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

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

We have felt that same unease. Alas, the Truly Safe conference did nothing to dispel the queasiness. In fact, the event made the hair at the back of our necks prickle with alarm – particularly the portion devoted to understanding the facts and what are purported to be the facts about Toyota Unintended Acceleration. Suggestions that electronics may have played a role were quickly dismissed. Instead, Anwyl reiterated his belief that driver error was the predominant cause. Neither he nor the conference’s roster of believers discussed or introduced any scientific data. For example, the “smart people” at the conference ignored the data which show that the complaint rates for the Camry, Tacoma, and Lexus ES skyrocketed in the same year those vehicles switched from mechanical to electronic throttles – before, after, and during the intense media coverage.  How can this be explained? Anwyl singled out this specific question for scorn.

Also absent was any discussion of the actual NASA findings – not Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s reductio ad absurdum claim that the reports exonerated Toyota’s electronics.  There was no science, no evidence, no statistical analyses, no discussion of the details or nuances of engine management system design, validation, and vehicle mitigation testing. In other words, Edmunds presided over yet another shallow conversation – at, no doubt, premium prices. (Who did foot the bill for that conference?)

Driver error was the theme of the day. Indeed, driver behavior is a wild card in auto safety. But allow us a moment to adjust our tin-foil hats and get serious.

The two biggest auto safety crises in the last decade were Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Ford/Firestone tire tread separation rollovers.  Both grew to mammoth proportions as public safety issues in an environment of antiquated and non-existent safety standards. They serve as a roadmap for the auto safety crises that inevitably erupt when there are no relevant safety standards.

You may recall that the most popular and best-selling SUV, the Ford Explorer, equipped with their original equipment Firestone tires, was prone to rollovers after tread separations, killing its occupants. The Firestone Radial ATX and Wilderness radial tires met all of the federal regulations at the time. Unfortunately, the standards belonged to another era of tire technology, when bias-plies were the norm. As for the controls on the Explorer side of the equation, well, there were no federal standards for occupant protection in rollovers. There was no minimum stability standard for Sport Utility Vehicles, a new breed of station wagon with a high-center of gravity based on a truck platform.  Industry fought off any regulations, even as the rollover death tolls in light trucks rose to epidemic levels.  (Rollovers accounted for 8 percent of light vehicle crashes, but accounted for 31 percent of all occupant fatalities.[1])

A series of gruesome high-profile crashes and some pointed news stories about the safety of Ford Explorers and Firestone tires compelled NHTSA to begin investigating. After Ford’s secret overseas tire recalls came to light, the automaker launched a series of campaigns to replace the Firestone tires. Ford insisted that the tires bore all the blame. NHTSA insisted that there were no reasons to examine the role of America’s then-best selling SUV in these tire-related fatal crashes. But the problem was more complex than NHTSA or Ford cared to admit. After all the tires were replaced, Explorer tire-related rollover deaths and injuries did not abate. In fact, independent analyses of crash data shows that the recalls and replacement campaigns by Ford and Bridgestone/Firestone did not achieve long-term effectiveness in eliminating tire-related deaths in the Ford Explorer fleet. ( http://quality-control.us/explorer_tire_fatalities.html)  If the tires were the only problem, what explains the post-recall death toll?

A decade later, the lack of a regulatory framework laid the foundation for an eerily similar scenario. Complaints of unintended acceleration dogged Toyota for six years, but NHTSA’s defect investigators can find nothing wrong. Toyota vehicles meet the federal accelerator controls standard, FMVSS 124 – only it was penned in 1972 when throttles still had cables. In the 1990s, many safety-critical mechanical automobile control systems moved to electronics systems, which rely on sophisticated sensors, computer processors and software, interpret the demands to deliver outputs needed in a driving environment. The agency attempted to upgrade the standard, but again, industry fought off any changes. In a federal rulemaking, NHTSA summarized their arguments:  “In general, the comments of vehicle and engine manufacturers did not address the specific questions in the notice. Instead, they voiced a preference for rescinding the standard altogether, suggesting that market forces and litigation pressure are sufficient to assure fail-safe performance without a Federal motor vehicle safety standard.”[2]

