When we talked about a four door version of Volkswagen’s hot-selling (in Europe, not available stateside) small car, the Up!, one commenter in particular equaled the car to a happy meal container and its owners to baby killers. A small car can be very safe – if its engineers know what they are doing. It just so happens that that little happy meal container is proof of it. It  was elected one of Europe’s safest cars.

Volkswagen’s Up! has been awarded five stars by Euro NCAP, the highest rating the independent European consumer protection organization can bestow.  Wait, it can do one better: Euro NCAP also gave the Up! the 2012 Advanced Award, for the UP!’s City Emergency Braking function. According to Euro NCAP, the Up! is the safest cars in its class.

As a small car, you need to be a little smarter than a dumb tank that simply barges through. The City Emergency Braking function for instance is automatically activated at speeds between 5 and 30 km/ h, and it uses a laser sensor (integrated in the upper area of the windscreen) to scan a space up to 10 meters (33 feet) in front of the Up! According to Volkswagen, the Up! is the only car in its segment that can be equipped with a City Emergency Braking function.

Distracted driving is very much in the news, and so far, cellphones were fingered as the culprits. Now, there is a study that finally identifies the biggest distraction: Passengers. A study by State Farm, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health goes to the bottom of what experts have known for long: Peer passengers increase driver crash risk, especially amongst adolescent drivers. 

The study analyzed a nationally-representative sample of 677 teen drivers involved in serious crashes. Says study author Allison Curry, PhD, director of epidemiology at the Center for Injury Research and Prevention.:

“Both male and female teen drivers with peer passengers were more likely to be distracted just before a crash as compared to teens who crashed while driving alone. Among the teens who said they were distracted by something inside the vehicle before they crashed, 71 percent of males and 47 percent of females said they were distracted directly by the actions of their passengers.”

The researchers found males with passengers were almost six times more likely to perform an illegal maneuver and more than twice as likely to drive aggressively just before a crash, as compared to males driving alone. Females rarely drove aggressively prior to a crash, regardless of whether they had passengers in the car.

Obama! Socialism! Taxes! Jesus! Faith! Guns! Now that you’re paying attention, it’s time for our regularly scheduled programming. A Detroit News article claims that NHTSA is denying any interference on the part of the White House with respect to the Chevrolet Volt fires that resulted from government crash test procedures.

News of the fires only came to light in November, despite the fires occurring in June. NHTSA head David Strickland claims that the White House wasn’t informed until September. A letter sent to three Republican congressmen states that

“shortly thereafter informed the Executive Office of the President regarding the June fire and NHTSA’s test plans to determine if the fire indicated that there is a risk of post-crash fires in Chevrolet Volts. No one from the Executive Office of the President requested or in any way suggested that NHTSA delay public release of information related to the Volt fire,” 

GM previously announced a fix for the Volt’s battery pack and leaky coolant, which is said to have caused the fires. GM has yet to restart production of the Volt since the line went idle in December, and won’t be able to apply the new safety measures to the Volt until some time in February of this year.

The quote is courtesy of John Sedat, professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California at San Francisco, quoted in a CNET article. Let’s get another quote, this one from Dr. Peter Rez at Arizona State:

To call anything based on high energy X-rays ‘low energy’ is worse than 1984 doublespeak

What’s this all about?

It’s called “Z Portal”. Sounds like the title of a second-tier 8-bit Nintendo game, right? Actually, it’s a machine to capture photos like this:

Clearly, the government wants to see your genitalia so badly they are willing to kill you to do it. It’s like having the Son of Sam running the Postal Service.

Quoth CNET:

The origin of the scanners can be traced back to a not-so-obvious source: President Obama’s signature American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, better known as the stimulus bill. That awarded a $27.3 million contract to American Science and Engineering, or AS&E, to build 35 scanners, according to a description at Recovery.gov. Soon afterward, X-ray scanners appeared at the San Ysidro, Calif., checkpoint, sometimes called the world’s busiest land crossing; other locations listed in the specification include El Paso, Texas, Columbus, N.M., and Nogales, Ariz.

Now Homeland Security wants more. The U.S. government convened a “pre-solicitation conference” in Washington, D.C., on November 29, 2011, according to a public procurement document. Another document says “Customs and Border Protection is very appreciative of all the responses received” and plans to publish a formal request for proposals for the next purchase on February 1.

Once the Z Portal is in place at all border crossings, the government will have achieved the dubious goal of succesfully violating everyone who wants to travel to another country. The rationale behind the airport scanners has always been that air travel is a privilege, not a right — but if every method of travel involves a cancer scan, where’s the freedom to travel?

Long-time TTAC readers know that one way to potentially frustrate the scanners would be to travel in a Seventies Chrysler Imperial. But what if the scanner is cranked up high enough to punch through the famous Imperial doors? What will that radiation do to you?

In the ramp-up to the launch of the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf, a great debate seized the engineering community: was Nissan opening itself to problems by not including a active thermal management system for the Leaf’s battery pack, or was Chevrolet’s liquid-cooled approach simply adding unnecessary complexity? Well, thus far, the verdict seems to be in Nissan’s favor. Though Leaf has been troubled by some dissatisfaction with its real-world range, the Volt has endurd the first technical semi-scandal of the plug-in era, when federal regulators found that ruptured coolant lines could cause fires. Now the liquid-cooled approach is hitting its second challenge, as Fisker’s battery supplier A123 Systems is warning in a letter [PDF] that

some of the battery packs we produce for Fisker Automotive could have a potential safety issue relating to the battery cooling system.

