WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has issued interim regulatory guidance prohibiting commercial drivers from texting while operating a commercial vehicle.

The agency published guidance on the ban in late January under a regulation that generally restricts the use of “additional equipment and accessories that decrease the safety of operation of commercial motor vehicles.” In its Federal Register notice, the FMCSA said that an electronic device for texting would be considered additional equipment or accessories. The agency was also clear that the guidance notice did not prohibit the use of cell phones in commercial vehicles.

In issuing the recommendation, the FMSCA also cited its October study, ‘‘Driver Distraction in Commercial Vehicle Operations,’’ which investigated the prevalence of driver distraction in crashes, near-crashes, lane departures and other safety-critical events. The naturalistic driving study concluded: “The odds of being involved in a safety-critical event is 23.2 times greater for drivers who are texting while driving than for those who do not. Texting drivers took their eyes off the forward roadway for an average of 4.6 seconds during the 6-second interval immediately preceding a safety-critical event. At 55 mph (or 80.7 feet per second), this equates to a driver traveling 371 feet, the approximate length of a football field, including the end zones, without looking at the roadway. At 65 mph (or 95.3 feet per second), the driver would have traveled approximately 439 feet without looking at the roadway.”

The notice follows a September petition by Advocates for Highway Safety requesting that the FMSCA prohibit or restrict any electronic device that could divert commercial drivers’ attention. Advocates had asked the FMCSA to immediately open a rulemaking to review the most current research on distracted driving, determine which electronic devices and technologies distract commercial drivers and then consider prohibiting them. The Advocates petition says anything that takes drivers off their primary task must be considered – cell phones and hands-free remotes, global petitioning systems, texting and entertainment devices – for a ban or a severe restriction. The group had asked that first responders, such as police and emergency medical technicians be exempted and that exceptions be made for operators using electronic devices to summon help during an emergency. Finally, the petition requested that any rule apply to all commercial motor vehicle drivers – including bus drivers covered by the FMCSA – and that violations automatically result in an Out of Service order – meaning the driver is prohibited from operating a commercial truck for a specified period of time.

Henry Jasny, Advocates’ general counsel said that the notice is only a partial response and doesn’t address the multitude of electronic distractions that are part and parcel of the cab in a commercial vehicle.

“At least the train is moving in the right direction, but it doesn’t go far enough,” he said. “Our petition went far beyond texting alone. Texting is only the tip of the iceberg. It’s the distraction of all the devices for work and infotainment. Drivers’ attention should always be on the road and not looking at maps or responding to messages even if its voice activated.”

The agency said that it would address the use of other electronic devices while driving in a later rulemaking.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Eleven years after the National Transportation Safety Board recommended that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration establish performance standards for school bus occupant protection systems in all types of collisions, the NTSB removed it from the top-ten list of most wanted safety improvements.

The NTSB voted to drop “Enhanced Protection for School Bus Passengers” from the annual list last month, after NHTSA issued a Final Rule that increased seatback height, and established performance specifications for voluntarily installed seat belts.

The agency’s actions actually fell short of the NTSB’s original recommendations, issued in 1999. At that time, the NTSB urged NHTSA to develop performance standards for school bus occupant protection systems that would work in all crash types. Further, and more importantly, the NTSB wanted NHTSA to require such systems in all newly constructed school buses, “including those in child safety restraint systems, within the seating compartment throughout the accident sequence for all accident scenarios.”

NHTSA’s response has been much more limited.

By the NTSB’s timetable, older bus riders have not fared even half as well. In 1999, the NTSB also issued recommendations to improve occupant protection in motor coaches. The board’s original suggestions to NHTSA included a redesign of motor coach window emergency exits for easy egress, stronger roofs and the establishment of an occupant ejection mitigation standard. In 2008, the NTSB rated NHTSA’s progress as “yellow,” indicating slow progress forward, because in 2007 the agency performed a full-scale frontal crash test for research purposes and followed up in 2008 with some roof strength and sled tests. But in lieu of any agency action, the NTSB ranked this most-wanted as red, meaning no real progress.

The designation is ironic, given that U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood has jump-started the agency’s motorcoach safety effort with the November release of an ambitious action plan. Emanating from an April 30 directive to develop an integrated approach to motorcoach safety, the plan encompasses seven actions that would have the greatest impact on improving motorcoach safety. Among the regulatory responsibilities for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) are rulemakings to require electronic on-board recording devices on all motorcoaches to monitor drivers’ hours and fatigue; and to propose prohibiting texting and limiting the use of cellular telephones and other devices by motorcoach drivers. NHTSA would be required to initiate rulemaking to require the installation of seat belts on motor coaches; rulemaking to improve tire performance and establish performance requirements for roof crush and for ESC on motorcoaches.

The NTSB also listed as yellow the prohibition of cell phone use by motor coach drivers. Any such regulation would fall under the jurisdiction of the FMCSA. To date, the agency has only studied the issue in determining if it should establish a regulation limiting cell phone use by commercial drivers. In July 2009, it released the results of a naturalistic driving study it commissioned the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute to do. The FMSCA has taken a more aggressive stance against texting while driving. (See FMCSA Issues Texting Ban; Advocates Say It’s a Good First Step, p. 7 )

Other slow-moving perennials on the top-ten list were: preventing collisions by using enhanced vehicle safety technology and preventing medically unqualified drivers from operating commercial vehicles.

The NTSB said that the FMSCA was not making enough progress in the areas of requiring electronic onboard data recorders for commercial vehicles and in promulgating rules preventing motor carriers from operating if they put vehicles with mechanical problems on the road or unqualified drivers behind the wheel.

Washington, D.C. – The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has leveled the second largest fine against a lead paint violator and prohibited the company from selling children’s toys and products in the U.S. until it creates a comprehensive safety plan.

In early March, Daiso Seattle LLC, of Seattle, Wash. and Daiso California LLC, of Hayward, Calif. agreed to pay $2.05 million in civil penalties, after the CPSC alleged that Daiso violated the Consumer Product Safety Act (CPSA) by distributing children’s products with high lead paint and phthalate concentrations and toys with small parts for children under three years of age, without proper warning labels. Under the consent decree, Daiso agreed to a take a number of steps to ensure product safety in the future.

Daiso’s fine was just a hair under the highest penalty ever levied against a manufacturer by the CPSC for violating the old limits on lead paint in children’s products. In June, Mattel/Fisher Price agreed to pay a $2.35 million penalty. In total, the agency has imposed nearly $8 million in civil fines. Under these settlements, manufacturers are allowed to deny the CPSC allegations that they knowingly violated a 30-year-old law limiting the lead content in paint to .06 percent in paints and surface coatings. Nonetheless, advocates say that the settlements send a strong message to industry about the CPSC’s newfound intolerance for companies that import products that harm children.

“I feel there’s a renewed commitment to safety in these actions,” says Nancy Cowles, executive director of the advocacy group, Kids In Danger. “It won’t be a slap on the wrist – you won’t be able to ignore the requirements. You are actually going to have to pay fines. That injunction (against Daiso), they’ve never done that before. That’s an interesting part of the whole package.”

Under the consent agreement, Daiso must complete a number of steps before the CPSC will allow the company to resume selling children’s products. The company must conduct a product audit to determine which merchandise requires testing and certification; establish and implement product safety testing; retain an independent product safety coordinator; a third-party testing entity and toxicologist and/or an accredited testing laboratory; create guidance manuals for managers and employees on how to comply with product safety requirements; and establish recall procedures. Finally, the company has to demonstrate to the commission that it understands its safety obligations and is in compliance with all federal laws.