Then, a high-profile crash kills California Highway Patrolman and his family. The media questions the safety of Toyota’s electronics in some of the most popular vehicles produced by the number-one automaker in the world.  NHTSA investigates and finds causes no more complicated than errant floor mats, sticky pedals and driver error. And after all the floor mats and pedals are replaced, problems continue.  Two occupants died in a November 2010 unintended acceleration crash in Utah, after the two surviving witnesses in the vehicle report that the driver tried repeatedly to disengage the cruise control and apply the brake as he exited a highway off ramp. There was no floor mat interference.  This is but one of many incidents that can’t be adequately explained by NHTSA or Toyota under their pet theories.

The lack of safety requirements set the stage for both the Ford/Firestone and Toyota UA crises. Rulemaking is the process by which NHTSA develops its institutional understanding of vehicle technology and functional outcomes. Without that critical step, automakers are left to their own devices; the agency is left behind the technological curve. And when bad design and manufacturing processes kill and injure, and NHTSA is called upon to ferret out a defect, it is ill-prepared to do so. The more widespread the defect and more expensive the remedy, the more likely it is that the agency will settle for a fix it thinks it can get – whether it solves the full problem or not.

These crises involved popular, high-volume models made by companies who actively opposed the regulatory structure that could have prevented the damage to their reputations and bottom lines and to their customers. In both cases, solutions are complex and expensive. How do you prevent or minimize the loss of control crashes that follow tread separations on an Explorer?  How do you prevent unwanted events that find their way through an electronic architecture lacking robust failsafe design?  Both are economically prohibitive for the wealthiest corporations.  What is more tenable?  Put the money into fighting a small defects office in a government agency ill-equipped to independently understand the issues and build your campaign around fighting the litigation and building good public relations.

Unfortunately, high-drama defects siphon NHTSA’s resources from planned injury reduction priorities.  Absent regulation and investigators with detailed understanding of current technology, the crises will continue to occur, starting the cycle anew.

If Edmund’s had any desire to start a real conversation about auto safety, first it would educate itself about regulatory history, automotive design and defect investigation, instead of announcing silly contests. If Edmund’s wanted to host a serious discussion about improving auto safety, its CEO would actually entertain opposing points of view, instead of shutting them down with Kennedy assassination conspiracy zingers. If Edmund’s wants data-driven discussion then how about actually discussing some data?

It doesn’t. Edmund’s wants to sell cars. And, as any good salesman knows, you gotta make the customer think you care.

(For those of you who haven’t followed this 25-year-old scrum, Malibu refers to two sets of experimental rollover tests General Motors conducted in 1983 and 1987 on Chevrolet Malibus. Known as Malibu I and II, the tests were conducted to validate the theory that occupants don’t suffer head and neck injuries because the roof collapses on them, but because the force of the crash propels them into the roof. Over the years, automakers have clung to the Malibu results, despite crash data showing that the number of deaths and injuries in rollover accidents has risen disproportionately, with more than quarter of the accidents involving a serious roof intrusion.)

On the other side was NHTSA, arguing that roof strength is related to injury. It’s refreshing – if ironic – to see NHTSA champion a relationship between intrusion and injury. The agency is a late convert to this view; after years as an adherent of the Holy Gospel of Malibu.

Meanwhile, over at the Transportation Research Board’s Annual Meeting – also last week – research from less likely suspects supported the need for stronger roofs.

Florida Requires Real-World Strenuous Roof Strength Requirements for Transit Buses

In August 2007, Florida upgraded its requirements for rollover occupant protection in all transit buses used in the state.  Previously, transit buses were required to meet the FMVSS 220 School Bus Rollover Protection static roof strength compliance test, similar to the single-sided FMVSS 216 procedure.  After reviewing the data on transit buses from both test methodologies, Florida increased the stringency of the requirements to a modified version of the UN-ECE Regulation 66 (ECE-R66) Dynamic Dolly Rollover test to better protect occupants.

