Category: Regulation

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 →

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.

IIHS Asks NHTSA for Stronger Underride Rule

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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.” Continue reading →

Another Attack of the Killer Floor Mats: Sarasota Edition

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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: Continue reading →