Editor’s note: The Safety Record spent more than a year seeking the documents related to Recall 08C002 involving Evenflo Discovery child restraint.  The Safety Record undertook this project because the defect was serious, resulting in a recall of more than 1 million seats. Yet, much the public record explaining how this recall came about was missing, and, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration was not forthright in its actions or in its public statements in February 2008. The Safety Record is committed to ensuring that the public record is complete and to bringing transparency to NHTSA’s important regulatory and investigative activities in the interest of government accountability. Documents obtained following the successful settlement of Safety Research & Strategies litigation against NHTSA show that the Evenflo recall was the result of secret investigations and behind-the-scenes exchanges between the agency and Evenflo. This Special Report, in part, is based on these records.  

On September 19, 2005, Isaac Neal Eslinger died of his injuries in a rollover crash that occurred the day before. He was seven months old. His mother Debra was at the wheel of the family’s 1996 Isuzu Oasis van, travelling north on Highway 6 towards Mandan, North Dakota. According to the police report of the crash, the last thing Debra Eslinger remembered was glancing back at her daughter, before realizing that she had swerved onto the shoulder of the other side of the road. Debra tried to correct her steering, but lost control of the van. It rolled over and came to rest in a ditch on the east side of the highway.

Debra, who was wearing her seatbelt, and her three-year-old daughter, secured in a child safety seat, survived the crash without any injuries. The Evenflo Discovery infant seat holding Isaac, however, detached from its base in the crash. Isaac, still strapped in the seat, was pitched out of the van. He died of a skull fracture and head injury.

Isaac’s father, Neal Eslinger, a chiropractor in Bismarck, paid tribute to his only son on a blog he writes, called My Living Strength:

“Isaac has a spirit presence that warmed all hearts. He was a “master of smiling” as he displayed his prominent dimples, twinkling eyes and his unique laughs, giggles and squeaks. The mere glimpse of his mother or sound of her voice would bring a smile and a laugh that truly was an honor to witness. …Isaac was a gift from God and he always was and always will be “Our Little Angel.” Words cannot express the blessings he brought into our lives.”

Three weeks after the crash, on Oct. 7, 2005, Isaac Eslinger’s death in an Evenflo Discovery infant seat was reported to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Fifteen months later, NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation came looking for the crash report.

January 2007 would turn out to be a turning point for the popular infant carrier combination car seat. A controversial Consumer Reports story claimed that sled-tests showed that some models of the Discovery had a tendency to separate from its base under the stress of crash forces. This wasn’t actually news. A spate of infant deaths and injuries linked to base separations had initiated a low-level NHTSA investigation in 2004. But that probe was closed four months later with no defect finding.

NHTSA and Evenflo swiftly dispatched the Consumer Reports story by pointing out that its side-impact sled tests were actually conducted at a much higher rate of speed than the story claimed. Within weeks, Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, printed a retraction, withdrew the story and apologized to its readers. But one year later, NHTSA and Evenflo announced that the juvenile products manufacturing firm was recalling 1.1 million Discovery infant carriers because testing by both parties showed that it could separate from its base in a side impact.

In the three-and-a-half year gap between the closing of the first investigation and the recall of the Discovery infant carrier were two secret NHTSA defects investigations into the infant carrier’s propensity for seat base separations, the discrediting of a consumer advocacy organization that attempted to raise the bar on child restraint safety, and more child injuries and deaths in crashes that resulted in base separations.

The recall was five years ago, but questions about its origins linger. Save a flurry of stories published about CU’s testing mistake and retraction, and fewer when the recall was announced a year later, the record surrounding this child safety defect has remained hidden from public view. Increasingly, this appears to be by design. NHTSA frequently hides the extent of its investigative activities and its negotiations with industry. If no formal Preliminary Evaluation or Engineering Analysis is opened, the public record is never established. This secrecy has been the subject of criticism by safety advocates, who say that it allows the agency to avoid accountability, and by the Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General. In an October 2011 audit, the OIG criticized the Office of Defects lack of documentation and transparency:

“Without comprehensive documentation of pre-investigation activities, ODI’s decisions are open to interpretation and questions after the fact, potentially undermining public confidence in its actions.” Noting NHTSA’s failure to document meetings with manufacturers, OIG recommended “a complete and transparent record system with documented support for decisions that significantly affect its investigations.”

In November 2011, Safety Research & Strategies filed a Freedom of Information Request for the communications between NHTSA and Evenflo surrounding February 2008 recall. When NHTSA responded that it had no such documents, SRS appealed – arguing that the simultaneous press releases issued by NHTSA and Evenflo showed that each entity knew about the other’s test results on the Discovery – evidence of communication between the two. In April, after NHTSA did not respond to SRS’s appeal, the company filed a civil lawsuit in U.S. District Court to obtain the documents. In February, SRS and the Department of Transportation settled the lawsuit, after NHTSA released all of the documents it said were in its possession. The Department of Transportation paid SRS’s costs and legal fees of $14,281. 

“We shouldn’t have to sue a federal agency to get documents that should have been in the public domain – especially on an important child safety seat defect,” says Sean Kane, president of Safety Research & Strategies and publisher of The Safety Record. “This matters because without transparency, there is no accountability. We continue to see NHTSA partner only with the industry it is supposed to regulate, and any outside critics are dismissed.”

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration refused to answer any specific questions about its actions in investigating base separations in the Evenflo Discovery or in bringing about the recall. This story is based on the internal records obtained through the FOIA lawsuit, interviews, and on documents in the public domain.

NHTSA’s First Investigation into the Evenflo Discovery

In March 2004, NHTSA opened a Preliminary Evaluation into allegations that the base of the Evenflo Discovery could separate in a crash.

Infant carrier-type child safety seats are designed to be convenient for caregivers – they double as a safety seat inside the vehicle and a carrier outside of the vehicle. As any parent who has had to wrestle a car seat in and out of a vehicle knows, a seat that can be easily removed and retained is a big convenience. But in this design, unlike other child safety restraints, only the base is secured to the vehicle. In a crash, much of the integrity of the unit rests on the mechanism that locks the seat to the base. The base may stay put in a crash, but a false latch, or a mechanism that fails during an impact, can cause the seat itself to detach, turning the child, securely strapped to the seat, into a projectile.

The Evenflo Discovery went into production in 1998 and was one of their most popular products – 2.6 million had been sold in six years.

The 2004 NHTSA investigation was prompted by seven complaints to NHTSA involving two child deaths and three injuries. The Preliminary Evaluation (PE04024), however, did not advance to an Engineering Analysis. The Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) terminated it just four months later. The tally of crashes, injuries and deaths was much higher by the time the Closing Resume was published: 56 crashes, 23 infant injuries and eight infant deaths. But NHTSA concluded that most of those crashes were so severe, that the child safety seat was not to blame for the injuries and deaths.

According to a list of Discovery base separations provided by Evenflo and filed as an exhibit in the only base separation civil lawsuit that went to trial, Hadjih v. Evenflo, the child safety seat had been experiencing separations since 1997. It happened three times in internal tests, and the real-world instances began in 1998. By the time NHTSA opened PE04024, the company had tallied 61 instances of base separations. During the four-month period of the PE, 10 more instances of base separations were reported to Evenflo, including two deaths and a crash in which the child sustained a skull fracture in two places.

ODI investigated by sending out peer information requests to other infant seat manufacturers, and seeking from Evenflo the information standard in every investigation – production and incident numbers and design changes. It also “conducted a review of the ODI database, telephone interviews with complainants, viewed real-world crash experience through manufacturers reports, photographs, police accident reports, and inspected crash seats,” according to the investigation’s Closing Resume.

In its replies to NHTSA, Evenflo defended the real-world crash performance of the Discovery, saying that it was aware of 500 crashes – a likely undercount – in which the seat performed well and stayed intact. The manufacturer’s main defense of base separation in crashes where some details were known, was a dismissal of each incident as a case of a parent’s failure to use the car seat properly or the result of crash forces so severe, no restraint could have protected the victim.

In some cases, the impacts were at high speeds. For example, three-month-old Ashlyn Worley died in a head-on collision at highway speed in October 2000. The driver of the striking car, which crossed the median and struck the Worley vehicle, died as well. The infant’s mother also sustained serious injuries.

But not every crash represented a high-speed, severe impact in which the odds of survival for all occupants were low. In August 2000, Gaudaloupe Pardo was six-month-old infant who died in a low-speed fender-bender, when the newly purchased Evenflo Discovery infant carrier separated from its base. According to court documents, Victoriano Pardo was at the wheel of a 1999 Ford Escort, southbound and creeping across an intersection to make a left-hand turn, when a motorist trying to avoid a back-up, by travelling northward in the bus lane, struck the Pardo Escort in the rear passenger door. Witnesses and Evenflo’s accident reconstruction expert agreed that both vehicles were travelling at low speeds, according to court documents. No one in either vehicle was seriously injured, and only the damage was to the exterior of the Escort’s rear passenger door.

But Guadaloupe Pardo occupied the right rear position. And the force of the crash allegedly caused the Discovery infant seat to detach from the base, forcing it upwards and flipping the seat over on to the chest of her mother, who was seated next to her daughter in the middle rear position. Guadaloupe Pardo remained strapped in her seat. She died the next day of massive head injuries, court documents said. (Evenflo and lawyers for the Pardo family disputed these facts in letters to NHTSA during the investigation. Documents produced later in litigation offered more facts about the crash.)

