Those who support a Vision Zero strategy to reduce every crash death possible should take note of this information on NHTSA’s recommendations for those who are engaged in private litigation which might be relevant to this situation. The following is a recent email bulletin from Lou Lombardo to the Care for Crash Victims Community:
Dear Care For Crash Victims Community Members:
NHTSA Notice of Guidelines Summary states:
“NHTSA’s ability to identify and define safety-related motor vehicle defects relies in large part on manufacturers’ self-reporting. However, although federal regulations may require them to report certain information to NHTSA, manufacturers do not always do so, or do not do so in a timely manner. Additionally, the information a manufacturer is required to report varies greatly depending on the product and company size and purpose. Given these constraints, safety-related information developed or discovered in private litigation is an important resource for NHTSA.
This Enforcement Guidance Bulletin sets forth NHTSA’s recommended guiding principles and best practices to be utilized in the context of private litigation. To the extent protective orders, settlement agreements, or other confidentiality provisions prohibit information obtained in private litigation from being transmitted to NHTSA, such limitations are contrary to Rule 26 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, its state corollaries, and sound principles of public policy. Although such restrictions are generally prohibited by applicable rules and law, the Agency recommends that litigants include a specific provision in any protective order or settlement agreement that provides for disclosure of relevant motor vehicle safety information to NHTSA, regardless of any other restrictions on the disclosure or dissemination of such information.”
Please see Guidelines for reporting at
Please also see [attached] comment to NHTSA by Investigator Steve Gray that notes the past legal practices that permitted deaths and injuries to occur for decades. Steve_Gray_-_Comment
Now we still have to make sure that legal information transmitted to NHTSA is made public and acted upon in the public interest.
Lou
We need all engineers and federal officials concerned with public health to take the professional Hippocratic Oath “Do No Harm”.
This post is from a recent demand for accountability from Care for Crash Victim’s Lou Lombardo entitled, “Seat Back Failures: Who Has The Power? & Who Has the Responsibility?”:
Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:
Please watch this excellent video and report by CBS News on Seat Back Failures.
The failures of both government and industry to protect the public from foreseeable tragedies – for decades – are described. See
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/seat-back-failures-injuries-deaths-auto-safety-experts-demand-nhtsa-action/
The Center for Auto Safety has documented the efforts by citizens that were ignored over decades. Profits were placed ahead of people decade after decade. See
NHTSA Urged to Warn Parents of Seatback Collapse Dangers to Children in Rear Seats & How to Reduce Risk While Keeping Children in Rear
March 9, 2016
(202)328-7700
The Center for Auto Safety (CAS) today petitioned the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to “take action to protect children riding in the rear seats of vehicles from the risk of being killed or severely injured when struck by a collapsing front seatback in a rear-end crash.” The petition asks NHTSA to warn parents as follows:
If Possible, Children Should Be Placed In Rear Seating Positions Behind Unoccupied Front Seats. In Rear-End Crashes, The Backs Of Occupied Front Seats Are Prone To Collapse Under The Weight Of Their Occupants. If This Occurs, The Seat Backs And Their Occupants Can Strike Children In Rear Seats And Cause Severe Or Fatal Injuries
As the petition states, “The problem underlying the need for the warnings sought by petitioner is, of course, the poor performance of seatbacks in rear-end crashes, and of serious inadequacy of the federal motor vehicle standard, FMVSS 207, which specifies minimum seat and seatback crash performance levels.” Attached to the petition is a timeline, “Collapsing Seatbacks And Injury Causation: A Timeline Of Knowledge,” which summarizes “the history of manufacturer and NHTSA inaction to ensure that in rear-end crashes, front seats provide adequate protection not only for their occupants but for people in the rear seats behind them.”
Separately, the Center filed a detailed analysis of lawsuits, police reports and litigated cases that shows the dangers of seat back collapse are far greater than what the agency recognizes because seat back collapse is not captured by the FARS database on which the agency has relied for all too long to deny there is a seatback collapse danger. FARS does not provide any information on seat back collapse. Out of 64 seat back collapse death and injury crashes, the Center only found 2 where the police report referenced seat back collapse.
For many years NHTSA has urged parents to place children in the rear seats of cars because of the risk that in the front seat, they might be injured by inflating airbags in frontal crashes. But the “unintended consequences” of this policy, the petition notes, has been to “expose them to another kind of hazard – that of being struck or crushed when the back of a front seat occupied by an adult collapses rearward… Until cars on the American highway are equipped with adequately strong front seats and seatbacks, children in rear seats behind occupied front seats will continue to be in danger of death or severe injury from front seatback failures in rear-end impacts.”