Ruh-roh!

In its warning letter, A123 explains

Specifically, certain hose clamps that are part of the battery pack’s internal cooling system were misaligned, positioned in such a way that could potentially cause a coolant leak. Over time, it is possible that in certain rare circumstances, this coolant leak could potentially lead to an electrical short circuit.

There have been no related battery performance or safety incidents with cars in the field. However, A123 and Fisker are committed to safety and are taking immediate, proactive steps to prevent any issue from occurring.

We have developed a confirmed repair for this situation. In the short time since recognizing this potential safety issue, the root cause was quickly identified, a fix has been developed and corrective action is well underway.

In total, fewer than 50 customer cars are involved in this action.

Bloomberg adds that the problem has been caught relatively early, as Fisker is still producing just 25 Karmas per day at Valmet’s contract-manufacturing plant in Finland. Production is scheduled to hit 60 units per day sometime next year. Meanwhile, A123 is also preparing to start supplying batteries to Chevrolet’s Spark EV, so GM is probably breathing a sigh of relief that it’s catching battery problems before that contract starts. Still, these early issues with battery cooling systems are tipping the debate in favor of the cheaper, less-complex passive cooling approach… for now, anyway. When Summer arrives and temperatures rise, we’ll be keeping an eye on the Leaf fleet to see if problems pop up there.

The University of Colorado-Denver looked into fatalities in the 16 states that have legalized medical marijuana and unearthed perplexing results: The states saw an average nine percent drop in traffic deaths since their medical marijuana laws took effect.

“We went into our research expecting the opposite effect,” says study co-author Daniel Rees, a professor of economics at the University of Colorado-Denver. “We thought medical marijuana legalization would increase traffic fatalities. We were stunned by the results.” It even stunned Insurancequotes.com, which printed the story.

Several factors seem to influence this:

• People who smoke dope drink less. The Beer Institute says beer purchases go down by an average of 5 percent after medical marijuana laws are passed.

• Stoned people drive more carefully: A clinical trial conducted in Israel compared the simulated driving skills of people who’d consumed alcohol and those who’d smoked marijuana. The researchers found that alcohol caused these people to speed up their driving, while smoking marijuana prompted the drivers to slow down.

Two weeks ago, the TTAC Black Friday Special was all about Corvette crashes. Not just any Corvette crashes, however. We’re talking about the very special kind of Vette crash that happens when you’re just driving along and… something happens to make you jam that accelerator down and lose control.

What’s that something? Experienced Corvette-ologists know that common provocations to throttle-based havoc include:

• the presence of your daughter’s sexy-ass friends, particularly if one of them is named “Sharona”;
• hearing the chorus of the famous Golden Earring song, “Radar Love”
• but worst of all, when somebody has the son-of-a-bitching nerve to drive up next to you at the stop sign in another Corvette!

From there it all goes downhill… but TTAC is here to help. When Corvettes attack, just click the jump to find out what to do.

Why do Corvettes (and other high-power rear-wheel-drive cars) suddenly “fishtail” under acceleration? It’s simple: The driver sends enough power to the rear wheels that they begin to spin. We intrinsically understand that a spinning rear tire has less accelerative traction, but did you ever consider that when the rear tires are spinning, they aren’t generating very much cornering traction? Imagine that someone is doing a standing burnout in a Corvette. As the back rubber is smoking, you could run up to the Corvette, push against the fender, and move the back end sideways. If you’re strong enough. I’ve seen it done at the midnight-dickweed-street-race events I attended back in the late Nineties. Spinning rear wheels won’t keep the back end in line, if something acts to throw it off.

Most dragstrips are perfectly level from side to side, plus they are straight. So it’s not unusual to see someone smoke from the beginning to the end of the strip without too much trouble. Real roads, however, have curves, and they have camber. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve personally experienced a “fishtail” because I spun the rear tires underway on a road with a lot of camber. The street in front of my subdivision is viciously crowned, and if I’m driving my Town Car on ice there, any rear-wheel spin whatsoever immediately prompts the whole back of the car to slouch towards the Bethlehem of the ditch. There’s a constant force acting on the car, you see, that wants it fall into the ditch. That force is resisted by your tires. When you are driving along a high-centered road, you are actually constantly steering up towards the crown of that road. Lose your traction, and you will find out.

Front-wheel-drive cars have the same problem, and if you’ve ever owned a Neon SRT-4 with a big-boost kit or something similar you’ve seen your nose slide towards the ditch when the front wheels spin. It’s much easier to fix that problem. Take your foot off the throttle and you’ll recover.

Even where the road is relatively flat, you might still be applying some light cornering load to the rear tires of your ‘Vette when they break loose. You might be jockeying for position in the lane, you might have a crosswind, the road may be veering off to one direction or another. In the case of the “Thanksgiving Turkey” video, I think the driver on the right was looking at the one on the left and ever-so-slightly steering towards him as a consequence. People tend to steer the car in the direction of their eyes. That’s why road racers avert their eyes from in-progress crashes. Or it’s why they should, anyway. In practice, half of the time we just drive into the pile and then moan like Nigel Mansell at the next drivers’ meeting.