In closing PE04024, NHTSA noted that Discovery infant seats had separated in 45 multi-vehicle and 11 single vehicle crashes: 29 involved side impacts; 16 frontal impacts; seven rear impacts; two rollovers and two in which the impact direction was unknown.

The agency conceded that it did not have all the details of all of the crashes, but concluded that “the reported crashes do not appear to be minor low speed incidents.” 

 Consumer Reports Takes a Hit

It would be another two and half years before the safety of the Evenflo Discovery would be challenged – this time in laboratory tests. Consumer Reports had decided to devote part of its February 2007 issue to infant seat safety tests. But, instead of relying on the FMVSS 213 compliance test – which is merely a minimum standard that only simulates the seat in a frontal crash, CU would subject a dozen popular infant seats to more rigorous front and side impact tests, designed to mimic the front and side impact tests for the New Car Assessment Program. (NCAP results are the basis for the federal safety rating system.)

It hired Calspan, the Buffalo, NY-based aerospace and automotive research-and-development corporation that had literally performed tens of thousands of sled tests. (In a sled test, the child restraint is attached to a simulated bench seat with three seat positions. The sled buck is accelerated forward and then abruptly stopped to simulate a pre-determined impact speed.  Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 213 requires child safety seats to undergo dynamic sled testing at 30 mph to comply with the requirement. Child injury experts do not consider the FMVSS 213 test to be very robust. Indeed, in 1999 NHTSA Administrator Ricardo Martinez sent a letter to child seat manufacturers scolding them for designing seats that merely met the requirements of FMVSS 213: “With the safety of our Nation’s children at issue, mere compliance with the minimum requirements of the standard is not enough; minimum standards should not be the most in safety design that manufacturers provide,” he said.)

Based on the Calspan test results, Consumers Union was convinced that it had uncovered some startling failures: only two seats performed well and seven had failed.

“They separated from their bases, rotated too far, or would have inflicted grave injuries, as measured by our test dummy, whose sensors record the severity of impact,” the article said. “We retested these to see whether they passed the 30-mph federal standard. All passed except the Evenflo Discovery.”

The Evenflo Discovery was far and away the poorest performer in the dozen – the seat had flown off its base with the dummy still strapped in it – as it had in some real-world crashes. As part of the story, CU urged the recall of the Evenflo Discovery.

Sometime in December 2006, after the issue was finished, but not yet published, the consumer advocacy organization met with NHTSA to present the results. The meeting was brief. Agency officials watched the crash videos and asked few questions, recall former CU staffers who were present.

The story itself got a much more dramatic reception from the public when it was released on January 5, 2007. Worried parents flooded NHTSA with questions. Child safety seat technicians who worked regularly with all of these brands were shocked. Then-NHTSA Administrator Nicole Nason attempted to comfort nervous parents that a child restraint was still the safest place for their babies.

Behind the scenes, NHTSA was assessing CU’s test. While the frontal crash tests were properly conducted, NHTSA discovered that the advocacy group had made a serious error in its test protocols for the side impact test – rather than simulating a crash at 35 mph, the Calspan tests simulated an impact of a significantly greater speed. After the issue was published, NHTSA sent CU a letter informing it of the error.

“CU was always incredibly diligent and robust in its testing, so this kind of thing rarely happened,” says Sally Greenberg, now executive director of the National Consumers League. In 2007 Greenberg was Senior Product Safety Counsel for Consumer’s Union. “When you look at the many, many hundreds of tests rarely do they have a misfire like this. But of course, it’s going to happen — to err is human. Internally, a lot of people were mad. It was a hit on everybody’s sense of purpose and relative sense of infallibility within CU.”

 Two weeks later, CU withdrew the entire report, but did not back down from its recommendation that the Evenflo Discovery be recalled. Nonetheless, Nason praised CU for its swift retraction.

“Consumer Reports was right to withdraw its infant car seat test report and I appreciate that they have taken this corrective action. We are always eager to work with Consumer Reports and other organizations to improve child safety and ensure that consumers continue to have access to accurate and credible data. I was troubled by the report because it frightened parents and could have discouraged them from using car seats. It is absolutely essential for every parent to understand that the safest place in an automobile for an infant is in a car seat. Simply put, car seats are the best defense for a child in a crash.”

Evenflo issued an emphatic defense of the Discovery. The company had immediately subjected the Discovery infant seat to 17 FMVSS 213 compliance tests, the company said in a statement. In fact, the Evenflo Discovery seat had been tested “nearly 220 times” in the last two years by NHTSA, internally and by outside laboratories. 

“We are absolutely confident in the safety of the Evenflo Discovery infant seat, and we are certain it meets or exceeds all federal government standards for safety,” the company said.

CU and NHTSA met a few more times – “awkward, uncomfortable meetings,” Greenberg recalled. “We were contrite.”

According to a February 2008 email exchange between CU and the Center for Auto Safety, Ron Medford, now heading Google’s driverless car initiative, then NHTSA’s Senior Associate Administrator for Vehicle Safety, told CU “that they would not piggyback child restraint testing onto their [Side Impact New Car Assessment Program] SINCAP program. He claimed that there was too much danger of the child restraint interfering with the readings they get from the other crash test dummies used in those tests. IIHS [Insurance Institute for Highway Safety] had the same concern when I asked about piggybacking tests for child restraints on to their side crashes.”

CU convened a review committee, and hired Brian O’Neill, former president of the Insurance Institute on Highway Safety, and Kennerly H. Digges, the director of the NHTSA/FHWA Vehicle Safety and Biomechanics National Crash Analysis Center, to retest the car seats. The results were released in the June 2007 issue of Consumer Reports. This time there were no side-impact tests, just FMVSS 213 compliance tests. All of the seats passed.

“It was extremely traumatic because CU’s reputation is built on being credible and reliable,” Greenberg says. “I think it was harmful to the ethos of our testing regimen. Others may disagree but I do feel that CU got a bit gun shy after that testing snafu.”

NHTSA’s Secret Investigations into the Evenflo Discovery

CU was not alone in its discomfort. Despite its public assurances, NHTSA apparently was not persuaded that the Evenflo Discovery was problem-free. Less than a week after CU retracted its story, NHTSA began to take another look at the infant safety seat. On January 24, Carol Meidinger, then-director of the North Dakota Department of Health’s Injury Prevention Program, sent the Office of Defects investigation – at their request – a copy of the Eslinger crash report. (Meidinger had originally reported the crash to NHTSA in 2005, in her role as a state public health official.) Greg Radja, a researcher at NHTSA’s National Center for Statistics and Analysis provided the Office of Defects Investigation with a spreadsheet of incident data collected via the National Automotive Sampling System. 

At the same time, the Office of Vehicle Safety Compliance was testing “numerous Evenflo Discovery seats as a result of the CU allegations,” according to September 24, 2007 email from Claude Harris, director of the Office of Vehicle Safety Compliance.

According to the public record, in a two-week period between January 19 and February 2, the agency ran three separate tests on the Evenflo Discovery 390 model. One test subjected the seat’s components, such as the webbing and the buckle, to various materials endurance tests. The other two compliance tests were a Federal Aviation Administration inversion test, for child restraint use on aircraft, and two dynamic sled tests that did not produce any base separations. If there were other tests, they were not placed in the public compliance test database.

Evenflo also voluntarily submitted test data and test protocols to NHTSA, and asked in June 2007 for confidential treatment of the materials. (NHTSA granted this request.)

NHTSA has not released to The Safety Record the documents surrounding the earlier “defects inquiry.” It is the subject of a separate Freedom of Information Act Request. But a September 2007 e-mail from Claude Harris indicates that NHTSA was investigating:

“I will let Kathy Demeter and/or Jessica Butterfield address what ODI is doing as a follow up to their previous defects inquiry on the Evenflo Discovery base separation issue performed earlier this year,” Harris wrote in a September 2007 email.

But nothing came of this “defects inquiry” until August 2007. The agency has no official “defects inquiry” category. Its hierarchy of investigations includes Issue Evaluations, Preliminary Evaluations, Engineering Analyses, and the most serious, a Case-level investigation. Whatever string ODI was gathering in the wake of the CU story, was in an unofficial capacity, and off the record.

Contrary to what Medford reportedly told CU, the agency did start placing child safety seats in vehicles slated for side-impact crash tests in the New Car Assessment Program. Beginning on February 7 with the 2007 Saturn Outlook outfitted with a Graco SafeSeat, the program conducted 38 tests over an eight-month period. Unlike the 213 compliance test, the SINCAP is an actual vehicle crash test, based on the dynamic requirements of FMVSS 214 (side impact), but is conducted at a higher speed. The SNCAP test simulates an intersection collision performed with a 1360 kg (3,000 lb.) moving deformable barrier at a speed of 61 kmph (38 mph) and  an angle of 27 degrees off the perpendicular. This simulates a car moving at 55 kph hitting another car at 27 kph.

On August 30, Ben Fischer, a test engineer at MGA Research Corp., sent an email to a group of NHTSA staffers informing them that the Evenflo Discovery separated from its base in two side-impact NCAP tests in a Chrysler Sebring and the Nissan Versa. In addition, the child passenger – placed in the non-struck rear right seat, contacted the adult dummy in the left rear seat.

“I felt someone may want to know about this without waiting for the full reports,” he wrote.

This news produced an immediate reaction at the agency. Three years after real-world crashes sounded the alarm about the Discovery’s stability in a crash, NHTSA had something it considered less ambiguous: controlled crash tests. Emails among staff members show that the investigators made assessing this new information a priority.

