Category: Automotive

Time to Examine Rear-Facing Infant Seat Safety Improvements?

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That an infant seat should be placed in the rear-seat of the car, facing rearwards is an article of faith, preached by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the American Academy of Pediatricians. Manufacturers only make rear-facing infant seats.

On its website, NHTSA advises:

“A rear-facing car seat is the best seat for your young child to use. It has a harness and in a crash, cradles and moves with your child to reduce the stress to the child’s fragile neck and spinal cord. Your child under age 1 should always ride in a rear-facing car seat.”

But Transport Canada researcher Suzanne Tylko presented data at the biennial Enhanced Safety of Vehicles conference that questions the certainty of that policy. Transport Canada has been at the forefront of child motor vehicle crash safety research. In particular, the agency’s dynamic testing has yielded important insights. In this three-year study, TC tested 131 child restraints in 85 motor vehicle crash tests. The vast majority were rigid barrier tests on rear-facing infant seats, secured by a three-point belt conducted at speed of 48km/h; 11 were conducted at 56 km/h; and seven were conducted at 40 km/h. TC also tested seats in offset deformable barrier tests, conducted at 40 km/h. (Fourteen tests involved convertible seats installed facing the rear.) Continue reading →

Taking the Burn Out of Seat Heaters

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Back in February, SRS wrote to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and National Mobility Equipment Dealers about the problem of car seat heaters and drivers with lower body sensory deficits, such as paraplegics and diabetics (See It’s Time to Make Seat Heaters Safer). Many consumer heating devices that make direct contact with the body, such as electric blankets, are designed with maximum temperature limits, but not so in the auto industry. In the absence of any regulation or industry standard, vehicle manufacturers have implemented a variety of designs, some of which lack an automatic cut-off and reach maximum temperatures that can produce third-degree burns or both.

For occupants who have limited or no sensations below the waist, these designs are dangerous. The medical literature has been documenting severe burns suffered by disabled drivers and passengers from car seat heaters since 2003, and nationally recognized burn care specialists joined our effort to engage adapters, regulators and manufacturers in averting these preventable injuries. Continue reading →

Hindsight’s Still 20-20: The Toyota Quality Report

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We here at the Safety Record Blog are getting caught up on our blogging after a hectic  before-the-holiday-weekend week attending Edmund.com’s Let’s Blame it on the Drivers conference and releasing our response to the NHTSA and NESC report on Toyota. If you haven’t had a chance to read this special edition of The Safety Record, you can catch it here.

And son of a gun if Toyota didn’t release its long awaited quality report on the same day! (A little awkward, we know.) This panel of Very Serious People outside of the company was charged with the task of evaluating just what went wrong:

“The Charter directs the Panel to conduct a thorough and independent review of the soundness of these processes and provide its assessment to Toyota’s senior management.” Continue reading →

Keeping Automakers’ Sales Truly Safe: The Edmund’s Conference

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SRS was in attendance, Tuesday, as the cyber sales team at Edmund’s ushered in a “new chapter in the conversation between government, the auto industry, safety advocates, academics and consumers, marked by thoughtful, data-driven contributions from all.”

It was written amid cocktails and at more sobering and highly-scripted venues inside the Newseum, the 250,000 square-foot monument to journalism in Washington DC.  If Edmund’s is going to author the new chapter on safety, consumers beware.

In the conference brochure, Edmund’s CEO Jeremy Anwyl tells participants that the Toyota Unintended Acceleration crisis was the impetus for the meeting: “Edmunds.com watched as a shallow conversation made international headlines. We felt uneasy about the lack of real discussion taking place among smart people with the power to change laws, introduce technology and educate drivers.” Continue reading →

NHTSA-NASA Reports Show That Toyota Electronics are Deficient – Can Lead to Unintended Acceleration: Toyota’s Involvement Exposed in New Documents

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REHOBOTH, MASS – The Safety Record, Safety Research & Strategies’ watchdog publication, published its new findings on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) reports on Toyota Unintended Acceleration.  Following extensive review of those reports and previously unavailable documents recently released by NHTSA and interviews with numerous scientists and experts, the authors found that:

  • – NASA identified numerous failures in Toyota electronics that could lead to unwanted acceleration.
  • – The report was heavily influenced by Toyota and its experts, including Exponent.
  • – The reports were narrowly construed examinations of limited vehicles and components.
  • – Much of the reports remain shrouded in secrecy. Continue reading →

What Got Stuck in NHTSA’s Craw

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More than a year ago, NHTSA whomped Toyota upside the pocketbook with a $16.4 million fine for failing to recall 2.3 million vehicles with defective accelerator pedals. It was just slightly more than chump change to billionaire Toyota, but at the time, everyone gasped at the largest civil penalty the agency had levied against an automaker –ever.