Alright, so here we are. For whatever eminently avoidable reason, we’ve punched the throttle on our Vette, the back wheels have started spinning, and the view through our windshield has lurched dramatically as the nose of the car points towards a tree/Jersey barrier/schoolbus full of children/thoroughly freaked-out dude in a Chrysler SRT-8. What do we do next?

This is what most drivers do: they wang the steering wheel off in some freaky direction to “save it”, then they jump off the throttle and step on the brake. It’s basic $299 triple-A driver’s-ed training. IF BAD THINGS HAPPEN STEP ON MAGIC SAFETY PEDAL. Taking that course of action causes a few things to happen:

• The rear wheels get their traction back.
• The front wheels get an extra load of traction thanks to the nose pitching forward over them.

Thank God. We’re in the traction zone again! The car is now going to go exactly where it’s pointed, no drama.

Except.

Where’s the car pointed, and which way are the front wheels pointed? Well, we know the car is pointed at something bad. That’s what freaked you out in the first place, right? So now you’re still pointed at the tree, except instead of fishtailing past it with the car headed generally straight, you’re now in an excellent position to drive right into it. And sometimes that’s exactly what happens.

If the driver has applied any steering motion during the fishtail, however, when traction is regained the Vette will make a max-g dart in the direction of the steering. That’s not trivial. If the driver was steering away from the skid, he’s going to shoot straight into the wall, pronto. If he’s been counter-steering, the car will dart back in the direction from whence it was sliding. This is where the oscillation begins.

Look at some of the Vette videos and see how the car just starts rocking wildly back and forth. That’s the driver trying to keep up with the oscillation he’s set in motion. The Vette heaves in one direction, so he throws a wild steering correction in. It’s too much steering, so the traction limit of the front wheels is briefly exceeded. When the steering recovers, the Vette flings in that direction and the guy swings the wheel again.

This video shows a mild form of it at the 0:40 mark, just to show that this issue isn’t exclusive to Vettes or high-powered cars:

The waterboxer 911 slides the tail, so the d00d cranks the wheel too hard to correct. When he gets his traction, that “correction” yanks him right off the track.

And here’s a Vette vid from Black Friday showing the oscillation/correction:

Note, also, the fact that the telltale flash of brake lights precisely coincides with the moment that the car gains traction at the nose and biffs its traveling companion.

So now we understand what not to do and why we don’t do that thing. What’s the correct course of action? It’s something you’re going to have to practice to get right. If you have a winter season where you live, congratulations. If not… go out when it rains, do it at low speeds in a large parking lot with nothing to hit, or join the SCCA and go autocrossing.

We practice like this:

Alone on an empty road with nothing to hit, we increase power until we feel the rear wheels start to spin. Listen for the revs to suddenly jump as the traction limit is exceeded. Needless to say, you’re going to have to turn “Radar Love” down for this one, and listen to the engine. Alternately, you can watch the tach, but that’s the second choice by far.

When you know the rear wheels are slipping, practice modulating them in and out of traction with your throttle. I do this in my Lincoln a dozen times a day when it’s raining or snowing. Break them loose, bring them back, break them loose again. Get a sense of what that feels like. With that mastered, you’re ready for the next step.

Do the same thing while steering lightly around a curve or driving on a crowned road. When the back end slips, apply the gentlest correction possible and restore your traction, using the techniques of throttle reduction you learned in Step One. Don’t ever touch the brakes. Well, I take that back. If you’ve pitched off the road at high speed and you’re headed for a giant iron spike aimed right at your head, you can hit the brake just so the coroner finds you that way.

I’ve just written a nice reminder poem for you to help you remember, along the lines of what children used to be taught in Catholic School:

I must, I must, I must not brake
Or I will die before my children wake

For my younger readers:

Middle pedal mashing may seem merry
But you’ll lose that chance to nail Katy Perry

If you want better rhymes, tell TTAC to pay me more.

Apply mild correction, reduce the throttle until you feel the back tires grip. If the car swerves a bit, relax your hands on the wheel and let it catch up with itself. A Corvette, like most modern cars, wants to go straight and if you will TAKE YOUR STUPID HANDS OFF THE WHEEL FOR A SECOND it probably will. By “take your stupid hands off” I mean “relax your grip”, but ask anybody who’s driven on a track with me: I love to play catch and release with the wheel. And I love to play games with the lives of my passengers. (This statement is not endorsed by NASA, TrackDAZE, BMWCCA, ACNA, or the LPSG.) Seriously, though, your car knows the right way to go and it will self-settle a mild oscillation. Try it yourself, in the parking lot, in the snow, and see.

So there you have it! Just remember to be careful. It’s like bullfighting: the more you do it, the longer the odds become against. Even the best get it wrong:

On my raceboat, we had one of those big red things pictured above. It was supposed to switch everything off when things went awry. The NHTSA now proposes something similar for cars with keyless ignition. It is intended to stop the car immediately in a panic situation. Of course it won’t be as intuitive as the big red switch pictured above. After all, the solution comes from Washington, DC.