About a week after the first side-impact NCAP test showed a base separation in a Sebring convertible, MGA completed four additional crash tests – with a Dodge Grand Caravan minivan and a Lexus RX350. In every one of them, the Discovery separated from the base. Staffers from the New Car Assessment Program, the Office of Vehicle Safety Compliance, and the Office of Defects Investigation were working together to gather more information: a list and images from other tests involving similar child restraints, especially in vehicles of similar weight and in similar test configurations; and forensic exams of the Discovery seats to see if there was a consistent failure pattern. In fact, the investigators found damage to the same area in all four failed seats – cracks or stress marks on the left red plastic hook at the head-end of the seat that affixes the carrier to the base.

NHTSA was also looking for other evidence to maneuver Evenflo to a recall – statements the child seat manufacturer may have made about the adequacy of compliance tests and its stance on crash testing child safety seats in NCAP.

On October 31, 2007, the agency presented its preliminary findings at a meeting with Evenflo.

The agency noted several changes in the Discovery’s design in the previous five years. In 2002, Evenflo discontinued the Discovery with a 5-point harness and switched to 3-point harness. In April 2005, Evenflo reinforced Discovery’s base to accommodate testing with the new 12-month old test dummy and to prepare for revisions to Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 213 that would be effective in August 2005. In June 2007, Evenflo reintroduced Discovery with the 5-point harness. But the agency concluded that the base and carrier for the pre-2007 versions with the 3-point harness and those with the 5-point harness were probably identical, because the 3-point harness versions had shell slots intended to accommodate a 5-point harness.

The Office of Defects Investigation provided a statistical analysis that was mostly confined to crashes that had occurred in the previous 10 months – meaning, since January 2007. The agency buttressed the crash-test findings with incidence statistics gathered from the Vehicle Owner Questionnaires – the agency’s public complaint database – Early Warning Reports, which manufacturers are required to file quarterly with the agency, and other crash databases, looking for crashes involving base separations. (NHTSA redacted much of the statistical information, under an exception for confidential business information.)

NHTSA’s strongest evidence was its side NCAP tests, and the Discovery’s poor performance as an outlier. In 38 tests with various vehicles and various child restraints using a separate carrier and base, there were four instances of base separations – all of which were Evenflo Discovery models.

According to a NHTSA presentation, Evenflo suggested that using the LATCH (Lower Anchorages and Tethers for Children) system to secure the base to the vehicle seat could place additional stress on child restraint. It also said that the manufacturer observed a separation in a sled test using LATCH, but not securing the base with a seat belt. And, according to the NHTSA presentation, Evenflo’s bottom line was: This was not a safety defect.

On December 21, Evenflo and NHTSA re-convened at MGA’s Burlington, Wisconsin crash test facility for a fifth test of the Evenflo Discovery. NHTSA NCAP and MGA officials worked closely to ensure that all of the seats were affixed to the seats in the last two rows of another 2008 Dodge Caravan according to Evenflo’s instructions – and to the satisfaction of the company’s representatives, Bill Forbes and Tom Batalaris, who flew in to observe the tests.

“The test is VERY important. The P3 position is the most important,” wrote NHTSA NCAP contractor Taryn Rockwell to the MGA staff.

“P3,” passenger 3, would be the 12-month-old CRABI dummy, placed in the second row of the van in the non-struck side of the vehicle, affixed to the seat using the seatbelt. The technicians were required to read the owner’s manual for every child restraint and prepare a check list for each CRS based on the mode of installation (seatbelt or Lower Anchors and Tethers for Children [LATCH] system). In addition, the technicians were required to read all portions of the vehicle owner’s manual that pertain to child restraints and include any pertinent information on the checklists as well. A certified child safety seat Child PS technician would install each seat and a second would check each installation.

On the struck side of the vehicle, a three-year-old dummy, restrained in a forward-facing child safety seat using the LATCH system, would occupy the outboard position in the second row . In the third row, on the struck side would be another 3-year-old dummy secured in a CRS using LATCH.  On the non-struck side would be another rear-facing Discovery infant carrier with a 12-month-old CRABI dummy, but this seat would be attached to the vehicle seat without the base, using the seat belt.

In a December 21 email, Daniel Smith, then-NHTSA’s Associate Administrator for Enforcement, summed the results to his colleagues:

“The Evenflo Discovery test just occurred at MGA in Wisconsin. Both Evenflo seats were on the non-struck side, rear facing. The seat in the second row, secured by the seatbelt, separated completely and left the carrier and dummy face down on the floor [emphasis ours]. The seat in the third row (no base, belted) experienced some twisting but no catastrophic failure. Taryn will send us pictures tomorrow and, by the time we once again have a quorum in the first week of January, we will have film and a report. Evenflo reps were present and, understandably, not happy with the result. They were there to observe the securement of the seats and, prior to the test, expressed satisfaction with the way it was done. The two other seats (which were not Evenflo seats) were forward facing seats holding three-year-old dummies on the struck side. They did not experience structural failures. Enough said for now. More to follow. And some real decisions to make early in the New Year.”

With the problem established, Evenflo and NHTSA began to work towards a disposition. In early January, The NCAP staff prepared all of the side NCAP test reports, videos and photos associated with the Evenflo Discovery to post to the docket – but withheld publishing the test results.

Evenflo, meanwhile, developed a solution – the addition of an extra strap, called a dual-hook fastener, to keep the seat on the base. On January 22, MGA tested an Evenflo Discovery with the strap modification in a 2008 Infiniti FX35. The modified seat performed well, without a separation or stress marks on the base or carrier.

Child seat engineering expert Gary Whitman, who served as a plaintiff’s expert in several Discovery base separation cases, says that the Discovery was vulnerable to a single-point failure, at the head end of the latch mechanism, which is located on the underside of the carrier shell. In an impact, inertial loading can cause the two teeth that engage in slots on either side of the head end of the carrier to release the carrier from the base. Initially, Whitman thought that intrusion was necessary to cause a base separation, but after studying the photographs and test videos from the SINCAP testing, he realized that contact wasn’t necessary.

 “In a side impact, when the child starts to move toward the impact, they load into the side of infant seat and into their harness. Those loads pull upwards on the infant carrier, causing the load to be transferred down to the teeth. That load causes deformation around where the teeth are engaged with the base. If the deformation is sufficient enough, it can allow the teeth to slip off the base edge.”

 In later iterations, Evenflo modified the latch mechanism to try to prevent this failure, Whitman said.

 “But I’m not convinced that they have eliminated the risk,” Whitman added.

Only Some Discovery Models are Recalled

On February 1, 2008, Evenflo recalled 1.1 million 390, 391, 534 and 552 model Discovery infant carriers made between April 2005 and January 29, 2008. The agency did not require Evenflo to submit a properly referenced Part 573 Defect and Noncompliance Report. The chronology of the events leading up to the recall, which is a statutory requirement, was conspicuously absent.

In a January 31, 2008 letter to NHTSA, Evenflo’s Vice President of Engineering Safety Lindsay Harris said that the models being recalled had “proven to be safe and effective in reported accidents involving side impact collisions with no serious injuries or deaths.” The failures in the side NCAP tests were not defects as defined in federal law, but a recall would be launched to allay consumer concerns. This is a position Evenflo maintains today. In a written statement to The Safety Record, Evenflo said:

“The Discovery model 390/391 Discovery was not defective and it passed all government and Evenflo internal standards. The voluntary recall was an effort on Evenflo’s part to further enhance the safety afforded by the model 390/391.”

In February 2008, NHTSA told The Safety Record and The New York Times that the recall was an unexpected consequence of its side-impact research program. The agency did not mention that it had any concerns raised by the CU testing, or had initiated an aborted “defects inquiry” in January 2007.

None of the earlier models, which prompted the 2004 investigation and were actually tied to real-world failures, were included. NHTSA would not answer any questions from The Safety Record relating to why it did not urge Evenflo to offer the strap fix to the earlier models. In response to a written question about design differences, an Evenflo representative explained that the company made a number of changes to respond to changes in FMVSS 213, which took effect in 2005. These new requirements, which applied to all child safety seats, included lengthening the seat back from 18 to 20 inches. The new test protocols included a heavier, 22-pound 12-month-old test dummy for dynamic testing; a  standard test bench reclined 8 degrees more than the previous bench; and increased spacing of the vehicle lap belt anchorage from 8.75 inches to 15.75 inches.

These changes produced “two significant effects on the dynamic performance of the Evenflo Discovery Model 391,” Evenflo said. The increased length of the seat repositioned the system’s center of gravity rearward. That coupled with a heavier and longer test dummy, increased the forces on the base itself and “on the system as a whole where the carrier and convenience base are joined.”  Second, Evenflo said:

 “The additional stiffness Evenflo added to the Discovery Model 391 convenience base to counteract these forces in frontal impacts had the unintended consequence of making the base much stiffer than both the convenience bases accompanying earlier models as well as the Discovery Model 391 carrier with which it was used.  This increased stiffness allowed the base to better maintain its shape when exposed to the crash forces, while the relatively unchanged stiffness of the carrier allowed it to flex away from the base in lateral impacts.” 

The company added: “Significantly, both NHTSA and Evenflo have side-impact tested the earlier production model 316 Discovery and it did not become detached like the subsequent model 390/391 model had leading up to the 2008 recall/safety upgrade campaign.”