At the TRB meeting, Jerry Wekezer, a professor from Florida A&M University and Florida State University presented numerical analyses of both test procedures, as part of the state’s ongoing bus testing and research. Under the old state regulations, buses passed the quasi-static roof resistance test by withstanding a prescribed force without large deflection.  However, under the tougher ECE requirements, the same bus significantly failed the dynamic rollover procedure when sidewall deformed into the occupant space. Transit busses are designed with strong roofbows to pass FMVSS 220, but the sidewalls, which have no design restrictions, are weaker, resulting in severe intrusion into the occupant’s survival space in the real-world dynamic test.

Wekezer argued that, contrary to NHTSA’s claims, a quasi-static load resistance test of the roof structure does not give sufficient indication on how the structure will behave during a real world rollover.  He argued that the simple, repeatable FMVSS 220 procedure may result in ignoring significant real-world rollover factors, since the load in the old test is initially applied symmetrically onto the roof structure in an unrealistic way.

Prominent auto safety researcher Raphael Grzebieta, of the University of New South Wales in Australia, expressed his dismay in the US’s continued use of the static FMVSS 220 test requirements when 44 other countries have already adopted the more real-world dynamic test procedure. In Australia, the adoption of dynamic test and 3-point belt requirements in transit buses has eliminated almost all of fatalities.

Obviously, this fellow has never heard of the super-duper protective qualities of compartmentalization. And what does this say about our passenger vehicle roof strength standards since FMVSS 216 is based on the same premise? We’re sure NHTSA will get around to it in a few decades.

Door Number 1: Diving

Back to the main bout. At the government-industry meeting, Jingwne Hu from UMTRI presented detailed modeling studies evaluating occupant kinematics and injury in rollovers.  He concluded from visual inspectionpeak neck load occurs at beginning of roof crush, long before significant intrusion occurs. that the dummy dives into the roof rather than the roof collapsing down on the dummy’s head.  He also analyzed roof crush and neck load vs. time and determined that in both strong and regular roofs, the

Those of us who follow dummy design understand that you have to be careful about interpreting these results since the HIII dummy Hu used was not designed for rollover-type of loading conditions.  In addition to the lack of biofidelity in flexion and extension, there are many studies showing that the HIII neck is much stiffer in compression than the human neck, which can alter occupant kinematics in a rollover.  Further, the ability to predict injury potential cannot be reliable if the dummy is not measuring values that are representative of the injury mechanisms being evaluated.  For example, peak neck load in Malibu was measured at the upper neck load cell.  Many neck injuries seen in rollovers are at the lower cervical spine, which is not adequately evaluated by this measurement.

Hu acknowledged that near-side roof stiffness affects far-side injury risk because a weak roof causes the far-side roof to contact the ground earlier and remains in contact with the ground longer, increasing the injury risk for the far-side occupant. The University of Virginia’s review of CIREN data for belted non-ejected occupants in single vehicle rollovers validated that roof crush is related to head and neck injury risk for the far-side occupant and chest injury for the near-side occupant.

Hu recommended low-friction padding is a countermeasure for head and neck injury potential for all occupants in rollovers.  With energy-absorbing foam with a zero coefficient of friction, the head will slide away, lowering the risk of neck injury. As the friction increases, neck injury risk increases.

Hu argued that lap belt design needs to be improved to reduce vertical excursion and keep the dummy off the roof – something safety advocates have been saying for years.  He specifically recommended that lap belt stretch be decreased, slack be removed with a pretensioner, and sliding latch plates be replaced with cinching latch plates.  Hu also mentioned that UMTRI is researching a double lap belt design to reduce rotation of the lap belt.

Essentially, Hu stressed the need for a combination of more effective vehicle restraint systems, stronger roof structures, and roof interior design optimization for occupant protection in rollovers.

“This is exactly what we as auto safety experts have been recommending for years,” said biomechanics expert Salena Zellers.