The petition reports on the results of an analysis of NHTSA data by Friedman Research Corp. Done at the Center’s request, the analysis shows that over the twenty-four year period 1990-2014, nearly 900 children seated behind a front-seat occupant or in a center rear seat died in rear impacts of 1990 and later model-year cars.
As the Timeline shows, NHTSA has frequently been alerted to the hazards of weak designs and inadequate federal performance standards for seats and seatbacks. “Papers published by the Society of Automotive Engineers as early as 1967 described the need for adequate of front-seat crashworthiness in graphic and alarming terms. A poorly designed car seat ‘becomes an injury-producing agency during collision,’ said one. Another stated, ‘…a weak seatback is not recognized as an acceptable solution for motorist protection from rear end collisions.’”
In 1974, the petition notes, NHTSA announced its intention to develop a new standard “covering the total seating system” and requiring dynamic rear-impact crash testing. But thirty years later, in 2004, it abandoned the plan, saying it needed “additional research and data analysis” and leaving in place the woefully weak requirements of FMVSS 207, a standard which has not been upgraded since its adoption in 1967. In a research study of 30-mph rear crashes done one year earlier which is not cited in the rulemaking termination, NHTSA researchers warned of the danger to children placed in rear seats at NHTSA’s recommendation. “Further, fatalities and injuries to rear child occupants due to seat back collapse of the front seat in rear impacts have also been reported. This is especially of concern since NHTSA recommends to the public that children of age 12 and under should be placed in the rear seat.”
In its conclusion, the petition states that warning parents of the hazards of front seatback collapse to children in rear seat is an essential measure “made necessary by the continued absence of a federal motor vehicle safety standard requiring that cars be equipped with adequately protective front seats.” The agency “can take most of the requested steps on its own, without time-consuming rulemaking, and should do so promptly,” the petition notes.
# # #
CAS Petitions NHTSA to Warn Parents of Seat Back Failure Dangers to Children in Rear Seats
CAS Letter to NHTSA Administrator Rosekind
Collapsing Seat Backs and Injury Causation: A Timeline of Knowledge
Friedman Study: Child Fatalities in Rear Impacts
NHTSA Seat Back Rulemaking History
Clarence Ditlow, Executive Director, Center for Auto Safety, 1825 Connecticut Ave NW #330, Washington DC 20009
For information on Who was responsible, see http://www.careforcrashvictims.com/assets/CFCV-MonthlyReport-March2014.pdf
and http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/opinion/weak-oversight-deadly-cars.html
We need all engineers and federal officials concerned with public health to take the professional Hippocratic Oath “Do No Harm”.
Lou
Safety: I do not think that word means what you think it means.
@ideas42 Hyunsoo Chang recognizes the complexity of regulations re: truck driver fatigue #VisionZero
The goal to reduce crash deaths is far too complex to keep approaching it merely with a disjointed strategy.
What will it take to make a significant reduction in the number of people who die on our roads?
The future of robotics and automated vehicles
Two books recommended by Tom Gage, Marconi Pacific, related to the future of robotics and automated vehicles:
and
The Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future
Tom Gage is speaking at the Driver Behavioral Change in Traffic Safety Conference (March 11):
NHTSA Driver Behavioral Change in Traffic Safety Conference wraps up today. Live streaming NOW
See the second day of this conference here:
Tapes might be available this afternoon.
Yesterday can be seen here:
Vision Zero Petition Book with 20,000+ signatures now posted on Federal Register for Underride Rule
The call for Vision Zero nationally and specifically to be applied to DOT Rulemaking Policy for Underride Regulations as well as countless other traffic safety measures is now posted on the Federal Register: NPRM Upgrade Underide: Vision Zero Book by Marianne Karth for President Obama
What will it take to make a significant reduction in the number of people who die on our roads?
Today, I watched some of the live streaming of NHTSA’s conference, Driving Behavioral Change in Traffic Safety. As I listened to the various speakers and panel discussions, many thoughts and questions went through my mind. . .
Driving Behavioral Change in Traffic Safety Conference being Livestreamed at DOT
The basic question is: What will it take to make a significant reduction in the number of people who die on our roads?
- It will take all of us working together.
- It will take facing the problem head on.
- It will take acknowledging that there is a problem–and the full extent of it.