 Whitman countered that the changes Evenflo made to accommodate the larger dummy did not alter the latch mechanism design. But, they did make the teeth on the latch longer than on the 316 Discovery, undoubtedly to try to prevent the detachments, he said. But detachments still occurred in the SINCAP tests. NHTSA’s SINCAP test videos clearly showed that “the detachment occurs due deformation of the plastic of the base immediately surrounding the notch that accepts the carrier latch teeth. It is not due to overall flexing of the base or carrier. To design a carrier-to-base attachment that must rely on the carrier and base to flex together in exactly the right amount in order to avoid detachment is absurd and extremely dangerous.”

“Many factors in the real world could affect flexing — impact from intrusion, contact by an adjacent occupant, variation in temperature, which significantly effects the flexibility of plastic, seat cushion stiffness, and seat belt tension,” he said.  

The side impact testing that NHTSA and Evenflo performed on the Model 316 Discovery did not simulate the crash conditions of the side impact NCAP tests, Whitman said. The pulse was not as severe and the test bench seat had a very soft cushion that allowed the entire infant carrier and base assembly to tip over, but prevented the carrier from applying the load to the carrier-to-base attachment in the manner necessary to cause detachment, he said.

For the staff at Consumer’s Union, the recall offered a bit of vindication. According to an email exchange between CU and the Center for Auto Safety, CU was surprised to learn that NHTSA had crash tested child safety restraints as part of the side NCAP, after going “to great lengths to prove us wrong after we published our flawed car seat report. If you remember, they simulated SINCAP tests on a sled and tested all the child restraints we did. They saw no separation… NHTSA did know that we had serious concerns about the Evenflo Discovery and we used their own field complaint data to support our concerns. I am happy that they quietly agreed with us in the end.”

For some, however, the recall did not represent the end.

Attorney Douglas Gentile represented the Hadjih family, whose five-month-old son suffered a skull fracture and traumatic brain injuries in a June 2005 crash. His mother, Razika Hadjih was at the wheel of a 1996 Jeep Grand Cherokee, making a left-hand turn, when she was struck by an oncoming 2004 Dodge Dakota. Her son, strapped in his Discovery infant carrier, became a projectile. The carrier separated from the base, and was flung into the rear cargo area of the Jeep. A jury heard the case in November, and after a two-week trial, the jury found for the defendant. Evenflo’s main defense, says Gentile, was that the Dakota drove the seat off of the base, and that the boy’s injuries were caused by the impact of the crash – not from the base separation. The infant who survived the crash is now eight years old and struggles physically, cognitively and emotionally. As Gentile sees it, this is a direct result of NHTSA’s failure to thoroughly investigate Discovery base separations in 2004.

“Instead of conducting a legitimate engineering analysis, NHTSA accepted Evenflo’s summary and conclusions with no supporting evidence. While I would grant you that some of the crashes were severe, that certainly did not explain the vast majority of the incidents,” Gentile says. “NHTSA blew it off. It’s pretty sad when the watchdog agency doesn’t do anything other than accept the word of the manufacturer’s in-house engineer who has an vested interest in not disclosing everything he knows about the failure mechanism. This seat was clearly defective and NHTSA gave Evenflo a pass.”

Gentile has filed a motion for a new trial, which is still pending.

In 2007, the Eslinger family sued Evenflo and reached a confidential settlement. Seven years after the death of his son, Neal Eslinger still trying to make sense of federal child safety seat standards that don’t always protect children. Like many who have lost a loved one in a crash, he has gotten – after the shock and grief of loss – a sobering education in a system riddled with numerous and incomprehensible gaps. Eslinger still doesn’t understand why the earlier model Discovery infant carriers with the same basic base and carrier attachment design have never been recalled, or why manufacturers immediately attempt to find fault with users instead of examining the deficiencies in their products.

“It’s their go-to thing – either the parent installed it improperly or the accident was too horrific,” he says. “Child safety seats are not for carrying children around, they are for keeping your child safe and secure in the vehicle when an accident occurs. If the carrier can release from the base unit in any circumstance of an accident, then the base unit shouldn’t be used, as the child safety seat fails for the only reason it exists and in the very moment you need it most.”

NHTSA’s Child Safety Record

The story of the Evenflo Discovery recall is of a piece with the history of child automotive safety in the U.S. – one of long delays involving the most basic aspects of occupant protection, a lack of leadership among federal regulators and industry, and a mis-match between the safety ideals caregivers are advised to seek and the reality of today’s vehicles and child safety seats.

For example, it is common knowledge among NHTSA, manufacturers and bio-injury experts that the FMVSS 213 compliance test is a poor measure of robust protection during a crash. Even Evenflo, in response to NHTSA’s 2000 child restraints system plan, acknowledged that “the FMVSS 213 crash pulse is not reflective of real world collisions” and supported adding child restraints to the NCAP tests to get an “improved understanding of child restraint and vehicle interaction.” A glaring omission in the dynamic sled test is the lack of a seat back in the front of the sled buck. Parents have been told for decades to secure their children in the rear seats of a vehicle, where, in a frontal crash, those occupants will be thrust forward toward the back of the front seat. Depending on how well a restraint does its job, limbs or the head may strike the seat back – yet we don’t test that reality because there’s nothing for the dummy to contact in the test. FMVSS 213 tests child restraints on a single bench seat that is mounted on a sled buck with no vehicle structure in front of it, and therefore does not test for real-world head contact risk in the rear seat compartment. This method of testing cannot address the effects of vehicle seat design, vehicle restraint design, potential impact areas for the child dummies, or compatibility issues. 

An analysis of 2006 compliance test data, as reported by noted biomechanical engineer and researcher Martha Bidez, showed head excursions for a large number of child occupant dummies, ranging from 3-12 years, exceed the available space in the rear seat compartment  – meaning there would be head contact with the seat back in a real-world crash.

In 1999, the NHTSA Administrator Dr. Richard Martinez chided child seat manufacturers for failing to take due care in their child safety seat designs. In a stern letter, Martinez stated, “When products are engineered with narrow compliance margins, the level of safety risk increases, even if the product is in technical compliance with the minimum standard. Only consumers don’t know that the phrase “meets or exceeds federal safety standards” is only a faint endorsement of a component’s safety.”

Just about every significant regulatory stride in child occupant protection has been initiated not from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration – but from Congress.

Three-point belts are critical in securing some child restraints – particularly booster seats – to the vehicle. NHTSA knew since 1968 that three-point belts offered superior protection over lap-only belts, but didn’t promulgate a rule mandating them in 1989 after a series of Congressional hearings excoriating the agency. Lap-shoulder belts in the center rear position – which the agency had been officially promoting as the safest position for a child since 1979 – were not required until September 2005, after Congress passed Anton’s Law mandating this requirement.

In 1991, Congress included a provision in the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) directing NHTSA to initiate a rulemaking on child booster seat safety. The Transportation Recall Enhancement Accountability and Documentation (TREAD) Act of 2000 mandated the agency to initiate a rulemaking to improve the safety of child restraints, including minimizing head injuries from side impact collisions.

When child safety regulations were first proposed they only covered children up to 50 pounds –a weight limit that the American Medical Association told the agency was “essentially arbitrary.” In 1974, when the amendments to FMVSS 213 were first proposed, Australia’s Motor Transport Department criticized NHTSA for the lack of provisions to protect older children and warned that adult seat belts were dangerous for children. NHTSA did not address older children in rulemaking.

Child seat misuse rates remain distressingly high. In 1996, a NHTSA study found that the percentage of child safety seat use was 79.5 percent. In 2004, another NHTSA study pegged it at 72.6 percent. Last week, Washington D.C. radio station WTOP reported that at one recent car seat inspections event in Prince George’s County, “100 percent of the seats that inspectors checked out were improperly installed.”

Children and young adults continue to be seriously injured in the rear seat compartment, because that area of the vehicle remains essentially unregulated. Neither FMVSS 213 nor NCAP include dynamic crash testing requirements for children in the rear seat compartment, masking the dangers and limitations of current rear seat restraint designs. A report released last month by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia recommended that technologies already protecting front seat passengers should be added to rear seat positions and that rear seat geometry be modified to better fit younger passengers.

The Evenflo Discovery: Three Investigations and One Recall Later

On July 1, 2009, Evenflo submitted to NHTSA’s Recall Management Division its required sixth quarterly report on the number of Discovery infant carriers that were repaired via the use of the strap. Out of a recall population of 1.1 million affected units, only about a third were remedied. The vast majority, 214,419, were remedied from a dealer or manufacturer’s inventory. Of the remaining 885,581, only 142,990 consumers got the strap. Five years after the recall, it is difficult to say how many are still in service – passed on to younger family members or to strangers at yard sales.

NHTSA declined to answer any specific questions about why it resumed investigating the Discovery infant carrier in 2007 after Consumers Union’s testing raised questions about the integrity of the Discovery’s attachment system in a side impact. Nor would the agency explain what was different in the attachment mechanism between the earlier Discovery models and those that were recalled, that led to the decision to forego a recall involving models that separated in real-world crashes. In response to a set of detailed questions, NHTSA would only release this non-responsivstatement attributed to the agency itself and not any specific individual:

“At the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, safety is our top priority, particularly the safety of children, and we work continually to improve child passenger safety through numerous efforts—including working with our state partners, providing expertise and support for child seat-fitting stations, conducting defect investigations and recalls, and ensuring manufacturers comply with federal motor vehicle safety standard (FMVSS) No. 213, “Child restraint systems.”  NHTSA is also developing a Child Seat Fit Program. Through this program, vehicle manufacturers would voluntarily recommend a minimum of three seats from each of the three child restraint system (CRS) type categories – rear facing, forward facing, and booster – and spanning across a range of price points.”