Since June, the CPSC announced that it had levied fines of more than $3.1 million against 13 children’s product manufacturers, importers and sellers to settle the federal lead paint ban. The settlements covered toys, children’s metal jewelry, children’s pens, metal water bottles, pencil pouches, sunglasses and children’s Halloween pails and baskets recalled in 2007 and 2008 that also violated the 1978 limits on lead in children’s products.

The companies are: RC2 Target Corp. of Minneapolis, Minn., $600,000; OKK Trading, of Commerce, Calif. $665,000; Schylling Associates Inc., of Rowley, Mass., $200,000; Excelligence Learning Corp. of Monterey, CA, $25,000; Cardinal Distributing Co. Inc., of Baltimore, Md., $100,000; Dollar General Corp., of Goodlettsville, Tenn., $100,000; Family Dollar Stores Inc., of Matthews, N.C., $75,000; Hobby Lobby Stores Inc., of Oklahoma City, Okla., $50,000; First Learning Company Ltd., of Hong Kong, $50,000; Michaels Stores Inc., of Irving, Texas, $45,000; A&A Global Industries Inc., of Cockeysville, Md., $40,000; Raymond Geddes & Co, of Baltimore, Md., $40,000; and Downeast Concepts Inc., of Yarmouth, Maine, $30,000.

These settlements reflect violations under the more lenient lead limits dictated by a 32-year-old regulation. Under the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008, products sold to children must be manufactured under more stringent guidelines. In August, the allowable amount of lead in surface coatings of children’s products dropped to .009 percent. The commission has not yet enforced the new, tougher, lead limits under the CPSIA; the lead testing provision is currently under a stay, designed to provide temporary relief to manufacturers while they gear up to adhere to the new regulations.

Rachel Weintraub, Director of Product Safety and Senior Counsel at Consumer Federation of America, called it “the dawning of a new CPSC.” She praised the commission not only for holding companies responsible for complying with the law, but for “creatively” imposing sanctions such as the injunction against Daiso.

Weintraub also pointed out that the CPSC recently broke with past practice, issuing a general warning to the public about the dangers of baby slings about two weeks before manufacturer Infantino LLC recalled more than 1 million baby slings. Infantino announced the recall on March 24, after three infant deaths were reported. The U.S. CPSC issued a general warning on March 12, “advising parents and caregivers to be cautious when using infant slings for babies younger than four months of age, based on a survey of incident reports from the past 20 years and open investigations into at least 14 deaths associated with sling-style infant carriers, including three in 2009.”

“The recall wasn’t ready to be announced, but they wanted to warn the public about baby slings, and that is not something that we have seen for a long time – using their ability to communicate hazards to the public,” Weintraub said.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – After nearly seven years of complaints and quietly failed Toyota SUA investigations, the floodgates have opened. The last two months have brought more recalls, unprecedented press coverage, political and corporate theater, lawsuits, three new NHTSA investigations and a dribbling of old documents that better fill-in the outlines of the history.

Safety Research & Strategies, which has been chronicling the history of this issue, testifying before Congress and advocating for consumers – including the families of five individuals who died in a crash in which SUA was alleged – has been following every development. We’ve gathered them here:

The Recalls

Toyota now has launched six recalls involving sticking accelerator pedals or floor mat entrapment since 2005. Three are currently active and expanding: 09V388, 10V017 and 10V023. These recalls cover 16 different Lexus, Toyota and Pontiac models (made at the joint GM / Toyota plant), from 2004-2010. The first recall, 09V388, announced in October, and the third recall, 10V023, announced on January 27, cover the 2007 – 2010 Camry; 2005 – 2010 Avalon; 2004 – 2009 Prius; 2005 – 2010 Tacoma; 2007 – 2010 Tundra; 2007 – 2010 ES350; 2006 – 2010 IS250 and IS350; 2008-2010 Highlander; 2009-2010 Corolla; 2009-2010 Venza; 2009-2010 Matrix; 2009-2010 Pontiac Vibe. Recently, Toyota added the Highlander Hybrid to this recall.

These models are slated to get a trimmed accelerator pedal or a new shortened accelerator pedal assembly and new accessory floor mats. In addition, the Camry, Avalon and Lexus were also scheduled to get a brake to idle override. In February, Toyota announced that it was adding the 2005-2010 Tacoma; the 2009-2010 Venza and the 2008-2010 Sequoia to those models getting a brake-to-idle-override feature.

Recall 10V017, announced on January 21, addresses a “sticky” accelerator pedal issue, for components manufactured by CTS of Elkhart, IN. This campaign covers certain 2009-2010 RAV4; certain 2009-2010 Corolla; 2009-2010 Matrix; 2005-2010 Avalon; certain 2007-2010 Camry; certain 2010 Highlander; 2007-2010 Tundra; and 2008-2010 Sequoia.

In late February, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo forced Toyota to step up its recall game by offering at-home pickup and return of recalled vehicles, free rental cars, and reimbursement for transportation expenses. Toyota extended these services to all its customers, when attorneys general all over the U.S. began clamoring for the same deal. Toyota apparently did one better for Chinese RAV4 owners in the Zhejiang Province. In late January, Toyota’s sticky accelerator pedal recall was extended to 75,000 RAV4s in China. The Zhejiang Administration of Industry and Commerce is reported to have negotiated an agreement with Toyota in which the automaker would offer the same basic package to RAV4 owners in that province, along with any lost wages incurred because of the repairs.

Where’s NHTSA?

During two weeks of Congressional hearings, U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood declared that he would be “getting into the weeds” on the electronic causes of sudden unintended acceleration. And, in late March, the agency announced that it was launching two new investigations. The National Academy of Sciences would be heading a 15-month inquiry into sudden unintended acceleration and automotive electronic vehicle controls. The study will focus on mechanical, human and electronic causes. The agency also launched a separate probe to specifically study sudden unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles with help from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, to look at software, hardware, electronics and hazard analysis. A third investigation, conducted by the DOT’s Inspector General, will examine NHTSA’s past eight investigations to determine if they were properly conducted. The agency also has been consulting with outside electromagnetic interference experts from Great Britain, Keith Armstrong, whose specialty is EMI, and Antony Anderson, an electrical forensic engineer, on the possibility of EMI to Toyota’s electronic throttle system.

On April 5, NHTSA levied the maximum fine — $16.4 million — against Toyota for failing to report the sticky accelerator problem to the agency with in the 5-day statutory reporting period. This resolves Timeliness Query (TQ) 10-002, which the agency opened on February 16. Toyota has two weeks to contest the fine. That leaves two other open investigations into Toyota’s recall responses: TQ10-001, which addresses the timeliness of the floor mat recalls, and Recall Query 10-003, which covers 7.7 million 2004-2010 Lexus, Toyota and Pontiac vehicles. RQ10-003 requests additional information from Toyota to evaluate whether the scope of the recalls “is sufficiently broad.”

“The agency is seeking to determine whether Toyota viewed the underlying defects too narrowly as interference between the accelerator pedal and the driver’s side floor mat, or as a lever design (including materials) or performance problem giving rise to a sticking accelerator pedal, without fully considering the broader issue of unintended acceleration and any associated safety-related defects that warrant recalls,” the RQ states.

One notable feature of this investigation is NHTSA’s new broadened definition of sudden unintended acceleration: “unintended, unrequested, uncontrollable, and/or unexplained acceleration of a subject vehicle, and to the failure of a vehicle’s engine to return to idle when the driver takes his or her foot off of the accelerator pedal or raises his or her foot to a position where the engine ordinarily would return to idle, regardless of the alleged or determined cause of the acceleration or failure to decelerate or return to idle and regardless of the speed at which the event allegedly took place. Unintended acceleration thus is broader than interference between the accelerator pedal and driver’s side floor mat and sticking accelerator pedals with levers made of a particular plastic(s).”