Bloomberg reports:

“U.S. auto-safety regulators proposed standardizing keyless ignitions to allow drivers to turn off cars faster and more easily in incidents of unintended acceleration following Toyota Motor Corp.’s record recalls. “

If course, this is not entirely true. The NHTSA writes:

“In this NPRM, we (NHTSA) address safety issues arising from increasing variations of keyless ignition controls, and the operation of those controls. At issue are drivers’ inability to stop a moving vehicle in a panic situation, and drivers who unintentionally leave the vehicle without the vehicle transmission’s being ‘locked in park,’ or with the engine still running, increasing the chances of vehicle rollaway or carbon monoxide poisoning in an enclosed area.”

Basically, what the proposed rule wants is to standardize the time you need to hold down the Start button for a power-off. As the owner of a runaway (or hung) computer, this may be intuitive to you. In a senior moment, while you are trying to figure out which pedal is the brake and which is gas, pushing the start button to stop may be entirely confusing … but we digress.

Currently, you simply hold down the button and wait a while. This while will be standardized.  The NHTSA proposes:

“to standardize the operation of controls that are used to stop the vehicle engine or other propulsion system and that do not involve the use of a physical key. We are also proposing to require that an audible warning be given to any driver who: attempts to shut down the propulsion system without first moving the gear selection control to the “park” position (for vehicles with a “park” position); exits a vehicle without having first moved the gear selection control to “park” (for vehicles with a “park” position), or exits a vehicle without first turning off the propulsion system.”

As far as the button-push goes, the SAE thinks anywhere between half a second and two seconds is good enough. Not good enough for the NHTSA. It suggests that:

“the driver must hold the control for a minimum of 500 milliseconds to shut down the propulsion system, whether the vehicle is moving or stationary, and the propulsion system must shut down within 1 second of the initial push of the stop control.”

But wait, there is more. While you are panicking, the system first gives you a lesson in proper shutdown procedures. The NHTSA wants to:

“Add a requirement for an internal alert to the driver when s/he requests propulsion system shut down without first placing the gear selection control in ‘park.’ “

 Because, you know, the car can roll away after you panic-stopped and forgot that gear lever. THAT may be the real dangerous thing: Driverless cars!

The National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), seeking:

“All records, documents, internal and external documentations between the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and General Motors between June 1, 2009 and December 1, 2011. These requested records shall include communication regarding the Chevrolet Volt, also known as the Chevy Volt.”

That’s a lot of paper if the request will be granted.

The NHTSA is investigating three fires in the battery packs of GM’s Chevy Volt following collision tests. The NLPC alleges that the NHTSA “may have withheld information of this potential safety problem from the public for several months.”

Says a NLPC statement:

“The United States government still owns a significant stake in GM. There’s an obvious conflict of interest in a government agency investigating a government-owned company. Moreover, the NHTSA cannot be impartial because it has become a cheerleader for electric vehicles.”

According to its website, the “NLPC promotes ethics in public life through research, investigation, education and legal action.”

GM is close to having a fix for the Volt battery that had a tendency to go up in flames after a crash. Meanwhile in Washington, senators are getting the grill ready.

Reuter’s Detroit bureau reports that repairs under consideration involve laminating circuitry in the battery pack, a reinforced case for the battery, and leakproofing the coolant system.

The good part is that the fix could be performed at GM dealerships, which, says Reuters, “could spare the automaker the cost and reputation damage from a more involved safety recall.” In other words, GM would not have to take the car back. Currently, Volt customers drive around with loaners while their Volts remain parked.

Reuters heard the solution before GM senior management did. Management will be shown the fix by the end of the week. The cost is said to be less than $9 million for GM, or about $1,000 per Volt. If NHTSA regulators want a more involved solution, it will be more expensive.

GM spokesman Rob Peterson had not heard of the fix: “To the best of my knowledge, we’re not discussing exact solutions at this point,” he told Reuters.

While GM is dousing the flames, DC is preparing a grilling.

The regulatory subcommittee of the House Oversight panel wants to hold a hearing next month. It wants to know why it took nearly six months for the matter to become public and whether the committee should have been advised. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened a probe of the Volt’s battery pack last month.

In the comments section of yesterday’s post on the ongoing Chevy Volt fire investigation, I noted that GM might

retrofit Volts with crash protection that can maintain battery integrity in all crash conditions… Mary Barra has said that GM is

“continuing to work with NHTSA to investigate additional actions to reduce or eliminate the potential of a post-crash electrical fire.”

I think some kind of update on the battery integrity front is inevitable, but we shall see…

Sure enough, today Reuters is running an interview with GM CEO Dan Akerson, who says that European deliveries of Opel-branded Volts (called Ampera) would be delayed pending NHTSA’s investigation, and that maybe, just possibly, the Volt’s battery might have to be redesigned. Says Akerson:

We want to assure the safety of our customers, of our buyers, and so we’re just going to take a time out, if you will, in terms of redesigning the battery possibly

Unfortunately, Akerson’s mangled syntax makes it tough to know if GM is really going to redesign the Volt’s battery, or what the “time out” in question means. He does tell the AP [via The WSJ [sub]] that a recall or buyback are options as well. Though redesigning the Volt’s battery could be expensive and devastating for sales, GM’s current post-crash safety protocol is incredibly human resources-intensive, and likely very costly as well. And the fact that GM is even considering redesigning the Volt for safety a year after its release is going to create a huge sales and marketing challenge anyway. Volt production edged down by 199 units in November, and now GM’s sales boss Don Johnson tells the Detroit News that the Volt will miss its 10,000 unit 2011 sales goal. At this point, GM may just want to take a mulligan on the Volt’s first year, redesign the battery, and relaunch the thing.