And while this as-yet unrealized initiative sounds like progress, in the European Union, this has been a requirement of the same manufacturers who market their products in the U.S. for decades.

What’s more significant in this unrelated statement is the agency position that it owes the public no more than the few facts it deigns to dole out in sparing measure. It will not entertain a live conversation, nor respond to specific questions. Every scrap of additional information must be subjected to the lengthy bureaucratic process of Freedom of Information Requests or fought for in a court of law. These are not the actions of an agency confident in its processes or conclusions.

In the case of the Evenflo Discovery, infants died and were severely injured in crashes in which the carrier separated from the base in lateral impacts. Not only did base separations happen in the real world; they also happened in crash tests. But the recall would not have come about at all had Consumers Union not raised questions – even with incorrect methodology. NHTSA’s unacknowledged debt to the consumer’s advocacy group remains.

In 2012, Kumho Tires notified NHTSA that it was recalling 40,769 SOLUS KH25 passenger car tires (size 225/45R17) due to sidewall cracking. At the time, nearly the entire recall population was in Kumho’s warehouses. Only 122 had actually been sold to customers; another 1,116 were in dealer’s inventories. But thanks to one of the nation’s biggest tire recyclers, Kumho has to recall them again.

On April 30, Kuhmo announced that it would now have to collect nearly 12,000 SOLUS KH25, because the national tire recycler that was supposed to scrap them resold them to used tire dealers. According the Defect and Noncompliance notice Kumho filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in early August 2012, the Vietnamese tire manufacturer paid Liberty Tire Recycling to dispose of 11,922 tires from its Itasca, Illinois warehouse. The tires slated for destruction had three holes drilled into in the tread surface – presumably to render them unusable. Instead, Liberty sold 7,875 tires to various tire wholesalers in Texas, New York, North Carolina and Puerto Rico.

On its website, Liberty proclaims itself as an environmental champion, turning more than 110 million scrap tires annually into the “raw materials for smart, sustainable products that improve people’s lives”: 

“Across the country – in small towns and big cities – a network of collection facilities and processors recycle car, truck and tractor tires to reuse as the base of innovative, eco-friendly products – and to rid the North American countryside of a tremendous amount of waste material. The landscape is changing, and Liberty Tire Recycling is at the forefront of a revolutionary conservation industry.”

In this case, Liberty was taking drilled, scrap tires and recycling them to become patched tires with a propensity for sidewall cracking that could lead to a sudden loss of air.

We aren’t sure if this is smart or sustainable – a sudden tire failure could change a person’s life – but probably not in a good way. Certainly Kumho couldn’t have been amused.

Kumho doesn’t mention how it learned of Liberty’s novel tire recycling scheme. More than 9,600 had not been sent back into the marketplace. But another 2,310 had already been sold to consumers, who, no doubt, didn’t know they were buying a rehabilitated recalled tire.

On NHTSA’s website, the agency warns that if patched and resold, these tires “may not adhere to specific Rubber Manufacturers Association (RMA) standards for tire repairs.”

In 2007, the RMA followed suit, by issuing a Tire Information Service Bulletin listing many negative factors affecting the condition of used tires following Safety Research & Strategies story on the hidden dangers associated and questionable practices associated with used tire sales (see Used Tires: A Booming Business with Hidden Dangers). 

“Used tires may have been exposed to improper service, maintenance or storage conditions and may have been damaged, which could eventually lead to tire failure,” the advisory said.

Currently, there is still no database or easy means for tire service professionals to determine whether a tire is subject to a recall (see Moving Tire Recalls into the 21^st Century). 

In Great Britain, manufacturers of new tires have issued warnings to consumers for more than a decade on the hazards of buying used tires.

Last week, four Japanese automakers – Toyota, Nissan, Honda and Mazda – announced recalls of 3.4 million vehicles for “improperly pressurized” airbags made by Takata that could rupture, igniting fires or propelling metal fragments that could travel “upward toward the windshield or downward toward the front passenger’s foot well.”

They forgot to mention that they could shoot straight out and hit you in the chest, as allegedly happened in 2009 to a Florida woman who owned a 2001 Honda Civic. And, they apparently forgot to mention that these airbags have been recalled over and over again since 2001.

In this latest campaign, Takata said that it only learned of the problem in 2011, after an alleged rupture of a passenger airbag inflator occurred in Puerto Rico. Certainly, it’s unlikely that 2011 was the first the supplier heard about this issue. There have been six recalls associated with Takata airbags that explode with too much force, spraying debris in their wake. This slow-moving rolling recall for manufacturing defects involving 13-year-old vehicles raises more questions than it answers. Why is Honda identifying a manufacturing process problem so long after these vehicles were produced?

The latest recall of 2000 to 2004 vehicles suggests an age degradation issue involving the propellant. Honda’s ever-changing explanations suggest that perhaps more than one manufacturing problem lies at the root of the inflator rupture problems.  A stroll through the recall documents also reveals Honda’s odd behavior – like recalling 830,000 vehicles to find 2,400 replacement modules. The depth of NHTSA’s involvement is also unknown. The agency began asking questions in 2009, without actually assigning the recall investigation an official Recall Query number. We suspect that the Recall Management Division has been keeping close company with Honda ever since.

Honda Inflator Ruptures Through the Years

2001: Recall 01V055

In February 2001, Isuzu reported in a Defect and Noncompliance Notice that it discovered three vehicles, a 2000 and 2001 Rodeo and an MY 2001 Honda Passport had passenger side front air bag inflator modules built with too much generant.

“In the event of a crash, the abnormal amount of generant could cause the airbag to burst. Occupants could be injured either as a result of debris or as a result of crash forces not counteracted by the air bag,” Isuzu said.

According to the defect report, the undisclosed supplier told the vehicle assembly plant that it had produced air bag units with incorrectly manufactured inflators in late January 2001. At the time, Isuzu said that it only knew of three defective vehicles outside its possession – identified by Isuzu ‘s undisclosed supplier using ”radiography images in the supplier’s possession.”

So, it was a small, limited recall, since two of the vehicles were on the dealer’s lot, and only one – a Honda Passport – had been sold to a customer. 

2008: Recall 08V593

In November 2008, Honda began to recall certain 2001 Accord and Civic vehicles to replace airbags that “could produce excessive internal pressure,” causing “the inflator to rupture,” spraying metal fragments through the airbag cushion. Honda said that it learned of the problem via a June 2007 claim. In September 2008, another metal-laced deployment occurred. The limited campaign affected fewer than 4,000 vehicles.

2009: Recall 09V259

On June 30, 2009, Honda decided to expand the recall to 440,000 MY 2001 and 2002 Civic, Accord and Acura vehicles, after receiving two more claims of “unusual deployments” on May 28 and June 9.

At this point, Honda got NHTSA’s attention. In August 2009, the Recall Management Division sent Honda an information request to explain why Honda didn’t include these vehicles in the 2008 recall, and “to evaluate the timeliness of HMC’s recent defect decision.” The Recall Management Division asked for complaints, lawsuits, warranty claims and field reports, along with a lot more explanation about the “unusual deployments” and Honda investigative efforts.

In Honda’s September reply, the automaker said that its information came from Takata:

“We understood the causal factors to be related to airbag propellant due to handling of the propellant during airbag inflator module assembly.” Later, Honda and Takata pinpointed the problem to “production of the airbag propellant prior to assembly of the inflators.” Specifically, the cause was “related to the process of pressing the propellant into wafers that were later installed into the inflator modules,” and limited to “one production process” involving one high-precision compression press that was used to form the propellant into wafers, the automaker told NHTSA.

(Honda included an October 2, 2008 presentation Takata made to Honda about the causes – the substance of which was granted confidentiality.)

The automaker said that it had fielded nine complaints and one lawsuit, with the first incident reported to Honda in May of 2004. It is difficult to determine if these represented complaints apart from those mentioned in Honda’s Defect and Noncompliance reports for the 2008 and 2009 recalls, because the dates of these complaints don’t line up.

(NHTSA has fielded at least four complaints from Honda customers reporting airbag deployments that shot metal shards into an occupant. But the first such claim came in 2005. According to ODI complaint number 10152674, a driver in Wheaton, Ill. reported that during a head-on collision, “the airbag exploded and discharged metal fragments causing injury to the driver.”)

Honda said that the common thread in these complaints was over-pressurization that created “some form of separation of the metal airbag inflator shelf, resulting in metal fragments of the shell being propelled through the airbag fabric. In most cases the metal fragments were relatively small, though in one instance it appears that the second stage of the two-stage inflator became separated from the inflator module and was propelled toward the driver.”

Since NHTSA didn’t open an official Recall Query, it’s difficult to say if Honda’s submissions were sufficient to close the matter for the agency.

2010: Recall 10V041

About three months after its 2009 recall, Honda announced a third recall for 379,000 vehicles – more 2001 and 2002 Accords and Civics, and certain 2002 MY Honda CR-V, 2002 Honda Odyssey, 2003 Honda Pilot, 2002-2003 Acura 3.2TL and 2003 Acura 3.2CL vehicles. This time, Honda said that there were two different manufacturing processes used to prepare the propellant – one was verified as being within specifications, but the other was not. Honda decided to recall all of those using the second process – even though the automaker claimed that testing of some inflators from this batch found that they performed properly.

2011: Recall 11V260

In April 2011, Honda filed yet another Part 573 Defect and Noncompliance report for 2,430 replacement service part airbag modules that might have been installed in vehicles covered by previous recall expansions. Despite an analysis to determine where those 2,430 replacement modules went, Honda said they couldn’t find them – so the automaker was going to contact all owners of previously recalled models – all 833,277 of them – to capture the errant replacement modules.