- It will take recognizing that we are all a part of the problem.
- It will take talking about it openly.
- It will take understanding that crash deaths are not just an expected risk of driving on the road but are to a great extent preventable.
- It will take accepting that risky driver behavior is not a personal right but a violation of other people’s right to be protected from reckless behavior.
- It will take calling risky driver behavior what it is: RECKLESS.
- It will take classifying a vehicle as a weapon and reckless driver behavior as an act of violence.
- It will take enacting laws that prohibit a full range of reckless driving behaviors and then enforcing those laws with stiff consequences.
- It will take understanding that changing personal behavior is not the only way to reduce crash deaths and learning how to work with others who are addressing vehicle and environment risk factors.
- It will take recognizing and embracing that preventing crashes from happening is not the only thing which needs to be addressed but that we can also reduce the severity of those crashes so that death is not the end result.
- It will take manufacturers and employers and consumers and law enforcement and engineers and countless others to recognize how their individual decisions and actions contribute to not just crash statistics but to the unnatural ending (or saving) of life for people with names and faces and hopes and dreams and other people who care about them whose lives will be changed forever.
- And it will take us all realizing that someday soon one of those names and faces could very well be ourselves or someone whom we love and will miss dreadfully. And that it could have been prevented.
- It will take listening to the hundreds of thousands of families who have lost loved ones due to traffic crashes and apologizing, as a society, for letting them down–for not addressing it as the priority it should be. Bringing healing and hope that their frustrations and anger and grief are being heard and that their petitions for change are being taken seriously. Giving them a voice and channeling their zealous energy in positive ways which can in fact be a powerful tool for changing the future and moving us more surely Toward Zero Crash Deaths, Serious Injuries, and Fear of Traffic.
- And beyond that, I firmly believe that, in order to move as a nation Toward a Vision of Zero Crash Deaths, it will take take a commitment to a National Vision Zero Goal and a coordinated endeavor of government, private industry, workers of every skill imaginable, and informed citizens. Anything short of this will be disjointed and less effective, which translates into — not simply unmet project goals but — people dying. It is not an impossible dream but it will require sacrifice and will be well worth the effort.
I kept writing down ideas as they came to me during the various presentations and discussions and emailing them to the event coordinator. I did not hear my questions being addressed. But I am going to record them (in their raw intensity) here:
- Set a National Vision Zero Goal (it is not listed as an issue on whitehouse.gov)
- Establish a White House Vision Zero Task Force
- Sign a Vision Zero Executive Order to authorize Vision Zero Rulemaking Policies
- What are you doing to address the reality (which I learned in 1979 at the University of Michigan/School of Public Health,Health Behavior/Health Education) that fear is not always the best motivator? The attitude that “it will never happen to me”?
- Will the addition of more and more technology for collision avoidance give people the false idea that they don’t have to pay as much attention, i.e., counteract attempts to focus on driver behavior?
- How many lives would be saved if the 319 proven safety standards/laws which are not being adopted by states were mandated? http://annaleahmary.
com/2016/01/why-on-earth-dont- we-establish-national-traffic- safety-standards-require-them- to-be-adopted-by-states/ - Drunk driving is one thing. What about stopping people for texting or using their cell phones while driving?
- What about drowsy driving? Are there ways for it to become something which can be included in traffic enforcement? DWF Driving While Fatigued.
-
What about DRIVING IMPAIRED BY MARIJUANA? https://annaleahmary.com/2015/
02/marijuana-impairs-judgment- reaction-times-awareness/ -
How about an equivalent of Volunteer Firefighters? Can we train and deputize citizens to pull over unsafe drivers?
-
For motor vehicle-related injury prevention. What about Second Collision problems? Like auto safety defects or truck UNDERRIDE deaths and serious injuries? Is the Task Force addressing this? What role could they play to prevent these preventable deaths?
- Not only does traffic safety involve the driver, vehicles, and environmental factors, but it does so in three phases–pre-event, event, and post event. Every one of these factors can be addressed to prevent or reduce the severity of the event. Remember Dr. Haddon’s matrix which Adrian Lund (IIHS) shared (similar to this one, Haddon Matrix) (also, see Care for Crash Victims):
-
How about requiring driver training programs to set up volunteer coaches or mentors for drivers with permits to aid parents in this vital life skill development?
-
How about change DMV written tests for driver license and renewal? Ours in NC was FULL of numbers and statistics regarding DUI consequences . How about make it more graphic and stick-in-the mind friendly? I spent my time preparing for it by memorizing numbers.