Door Number 2: Roof Strength

NHTSA’s National Center for Statistics and Analysis (NCSA) presented the opposing view. The agency research compared roof strength to roof deformation and injury in real-world rollovers using NASS CDS data.  They demonstrated a statistically significant relationship between the peak strength-to-weight ratio and the maximum vertical roof intrusion.  This work supports earlier NHTSA work (and research from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety) demonstrating a relationship between vertical roof intrusion and injury risk in rollovers. NCSA argued that this supports the validity of strength-to-weight ratio as a measure of real world roof strength. (The NHTSA/IIHS unity on the link between injury and roof crush is a brief moment of harmony in a relationship that has gotten a bit testy of late over data disputes.)

The Bottom Line

Automakers have known for decades that their seat belts do not restrain occupants effectively in rollovers.  Instead of focusing on retaining the occupant survival space and designing seat belts that prevent injurious head contact with the roof structures, they have moaned and groaned that roof crush doesn’t cause injury, so why bother preventing it?  They blame the injury to belted occupants in rollovers not on the roof, but rather on their own defective seat belts and poor vehicle designs that lack of sufficient head room.

To keep this in perspective: your vehicle design engineer tells you that the seat belts he designed will not keep the driver from impacting the steering wheel at force levels high enough to cause severe torso injuries in a 30 mph frontal impact.  He argues that it doesn’t matter if the steering wheel is moving rearward toward the driver from the impact, the driver will impact it anyway because the seat belts will not restrain him effectively in that direction.

You say: “You’re fired!”   And then you find a way to increase the occupant space by preventing rearward displacement of the steering wheel and design a belt system that can restrain the driver from impacting the steering wheel in that amount of distance – just like the auto manufacturers accomplished decades ago.

Tell us again why it’s different for the roof?

WASHINGTON, D.C. – As the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s effort to write a new roof strength standard drags into its fourth year, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has gone ahead and created one that is far more stringent than anything the agency has proposed.

Beginning in 2010, automakers who want IIHS’s coveted Top Safety Pick designation will have to build vehicle roofs with a 4.0 strength-to-weight ratio – far above the timid 2.5 ratio the government has been contemplating for its amended standard. The IIHS estimated that vehicles that could meet this new strength standard could reduce injury risk to occupants by 40-50 percent. In January, the insurance advocacy group informed manufacturers about its new requirement for vehicle roofs to win its highest honor. The industry greeted the news with the “can’t-do” spirit that characterizes its reaction to nearly every safety improvement.

“A number have said to us the 4.0 strength-to-weight ratio is a very hard standard to meet,” says IIHS’s Adrian Lund.
(Based on NHTSA data, the Volvo XC90, the 2006-2009 Honda Civic, Volkswagen Jetta 2005-2009; Toyota Camry 2007-2009 and Toyota Tacoma 2005-2009 already meet or exceed that standard.)

But the IIHS has heard it all before. When it introduced its new 40 mph frontal offset crash tests in 1995, automakers protested that their vehicles couldn’t pass such a tough test. Today, virtually 100 percent of new vehicles earn a good rating in that test. In 2003, when the IIHS upped the ante on side-impact crashworthiness, by using a barrier more representative of an SUV than the sedan-type barrier used in the federal compliance test, manufacturers complained again. The IIHS reports that automakers are rapidly rising to that challenge, with 64 percent earning a “good” rating in that test in 2009.

“The main point is: It’s hard when you start, but obviously, it can be done,” Lund says. “I think we will get some movement on roof strength. They are going to try to do it – this one isn’t rocket science.”

The IIHS decided to move forward on roof strength, after conducting two studies on mid-sized SUVs and small sedans showing that roof strength was strongly related to occupant injury risk. In conducting its research, the IIHS cleverly sidestepped the chicken-and-egg debate of whether occupants sustain injuries in a rollover because they “dive” into the roof or because the roof crushes into occupants. Instead, it compared injury figures from real world crashes with the roof strength ratios of the 11 models in those crashes, as measured by the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 216 quasi-static compliance test.

The first study, published in March 2008, focused on SUVs. The IIHS culled 22,817 rollover crashes from the State Data System – police-reported crashes submitted to NHTSA – in 12 states that had data available for some part of calendar years 1997-2005, had a mechanism to identify single-vehicle rollovers, and had sufficient VIN information to determine vehicle make, model, and model year. The 12 states that met these criteria – Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Wyoming – used KABCO injury coding, in which “K” represents fatal injuries and “A” represents incapacitating injuries as assessed by the investigating police officer.