The problem continued to surface. In addition to the Puerto Rico incident in 2011, in October 2012, the owner of a 2002 Civic from McKinney, Texas reported to NHTSA:

I was proceeding to make a left turn after stopping and looking at an all-way stop. A Ford truck coming the opposite direction ran the stop and crashed into my car in the right-front. The airbags deployed and I was stunned by the impact. My left ear and face were severely lacerated by fragments of the airbag inflator (which were found and photo-documented), resulting in 29 stitches and permanent scarring. Shortly after the accident, Honda sent me a recall notice regarding the airbag inflator: this was the first time I was made aware of the fact that the airbag inflator was known to produce shrapnel and had caused fatalities. Despite having owned the car since 2003 and having it serviced at dealerships several times over the years, I had not received any prior information regarding the lethal airbag defect. Honda has been irresponsible and apathetic regarding my situation and the problem in general. I could have easily been injured worse or killed by the fragments, yet the company seems to not take the problem seriously. I will absolutely never own another Honda, will forbid my family and loved ones from owning a Honda.

2013: Recall 13V132

And that brings us up to this month, when the exploding airbag recall exploded into the millions. According to Honda’s most recent Defect and Noncompliance report, the airbag that exploded in Puerto Rico in October 2011 prompted Honda to ask NHTSA if it could collect “healthy” airbag modules to see if “abnormal combustion was possible,” and guess what? It was! But Honda claims it still didn’t know why.

On February 8, NHTSA and Honda met to discuss the “ongoing investigation.” Honda said that “A recreation of propellant production using the same methods as were used during 2001-2002 production periods indicated that it was possible for propellant produced during 2001-2002 to be manufactured out of specification without the manufacturing processes correctly identifying and removing the out of specification propellant. Separately, Honda was informed by the supplier of another potential concern related to airbag inflator production that could affect the performance of these airbag modules.”

Well that clears it all up, then.

So, why are these Takata airbags spewing metal? Let’s review the explanations:

·         In 2001, it was too much generant in new vehicles.

·        In 2008, it was excessive internal pressure caused by the handling of the propellant during airbag inflator module assembly. Then it was a manufacturing process that occurred before assembling the inflators — the process of pressing the propellant into wafers, traced to one particular compression machine.

·         In 2010, Honda/Takata revealed that there were actually two different manufacturing processes used to prepare the propellant – one was verified as being within spec, but the other wasn’t.

·         In 2013, Honda/Takata discovered that the propellant produced in 2001-2002 could be out of spec without the plant knowing it, and “another potential concern” – as yet unidentified.

Confused yet? Exactly how were these propellants out of spec? Was Takata skimping on the chemical binders that hold the material together? Is this an age degradation issue – exacerbated by heat? Time? Moisture? Publicly known complaints emanate from warm climate states like Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico. If this is a manufacturing process issue, why did it take Takata six years to suss it out? Why are some newly manufactured airbags exploding and spraying shrapnel? Same reasons?

One thing is for sure: these recalls don’t inspire much confidence that the problem has been solved. 

At the time, the automaker said that it could not duplicate the event, and that it was “an isolated incident.” But, it bought Ulvestad’s Kia double-quick.

Well, today it turned out that the Ulvestad incident wasn’t so isolated after all. Kia and Hyundai announced that they were recalling 1.9 million vehicles from the 2006-2011 model years for a brake switch failure. The long list of vehicles includes: Hyundai Accent, Elantra, Genesis Coupe, Santa Fe, Sonata, Tucson and Veracruz vehicles and Kias Optima, Rondo, Sedona, Sorento, Soul and Sportage.

According to KIA’s Part 573 Defect and Noncompliance Report:

“The stop lamp switch” (also known as a brake switch) “on vehicles in the subject recall population may experience intermittent switch point contact. This condition could potentially result in intermittent operation of the push-button start feature, intermittent ability to remove the vehicle’s shifter from the Park position, illumination of the ‘ESC’ (Electronic Stability Control) indicator lamp in the instrument cluster, intermittent interference with operation of the cruise control feature, or intermittent operation of the stop lamps. Intermittent operation of the stop lamps increases the risk of a crash.”

How does this description square with Lauri Ulvestad’s experience? Let’s see:

-          Vehicle in cruise control? Check

-          Unable to disengage? Check.

-          Inoperable gear shift? Check

-          Push button ignition malfunctioning? Check

And, for the coup de grace: Ulvestad had had her stop lamp/brake switch replaced a couple of weeks before the event, because she could not shift the vehicle out of gear. In other words, her experience was not an isolated event. This recall represents the full Ulvestad.

If this all sounds familiar, it’s because Kia/Hyundai recalled misbehaving brake switches on April 15, 2009 to bring the curtain down on a NHTSA Preliminary Investigation which opened in January that year. According to investigation documents in the public file, Hyundai-Kia reported few crashes but more than 44,000 warranty claims for brake switch replacements. In announcing the recall, the automaker reported that the stop lamp switches, supplied by INFAC Corporation, might have been damaged during assembly at the supplier, causing the plunger within the threaded hollow shaft in the switch to stick. And how did the sticky plunger affect the vehicle? The ESC light might come on indicating ESC off; the shifter doesn’t work; the brake lights may not come on when the brake pedal is depressed, or stay on after the brake pedal is released, oh, and the cruise control might not deactivate.

The fix for recalls 09V-130 and 09V-0122 was to replace the stop lamp switch with a newly designed version.

Here we are four years later. The Ulvestad incident occurred on August 19, 2012. On November 1, 2012, Transport Canada opened an investigation into nine unidentified complaints for vehicles that were outside the population of Hyundais recalled there in 2009.

On December 17, Safety Research & Strategies asked NHTSA if the agency was investigating this incident specifically.

The agency responded with one of those wonderfully content-free statements:

“The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is committed to ensuring the safety of vehicles on America’s roads. The agency is aware of the incident, is monitoring complaints and other data closely, and will take appropriate action as necessary.”

(At first, we thought that meant “no,” but now we’re thinking secret investigation.) On January 10, Transport Canada opened an investigation requesting additional information. Then, according to the automaker’s defect report, “ODI requested that Kia review the VOQs in the NHTSA database. In discussions with ODI, Hyundai-Kia America Technical Center indicated that any action taken in Canada would involve a corollary action in the United States.”

So, Hyundai-Kia is going to replace these switches with new switches. Explain to us again how this solves the functional safety problem? Switches fail. They’ve failed and been replaced in Kias and Hyundais for several years now. Where is the failsafe? A bum brake switch should not be able to render a car uncontrollable. We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again. We’ll repeat it as many times as necessary, when is NHTSA going to regulate the functional safety of vehicle electronics?

Lauri Ulvestad was at highway speed. She could not turn off her cruise control, she could not shift out of drive and she could not turn the car off. Is the failsafe supposed to be a police escort and the grace of God?

As in the recently settled Toyota MDL, the remedy is a brake override system. Hopefully Ford will design one that works in most UA scenarios – unlike Toyota’s version, which does not override the command to accelerate if the brake is already depressed when the UA occurs or at low speeds. (Sorry, all you plate-glass-breaking, drive –through, curb-hopping Toyota parkers who have the misfortune of experiencing a UA event while riding the brakes into a parking spot.)

While Toyota has gotten most of the ink on UA, it is hardly the only automaker grappling with electronic malfunctions in its vehicles. A casual survey of some of pending or recently retired National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigations and news stories about wild terrifying trips on our nation’s highways shows that Hyundai, Mercedes Benz, Honda, Ford and others have been associated with Unintended Acceleration and Unintended Braking.

Ford, you may recall, was the target in 2011 of Judge William T. Swigert’s ire for lying to the court, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, as well as its own expert witnesses on its knowledge of UA. Swigert, Senior Judge of the Florida’s Fifth Judicial Circuit, set aside a jury verdict in favor of Ford in Stimpson v. Ford, because the automaker defrauded the court by claiming that it knew of no other cause of unintended acceleration than driver error and for concealing years of testing that showed that electromagnetic interference was a frequent root cause of UA in Ford vehicles.

Stimpson v. Ford emanated from an October 28, 2003 crash. The suit alleged that Ralph Stimpson’s 1991 Ford Aerostar suddenly accelerated from the carport, as he put the van into gear. The Aerostar hurtled more than 100 feet, and crashed into a utility pole. Peggy Stimpson remains paralyzed as the result of her injuries.

Swigert ordered a new trial in which the jury would only consider compensatory and punitive damages in Stimpson v. Ford. The automaker has appealed the ruling. Attorney Molly O’Neill with Thomas J. Murray Law in Sandusky, Ohio, who represented the Stimpson family, said that the appeal is still pending.

Swigert wrote a 51-page decision detailing Ford’s systematic concealment of UA problems, stretching back to the 1970s. Internal Ford documents, presented in the case, showed that Ford had studied the problem of electromagnetic interference and unintended acceleration and worked to resolve it. Ford did its best to cover its tracks, even as real world incidents continued to occur, destroying field technical reports that identified electromagnetic interference with the cruise control servo as a cause of unintended acceleration and misleading its own experts, who have repeatedly testified in other cases that driver error had to be the cause of such events.

The litigation is likely to put Ford electronics under the oscilloscope, while Office of Defects Investigation probes tend to bring root causes into focus with the intensity of drugstore cheaters.