TTAC has received the following protocol, developed by GM in the wake of the June Volt fire at a NHTSA facility in Wisconsin, from a GM source and has confirmed its legitimacy with a second GM source. Though the procedure may be refined based on the findings of NHTSA’s latest round of tests, it gives a good picture of what GM currently does to ensure the safety of Volt driver and passengers as well as rescue workers, towing company workers and salvage yards. And, I have to say, it puts some of my fears about this safety scare to rest. It hadn’t occurred to me that GM’s Onstar system could provide opportunities to respond to crashes in real time, and apparently the system provides a wide variety of data with which GM’s “corporate SWAT team” can tailor its response to any Volt crash event. Hit the jump for the full procedure.

• Chevy Volt sends Onstar message of just occurred crash event.
• Onstar team notified of Volt crash and immediately implements standard crash protocol to assist vehicle operator
• Onstar immediately pulls key crash criteria from crash notification, i.e. vehicle speed, vehicles conditions (rollover), etc
• Onstar team notifies Volt Battery Team Leader of crash event including key vehicle conditions
• Volt Battery team leader works with Onstar to ping Volt and check additional data if appropriate (higher severity crash events, battery data, etc)
• Volt Battery team Leader determines if high crash severity standards met for depowering or if there is any question about battery severity level.  If yes to either, Battery team representative is sent to crash site
• Volt Battery team works with Volt advisor to contact Vehicle Owner and/or determine vehicle location
• Volt Battery representative obtains approval from owner and then proceeds to investigate the crashed Volt and depowers battery if deemed necessary
• Post Crash Volt stable and ready for disposition

NHTSA has has opened a formal defect investigation into the Chevrolet Volt, on the grounds that

 Intrusion in a crash may damage the battery, which may result in a substantial thermal reaction and fire

We knew that NHTSA was already looking in to this type of defect after an earlier test incident, but the official investigation resume [PDF] lists three separate thermal events that have occurred as a result of NHTSA tests. Hit the jump for the official explanation of this sequence of events.

On May 12, 2011, NHTSA performed a NCAP side pole impact test, followed by a post impact rollover test on a Chevrolet Volt. In connection with that testing, NHTSA has identified the potential for intrusion damage to the battery
which may result in a substantial thermal reaction and fire. Twenty-one days after the May 12, 2011 testing, delayed thermal heating and pressure release resulted in a fire that consumed the Chevrolet Volt and three other vehicles in close proximity at the test facility.

During the week of November 14, 2011, NHTSA performed follow-up battery-level tests to simulate the incident. NHTSA performed three tests simulating the mechanical damage to a battery pack observed from the first incident. Two of the three tests produced thermal events, including fire. Because of these test results, NHTSA has opened this investigation to examine the potential risks involved from intrusion damage to the battery in the Chevrolet Volt, in coordination with the agency’s ongoing review of the emerging technology involved in electric vehicle

A more extensive NHTSA press release notes

NHTSA is not aware of any roadway crashes that have resulted in battery-related fires in Chevy Volts or other vehicles powered by lithium-ion batteries. However, the agency is concerned that damage to the Volt’s batteries as part of three tests that are explicitly designed to replicate real-world crash scenarios have resulted in fire. NHTSA is therefore opening a safety defect investigation of Chevy Volts, which could experience a battery-related fire following a crash. Chevy Volt owners whose vehicles have not been in a serious crash do not have reason for concern.

GM’s response [via Phil Lebeau/Twitter]:

The Volt is safe & doesn’t present undue risk as part of normal operation, right after a severe crash.

This is the defense that GM has been using throughout this NHTSA/Volt fire investigation, and to some extent it bears a lot of similarity to Toyota’s defense against the test results trumpeted by Professor David Gilbert. The argument is that the investigator is creating defects through conditions that would not exist in normal use. The problem with GM’s position is that the safety protocols it wants NHTSA to follow in order to not prevent these kinds of fires apparently haven’t been circulated. As GM’s spokesman put it last week

We had a process [for draining the battery] internally but I don’t believe it was shared with anyone. The incident with NHTSA raised awareness that we had to develop a procedure and alert all stakeholders.

And based on the fact that NHTSA’s press release on this defect investigation lists the agency’s tips for post-crash safety procedures for plug-in vehicles, it seems that this is its major concern. What’s strange is that GM made quite the fuss about its Volt first responder training (see video at top) when the car was launched. That this issue, and the necessary safety protocol response to it, seemed to slip through the cracks when that program was developed is not encouraging.

Some 369,629 Americans lost their lives on the road in the period from 2001 through 2009. Now ITO World has mapped every single one of them onto an interactive map that promises hours of morbid fun. Where do accidents happen? Who do they happen to? What kind of vehicles tend to be involved? Are there high-fatality areas near you? The answers to these questions and more await in this one-of-a-kind map.