The IIHS used the crash data to select the mid-sized SUVs most represented in fatal crash data and the models most represented on the road to ensure a sufficient sample size. Eleven models were used as the basis of comparison. General Testing Laboratories, under contract with IIHS, subjected eight midsize SUVs – six of which were used vehicles – to the FMVSS 216 quasi-static tests. The maximum force required to crush the roof to 2, 5, and 10 inches of plate displacement was recorded. (The IIHS used NHTSA roof strength data for three models.)

The IIHS found that in all cases, “increased measures of roof strength resulted in significantly reduced rates of fatal or incapacitating driver injury after accounting for vehicle stability, driver age, and state differences.” Researchers estimated that a one-unit increase in peak strength-to-weight ratio within five inches of plate displacement was estimated to reduce the risk of fatal or incapacitating injury by 28 percent.

This finding contradicted other studies on the relationship between roof strength and injury risk, but the IIHS defended its study as having more tightly controlled potential confounding factors. Also, the IIHS estimated number of lives saved by increasing the regulated SWR to 2.5 is considerably higher than the estimated 13 and 44 lives saved indicated in NHTSA’s 2005 NPRM, despite the fact the agency’s estimates cover the entire passenger vehicle fleet.

This winter, the organization conducted a second study, using the same methodology, with small sedans. The as-yet unpublished study confirmed the results of the SUV project – roof strength was highly correlated with injury risk, and the benefits of stronger roofs were substantial.

Lund said that the IIHS’s research results were too definitive to wait for the agency to finally move on an amended roof crush standard. First introduced in August 2005, the proposed amendment would increase the roof strength-to-weight ratio from the current standard of 1.5, established in 1973, to 2.5 times a vehicle’s weight in a rollover crash. The maximum 5-inch plate displacement limit would be replaced by a requirement that the minimum strength be achieved prior to head-to-roof contact for an ATD positioned in the front outboard seat on the side of the vehicle being tested. In January 2008, NHTSA issued a supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking announcing that it would delay the adoption of a new standard while it considered testing a sequential two-sided test for possible adoption. The agency was required to revamp the standard by July 2007, but has delayed further action until April.

IIHS is scheduled to start testing roofs soon and will be releasing small SUV roof strength ratings in the spring. Roof strength will officially be among the Top-Safety-Pick criteria in 2010 models beginning this Fall, Lund said.

Copyright @ Safety Research & Strategies, Inc., 2009

OXFORD, NC-One year after a fatal crash and seven months after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched a defect investigation into 30 million Chinese-manufactured tire valve stems that could crack prematurely, Dill Air Control Products has finally announced a recall.

In early December, the North Carolina-based distributor agreed to recall 1.8 million tire valve stems, acknowledging that three models of valve stems, the TR 413, 414 and 418, were manufactured without an additive to protect the rubber from deteriorating under exposure to ozone. The recall covers a fraction of the population that could be affected by the defect. An estimated 30 million tire valve stems were manufactured during the period in question.

The announcement closes a NHTSA Engineering Analysis into the defective valve stems.

Dill claims that the defect affects fewer than 200,000 valve stems confined to two lots manufactured by Topseal, a division of the Chinese conglomerate, Shanghai Baolong Industries Co. Ltd, in July 2006. (Topseal and Dill share corporate ownership. In March 2005, Shanghai Baolong and Zhongding Group purchased an ownership stake in Eaton Corporation’s Roxboro, North Carolina plant. The Chinese manufacturer renamed the company Dill Air Control Products and relocated the facility to Oxford.)