Speaking of cheating – Corporate Counsel’s story of Toyota’s prevarications around its electronically based Unintended Acceleration problems, as revealed in a raft of leaked internal documents got another airing in the San Diego Tribune, by tech columnist Phillip Baker. His assessment of the Toyota UA saga? A cover-up, aided and abetted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. It’s worth a read.

The story, entitled Is Toyota Telling the Truth About Sudden Acceleration? (Spoiler alert: the answer is: No.) is a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at a company in disarray with a technically challenging problem that its technicians weren’t looking too hard to solve, while its legal and public relations gears clicked into place to drive the denial machine forward. Our favorite:

“Hagiwara and Chris Tinto, a V.P. for technical and regulatory affairs and safety, had been talking about the U.S. investigation and an earlier one in Europe that also involved unintended acceleration (UA).

‘Tinto is extremely pessimistic,’ Hagiwara wrote, ‘and is saying (public hearings, someone will go to jail, I can’t completely take care of the pedal problem, etc.).’ Tinto’s primary concerns (according to Hagiwara): ‘For NHTSA, we said that our investigations in Europe found that the pedal return is a little slow at a slightly open position, and that there were no accidents, but this is not true. Last year’s situation in Europe (many reports of sticking pedals and accidents, and a TI TS9-161 was filed on October 1, 2009) was not reported to NHTSA.’ That failure, Tinto said, ‘may be a violation of the TREAD Act’—the federal law that requires car manufacturers that conduct recalls in foreign countries to report these to U.S. regulators.”

Benjaminson was apparently so disturbed by the unvarnished emails she was translating, cast against Toyota’s public assurances, she leaked them. According to this story, some of the NASA scientists who worked on the February 2011 report that DOT Secretary Ray LaHood proclaimed an exoneration of Toyota electronics were so disturbed by the way they were forced to “investigate,” they refused to sign the final product.

This story is well worth your time. It’s not likely to aid digestion for any in-house counsel reading it over his or her cornflakes, but for those of us who have been challenging the narrative put forth by the auto industry and its enablers – NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation – that unintended acceleration is always detected by the vehicle electronics, and that the absence of this evidence is ironclad proof that the problem was a driver or a floormat, it’s got the unmistakable ring of truth.

More on Toyota Unintended Acceleration

They stamped their feet and waved their fists, but the database was mandated as part of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008. A few rearguard actions were mounted to kill its funding, but they met with no greater success.

Saferproducts.gov debuted in March 2011. If you are afraid you missed the apocalypse, no worries. It didn’t happen. According to a rather mild – dare we say boring – Government Accounting Office report, the rumors of the free market’s demise at the hands of a consumer compliant database were greatly exaggerated. In fact, few consumers have actually used Saferproducts.gov to report an incident – only 12,030 from April 2011 to January 2013. The GAO, which conducted the performance audit from July 2012 to March 2013, found that more than 97 percent who used the website to report an alleged product failure identified themselves as consumers. In more than half the cases, the reporter identified him or herself – or a relative (parent, child, spouse) as the victim.

Most of the consumers who test drove the website for the GAO auditors found it easy to use. None of the group had heard of Saferproducts.gov before, and only a few understood the basic mission of the CPSC. Some were put off by requests that reporters register with the website. A few suggested helpfully that the website would be more aptly named Unsafeproducts.gov. (Now would that go over big with industry.)  

The GAO report entitled, Awareness, Use, and Usefulness of SaferProducts.gov, concludes that the CPSC could do more to promote awareness of the database and make its contents more useful to the agency itself. It made three recommendations to the CPSC:  to establish metrics to measure their success in promoting the website, look for some way to collect information about website users and their use of Saferproducts.gov and to make some cost-effective improvements to the website.

Snark aside, it behooves the CPSC to weave Saferproducts.gov more tightly into the fabric of the consumer community, because, as the GAO points out: this database is a part of CPSC’s larger Consumer Product Safety Risk Management System (CPSRMS), which is “designed to allow CPSC to study data from multiple sources in a centralized location to identify emerging consumer product safety hazards.”

A mere 12,000 reports out of a universe of millions of consumer products isn’t going to create much of an early warning tool. For example, CPSC officials told the GAO that its main website CPSC.gov received almost 10 times as many visits each month, as Saferproducts.gov.

But, new systems take time to establish themselves, work out the bugs, and raise their profiles. The CPSC has been using an array of promotional strategies. (Hey – did anyone catch “Chairtastrophe, the CPSC’s 30-second spot on reporting an office chair mishap? We laughed! We cried! It was the feel-good CPSC video of the year!)

So buck up, free enterprisers, your dark predictions may yet come to pass. Apparently, it’s going to take a little more time.

An electric vehicle is going to invite those metaphors, right? But three months ago, a driver from California made a complaint to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that was literally shocking. On December 1, the driver received what was described as a significant electric shock from the gear shifter:

“Luckily, when incident occurred, driver was able to quickly remove their point of contact from gear shifter before the hand and arm muscles had involuntarily contracted in place permanently closing the contact and resulting in further electrocution. Driver sustained significant electrical shock injury to hand/arm including pain, shock, soreness, numbness, and tingling sensation.”

The incident was immediately reported to GM, which instructed the driver to call 911 so that the local fire department could disconnect the power. Those first responders refused, because they didn’t know the system, and feared for their own safety, the complaint said.

GM had already agreed to buy back this vehicle for a host of other problems. A repair document filed with the complaint indicates that in late October, the driver took it to Paradise Chevrolet in Ventura, California, complaining that the Volt kept turning itself off and on. The automaker’s reaction to this latest, arguably more hazardous malfunction was totally warm and fuzzy, according to the complaint:

“Since incident, GM is only willing to transfer driver to their Product Allocation Department which acts in a legal capacity and accepts claim reports for further investigation. Driver’s immediate concern is not to sue GM but to insure [sic] all reasonable efforts are made to inform other Volt dealers of incident and hopefully prevent other drivers from being electrocuted.”

Has GM heeded the driver’s plea? A check for Technical Service Bulletins didn’t turn up any new alerts. Judging by a FAX cover sheet that accompanied the repair bill and a redacted medical record, the driver was in direct contact with NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation in early December. Is the agency looking into this?

The last time ODI investigated a problem with the Chevy Volt, the public found out about it after five months of secret tests and analyses. The probe was officially opened only after the agency had done nearly all of its work. As the DOT’s dear leader Ray LaHood opined at the time that the Volt was safe to drive, it seems that the agency had pretty much concluded that no defect existed. As we have noted before, NHTSA has been known to keep high-profile defect investigations under wraps by not publishing an Opening Resume until some sort of conclusion has already been reached. See: What Doesn’t NHTSA Want You to Know About Auto Safety?

To re-cap: On November 25, 2011, ODI opened an investigation into Chevy Volt fires, after one ignited at a Wisconsin storage facility in June 2011 after a crash test. The vehicle had been subjected to an NCAP oblique side pole impact, which pushed the transverse stiffener located under the driver’s seat inward, piercing the HV battery enclosure and battery, and causing a battery coolant leak. As part of the test protocol, NHTSA subjects EVs to post-crash rollover tests to look for electrolyte and fuel spillage In this case, the rollover introduced the leaking coolant to the HV battery and electronics. Three weeks later, the vehicle caught fire and burned two other vehicles.

Unbeknownst to consumers, in the five months between the fire and opening of the official investigation, NHTSA had already sifted the data looking for other incidents, had a fire contractor isolate the cause of the storage facility fire to the Volt’s battery, sent the wreck to the Vehicle Test and Research Center for a tear-down and forensic analysis, conducted a side-impact NCAP on another Volt and impact-tested three undamaged batteries from Volts used in other crash tests.

After NHTSA opened an initial Preliminary Analysis 011-037, the agency ran another series of battery pack tests “to isolate the individual effects of cell damage.” The official investigation closed less than two months later, on January 20, 2012, with no defect finding.

Nonetheless, GM agreed to conduct “a free-of-charge customer satisfaction campaign,” also known as an unregulated recall on 14,735 vehicles built before December 21, 2011. The campaign offered a strengthening of the structure of the vehicle in the area where battery intrusion occurred, adding an HV battery coolant loss sensor and control system software that alerts the driver and prevents recharging the HV battery. Finally, GM offered to add a tamper-proofing device to prevent consumers from adding coolant.

The issue of electric shock and electrocution in electric vehicles is real. In August 2010, The National Fire Protection Association and GM announced a partnership to train first responder in how to safely de-power a Volt and how to properly fight a battery fire. This training, apparently, had not yet reached the fire department in the shocked Volt driver’s town. And, last year SAE International AE International’s Hybrid Technical Committee issued technical standard “J2990—Hybrid and EV First and Second Responder Recommended Practice,” to address the unique chemical, thermal and electrical hazards associated with EVs’ high voltage systems.

Electric shock risks to drivers not poking around under the hood – that’s a new one. And it raises more questions about the Volt that surely demand answers.

Automotive electronics expert David Gilbert of Southern Illinois University Carbondale said that “the most alarming” detail of the complaint was that the dealership appeared to have verified the driver’s first claim that the Volt was turning itself on and off.

“There’s something no one can deny and that is not a normal operation,” Gilbert said. “What was in place to cause that?”

The electric shock complaint, he said, was puzzling. It takes a lot of direct current voltage to produce a significant electric shock.

“What would be the path from the shift mechanism?” he asked.

Earlier this month, the law firm of Swensen, Perer & Kontos filed a lawsuit on behalf of the victims’ families. The civil action names eight defendants, including Chrysler for failing to warn consumers about the hazards of vehicle submersion and for a failure to implement escape technology.