Ask a Westerner what he or she thinks of Chinese cars, and the answer will be predictable: unsafe. Thanks to China’s slower crash test speeds and low-cost manufacturing, Chinese cars have largely not met global safety standards, and Youtube videos have long cemented the impression that Chinese cars are fundamentally unsafe. But as with any growing industry, the Chinese are stepping their game up. Far from a global embarrassment, the latest Geely Emgrand even earned four stars in Euro-NCAP testing. That’s not enough to erase China’s reputation for unsafe cars, as five star performances are rapidly becoming the standard in Europe. But it is enough to match the achievements of  other modern European cars, most notably the updated Fiat Panda. Though the Panda is considerably smaller than the Emgrand, and therefore is at something of a safety disadvantage, the price difference between the two cars is likely to be negligible, making the comparison quite interesting. Meanwhile, there are other four-star (or should we call it “Chinese Quality”?) cars in NCAP’s latest round of testing, including the considerably more expensive Jaguar XF and Jeep Grand Cherokee. Check out the reports for the XF, Panda and Emgrand in the gallery below, or surf on over to Autobild for more details on where these cars came up short on safety…

I caught hell from a number of TTAC’s Best and Brightest five days ago, when I blogged about the Chevrolet Volt fire at a NHTSA facility but failed to initially note GM’s response. At the time, GM’s Greg Martin said

GM has safety procedures for handling the Volt and its battery after an accident. Had those been followed, there wouldn’t have been a fire.

At the time, a number of readers accused me of bias for not including Martin’s response at first. Eventually I conceded that this was some worthwhile perspective for the story, but I cautioned that it only represented the opinion of one GM employee. Whether or not NHTSA actually followed those procedures remained an open question… until now. Automotive News [sub] is reporting that NHTSA couldn’t possibly have followed those procedures, nor indeed could anyone else, for the simple reason that GM failed to share them with anybody. So not only is the NHTSA fire being blamed on the fact that government regulators were not given the necessary safety procedures, but it turns out that rescue workers, salvage yards, towing companies and the like were not taught how to discharge the Volt’s battery either. In other words, this NHTSA crash was an important eye-opener for the Volt team.

GM had trained a number of rescue workers prior to the rollout, showing how to disconnect the Volt’s batteries and rescue occupants without running the risk of electrocution. But the NHTSA fire was caused because the Volt’s battery wasn’t fully drained before being put in storage, and this key safety step managed to escape the rescue training as well. Says GM’s Rob Peterson

We had a process [for draining the battery] internally but I don’t believe it was shared with anyone. The incident with NHTSA raised awareness that we had to develop a procedure and alert all stakeholders.

GM’s EV engineering honcho Jim Federico adds

The fire occurred because the battery wasn’t completely discharged after the test… GM developed its battery depowering process for the Volt after NHTSA’s test.

Though not as bad as a technical defect, this oversight is certainly a bit embarrassing to GM, which now has to endure the lectures of folks like Clarence Ditlow of the Naderite Center For Auto Safety, who rants

I can’t conceive that they didn’t have a standard operating procedure in place for handling a wrecked vehicle before the car went on sale. NHTSA and GM should have established protocols in place before it went on sale.

And you have to admit, he has a point…

Remember the uproar over Unintended Acceleration in Toyotas? After more than a year of investigation, NHTSA has yet to find a definitive cause for the furor… although the experience was not an entire waste. In fact, the most interesting result of the entire situation was that it cast light on NHTSA’s inefficacy as much as it did embarrass Toyota’s quality control. And to help clarify what exactly the lessons of the Toyota flap were, the DOT’s Inspector General has released a report detailing its criticisms of the federal safety regulators. According to the report [PDF], NHTSA’s Office of Defect Investigation (ODI) has not

• Adequately tracked or documented pre-investigation activities.
• Established a systematic process for determining when to involve third-party or Vehicle Research and Test Center (VRTC) assistance
• Followed timeliness goals for completing investigations or fully implemented its redaction policy to ensure consumers’ privacy. [Ed: gee, you think?]
• Established a complete and transparent record system with documented support for decisions that significantly affect its investigations.
• Developed a formal training program to ensure staff has the necessary skills and expertise.

In his response, NHTSA Administrator David Strickland largely concurred with the audit’s findings, and is working with the ODI to improve investigation processes, transparency, privacy controls, staffing, training and more. In short, the government has reached the same conclusion that I reached on the day of the angst-filled Toyota testimony before congress, to wit:

Congress holds hearings like these to uncover shocking evidence and to impress its constituents with its dedication to their safety and well-being. Having been enticed into believing that sinister conspiracies exist in Toyota’s software code and the halls of the NHTSA, the House Energy Committee uncovered only one actionable solution to the ongoing scandal: [improving] NHTSA’s investigative capabilities. Put differently, after hours of posturing congress finally met the enemy and he was them.

The Chevy Volt fire rumors started early this week, when the utility company Duke Energy told its customers to stop using their Chevy Volt home chargers after an October 30 fire. At last word, NHTSA said that

No conclusions have yet been reached regarding the cause of the fire. We are continuing to monitor the situation.

But it seems that the investigation is coming home, as Bloomberg just reported that a Chevy Volt caught fire at a NHTSA facility, shortly weeks after being crash tested.

The Volt caught fire while parked at a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration testing center in Wisconsin, three weeks after a side-impact crash test, said an agency official. The official, as well as the three other people familiar with the inquiry, said they couldn’t be named because the investigation isn’t public.

