we gotta tell you, Ray, we aren’t ready to buy our kid a new Toyota.
Far from exonerating Toyota electronics, the reports by NHTSA and the NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) confirm the paucity of the automaker’s safety diagnostics. The NESC team also identifies how the two signals in the accelerator pedal position sensor can be shorted in the real world – leading to an open throttle (aka, tin whiskers). Hell, NESC found the potential in three pedals – that’s a pretty significant percentage in a very small sample. Tin whiskers are such a serious issue that NASA has devoted considerable resources to studying them. They have wreaked electronic havoc on everything from medical devices to weapons systems and satellites. Yet, the NESC report treated the discovery of tin whiskers in a third of their pedal sample like a dead end, instead of a promising avenue of study.
February 8, 2011
In his characteristically colorful way, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood told reporters today: “We enlisted the best and brightest engineers to study Toyota’s electronics system, and the verdict is in. There is no electronic-based cause for unintended, high-speed acceleration in Toyotas.” LaHood issued this scientific proclamation based on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration “rigorous” […]