But Dill said it would recall all the valve stems manufactured in 2006, because it is impossible to identify the suspect lots. This campaign follows a customer satisfaction program, a recall of the defective tire stems from another distributor, two separate defect investigations – all emanating from a wrongful death lawsuit. On November 11, Robert Monk of Orlando, Fla. died when the right rear wheel of his 1998 Ford Explorer failed, triggering a rollover crash. The tire failure was linked to a cracked Dill TR413 valve stem and in March, the Monk family filed suit against Dill. The following month, Dill officials met with NHTSA to discuss the potential snap-in tire valve defect. Dill described a problem with valves leaking from cracks due to apparent ozone exposure and indicated that an early investigation had traced the concern to a five-month manufacturing period in 2006 – even though discussions about the integrity of the tire valve stem had taken place within the company two years earlier.

Three days after its meeting with NHTSA, Dill sent a Technical Bulletin to some major tire retailers advising them that the company had received complaints of surface cracks appearing on the outside of the rubber near the rim hole in several models. Despite this acknowledgement to dealers, the company didn’t initiate a recall to alert consumers.

In May, NHTSA’s Office of Defect Investigations opened a preliminary evaluation into the safety of the TR413 and Dill announced a customer satisfaction program. In June, another distributor of Topseal valve stems, Tech International of Johnstown, Ohio filed a separate defect report recalling six million valve stems, after customers reported problems with premature cracking. Tech International also claimed that the defect was actually confined to only 8,600 TRI 413 valve stems, manufactured between July and November 2006, but, like Dill, offered free replacements for any of the 6 million sold — and compensation for any tire damage caused by the defective part — because it was impossible to identify the defective lots or the end users.

“NHTSA was not even notified until the Monk family filed suit against Dill. Sadly, it took this fatal crash, a great deal of publicity, and a federal investigation before the company decided to recall” said Rich Newsome, the Orlando, Florida attorney representing the Monks.

In its Safety Defect and Non-Compliance Report, Dill said that it and Topseal engaged independent rubber engineering experts to perform mass spectrometry analysis on samples from lots produced from June to November 2006. According to Dill, the analysis revealed that two lots demonstrated “substantially different chemical properties than samples from other control periods.” Topseal admitted that, around that same time period, it had changed its distributor of the anti-ozone chemical agent used in the rubber compound. Dill concluded that the rubber used in the suspect lots was compounded using sub-standard anti-ozone chemicals.

Even before this NHTSA-inspired inquiry and the change in anti-ozone suppliers, Dill and Topseal were aware that its valve stems in 2006 had problems. In April 2006, the board of Dill Air Control Products Corporation met, with members from the U.S. and China attending. This was the first such meeting since Shanghai Baolong purchased the company. Amid the discussions about business strategy and future goals, the group discussed current challenges. At a technical exchange between Dill and Topseal, the managers discussed “problems such as tire valve leaking, core of tire valve not firm and so on,” according to a Shanghai Baolong report of the meeting.

While the recall signaled the closing of one probe into Dill-distributed valve stems, other Topseal valve stems remain under investigation. In late September, Safety Research & Strategies requested that NHTSA open a defect investigation into the Topseal tire valve stems used as OEM equipment in some Ford vehicles.

SRS was persuaded by its brief field survey that found prematurely cracked TR414 valve stems on 2007 Ford models, all bearing the Topseal symbol on the base of the stem and all demonstrating the failure modes identical to those in the Dill-labeled models. SRS also conducted an independent analysis of the agency’s complaint records and found that Ford was a standout among OE valve stem failure complaints, with 35 unique vehicle reports alleging valve stem failures on 2007 and 2008 Ford vehicles.

And on October 14, ODI opened a Preliminary Evaluation (PE08-060) into the valve stems, citing the possibility that they may crack due to poor ozone resistance. Although Ford claims that loss of tire air pressure doesn’t represent a safety hazard, the investigation is still pending.

Copyright © Safety Research & Strategies, Inc. 2008

“With less than a month to the deadline established in SAFETEA-LU, we are deeply concerned with the direction currently taken by the NHTSA in this rulemaking,” wrote U.S. Senator Mark Pryor (D-Arkansas) to Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters. “It is our belief that the current proposed rule largely ignores Congressional intent by continuing to rely on outdated one-sided tests and insufficient applied force standards and would fail to significantly reduce injuries and deaths. Furthermore, we believe the proposed rule would lessen remedies available to victims and remove all legal liability for automobile manufacturers in state courts for the manufacture of faulty products. The NHTSA’s reluctance to discuss specific decisions related to estimates of lives saved, stringency of the requirements, or other issues related to the final rule only exacerbate these concerns. This lack of transparency in the NHTSA rulemaking process is simply unacceptable and runs counter to the notion of open government and the development of sound safety policy.”

