NHTSA Administrator Says Compliance With Standards At Time of Production Not Enough

TTAC Staff
by TTAC Staff

In an interview with Automotive News (registration required), National Highway Traffic Safety Administration director David Strickland said that if automakers want to keep their cars and trucks from getting recalled, those cars must not just meet standards in effect at the time vehicles are produced, but that the car companies must also make sure they stay as safe, statistically, as competitors’ products that use different designs.

Though he didn’t explicitly say so, his remarks could be read as saying that the agency will aggressively pursue recalls even though the involved vehicles met all standards in effect when they were built. Companies apparently will not be able to avoid recalls by saying that their cars and trucks met all applicable standards when sold new. Strickland’s comments were made against the backdrop of the voluntary inspection and retrofitting of trailer hitches on some Jeep models to reduce the risk of punctures to the rear mounted gas tanks in the event of rear collisions

“It really is based on the notion of unreasonable risk. And that is an evolving notion,” Strickland told the AN. He said that NHTSA is obligated to reassess risks “if state of the art moves all the peers in one direction, and it appears that there is another part of the fleet that has not made those same moves or improvements.” If car makers want to avoid recalls, they’ll have to remain “within the zone of reasonable risk”.

When Chrysler was first ordered to recall 2.7 million Jeep Grand Cherokee and Liberty SUVs, the company claimed that the agency was changing the rules. The dispute raised the issue as to what exactly is a “standard” if that standard is fluid and subject to retroactive change. “NHTSA seems to be holding Chrysler Group to a new standard for fuel tank integrity that does not exist now and did not exist when the Jeep vehicles were manufactured,” the company at first said after the recall was announced, though as mentioned the company and NHTSA came to an agreement about Chrysler doing the inspections and retrofits voluntarily.

Though Strickland said that the use of fluid standards isn’t the result of any new interpretation of the laws the agency enforces, he also said that using the “reasonable risk” standard was a tactical solution to “upgrading” standards when the slow pace of changing the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards legislatively doesn’t move fast enough in the agency’s opinion.

“It’s very hard to change or upgrade a federal motor vehicle safety standard,” he said. “Sometimes it can be decades. Sometimes it can be 20 or 30 years.” Using a standard that changes retroactively based on the concept of reasonable risk, the NHTSA director added, allows the agency to “to backstop the inability to reach back and upgrade standards – because of cost and time and all sorts of other factors.”

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  • Bjchase55 Bjchase55 on Jul 16, 2013

    Did I just read that right? It can take 20-30 years on some items to change/modify? I can understand some items maybe taking up to 5 years, but 20-30?! By the time a decision is made on the item that item will likely be obsolete! Perhaps they should just outsource that function to the SAE.

  • Jkross22 Jkross22 on Jul 16, 2013

    So, when does the banning of gasoline begin? After all, it's a very unstable substance and most people who struggle to rub two synapses together will likely blow themselves up at the local 76 station.

    • See 4 previous
    • George Herbert George Herbert on Jul 17, 2013

      Darkwing: "Not even the EPA is willing to classify gasoline as a carcinogen. Where on earth do you get this stuff?" --- That would be the Power of Science, Darkwing. The EPA does not test materials for carcinogenicity, they make regulatory determinations based on other testing and political, economic, and other factors as to whether they will regulate materials as carcinogenic. Gasoline is not regulated as carcinogenic because doing so would be an immediate disaster for the whole motor vehicle industry and petroleum industry and would cause financial chaos and a collapse of our transport grid. I.e., it's not a carcinogen (says the EPA) because they cannot survive the consequences of declaring it one at this time. The actual science is summed up in things like Materials Safety Data Sheets, which tell you what's in it and what its health effects are. The underlying science is found in many thousands of published peer-reviewed articles by doctors and various scientists, but going that deep here would not help anything. This is just a quick googleable surface scan. A couple of years ago I did a similar deeper comparison for some rocketry purposes, and groups considering using it for rocket fuel walked away. MSDS for Gasoline: http://www.haskellcorp.com/uploads/msds/Gases/chevron%20regular%20unleaded%20gasoline.pdf Note major ingredient Benzene. MSDS for Benzene: http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9927339 Note the "confirmed human carcinogen" and suspected human mutagen, along with a host of other toxic effects including bone and blood and liver and urinary. Note major ingredient Toluene. MSDS for Toluene: http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9927301 Not carcinogen or mutagen that we know, but toxic to liver, blood, kidneys, central nervous system, ... Note major ingredient Ethyl Benzene. MSDS for Ethyl Benzene: http://www.mathesongas.com/pdfs/msds/MAT08780.pdf Note confirmed animal carcinogen, suspected but not proven human, known CNS, some mutagenic studies but not proven. Note major ingredient Napathalene. MSDS for Napathalene: http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9927671 Note toxicity to blood, kidneys, nervous system, reproductive system, CNS, ... For older gasoline, note MTBE MSDS: http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9927229 Acutely toxic to lungs, nervous system, mucous membranes. Note ingredient tert-Amyl methyl ether. TAME MSDS: http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/MSDS/MSDS/DisplayMSDSPage.do?country=US&language=en&productNumber=283096&brand=ALDRICH&PageToGoToURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sigmaaldrich.com%2Fcatalog%2Fproduct%2Faldrich%2F283096%3Flang%3Den Note pulmonary emboli and fetal toxicity and death. ETBE is about the only non-toxic ingredient. Oh, and ethanol. Benzene just by itself should be treated highly cautiously. A mixture of water and 5% benzene is a hazardous toxic carcinogenic material. All the other stuff in gasoline does not help in the slightest. Don't breathe the fumes. Don't get any on you. If you're planning on getting pregnant consider buying or leasing a diesel car for the duration of pregnancy and early childhood.

  • AZFelix Hilux technical, preferably with a swivel mount.
  • ToolGuy This is the kind of thing you get when you give people faster internet.
  • ToolGuy North America is already the greatest country on the planet, and I have learned to be careful about what I wish for in terms of making changes. I mean, if Greenland wants to buy JDM vehicles, isn't that for the Danes to decide?
  • ToolGuy Once again my home did not catch on fire and my fire extinguisher(s) stayed in the closet, unused. I guess I threw my money away on fire extinguishers.(And by fire extinguishers I mean nuclear missiles.)
  • Carson D The UAW has succeeded in organizing a US VW plant before. There's a reason they don't teach history in the schools any longer. People wouldn't make the same mistakes.
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