NHTSA says that its is also seeking information about how Toyota viewed complaints, how it assessed potential electromagnetic interference and why some models of vehicles with electronic throttle control were not included in the recalls.

More Theories Emerge

Into a root-cause vacuum of knowledge the last two months, outside scientists and engineers have floated a variety of theories on the non-mechanical sources of Sudden Unintended Acceleration. They included: electromagnetic interference; the use of tin as the main ingredient in solder material (tin whiskers); single event upsets, electronic “latch up,” and other software problems.

At the February 23 House Sub-Committee on Oversight and Investigations, Energy and Commerce Committee, Dr. David Gilbert, an automotive technology professor from Southern Illinois University Carbondale presented a preliminary research report performed for Safety Research & Strategies, which examined the failsafe detection capabilities of electrical circuitry, particularly, at the Accelerator Pedal Position Sensor (APPS) and the voltages and associated wiring circuits. Gilbert’s electronic diagnostic tests showed that there are conditions in the Toyota and Lexus models tested in which the failsafe redundancy from the APPS, the primary signal input that controls acceleration, in the Electronic Throttle Control System (ETCS) can be lost without detecting an error code or employing a failsafe mode.  This important finding is the first analysis to demonstrate that problems can exist in which Toyota’s Electronic Control Unit (ECU) doesn’t detect a critical system failure. Loss of a signal redundancy, the safety net for electronic control systems, should always be detected in order to trigger a failsafe mode. Once the redundant signal is lost and undetected as an error, the vehicle is in an unsafe condition.  The purpose for setting an error code and putting the vehicle into a failsafe mode is to protect the driver from any further potential scenarios in which the ETCS behaves in a manner inconsistent with driver input. Further Gilbert demonstrated that when the Toyota ETCS loses signal redundancy, a small voltage spike can cause wide open throttle. The single most significant finding is that Toyota’s assertion that its electronics will always detect a failure is incorrect. This forms the basis for further study of potential electronic failures that might lead to sudden unintended acceleration.

An anonymous individual submitted the single-event upset (SEU) at sea level theory via a letter with accompanying technical papers to RQ10-003. The self-described “Concerned Scientist” raised the possibility of cosmic rays disrupting electronics at sea: “this phenomenon is a ‘soft’ error that is not detectable except through redundant electronic and communication systems.” The e-mail to NHTSA recall investigator Jennifer Timian explained that SEUs had traditionally occurred at high altitudes in aircraft and spacecraft and that the avionics industry has successfully countered these events through highly redundant electronics and software. The automotive industry has yet to truly anticipate SEUs. The reason SEUs are now relevant to the automotive industry is because electronics have gotten smaller and the required voltage levels have dropped significantly, therefore making electronics more susceptible to cosmic radiation even at sea level. SEU is one possible explanation for sudden unintended acceleration (SUA) in Toyotas.

EMI expert Keith Armstrong has staked a position that EMI and/or a series of other factors could cause undetectable short-circuits and faults capable of triggering an SUA event. Armstrong also enumerated the possibilities of malfunctions caused by lead-free soldering that leads to a well-known phenomenon called “tin whiskers.” The elimination of lead for environmental purposes means that solder is now mostly tin:

“All sorts of new possibilities arise for short-circuits and open-circuits, and intermittent shorts and opens, mainly on printed circuit boards (PCBs) and mainly associated with small-footprint integrated circuits (ICs), especially ball-grid arrays (BGAs). These will grow out of soldered joints and can contact other conductors, causing short-circuits between PCB copper traces and the pins of connectors.”

The tin can also exude microscopically thin “whiskers” which can carry enough current to short-out electronics, Armstrong says.

Another possible cause is a malfunction in an integrated circuit called “latch-up.” Latch-up occurs when a path is inadvertently created between two power supply rails, forming a parasitic structure that acts as a short circuit.

SUA: The Spectacle

There have been four Congressional hearings on NHTSA and Toyota on February 23 and 24 and on March 2 and 11. These lengthy interrogatories were conducted by three House committees: the Energy and Commerce Committee’s Sub-Committee on Oversight and Investigations and Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection, the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and the Committee on Energy and Commerce and one Senate committee, Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.

The hearings featured consumers, advocates, DOT managers and Toyota executives. The witnesses from Toyota included TMC President Akio Toyoda, Shinichi Sasaki, Toyota Executive Vice President; Takeshi Uchiyamada, Toyota Executive Vice President; Yoshimi Inaba, President/CEO Toyota North America and Jim Lentz, president of Toyota Motor Sales. U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and NHTSA Administrator David Strickland represented the government regulators. Safety advocate witnesses included SRS President Sean Kane along with Professor David Gilbert of Southern Illinois University Carbondale, retired NHTSA Administrator Joan Claybrook, and Clarence Ditlow of the Center for Auto Safety.

The hearings themselves produced little new information and a lot of blustery promises from DOT and Toyota to get to the bottom of the SUA problem. The committee investigations have brought into the public arena information contained in Toyota internal documents showing that Toyota had fielded some 37,900 speed control complaints and that 70 percent of those lie outside the recalled populations. Other documents showed that executives and union officials alike had been expressing concern about slipping quality since 2006. Other emails and presentations showed that Toyota considered its relationship to NHTSA investigators to be critical in controlling the outcome of defect investigations. The Congressional investigating committees also posted an Issue Evaluation memo by Steve Chan of the Office of Defects Investigation confirming that in 2003, NHTSA had considered investigating electronic throttle problems in Camry vehicles. This investigation did not materialize.

Legal Maneuvers

On March 25, class-action attorneys gathered in a federal courtroom in San Diego, where a panel of judges will decide whether to consolidate the myriad of Toyota SUA cases and which judge will be assigned to preside over them. At the hearing, the automaker said that it was embroiled in 235 lawsuits. The vast majority – 138 – are class actions; a few are related to the timeliness of the recalls, filed on behalf of individuals, and about 97 are products liability actions.

In addition, Toyota is the subject of a federal grand jury probe in the Southern District of New York. The company has said that it had received a subpoena in early February requesting documents relating to sudden unintended acceleration and the Prius braking system. The Los Angeles office of the Securities and Exchange Commission also subpoenaed SUA documents to the Japan-based Toyota Motor Corp. and the Torrance, CA-based Toyota Motor Sales USA.

The documents of former corporate counsel Dimitrios Biller were among the topics discussed during the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing. Biller has accused the automaker of withholding and destroying evidence in rollover lawsuits. He departed Toyota in September 2007 with a severance package totaling nearly $4 million in wages, legal expenses, and a $2.3 million lump severance payment for emotional distress. In addition, Toyota forgave a loan in an unspecified amount that it made to Biller in 2005.

Edolphus Towns sent a letter to NHTSA asking questions about the automaker’s Books of Knowledge, compendiums purportedly containing, among other things, damning information about the automakers acknowledgement of design issues and countermeasures, by component and vehicle. References to these so-called Books of Knowledge appeared in documents produced under a committee subpoena to Biller. In a letter to Yoshimi Inaba, CEO of Toyota Motor North America, Towns asked him to respond to e-mails such as this June 2005 correspondence to Toyota executive Webster Burns, regarding the Greenburg SUA lawsuit:

“When this lawsuit was threatened, no one was surprised. This issue [sudden unintended acceleration] had been the subject of a number of meetings and the exchange of a number of documents between TMS and TMC, (did anyone ever gather and organize all those documents and memorialize the “meetings”? If so, were [sic] are the documents and information about the meetings?) [emphasis indicates Biller's comments] and the possibility of a class action lawsuit was used as one way to try to get TMC to work on a series of proposed countermeasures.”