The June 19 letter followed a hearing on the roof crush rule two weeks earlier, during which sub-committee members emphatically told National Highway Traffic Safety Administration officials they would be working hard to bring the era of boilerplate pre-emption clauses in safety standards to a swift end.

Pryor presided over the June 4 hearing to consider the biomechanics of a rollover, the relationship between vehicle roof strength and occupant injury risk, the history of the roof strength standard, and to review the January Supplemental Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for roof strength. But amid the expected testimonies from consumer groups and manufacturers on the details of the roof crush proposal, was a lively exchange on pre-emption.

NHTSA’s Deputy Administrator James Ports made a presentation on the current proposal, which would increase the roof strength-to-weight ratio from 1.5, established in 1973, to 2.5 times a vehicle’s weight in a rollover crash. The agency, which has been working since 2005 on the first upgrade to the roof strength regulation in three decades, faces a July 1 deadline to revamp the standard. As part of the proposed rule, the agency inserted language which would preempt accident victims from suing any manufacturers who meet this minimum standard. Ports attempted to explain the pre-emption clause as a trial balloon floated out to the public for comment and an attempt to insulate manufacturers against litigation if the increased roof strength inadvertently makes vehicles more prone to rollovers.

“Increasing the roof resistance too much could potentially increase a vehicle’s rollover propensity if we added weight to the roof structure,” Ports said, of the some of the industry comments on the proposal. “Other things being equal, raising the roof’s center of gravity could upset the balance between efforts of increasing the roof strength and the rollover propensity, defeating the purpose of this rule.”

The three senators at the hearing, who either raised questions or made comments on the proposal, weren’t buying. Sen. Pryor told Ports that NHTSA could “save everybody a lot of headaches” if the agency would drop pre-emption clauses from regulatory language. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri) aimed all of her fire on pre-emption – in this proposed rule and others the agency had promulgated in the last few years:

When did NHTSA decide to crush the rights of states? Where did this come from?” she demanded several times. “I’m not trying to be mean to you, but I’m far from satisfied with the answers I’m getting today. It looks like this is, frankly, being railroaded through in a way that people can’t comment. I am one of many in the Senate who feels very strongly on this.

Senator Tom Coburn, (R-Oklahoma) criticized NHTSA’s current proposal for its lack of stringency and for containing a pre-emption provision. Coburn noted that 26 state attorney generals had sent a letter to NHTSA protesting pre-emption as “a major setback to motor vehicle safety.” Coburn also took the agency to task for conducting a rulemaking process that lacked efficacy and transparency. He noted that NHTSA had failed to present “clear and precise evidence” of how safety standards were promulgated and that the current proposal did not go far enough.

“If we have a little increase in roof strength that doesn’t result in a major decrease in injuries and fatalities, we’ve done nothing,” he said.

Safety advocates Joan Claybrook of Public Citizen and Jacqueline Gillian of Advocates for Highway & Auto Safety lobbied for the same improvements outlined in their rulemaking comments, including a dynamic roof strength test and a higher strength-to-weight ratio standard. Stephen Oesch of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety presented the results of their roof crush studies in which showed the relationship between increased roof strength and reduced injury risk in rollover s and suggested that the proposal be strengthened to require a strength-to-weight ratio of at least 3.0.

“Prior to our recent research on roof strength, several studies had reported no relationship between roof strength and injury risk in rollover crashes. These earlier findings defy logic because, as I just explained, in every other crash configuration – whether front, side, or rear – the basic principles of occupant protection dictate that the compartment be designed to resist intrusion so lap/shoulder safety belts and airbags can provide protection to occupants,” Oesch said. “There is no logical reason to assume that in a rollover crash, you would design a vehicle to permit excessive intrusion. This is the reason NASCAR vehicles are equipped with roll bars to prevent roof crush in violent rollover crashes such as the one experienced by Michael McDowell at the Texas Motor Speedway in 2008. He walked away from this crash uninjured.”

