July 6, 2015
Flexing its new tough-on-automakers muscle, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration held a rare public hearing last week to highlight Fiat Chrysler’s dismal recall record. The hearing was short, statements were read into the record, and that a large fine will be levied against Fiat Chrysler (FCA) seems a foregone conclusion. It’s another signal that […]
June 23, 2015
Inspector Agrees with SRS: NHTSA Ain’t Right Today, we salute the good men and women of the Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) for putting their official imprimatur on concerns that The Safety Record has been raising for years. The report, released to selected press on Friday, and to the rest of us […]
June 10, 2015
Editor’s Note: A Bus Crash, Litigation, and a Surprising Result is a complex and extraordinary story involving crash deaths, corporate malfeasance, regulatory gaps and litigation that produced significant results – not just for the plaintiffs, but for public safety. Given the length necessary to do this story justice, The Safety Record has decided to publish […]
June 9, 2015
Editor’s Note: A Bus Crash, Litigation, and a Surprising Result is a complex and extraordinary story involving crash deaths, corporate malfeasance, regulatory gaps and litigation that produced significant results – not just for the plaintiffs, but for public safety. Given the length necessary to do this story justice, The Safety Record Blog has decided to […]
June 5, 2015
NHTSA’s Path Forward has some refreshing acknowledgements of the agency’s problems. But it still soft-pedals why they have gone from one defect crisis to another. It is notable what is missing: Any mention of the importance of transparency and acknowledgement of the real depth of the culture that has kept the agency from objectively investigating […]
June 3, 2015
The big take-aways from the second round of Congressional hearings on Takata airbag inflator ruptures and recalls were: No root causes have been definitively identified and may never be definitively identified. Takata is going to cut back on its production of ammonium nitrate – one of several potential root causes of inflator explosions. There was […]
May 27, 2015
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has fined paper-and-pencil-pusher Office Depot $3.4 million for its failure to report defects in its Gibson Leather and Quantum office chairs. The two shared a common problem – a sudden collapse of the seat base and a common retailer with a high resistance to recalls – but had different […]
May 21, 2015
Today, the Department of Transportation announced that it will organize the multi-manufacturer recall of 34 million airbag inflators announced by supplier Takata earlier this week. Just three days earlier, the agency took a victory lap, after finally forcing Takata to launch national – not regional – recalls and to work more closely – under the […]
May 8, 2015
Eight months after a Bristol, RI Toyota Corolla owner petitioned the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to investigate low-speed surges into Toyota Corollas, the agency has denied the petition, concluding: In our view, a defects investigation is unlikely to result in a finding that a defect related to motor vehicle safety exists or a NHTSA […]
April 23, 2015
The New York bankruptcy court that oversaw the massive GM bailout in 2009 has dealt what may be a death knell to all claims for ignition-switch related deaths and injuries in crashes that happened before the bankruptcy. After GM’s massive coverup was exposed, some thought the court would surely feel outraged at being tricked into […]