Towns posted some of the Biller documents online. But they were yanked from public circulation shortly thereafter.

Toyota’s Tactics: Attack and Deny

As the pressure from Congress, the media and consumers has ratcheted upwards, Toyota has employed a variety of strategies to contain the issue. Underneath the high-profile media campaign of Toyota and its customers professing their love and commitment for one another, Toyota is executing a number of other simultaneous plays: stay the-floor-mats-and-accelerator-root cause course; vociferously attack its critics; and plead ignorance with customers who have experienced a sudden unintended acceleration incident.

The first tack has driven the other two. Toyota executives have continued to maintain in a number of settings that they are absolutely confident that vehicle electronics play no part in any of the reported sudden unintended acceleration incidents. At the Congressional hearings in late February and early March, Jim Lentz wavered ever so slightly. But for the most part, Toyota has not retreated from that stance.

For customers who continue to experience sudden unintended acceleration in their Toyotas, the result as been supreme frustration. As it has from the inception of the problem, Toyota insists that it can find nothing wrong with the vehicle and has blamed customers complaining of an SUA event or, in other words, called them liars.

An example of the former is Michael Teston, a 2006 4-Runner owner from Maaumelle, AR, who experienced an SUA event in a parking lot that resulted in a property-damage crash. In view of witnesses, the vehicle surged forward, hit a pole, and began hopping as the rear tires continued to spin. The engine maintained wide-open-throttle until the ignition was turned off. In a February 3 letter to Teston, Gulf States Toyota, Inc., noted that during the inspection, the driver’s floor mat was in place and properly secured and there were “no codes stored in the computer to indicate any product concern or failure.” Instead, it blamed its own brand accessory pedals that had been installed by a Toyota dealership: “Our Technical Specialist noted that aftermarket pedal covers were installed on the brake and accelerator pedals that increased the length of the pedals, which could have contributed to the accident described.” How they could have contributed was left undisclosed — Teston’s vehicle was not equipped with a suspect all-weather floor mat.

An example of the latter is Elizabeth James of Eagleton, CO, who crashed in her 2005 Prius after it raced out of control on Interstate 70 at 90 miles per hour. James attempted to apply the brake and the emergency brake, while looking for a safe place to crash her vehicle, but was unable to stop the vehicle. She eventually steered her runaway Prius through the woods, hit a shed, and landed in a river. She still suffers long-term injuries to her legs and back and stomach as a result of the crash. After James attempted to recoup $15,000 in medical costs from Toyota, she received a letter from the company blaming the incident on excessive brake wear: “We are sure she believes that her vehicle accelerated on its own; but our inspection of her vehicle did not reveal any evidence to support her allegations.”

Nearly 100 consumers have so far reported to NHTSA that they have experienced a sudden unintended acceleration event after receiving the recall fix. Consumers who have contacted SRS say that technical service personnel from either the dealership or Toyota have inspected their vehicles out of their presence and returned them saying that there is nothing wrong with the vehicle. Many of these consumers, now steeped in information about the problem, have asked to see copies of the test reports outlining what diagnostics were performed and the results. They have been consistently denied this information by Toyota personnel, owners have reported to SRS.

With its back in the corner beside a pile of accessory floor mats and bum accelerator pedals, the automaker has gone hard after the dissenting voices of Dr. David Gilbert, Safety Research & Strategies, ABC News and other news media that have questioned the company line.

Toyota appears to have honed its attack message using the results of an online survey conducted by Opinion Outpost in early March or late February just before they did a webinar attacking Gilbert’s research. The survey featured Dr. Gilber, ABC and SRS featured very prominently. The poll, offered to screened, paid respondents, asked them to judge the credibility of Gilbert, Sean Kane of Safety Research & Strategies and Brian Ross of ABC News. It started with: “Prior to taking this survey, had you heard anything about Sean Kane’s report or Professor Gilbert’s test?”

And it proceeded to lengthy and specific questions assessing the respondents’ reactions to a variety of statements, for example:

“Toyota Motor Corp. is rebutting the findings of a study presented in a Congressional hearing and on ABC News that claimed to present evidence of a “design flaw” in Toyota’s electronics that could cause sudden unintended acceleration. The company says that this was a “parlor trick” that relied on manipulation of the wires and electronic system in a way that is “extremely unlikely” to ever occur in reality, and it could be done just as easily with vehicles from several competitors.”

“The American people deserve the truth about the safety of their cars, not biased studies by trial lawyer consultants who stand to make millions suing Toyota. The facts are: Toyota and its dealers are working around the clock to make things right for its customers. More than one million cars have already been repaired. And, a world-class engineering firm has conducted a comprehensive review of Toyota’s electronics. Their interim report confirms that our fail-safe systems work.”

“Sean Kane, a paid consultant for plaintiffs’ lawyers suing Toyota, and David Gilbert, an academic working for him, deliberately deceived Congress and the American people.”

“While Sean Kane claims to be an independent safety expert, he is the owner of a for-profit company that serves as a paid consultant for the plaintiff lawyers that are currently suing Toyota. Despite what he says, he is not working for the best interest and safety of the American people.”

“Sean Kane, the owner of Safety Research & Strategies Inc. who testified during the Congressional hearings, is a paid consultant for trial lawyers who are suing Toyota, not a “safety expert” advocating for consumers.”

The language of this survey has echoed throughout Toyota’s offensive plays. On March 11, Toyota sent a letter to ABC President David Westin, demanding an apology for a story reported by Brian Ross on Dr. Gilbert’s study that the network aired on the eve of the first Congressional hearing. The letter hits all of the themes captured in the online opinion poll – Kane, Gilbert and their reports are tainted by litigation, ABC fabricated its test and together they are misleading Congress and the public. For example, Toyota General Counsel Christopher Reynolds writes that “the American public and the U.S. Congress were seriously misled” by ABC, Kane and Gilbert. And he takes the network to task for concealing “the fact that Professor Gilbert’s work was financed by Sean Kane, a paid advocate for trial lawyers involved in litigation against Toyota.”

Toyota dealers have also pressured local news affiliates who have aired stories about Toyota SUA.

But Dr. Gilbert has come under the harshest attack. Gilbert, a professor of automotive technology with 30 years of experience in electronic diagnostics, began his own inquiry into possible weaknesses in Toyota’s electronic throttle system out of a personal concern – he owns a Tacoma. His preliminary report concluded simply that Toyota’s repeated claim that the redundancy in the system made it impervious to an undetectable error was not true. Gilbert actually first approached Toyota technical staff to discuss his findings.

At the February 23 House Energy and Commerce Sub-Committee on Oversight and Investigations, Lentz said that Toyota would work with Gilbert to investigate Toyota SUA. Instead, Toyota used that promise to engage in some close-quarter combat with the automotive technology professor. Rather than dispatch its technical team to Carbondale for scientific inquiry, Toyota’s litigation counsel Vince Galvin, with well-known defense firm Bowman & Brooke and engineering consultants Exponent showed up at SIU. Galvin treated Gilbert to hours of deposition-style questioning, and attempting to show him why floor mats were the root cause. Galvin asked him questions such as: Do you feel guilty for impugning Toyota after testing only four cars?

Toyota has used Exponent, a firm that has been paid hundreds of millions of dollars to defend automakers, and has allocated “unlimited funds” to the company according to Lentz’s congressional testimony.