Motor vehicle submersions are small but significant portion of motor vehicle deaths.  The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, using the Fatal Analysis Reporting System (FARS) and the National Automotive Sampling System – Crashworthiness Data Systems (NASS-CDS) has reported that an average of 384 occupants die in motor vehicle crashes each year – not including those that occur during floods. An internal NHTSA analysis of non-flooding submersion deaths showed that most occurred as the result of a collision or rollover, that the windows were already smashed by impacts, and that most occupants were already injured before the vehicle hit the water. 

In the published version of the NHTSA research, Drowning Deaths In Motor Vehicle Traffic Accidents, author Rory Austin says the little is known about drowning deaths that occur as the result of a traffic crash. His analysis found that “63 percent of the passenger vehicle drowning fatalities involved a rollover, and 12 percent involved a collision with another motor vehicle. The most common passenger vehicle crash scenario was a single-vehicle rollover accounting for 59 percent of the fatalities. These crashes frequently involved running off the road and colliding with a fixed object prior to the rollover and immersion. In cases with known restraint use, the victim was not using any form of restraint system 52 percent of the time.”

Research by Gordon Giesbrecht and Gerren McDonald of the University of Manitoba concluded the opposite: “Many, if not most, victims die from drowning rather than from trauma.” In some industrialized nations, such as New Zealand, Canada, and the U.S. motor vehicle submersions. account for a significant proportion of all accidental drowning deaths – from 7 to 11.6 percent Giesbrecht and McDonald call motor vehicle submersions the deadliest type of single vehicle crash.

Vehicle submersions caused by flooding are a major subset of these fatalities. A comprehensive study of all flooding deaths in the U.S., from 1959 -2005 found that the annually about 100 people, on average, perish in floods, making them the second-deadliest weather related hazard, after heat. More than 60 percent of those deaths occur in vehicles, according to the 2008 research published in the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology. The National Weather Service has tried to educate the public about vehicle submersions due to storm-related flooding with a Turn Around, Don’t Drown campaign: “In the last 30 years, inland flooding has caused more than half of the deaths associated with tropical storms and hurricanes in the United States….each year, most people killed by floodwaters meet that end because they attempt to drive across flooded roadways in their cars or trucks.”  

Despite the high fatality rates, there has been very little attention paid to the concept of escapeworthiness. The last time NHTSA explored the issue was in the 1970s, when the agency published studies conducted by the Oklahoma Research Institute on land and water escapes. Since then, the agency has periodically performed incidence research, but has not explored automotive design solutions, nor public education initiatives to teach motorists how and when to escape a rapidly sinking vehicle. 

More recently research by Giesbrecht and Gerren redefines the flotation phase of a submersion event, clarifies the best options for occupant survival and identifies other countermeasures. In Vehicle submersion: a review of the problem and how the high mortality rate can be reduced, now in press at Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine, the authors show that the Flotation Phase, formerly thought of as “the entire period from when the vehicle lands in the water until it is completely submersed,” is actually the time period “from water impact until water rises to the bottom of side windows.” This flotation phase typically last for about a minute, and is the period when escape is easiest, and the survival probability the highest. The best escape route is through the side windows, while the vehicle is still floating.

Giesbrecht began his research in 2005, after testifying at the inquest of a snow plow driver who died after clearing a winter ice road when his vehicle broke through the ice on Lone Island Lake, Manitoba. An expert in hypothermia, Giesbrecht focused his opinion on the driver’s potential for survival in the frigid waters.

“I thought that cold water was the main issue for this victim,” he recalled. “We started looking for information and there was nothing. We started doing research and found that things I suggested at the inquest did not tell the whole story.  We took a five-ton snow plow and broke it through the ice, and the vehicle basically sunk in three seconds. The bottom line was: he would have drowned regardless of the water temperature. The more important issue was the lack of an escape route. That got us into looking what are vehicle sinking characteristics and how they affect how you might act.”

Many people waste the minute or so until the vehicle is submerged, calling 911 or a loved one. Giesbrecht’s research also found that most of the professional advice to the public – amplified by the popular media – practically guaranteed drownings. The conventional wisdom held that  occupants should stay in the vehicle and let the passenger compartment fill with water before exiting, or kick out the windshield, or keep window breaking tools in the glove compartment. Other wrong-headed recommendations included opening the door to exit, waiting until the vehicle hits the bottom, relying on air pockets in the submerged passenger compartment.

“We really got it boiled down to: you have to get out of the vehicle as quickly as possible and it’s through the side window. If you touch your cell phone, you die,” Giesbrecht said. “You have one minute to survive. There’s no rescue that’s going to get to you within 60 seconds.”

Power windows are frequently the only means of egress. But the length of time that they remain functional varies. Breaking a tempered side widow requires a blunt object or a rescue tool, which most drivers don’t have. Advanced glazing, designed to prevent occupant ejection in crashes in side windows, are nearly impossible to break out from inside. 

For these reasons, automotive design countermeasures can play a critical role. The Griffith and Saflin lawsuit referenced several escape technologies Chrysler could have installed: a waterproof power window switch; a remote power source to provide power to the windows; a power window submersion sensor, that would automatically reverse the windows upon submersion; a manual auxiliary window operation; and a single or multiple point device designed to break glass in the event of power window failure. 

Road design countermeasures include more guardrails, barriers, warning signs and road markings, or routing roadways away from water. Better road hazard markings might have saved Trey Kidwell, a 17-year-old from Centerville, Indiana, who died in a vehicle submersion on June 4, 2007. Kidwell was on his way home, when he mistakenly turned onto a road that ended in Brookville Lake. While two other fatal vehicle submersion events had occurred there – one of which happened a year earlier – the state did not put up hazard lights or warning signs until the Department of Natural Resources responded to a petition circulated by Trey Kidwell’s family and others.  His grandmother and submersion prevention advocate Mary Kay Kidwell, is frustrated by the public’s basic lack of knowledge about the immediate need to escape a vehicle in the water.

“The gap is in not having some kind of comprehensive communication where someone is a recognized expert. Everybody has an opinion. People make little videos. One guy was a bartender,” she says. “The dispatch universe needs to be trained in the difference in handling a water-based accident or a land-based accident.”

Geisbrecht, who in conjunction with the National Drowning Prevention Association meeting in March, will conduct a seminar and vehicle submersion demonstration for emergency response personnel in Southern Florida, says dispatch protocols are about to change. He and his colleague McDonald have re-written emergency response protocols for submersed vehicles to change the focus of 911 operator responses from identifying a caller’s location to advising the occupant on how to escape. The protocol, written under the auspices of the International Academies of Emergency Dispatch, is in the midst of the approval process and is expected to released to 3,000 911 centers worldwide in the next round of updates in April.

Says Giesbrecht:

“I would love to get out the point: You have one minute. Don’t touch your cell phone. Seatbelts off. Window out.”

The issue of tire age surfaced in the U.S. in the wake of the Ford Explorer/Firestone Wilderness ATX. In 2003, NHTSA fulfilled a Congressional mandate by initiating a tire age rulemaking, which sought manufacturers’ comments. The industry did not exactly distinguish itself. Its responses ranged from denial of any problem to ignorance of testing, analysis or the very concept of tire age.

Our research showed that industry was studying rubber oxidation and heat as early as the 1930s. We also located a pair of German studies from the 1980s which concluded that tires failed at a greater rate after six years and recommended manufacturers alert consumers to prevent potential crashes. We identified the vehicle and tire makers who followed that advice, publishing tire age recommendations as early as the 1990s. Not one industry representative alerted the agency to wealth of information it had about tire age.   

We subsequently uncovered the 2001 position of the British Rubber Manufacturers Association, which represents the same tire manufacturers in the U.S. market: “BRMA members strongly recommend that unused tyres should not be put into service if they are over 6 years old and that all tyres should be replaced 10 years from the date of their manufacture.” And we began to regularly submit aged tire-related crashes to the agency because no one was collecting that type of information.  Many of these incidents involved what appeared to be virtually “new” tires that were actually aged spares – often stored in the under-carriage, or used tires with legal tread and good visual appearance.  

In October 2005 Bridgestone/Firestone issued a Technical Bulletin to its dealers advising them that tires should be inspected after 5 years and replaced after 10 years – “even when tires appear to be usable from their external appearance or the tread depth may not have reached the minimum wear out.”  Michelin, Continental, Cooper and other tire companies issued similar bulletins – some of which defer customers to adhere to the vehicle manufacturers, which brings us back to the six-year milestone.  Now nearly every vehicle manufacturer recommends replacement of tires after six years, regardless of tread depth. 

Our concern about used tires is not new.  We began to focus of the hazards of used tires six years ago, when we published our first article on the topic (see “Used Tires: A Booming Business with Hidden Dangers”). The RMA followed up three months later with a bulletin warning consumers about the hazards of used tires. Bridgestone/Firestone announced that its corporate stores would no longer sell used tires.

Mr. Ulrich is right about my impatience. Unlike modern tire dealers, I don’t meet tire consumers over the counter.  I meet them when their families have been riven by an entirely preventable tragedy. I frequently learn about safety hazards, like aged and used tires, when these families file a lawsuit.  Helping them, by providing factual research to their lawyers, is part of our business, but my advocacy on this issue is self-funded.

The industry has known about tire aging for decades. NHTSA’s been working on it for more than 10 years. In that time, too many families have lost their loved ones and friends to tire-related crashes that should have never happened. Impatient? You bet.     

More on SRS’s Tire Aging Advocacy