On the industry side, Robert Strassberger of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and Michael Stanton of the Association of International Automobile Manufacturers re-stated their opposition to dynamic testing and to two-sided roof testing. Strassberger reiterated the company line that roof strength bore no relation to injuries in a rollover crash.

On one thing, most of the commenters agreed: NHTSA should take more time, if necessary to propose a well-crafted roof crush amendment, rather than rush to make the July 1 deadline.

“It’s more important to get this thing done right, than get it done fast,” Pryor said.

Copyright © Safety Research & Strategies, 2008

It’s difficult to find an advertisement for a vehicle in the U.S. that doesn’t include safety claims. Multiple airbags, Electronic Stability Control, an alphabet soup of indecipherable acronyms, along with the prerequisite government five-star ratings – all seemingly indicate we are at the pinnacle of safety in America. Despite all of this hype, U.S. views on auto safety are schizophrenic: We allow our crash safety regulations, many of which were written decades ago, to significantly lag behind state-of-the-art and meanwhile more than 42,000 deaths that occurred on America’s roads last year are given scant notice.

Currently, much of the safety focus is on crash prevention technologies. These technologies offer tremendous opportunities to reduce injuries and fatalities by preventing crashes. But protecting occupants who are in crashes should remain a high priority. In addition to providing a vehicle structure designed to deform, occupants must have a “safety cage” to provide sufficient survival space in crashes, and restraint systems and occupant packaging designed to reduce injuries and fatalities.

While these well-recognized concepts are the basis of motor vehicle crashworthiness, today rollover crashes account for nearly one-third of all deaths on U.S. roads, yet we lack standards ensuring occupant protection in rollovers. The current standard, which governs roof strength (FMVSS 216), requires a vehicle roof to withstand a static force of 1.5 times its unloaded vehicle weight. First established in 1973, the requirement was intended as a “temporary” alternative to the much more stringent dynamic dolly rollover test. But this “temporary” requirement was never significantly altered even as data continued to show the growing risk of death and serious injury from rollover crashes. The first proposed revision to FMVSS was issued in 2005 yet the proposal offered only a slightly more stringent version of the current static test-a test that is roundly criticized for lacking real-world relevance to occupant protection in rollover crashes. A new proposal is expected before the end of the year. Rollover occupant protection has become so controversial there is lack of agreement even on a basic level, including whether a roof crushing into the occupant space is the cause of motorists’ injuries.

Another consistent crashworthiness problem is “The Forgotten Child.” Children between the ages of 4 and 8 years old have been consistently left out of manufacturers plans for improved safety. These children are not so much forgotten, as systematically ignored by industry and regulators alike. In fact, the historical landscape is dotted with missed opportunities to close the safety gap and warnings about the failure to do so.

Today, motor vehicle crashes remain the leading cause of injury-related unintentional death among children aged 14 and younger; children between the ages of 5-14 account for two-thirds of those deaths. In 2005, 585 children, ages 5-9 died in motor vehicle crashes; 74,000 suffered injuries. About 8,000 of those injuries were incapacitating-including traumatic brain injuries caused by head trauma and cervical spine and severe abdominal injuries associated with restrain misuse.

These tragic statistics reflect more than benign neglect. They are the result of manufacturers’ conscious decisions to exclude young children in their restraint designs, abetted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s inconsistent and ineffective regulations. Regulators have been slow to require automakers to install the basic equipment necessary to make child safety seats effective – such as rear lap/shoulder belts – particularly in the middle position. They have failed to promulgate standards for child restraints that cover the probable weight ranges for passengers in the 4-8 year-old age range. Astoundingly, there are still no dynamic requirements to test dummies – of any size – in rear seats.

Safety demands a holistic and systems approach and it takes more than advertising about features to make an impact on motor vehicle deaths and injuries.

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