First, Exponent was hired to produce a report concluding the automaker’s contention that its electronics are inviolable, which Toyota executives offered to Congress. Then, Toyota paid for a second Exponent report to try to blunt the conclusions of Gilbert’s preliminary report. While the company was able to duplicate Gilbert’s results in tests, Exponent claimed that the scenario Dr. Gilbert describes in his report “would be highly unlikely to occur naturally.” And in classic Exponent style, the company redefined what Gilbert’s report said and proceeded to say why their construct wasn’t likely to lead to SUA.

Toyota, which had donated $100,000 to construct a Transportation Education Center at SIU, also put pressure on Gilbert through its connections to the university. Two Toyota managers—Terry Martin, manager of customer quality for Toyota Motor Manufacturing Indiana Inc., and Neil R. Swartz, corporate manager for North American Parts Operations, Toyota Motor Sales USA—resigned from the school’s automotive technology department advisory committee as the cash-strapped university struggles to maintain corporate donations to its applied technology division.

What’s the Story?

In order to solve the Toyota SUA problem, there has to be a consensus, one there is a problem, and two, what the problem is. To that end, shaping the narrative around the Toyota Sudden Unintended Acceleration becomes critically important for all of the stakeholders, from consumers to Toyota, which is fighting hard to salvage its reputation and sales and to build a defense against an increasing number of class action and personal injury lawsuits. A recent Bloomberg National Poll released in late March showed that Toyota may be losing control of its story. The survey results show that more than four in ten American consumers would definitely not buy a Toyota. The automaker received an unfavorable rating of 36 percent, the highest of all automakers in the poll.

Up until the Santee crash that killed a California Highway Patrol officer and his family, Toyota controlled the plot line: sudden unintended acceleration in its vehicles was a driver problem or a floor mat issue; its electronic throttle system was robust and infallible. Once more players, including SRS, began to look closely at the incidence data, this story was challenged. Floor mats simply could not explain all of the experiences consumers were reporting, and the media began to publish and broadcast stories raising the possibility that electronics might be to blame. While Toyota, with its near-daily defensive press releases and news conferences has led the pushback to nudge the narrative back in line, they have found takers in the media.

Many in the mainstream press who have jumped on the story have a rather shallow understanding of automotive defects, history, statistics or the role of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and their ignorance produces some interesting results.

For example, on March 23, CNN ran a story about obtaining a Toyota “internal memo” that proved that Toyota knew that the Camry had electronic throttle problems in 2002. Investigative reporter Drew Griffin told viewers: “The document is called a ‘Technical Service Bulletin’ and was given to CNN by a group of attorneys now seeking a nationwide class action lawsuit against Toyota.” TSBs are public documents, filed with NHTSA by regulation and Griffin didn’t need attorneys to hand over the “internal document;” he could have Googled it. This particular 2002 TSB for electronic throttle surging had long-ago been noted as part of the public record.

One of the dominant counter themes is: There is No Electronic Problem, Only Human Error and Mass Hysteria, and its corollaries, Toyota Equals Audi and Audi Was Exonerated. These editorials and news stories posit that reports of Toyota SUA are nothing more than a driver error and a modern-day re-enactment of the Audi sudden acceleration controversy.

One can make that case, as long as one sticks to the surface of some facts. Like Audi, lots of consumers complained about SUA incidents and like Audi, these complaints were the subject of a network news story that itself became a story about how not to replicate an auto defect for television cameras. Like Audi, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has not found an electronic cause for SUA in Toyotas– yet.

None of these similarities should lead anyone to conclude that either Audis or Toyotas were without safety defects. Both automakers filed multiple Part 573 defect and non-compliance reports related to these sudden acceleration complaints.

Between 1982 and 1987, Audi launched six recalls to address the problem. The first two attempted to fix what Audi had characterized as the driver-error problem by moving the accelerator and brake pedal positions. Recall 82V037, for example, added an accelerator shield to prevent floor mat entrapment.

In 1987, Audi launched three more recalls for Audi 5000 and 4000 vehicles from the 1984-1986 model years, for worn idle stabilizer units. As Audi explained to its customers: “The idle stabilizer has the purpose of maintaining uniform engine idle speed by regulating air flow under different operating conditions, such as variations in engine temperature, and on/off cycling of the air conditioner or power assist pump. Excessive idle stabilizer wear causes engine idle fluctuations which increase with the usage of the car. If a worn unit is not replaced in a timely fashion, the engine idle could ultimately see-saw so severely that it may surprise a driver who is not acquainted with the vehicle’s condition and fails to apply the brake. Under these circumstances, there is a risk of a collision in a confined space with the possibility of injury.”

A sixth recall for 251,000 1978 to 1987 Audi 5000S vehicles added a brake-shift interlock – which requires drivers to depress the brake pedal before shifting out of the Park position.

A key difference between the two is their throttle controls. The Audi 5000 of the 1980s employed a cable. Toyota’s electronic throttle consists of a complex system of sensors and microprocessors. This has led to a broad spectrum of Toyota and Lexus speed control complaints across multiple models and model years. It has also led to SUA incidents under varied and much different circumstances than the Audi incidents – SUA at high speed and at times when the driver already has the brake depressed.

Nonetheless, that narrative offers Toyota a useful – though false – equivalence.

More on Toyota SUA

Toyota: Real Stories

NEW YORK, NY— Toyota ended the old year trying to decisively shut the door on sudden unintended acceleration (SUA) problems in its Toyota and Lexus vehicles, but it’s unlikely that the automaker’s troubles are gone with 2009.

A one-car crash in Dallas, Texas that left four dead the day after Christmas may be yet another incident to punch a hole in Toyota’s floor mat interference theory. The four occupants of a 2008 Toyota Avalon died after the sedan inexplicably went off the road, crashed through a fence and landed upside down in a pond. Investigators have already ruled out the floor mats – which were found in the trunk – as the cause.

Safety Research & Strategies, which has been tracking Toyota SUA, continues to review incidents that can’t be explained by floor mat interference, including one which a Toyota dealer witnessed.

One New Jersey owner of a 2007 Avalon described multiple instances of the vehicle accelerating of its own accord. In the first incident, the driver was able to slow the Avalon with brakes, and stop it by shifting into neutral as the engine raced to maximum RPMs. An initial check by the dealer didn’t reveal any problems. The most recent incident ended with the dealer witnessing the out-of-control vehicle engine and overheated brakes – with no floor mat interference. The owner was driving on the highway when the vehicle began to accelerate on its own. Despite brake pressure and a shift into neutral, the Avalon kept revving uncontrollably. He immediately headed to the nearby Toyota dealership by shifting between Drive and Neutral with the engine at full throttle.  He pulled into the lot with the Avalon revving and the brakes smoking. The dealer service technician tried to physically move the pedal, but was unable to stop the vehicle engine from revving. The dealer contacted a Toyota corporate representative, who authorized replacement of the throttle body, accelerator pedal and the associated sensors and paid for the labor and a car rental for the owner.

The replacement part repair – and an event witnessed by Toyota – is another new wrinkle in the ongoing investigation into sudden unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles and the automaker’s response to the issue, going back seven years. Toyota has religiously stuck to pedal interference as the root cause. The only “parts” it has ever offered to replace was a floor mat or carpet and a shortened accelerator pedal.. The emergence of a more substantive repair raises new questions about what Toyota knows about this problem and how candid it has been with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the past.