The fire was severe enough to burn vehicles parked near the Volt, the agency official said. Investigators determined the battery was the source of the fire, the official said.

Ruh-Roh!

GM’s response came from spokesman Greg Martin, who insists that the Volt would not have caught fire had NHTSA followed GM’s post-crash safety protocols.

In June, GM and NHTSA both crashed a Volt and could not replicate the May fire, Martin said. GM has safety procedures for handling the Volt and its battery after an accident. Had those been followed, there wouldn’t have been a fire, he said in a phone interview.

“There are safety protocols for conventional cars,” Martin said. “As we develop new technology, we need to ensure that safety protocols match the technology.”

The Volt has received NHTSA’s top safety rating based on crash testing, although in the side impact test, some metal did apparently penetrate the Volt’s battery. Whether or not that’s related to this latest fire, whether NHTSA did in fact follow post-crash procedures and other key details remain unconfirmed at this time. The government is in contact with other automakers currently selling or planning to sell cars with lithium-ion batteries as its investigation rolls on.

UPDATE: GM Chief EV Engineer Jim Federico writes

First and foremost, I want to make this very clear: the Volt is a safe car. We are working cooperatively with NHTSA as it completes its investigation. However, NHTSA has stated that based on available data, there’s no greater risk of fire with a Volt than a traditional gas-powered car.

Safety protocols for electric vehicles are clearly an industry concern. At GM, we have safety protocols to depower the battery of an electric vehicle after a significant crash.

We are working with other vehicle manufacturers, first responders, tow truck operators, and salvage associations with the goal of implementing industry-wide protocols.

Back in 2005, Ford was ordered to pay some $43m to the Jablonski family whose Lincoln Town Car had caught fire after being rear-ended. According to the Associated Press:

As a result of the crash, according to the ruling, a large pipe wrench in the Jablonski car’s [trunk] was propelled into the vehicle’s gas tank, causing the blaze.

Attorneys for the family argued during the 11-day trial that the fuel tank’s positioning behind axle was among things flawed in the car’s construction, and that Ford should have warned car owners or retrofitted the vehicles with safety devices.

Ford countered that no similar accidents had occurred involving the same Town Car model as the one driven by John Jablonski, that the vehicle’s fuel tank was in “the optimum location for that car,” and that the crash should be blamed on the motorist who rear-ended the Jablonskis.

That ruling, with its echoes of the Pinto fiasco, could have validated a long-cherished belief of the personal injury attorney profession: that gas tanks rear of the rear axle are fundamentally dangerous (see above). Of course that’s not the case, and the Town Car in question was given a five-star safety rating by NHTSA. Accordingly, the Illinois Supreme Court threw out the ruling, finding that

the lawsuit on Dora and John Jablonski’s behalf did not give sufficient evidence for a jury to conclude Ford negligently “breached its duty of reasonable care” in designing the Lincoln Town Car

Well, it’s Halloween…. the time of year when a young man’s thoughts turn towards death. Bertel gave us a double-shot of the macabre earlier today, but it was an unplanned spin-and-a-half (no, not on public roads) that most recently and viscerally reminded me just how deadly this whole driving a car business can be. And that particular bit of man-machine miscommunication didn’t even happen in the most scary car I’ve ever driven (thank goodness).

My scariest in-car experience actually happened earlier in the Summer, when I found myself on the freeway in a Chinese-spec Shuanghuan Noble… on which at least one wheel was seriously out of round. The second I hit about 72 MPH, the thing took on a life of its own, oscillating wildly back and forth and trying to throw itself into one adjacent lane after the other. Realizing I had only ever seen this vehicle crash-tested at less than half the speed at which I was then traveling, contemplating its top-heavy dimensions and not even knowing if this dealer-plated example had a functioning airbag, I grappled with the wheel and eased down the speed. Eventually it stopped pogo-ing, all though it took my heart another 20 minutes or so to follow suit. Even compared to my select irresponsible experiences with insanely overpowered-powered vehicles, it was by far the most terrifying, mortality-facing, PTSD-inspiring experience I’ve ever had in a car… probably because I only half-expected to be literally taking my life into my hands on that drive.

But, what about you? What car scares you the most? What was the scariest experience you’ve had behind the wheel? Was it a product of you trying to scare yourself with a machine whose limits exceeded your own, or did it just …happen?

Having been on the road with Steve Lang who conducts his buy here, pay here business (“500 down and 50 a week!”) from a cell phone that appears to be  surgically attached to his ear, I was longing for a heads up display fighter pilots have: Eyes on what’s ahead, and still masses of targeting information. We should have driven a BMW: A “full-color head-up display is optionally available for almost all series,” BMW tells me in an email.

LaHood take note: “A normal driver takes a whole second to read the speed indicator in the instrument panel or to glance at the navigation device,” BMW says. “Whilst the driver is distracted, that is without his or her eyes on the road, the vehicle covers a distance of around 14 metres when travelling in urban areas at a speed of 50 km/h – virtually a “blind flight.”

How about this: “Sorry, officer, as my contribution to the war on distracted driving, I just cannot look at the speedometer.” In an optionally equipped BMW, you won’t have that excuse.