As described by Toyota, the so-called sticky pedals, manufactured by supplier CTS, were slow to return to idle and could become stuck in a partially depressed position. Just for the record, we’d like to remind our readers that the SRS has always argued that a sticky pedal has nothing to do with unintended acceleration–which is not to say that this problem isn’t a safety defect — it just doesn’t lead to the type of unintended acceleration incidents reported by drivers.  But NHTSA and Toyota have always enjoyed conflating the two, without offering any evidence that sticky pedals cause unintended acceleration events. It gave the appearance that all concerned were actually doing something about the problem. Continue reading →

Updated Toyota Report: The Recall Ate My Floormat!

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Well, here we are, 14 months after Toyota began admitting to the world that it could no longer design a simple pedal, a floor mat or a floor pan, by launching Phase I of many phases of a recall to replace all-weather floor mats that may entrap the accelerator. Initially, the recall 90L, the mother of all floor mat recalls, was meant to switch those sneaky little All-Weather Floor Mats out of 3.8 million Toyota and Lexus vehicles.  (See  Toyota All-Weather Floor Mat Entrapment) Continue reading →

Bus Safety Buzz Kill

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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.) Continue reading →

Car Salesmen and Math

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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 are all of these hot-rodding grandfathers dying shamelessly at increasing rates? And more importantly, how come whenever we’re stuck behind one of them, they seem to be driving so slowly?

“According to NHTSA’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), the number of annual traffic fatalities for men 51-65 rose by almost one-quarter from 2000 to 2009 (the last year for which data is available). In comparison, annual fatality figures for all male drivers during that time declined more than 20 percent. Fatality figures for female drivers also declined 20 percent during the ten-year period,” the press release said.

“We spend a lot of worthwhile energy teaching younger generations about the virtues of staying safe on the road — especially when it comes to the dangers of drinking and driving — and based on the stats, it looks like they’re getting that message,” said Edmunds.com CEO Jeremy Anwyl. “But the baby boomer generation is not heeding the same advice they’re giving to their children. There needs to be a longer look at why there are more traffic deaths within this age group while all others are seeing fewer.”

Excellent point! Statistician Randy Whitfield has done just that, and it appears that the problem is not over-the-hill hypocrites climbing behind the wheel, half-cocked on too many martoonies. It’s data analysis that fails to employ standard statistical methodologies and controls.

Whitfield analyzed driver death rates for the U.S. population in standard age ranges from 50 through 69, to fully overlap the Edmund’s study group, using NHTSA’s FARS data for and Federal Highway Administration drivers’ licensure data, both from calendar years 2000-2009. Whitfield found that the increase in deaths is related to the increase in the number of licensed drivers. Male licensed drivers in the 59-60 age group rose by 33 percent over the study period, but increase in death was actually slower at 21 percent.

Whitfield’s takeaway?

“Edmunds asked why there are more traffic deaths in 2009 compared to 2000 within the 51-65 age group, while all other age groups have fewer deaths. An answer that does not involve recourse to unmeasured, hypothetical driver attitudes toward safety is that there are so many more drivers in this age group in 2009 than there were in 2000. Conversely, part of the explanation for the reduction in male driver deaths in other age groups is simply that the size of that subpopulation has remained relatively stable. This demographic bulge in the population age structure is just what gave the ‘baby boomers’ their name.”

Read Whitfield’s full analysis

This “analysis,” in advance of Edmund’s exciting May conference, entitled “Truly Safe? Debunking Myths and Crafting Effective Policies for Car Safety,” is a preview of the let’s-blame-sucky-drivers mantra that manufacturers have leaned on since the first Model-T rolled off the assembly line. And, in truth, there’s speeding, refusing to buckle up, texting while driving, and any number of ways that drivers mortgage their safety behind the wheel. But are these the myths in need of debunking?

Sticky Throttles Everywhere!

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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 – not sure why,” Truex said to The News Virginian.  “There’s a lot of big chunks of rubber flying around out there. I don’t know if one of those got up in the carburetor linkage or what, but just never had any warning. Went to let off to go into three and it was stuck to the floor. Not much you can do at that point here.”

We’re not sure all the theories have been explored. Did he check his floor mat? Was NASA consulted?

The commentators noted that Truex appeared as though he couldn’t slow his vehicle down – and maybe lost his brakes. Those guys apparently hadn’t got the memo that the brakes on a Toyota always overcome the throttle. They are two separate systems, and a stuck throttle and simultaneous brake failure isn’t possible. We’re serious. Toyota’s told that one to a lot of customers who complained that they crashed because their Toyota or Lexus took off on them and braking didn’t help.

[flashvideo file=video/2011_MartinsvilleNASCARCrash.flv image=”video/2011_MartinsvilleNASCARCrash_Preview.jpg” /]

Now we know that a race track is not I-95, that a NASCAR professional is no muddled blue-hair, and that the vehicle in question had a mechanical throttle instead of the vaunted, never-to-be defeated ETCS-i.

And yet. And yet, Truex’s observations – no warning, happened too fast to avoid a crash – ring more bells than a Jehovah’s witness.