The Avalon was one of 3.8 million vehicles Toyota recalled in October for sudden acceleration problems that the automaker has insisted was caused by floor mats inadvertently jamming the accelerator pedals of its vehicles. In November, Toyota announced that it would reconfigure the shape of the accelerator pedal to remove the risk of floor mat entrapment by first offering to cut down the current design. In the Spring Toyota would replace the accelerator pedal assembly with a shortened version. For the ES350, Camry, and Avalon, the automaker said that it will change the shape of the floor surface to increase the space between the accelerator pedal and the floor. Vehicles with Toyota or Lexus brand floor mats will receive newly-designed replacement driver- and front passenger-side all-weather floor mats. And Toyota would install a brake override feature on the Camry, Avalon, and Lexus ES 350, IS350 and IS 250 models only. Toyota did not explain why other affected models was not getting this safety feature.

The recall was big enough to push Toyota to the top of a list it didn’t want to be on: automakers with the most recalled vehicles in 2009.

On the upside for Toyota, disgruntled ex-corporate counsel Dimitrios Biller’s explosive allegations of withholding evidence in about 300 rollover cases has ended with a whimper – for at least some litigants. E. Todd Tracey of the Tracey Law Firm in Dallas was hoping to use some of Biller’s documents like a crowbar to re-open 17 rollover cases. But just before Christmas, he asked a federal judge in Marshall, Texas to dismiss the case, based on the contents of four boxes of internal materials Biller claimed would prove his allegations. Last summer, Biller, who handled Toyota’s rollover cases for more than four years, sued his former employer in a Los Angeles federal court, alleging that the automaker routinely hid or destroyed evidence. Several thousand documents were delivered to the Texas court, where they remained under seal. Tracey pulled the plug after Biller showed him a duplicate set of the documents. But, other attorneys with similar intentions are still proceeding with their inquiries.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – After decades of successfully maintaining the status quo, motor coach manufacturers and operators are about to be regulated as part of a concerted approach to improve motorcoach safety.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has released its Motorcoach Safety Action Plan, which includes rulemaking to make these buses safer and to better qualify their drivers initiated by NHTSA and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

Agency data show that over the past decade, crashes have killed an average of 19 motorcoach occupant fatalities each year, in addition to pedestrians, drivers, and passengers of other vehicles involved in these crashes. Driver fatigue, vehicle rollover, occupant ejection, and operator maintenance have been major factors in these fatalities and injuries.

According to the plan, the National Transportation Safety Board “identified driver-related problems as root causes responsible for 56 percent of the motorcoach crashes it investigated.” In 13 percent of the cases, the NTSB identified the condition of the vehicle as a root cause. A second study by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute cited driver error is a factor in 31 percent of all motorcoach crashes. FMCSA’s Bus Crash Causation Study found that the bus was the critical cause of the crash in about one-half of the cases, with driver error a “primary factor nearly 80 percent of the time.”

The plan emanates from an April 30 directive from U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood to develop an integrated approach to motorcoach safety. DOT then identified seven actions that would have the greatest impact on improving motorcoach safety. Among the regulatory responsibilities for the FMCSA are rulemakings to require electronic on-board recording devices on all motorcoaches to monitor drivers’ hours and fatigue; and to propose prohibiting texting and limiting the use of cellular telephones and other devices by motorcoach drivers.

NHTSA would be required to initiate rulemaking to require the installation of seat belts on motorcoaches; to improve tire performance; and to establish performance requirements for roof crush and for ESC on motorcoaches.

LaHood also charged NHTSA with expanding its research on crash-avoidance warning systems, improved glazing and window retention techniques and fire safety. The agency is also expected to develop enhanced emergency egress requirements, with special attention to children, older people, and people with disabilities. These ambitious goals are on a fast track. According to the plan, much of this is to be accomplished in the next two years.

WASHINGTON, D.C – On the eve of a rare non-compliance public hearing, Transportation Collaborative, Inc., a New York school bus company, agreed to complete by September, 15 recalls campaigns dating back to 2001 and to pay a $20,000 fine.

NHTSA abruptly cancelled an October 23, 2009 public hearing to determine if TCI had met its obligations to notify owners and to remedy defects related to a slew safety failures – ranging from minor infractions, such as a misplaced mirror use label, to serious violations, such as seat anchorages that didn’t meet the minimum standard — in buses built by U.S. Bus, Inc.

Over a six-year period, ending in 2007, U.S. Bus Corp filed 21 defect and non-compliance reports to the agency. It had agreed to complete the campaigns, and filed quarterly reports, but recorded no real progress in making any substantive repairs. Then, in November 2007, U.S. Bus “sold” its assets to TCI, another bus company located about 15 miles away. After the transfer, the agency began to investigate the outstanding recalls and the ownership of both companies. The agency discovered that it was merely a paper transfer among common owners, motivated by an attempt to skirt their recall responsibilities. NHTSA tentatively concluded that TCI was on the hook to finish the recalls.

According to a settlement agreement signed on Oct. 23, TCI was required to file a revised defect and noncompliance information report for the 15 undone recalls to NHTSA’s Recall Management Division by Nov. 13, including a description of TCI’s remedy and a plan for reimbursing any owner who incurred costs trying to fix the problem. NHTSA reserved the right to request that TCI send the agency a complete remedy kit with instructions to determine if the remedy is sufficient.

“Failure to correct a deficiency is considered breach of this Agreement and Order, unless TCl can show that the vehicle owner was sent the remedy kit or owner notification letter and failed to remedy the vehicle,” the agreement states.

For six of the recalls, TCI had until the end of November to provide NHTSA with a separate report for each recall “documenting successful installation and testing of the remedy in a full vehicle or a vehicle body that is identical, in pertinent respects, to that of the affected vehicles.”

TCI was also required to send a notice of the noncompliances or defects to all owners, purchasers, and dealers of the affected vehicles, except those that TCI could document as having had the remedy performed.

It appears as though many, many TCI customers received notices. New documents filed to satisfy the settlement agreement show that U.S. Bus didn’t actually make any repairs in some of the most serious instances. For example, Recall 05V-255 required U.S. Bus to fix improper or missing welds from the restraining barrier located in front of the forward-most seat of the Sturdibus HD model. Recall 05V257 required the company to make repairs to the glass retention gasket on the rear emergency door windows, to comply with the FMVSS 217 Emergency Exits and Retention and Release retention force requirements. The company’s latest defect filings show that not one vehicle in those recall populations has ever been repaired.

U.S. Bus had previously sent all of the typical recall paperwork to the agency – including a copy of the owner notification letter. But given the seriousness of the defects and the population of occupants in the affected vehicles – school children – one can’t help but wonder why no owners demanded repairs. NHTSA may have concluded that U.S. Bus didn’t actually send any notice to owners – the settlement agreement required TCI not only to file a copy of the materials used to inform owners of affected vehicles, it also mandated that TCI supply a list of the recipients of the notices, the VIN numbers of the affected vehicles, and the date the notices were sent.

TCI must again file its six quarterly reports, and if the company has not repaired at least 50 percent of the vehicles by Sept. 30, it will be required to report the poor remedy rate to NHTSA and to launch another campaign. Once the final recall reports are filed, NHTSA will decide if TCI has finally fulfilled its recall obligations – any work the agency deems undone will have to be completed, according to the agreement.

In exchange for the fine, NHTSA agreed to make no formal determination on TCI’s failure to implement the recalls. But the agency kept a second, monetary threat in reserve: Should TCI fail to perform adequately implement all the recalls, the company will be assessed another $100,000 fine.

ARLINGTON, VA — The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety released its latest ratings for boosters, and out of 60 models gave 15 models high marks and dinged 11 as “not recommended.” Meanwhile, a statistical analysis of the association between booster seat use and the risk of death found that boosters were no better than seatbelts alone in preventing death among 4-8-year-old children.