The information is right in your field of vision, in living colors, courtesy of a translucent TFT (Thin Film Transistor) display, the image being transferred to the windscreen via specially shaped mirrors, and adjusted to look straight in the convex window screen.

Since editor Ed and big Bertel are in transit to Nashville right now, where they will be meeing me and my girls (Vodka McBigbra and Drama McHourglass) for dinner, there’s theoretically no way they could stop me from headlining this article Jalopnik-style, “THIS is the wagon that could kill you to DEATH.” Let’s just pretend I did. Because this really IS the wagon that could kill you to death.

Luckily, you can’t buy it in the United States.

ComputerWorld brings us the news that about 18,000 Jaguars were shipped with defective cruise-control programming. All of the affected cars were diesel X-Type wagons. That right there brings up the question: How the hell did Jaguar sell 18,000 diesel X-Type wagons?

If the fault occurs, cruise control can only be disabled by turning of the ignition while driving – which would mean a loss of some control and in many cars also disables power steering. Braking or pressing the cancel button will not work.

That’s like whoa. During my time as a car salesman in the Nineties, I remember dozens of customers expressing concern to me that “electronical cruise controls” would go out of control and shoot them down the freeway like rodeo riders on a particularly discontented bull. I patiently explained to them that under no circumstances would a major manufacturer permit such a situation to occur. Just for record, I never promised them that the cruise control stalk wouldn’t catch fire. That would have been rash. I just promised that it wouldn’t disregard the brake or “off” switch. Turns out it took Jaguar engineering to make my customers’ nightmares come true.

The fix Jaguar is offering, if I understand correctly, will disable the cruise control and warn the driver if certain conditions are met. Good idea. That’s much better than, you know, actually keeping the problem from occurring. In the meantime, those of you who are pining away for European diesel wagons can thank you stars that, although Jaguar wasn’t smart enough to engineer a cruise-control system, at least they were smart enough to avoid brining that car to the United States…

Usually it’s the Germans who we find continually pushing the crash-test envelope, but this time around the UK’s Fifth Gear TV Show that decided to crash a car at 120 MPH. Sure, the Germans already proved how much of a difference can be made by crashing at 50 MPH instead of the traditional 40 MPH, just as the Chinese can make any of their cars appear safe by testing at 35 MPH rather than 40 MPH. But 120 MPH? It’s never been done before…

Chinese automakers are delaying exports to Europe and the US until after 2015, largely because they admit their products aren’t “ready for primetime.” And few issues demonstrate that fact as well as the scandalous crash test videos that have defined internet perceptions of Chinese cars for years now. But with even more recent Chinese export-intenders continuing to put up lousy safety results, Autobild reports that, starting in 2012, China will improve its crash test standards to near-European levels.

Called C-NCAP, the new standard is modeled on EUropean NCAP rules, and raises the bar significantly. For example, Chinese cars will now be crashed at 64 km/h instead of 56 km/h. Anti-whiplash and other active safety measures will also be tested, as will results for rear-seat passengers in addition to front-seat passengers. And in order to include these additional test results, the maximum points available are going up from 51 to 62.

But if China wants to rid itself of its horrible auto safety reputation, regulators can only do so much. The industry also has to develop a culture that outs a high variety on safety. After all, even under the outgoing, lax standards, only 43 Chinese-market models have achieved five star ratings. With standards going up, that number should stagnate or decline until the Chinese automakers get serious about safety. After all, perceptions are huge in the car game, and Chinese brands need to work extra hard to wipe clean a reputation slate that has been marred with shocking crash test results.

And in the end, confronting this challenge is just part of the emergence of the Chinese industry: as Bertel reported, R&D spending at the Chinese OEMs is a fraction of what Western firms spend. With low-cost Chinese labor going the way of the dodo, the Chinese auto industry has to start competing with the Western brands on every possible level. Spending more on safety research and development seems like the logical place to start…

Remember when cars, especially Toyotas, suddenly had a mind of their own, started accelerating, leaving their drivers helpless and hapless? It was in the beginning of 2010. The media cited scores of allegedly killed people. Source: The NHTSA complaint database. When complaints skyrocketed, the media wrote about a dramatic increase of complaints. Now, have a look at the graph above.

This graph was compiled by Edmunds. It is a simple report. It shows the number of all complaints about all cars of any manufacturer per month. We see that in February 2010 the number of complaints exploded, it was high in March, and then consolidated at a slightly higher level than at the end of 2009. In a straight line analysis, the complaints should be approximately where they are.

Then why the jump in February and March 2010? It was the height of the witch-hunt. The height of the fakery on ABC News. It was the fools hearings on the hill.

When that was over, suddenly, as if driven by ghosts, the cars behaved again. After Toyota had been declared ghost-free by the NHTSA in February 2011, there was even a little dip in the reports. Then, all fell back to normal.

For those who are still desperate to read something into this crowd-sourced list, here a little table, also courtesy of Edmunds. It shows the YTD complaints trough August 2011, along with the rolling 12 month market share, for the top ten recipients of complaints. As you can see, things are pretty much as they should be. People seem to complain a lot about Chrysler though…

Witch-hunts had been with us since ancient times. In Sub-Saharan Africa, India, and Saudi Arabia, people are still tried and sentenced for witchcraft. The graph you are looking at shows that witch-hunts are alive and well in America.