Researchers T.M. Rice, C.L. Anderson, and A.S. Lee of the University of California, Berkley’s Traffic Safety Center and the Center for Trauma and Injury Prevention Research at the University of California Irvine’s Department of Emergency Medicine conducted a matched cohort study (matching exposed to unexposed persons prior to outcome determination) using 1996-2006 data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System. The sample of 6,006 vehicles included those with two or more occupants in the first two rows of seating, with one or more occupants aged 4-8 years old in which one or more occupants died.

The analysis, published in Injury Prevention, showed that seat belts, used with booster seats, were “highly effective” in preventing death among young motor vehicle occupants. In a severe crash, unrestrained children in the sample were 2.8 times more likely to die than those restrained in seat belts with boosters. The effectiveness for children 6-8 years was slightly less. But the study showed that belts alone were almost as effective: “Unrestrained children were 2.6 times more likely to suffer fatal injury than belted children. The estimated death risk ratio comparing seatbelts with boosters with seatbelts alone was 0.92.”

The researchers concluded that, in looking at the risk of death only, “booster seats do not appear to improve the performance of seatbelts.” They also noted that these results were similar to a 2002 study published in the Annual Proceedings Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine.

The numbers did not lead the researchers to recommend that young children use seatbelts alone because other studies show that booster seats reduce non-fatal injury severity – the abdominal and spinal injuries characteristic of seatbelt syndrome.

“Clinicians and injury prevention specialists should continue to recommend the use of boosters to parents of young children,” the study’s authors said.

IIHS’s second annual recommended booster seat list attempts to help parents and caregivers select the booster seats “most likely to provide good lap and shoulder belt fit in a range of vehicles,” the institute said in a news release about rankings. In its first year, the institute evaluated 41 seats. This latest round covers nearly all models sold in the United States. Eventually, IIHS plans to structure its booster seat ratings like its Top Safety Pick awards, evaluating new models as they are released to the public.

Institute engineers assess each model by measuring how lap shoulder belts fit a “specially outfitted” 6-year-old crash test dummy under “four conditions spanning the range of safety belt configurations in vehicle models. Each booster gets four scores for lap belt fit and four for shoulder belt fit. The overall rating for each booster is based on the range of scores for each measurement,” the news release said.

The IIHS’s best-rated boosters are: the Combi Dakota backless with clip, Recaro Young Sport highback (combination seat), Recaro Vivo highback, Maxi-Cosi Rodi XR dual-use highback, Evenflo Big Kid Amp backless with clip, Eddie Bauer Auto Booster dual-use highback, Cosco Juvenile Pronto dual-use highback, Britax Frontier highback.

The Institute did not recommend: Harmony Secure Comfort Deluxe backless with clip, Combi Kobuk dual-use highback, Evenflo Express highback (combination), Eddie Bauer Deluxe highback (combination), and Evenflo Sightseer highback. Also on the list are 3-in-1s including the Safety 1st Alpha Omega Elite, Alpha Omega Elite, Eddie Bauer Deluxe 3-in-1, Safety 1st All-in-One, Alpha Omega Luxe Echelon, and Alpha Omega.

Half of the boosters that aren’t recommended are 3-in-1s that leave the lap belt too high on the abdomen and the shoulder belt too far out on the shoulder. One seat, the Harmony Secure, has armrests that push the lap belt away from the hips, way out on a child’s thighs. Shoulder belt fit is the main problem for the rest — the Combi, 2 Evenflos, and the Eddie Bauer Deluxe.

Dorel Juvenile Group, the largest US children’s gear distributor, makes three of the most highly recommended boosters and seven of those that aren’t recommended. Dorel seats sell under the names Cosco, Dorel, Eddie Bauer, Maxi-Cosi, and Safety 1st.

These recent developments contradict, in part, earlier findings by researcher Suzanne Tylko of Transport Canada, who reported three years ago that a five-point restraint system is the safest option for children.

Transport Canada measured the performance of booster seats with child Hybrid III dummies representing a 10- and 6-year-olds in full frontal rigid barrier and frontal offset deformable barrier tests. The 6-year-old dummy was restrained in a belt-positioning booster and the 10-year-old was restrained with either a booster or a three-point belt. Tylko and her colleague Dainius Dalmotas tested 77 passenger cars, cross-over vehicles, minivans and SUVs from the 2003-2005 model years, paired with low-back and high-back boosters, high-back boosters with a harness latch and tether and a lap and shoulder belt.

In the tests involving the six-year-old dummy in a lap and shoulder belt, the belt would either slide up into the neck or down to the shoulder, as the dummy pitched forward. In the latter case, some dummies rolled out of the belt entirely—particularly if there was any offset component to the crash—causing the head and chest to hit its lower extremities. Tylko found little difference among booster seats. All of them – unlike three-point belts alone – effectively kept the lap portion of the belt in the pelvic region, and prevented it from traveling into the abdominal cavity. But boosters didn’t do much to protect the child’s chest region, failing to keep them properly positioned in an adult three-point belt.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Fair. A listener. Safety conscious. The safety community was near unanimous in its reaction to the confirmation of David L. Strickland as NHTSA’s new administrator.

“We’re very happy,” says Janette Fennell, of Kids and Cars. “David’s a great guy. Anybody who’s worked on transportation issues knows that he’s a prime player. He’s very nice, very articulate. We have taken many families to meet with him and he’s extremely compassionate. He does not-over promise. He listens and he’s a straight shooter.”

At his confirmation hearing last month, Strickland received a standing ovation before his bosses at the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, where he has worked since 2001. Republican Kay Bailey Hutchinson (Texas) quipped that he got a much better reception than the committee chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), when he arrived late.

Strickland was pelted with verbal bouquets from Rockefeller and former committee chair Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii; the rest of the committee members gently questioned him, mostly about the behavioral issues of impaired and distracted driving. Surrounded by extended family, Strickland returned the compliment, devoting most of his statement to praising others.

A graduate of the Harvard Law School, Strickland worked for the former law firm of Wiley, Rein & Fielding early in his career. From 1996 to 2001, Strickland served the Association of Trial Lawyers of America as the associate director and a lobbyist.

“He is a true consumer advocate,” says Linda Lipsen, Senior Vice President for Public Affairs at the American Association for Justice. “That is his first concern – always. He is very big-hearted and he will come to this job with all the right values. It’s a wonderful appointment. He’s responsible for getting the most comprehensive consumer bill in years (The CPSIA). He just persevered and worked at it diligently. He got a more comprehensive bill than anybody expected. He’s very talented and he’s going to restore to the agency a real commitment to consumers.”

As senior counsel to the consumer protection sub-committee Strickland was instrumental in the writing and passage of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, and the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which ushered in the first major upgrade in the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards in 30 years. Advocates also credit Strickland with keeping important auto safety legislation in the 2005 Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU). Mothers Against Drunk Driving named him Congressional Staffer of the Year in 2004.

“David was such a major part of the safety provisions (of SAFETEA-LU),” says Jackie Gillan, executive director of Advocates for Highway Safety. “The regulations implemented in the Bush administration haven’t met their full life-saving potential, because they have been weak rules. David’s familiar with congressional intent and what the public expects. He is known by the NHTSA staff and the stakeholders. He will be a great asset to (Transportation) Secretary (Ray) LaHood.”

Many advocates believe that the agency has been adrift under a series of short-term administrators, beginning with Nicole Nason. A Bush appointee, Nason had worked as a DOT lobbyist, and as communications director for former Republican Rep. Porter Goss before assuming the leadership of NHTSA. At the time of her appointment, one auto industry lobbyist sniped in a January 2006 news story: “Maybe she has talents not yet obvious to the outside world.”

Likewise, many characterized Nason’s 26-month tenure as under-whelming. In a move that befuddled reporters, Nason prohibited any staffer from speaking to the news media about the agency; she was the only on-the-record source. The agency promulgated a weak roof crush rule complete with a preemption clause, and apparently stopped enforcing regulations, according to an analysis by the Center for Auto Safety. The advocacy group said that the agency collected more than $4.3 million in penalties from late 1995 to early 2006, and then, stopped imposing penalties altogether.

Her successor, David Kelly, was previously Nason’s chief of staff and a program manager at the National Safety Council. He headed the agency for a scant four months, before departing last January with the Bush administration. Senior Associate Administrator for Vehicle Safety, Ronald Medford has been acting deputy administrator ever since.

“He’s terrific. I hope he can revive the agency,” says Joan Claybrook, who served as the NHTSA Administrator in the 1970s. “Very little has been done in the last eight years and we need to have some raw energy and safety orientation injected into the agency. I think he has a real chance of selling his perspective.”

In May, President Obama’s first NHTSA nominee MADD CEO Chuck Hurley withdrew after environmental groups protested, citing Hurley’s opposition to stricter fuel economy standards when he worked for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Strickland has received public endorsements from the Rubber Manufacturers Association and the Governors Highway Safety Association, which urged a quick confirmation. No groups had raised any objections.Strickland’s nomination was voted out of committee on Dec. 17, and the Senate approved it on December 24.

WASHINGTON D.C. – At least a year past a Congressional deadline and several years behind its own schedule, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has proposed a new ejection-mitigation standard that would compel automakers to improve their side airbag designs to fully cover up to three rows of passengers and – perhaps – install advanced glazing.

The proposal would establish a new Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 226 – Ejection Mitigation. The standard would apply to the side windows next to the first three rows of seats in motor vehicles with a gross vehicle weight rating of 10,000 pounds or less. The performance-based standard would institute a compliance test in which an impactor would be propelled from inside a test vehicle toward the windows. The ejection mitigation system would have to prevent the impactor – based on the mass imposed by a 50th percentile male’s upper torso on the window opening – from moving more than a specified distance beyond the plane of the window. Each side window would be impacted at up to four locations around its perimeter at two time intervals following deployment, to ensure that the airbags remain deployed for the beginning and end stages of a rollover.

According to the NPRM, the intention of the test is to:

“mitigate ejections in different types of rollover and side impact crashes involving different occupant kinematics. The test has been designed to represent the dynamic rollover event. The mass of the impactor, 18 kilograms (kg) (40 lb), in combination with the impact speed discussed below, has sufficient kinetic energy to assure that the ejection mitigation countermeasure is able to protect a far-reaching population of people in real world crashes.”

Don Friedman, inventor of the Jordan Rollover System, a repeatable dynamic rollover test, said that the proposal was good – as far as it went.

“It’s not a dynamic test, but it’s consistent with the plans they had laid out,” Friedman said. “And it is consistent with the roof crush standard in that they are proceeding with a simulated static test. It will have useful consequences that will hopefully be supplanted by a dynamic test in the NCAP which will deal with ejection and roof crush issue.”

This rulemaking comes on the heels of the 2007 upgrade to the FMVSS 214 side-impact pole test, which, in effect, mandated the use of side air curtains to prevent head injuries in side impacts. The agency predicts that manufacturers will meet this new proposed performance requirement by making existing side impact air bag curtains larger and able to stay inflated longer. The agency based the test on computer modeling showing that ejections can occur early and late in the rollover event. Under the proposed test, the impactor would strike the targets at two impact speeds and at two different points in time after the side curtain air bag deployed, to ensure that the curtains retain the occupant through all the stages of a rollover.

Under the NPRM, NHTSA could request that manufacturers describe the conditions under which the ejection mitigation air bags will deploy.

“We do not believe conditions need to be specified in the standard dictating when the sensors should deploy; field data indicate that rollover sensors are deploying when they should in the real world,” the agency said.

The ejection mitigation rulemaking was mandated under the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users, the massive transportation bill of 2005. NHTSA was to have issued a final ejection mitigation rule by September 1, 2009, when SAFETEA-LU’s funding expired. The rulemaking was to be part of a broader initiative to reduce rollover crashes and the associated deaths and injuries.

The agency multi-pronged approach included a new rule mandating electronic stability control to improve rollover crash avoidance and a contentious upgrade to the roof crush standard. SAFETEA-LU’s Section 10301 directed NHTSA to complete a rulemaking to reduce complete and partial ejections. The agency’s early planning documents show that it expected to propose occupant containment performance requirement for side windows by 2006.

NHTSA has been studying advanced glazing as an ejection countermeasure since 1995, when it published “Ejection Mitigation Using Advanced Glazings: A Status Report.” The agency issued a second glazing report in 1999 and the following year published an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on anti-ejection glazing. But in 2001, the agency reversed itself. It issued a third report downplaying the benefits of anti-ejection glazing and in 2002 terminated the rulemaking, saying that “advanced glazing appeared to increase the risk of neck injury by producing higher neck shear loads and neck moments than impacts into tempered side glazing.” The agency also turned in high estimates for requiring automakers to install such glazing in front side windows ranging from more than $800 million to over $1.3 billion.

Advanced glazing may rise from the regulatory dead under this proposal. The agency drafted the test procedure to encourage the use of advanced laminated glazing in fixed and in moveable windows in addition to or in lieu of the side curtain air bag. Memphis attorney Patrick Ardis, who has been espousing the advantages of laminated glazing for years and has litigated civil suits that involve ejection, says that automakers should opt to use both, because both are necessary to complete the occupant protection system.

“It’s only about 40 years too late,” says Ardis. “The bottom line is that none of the domestic car manufacturers have had to evaluate the real world performance of side windows or any other fixed windows. All they’ve done is a series of drop tests – tests that go back to the1930s. So far, there’s been this giant disconnect between a 1930s test and horrible performance in the real-world.”

In the agency’s tests, the glazing was pre-broken to simulate the likely condition of glazing in a rollover. Tests of vehicles with advanced glazing resulted in an average 51 mm reduction in impactor displacement across the target locations. In other words, an ejection mitigation window curtain plus advanced glazing resulted in the least displacement of the headform. To encourage manufacturers to enhance ejection mitigation curtains with advanced glazing, the NPRM proposed to allow windows of advanced laminated glazing to be in position, but pre-broken to reproduce the state of glazing in an actual rollover crash.

Attorney Jim Gilbert, who tried the nation’s first windshield pop-out case in the mid-1980s, and a leading specialist in rollover litigation, says that the proposal still constitutes an unnecessary delay. Gilbert’s eventual appellate court victory over an international aftermarket windshield replacement company accused of substandard installation practices led to an industry-wide change. But Gilbert, of the Arvada, Colorado-based Gilbert, Ollanick & Komyatte P.C., hasn’t seen OE manufacturers improve their glazing at all.

“Manufacturers aren’t going to start making improvements unless someone tells them they have to and that some one is either a jury or the government,” Gilbert said.

But he decried the pace of the proposed phase-in, in which manufacturers would be required to have 20 percent of their fleets compliant by September 2014, with full implementation by 2017.

“Twenty percent is already being done,” he said. “Sensors and side curtains have been around since the 1990s. Why aren’t they acknowledging the facts – that this is available. It seems like an unreasonable delay after the decades of delay in the industry.”

The agency is accepting comments on this proposal through January.