-
Take a tip from 1954 and Jimmy Stewart. Start training at elementary level only update it to use the technology that the youngest generation is immersed in: https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=Uj9Iuxw2_wk How about design electronic games to raise awareness and teach safe driving behavior? -
How about clear up the confusion about whether Marijuana IMPAIRS driving?
-
How can we find ways to remind people that driving choices can lead to forever results? Find ways to touch not only the head but the heart.
Never Come Back Once a lovedone becomes a motor vehicle crash statistic, it will be too late–they will
not come back to you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8lDg8kyyYw Towards Zero; There’s no one someone won’t miss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsyvrkEjoXI -
How about using interactive learning methods of raising awareness?
When I interviewed my 9 and 6 year-old grandchildren about how they thought underride guards could be stronger, they showed amazing awareness and creativity.Put people in situations where they are faced with thinking through the results of driving choices and also purchase of safe equipment and increase their demand for affordable safer vehicles from the automotive industry.In group settings. In game apps. Make use of church youth groups to address these issues. -
REQUIRE phone manufacturers to advertise safe driving behavior
-
Why not set a National Vision Zero Goal to raise American awareness?
People need to know that Death by Motor Vehicle is a preventable problem but it will take us all to work together to defeat it.They should be just as concerned, if not more, about the Violent Weapon of Destruction that is put into the hands of drivers everywhere 24/7. -
What about the use of more electronic road signs to alert drivers to upcoming traffic situations? And more things like rumble strips?
-
People need to know that they are not in control so that their driving behavior reflects that knowledge.
Use Cass Sunstein’s idea for example for phone usage. Default Setting. Turned off when in a moving vehicle. Not sure if that is technologically possible but something like that.Default RULE/traffic law. If caught texting or talking on cell phone while driving, get a point on record.Set up a Consequence. Have their TICKET posted on social media.Loss of Reputation/Respect.ILLUSION OF CONTROL -
Make salient and visible How can we give visibility nationally and locally the extent of the Traffic Safety Problem?
- Electronic signs on highway to alert drivers to traffic conditions
- Choice architecture: use existing social groups to create localized indication of traffic safety norms, church youth groups, MOPS groups, Preschool parent groups LET them hear from families of crash victims. Give these people visibility.
- Savings of not losing a loved one: https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=bsyvrkEjoXI - Can we get TRAFFIC SAFETY as an issue on whitehouse.gov?
- Can we get President Obama to set a Vision Zero Goal, establish a White House Vision Zero Task Force which would include an interdisciplinary group, and sign a Vision Zero Executive Order?
- Have we made Vision Zero a National Priority? http://annaleahmary.
com/2016/03/tell-obama-you- are-standing-with-us-in-this- family-continues-fight-for- trucking-safety/ - Why not set up Community Vision Zero Activist Groups?
- Are there strategies raising awareness about MICROSLEEP?
-
MAKE IT A NATIONAL Vision Zero Goal!!!! Apply the resources.
- Put a face to the problem!!!!! Let the victims and their families be honored and remembered on a regular basis. We are ALL vulnerable.
Create a National Vision Zero Goal using social media and modern technology.I know someone who could design immersive reality simulation models to show immediate negative consequences of reckless driver behavior choices (as suggested by Dr. David Abrams).
- Could this group of people gathered together in Washington at this conference please, please, please call upon President Obama to set a National Vision Zero Goal, establish a Vision Zero Task Force, and sign a Vision Zero Executive Order? If he does not do those things, who else will lead us in such a United Effort? Without such a vision, the people will indeed perish.
Driving Behavioral Change in Traffic Safety Conference being Livestreamed at DOT #VisionZero
Thursday and Friday, March 10 & 11
Thank you for your interest in the Driving Behavioral Change in Traffic Safety conference that is taking place Thursday, March 10 and Friday, March 11 in Washington. The event will run from 8:30 – 4:30 on Thursday and from 8:30 – Noon on Friday.
NHTSA will be streaming this event live at http://www.nhtsa.gov/nhtsa/symposiums/index.html. The link within that page for the webcast should be live this afternoon.
You may access the agenda by following this link: http://www.nhtsa.gov/nhtsa/symposiums/march2016/index.html
Please share these links with any of your colleagues who might be interested in watching this event. Thank you,
Vision Zero will not undo the past, but it can shape the future.
Last night, I was sewing a row of quilt squares while watching some television with the family. I am thankful that I have this means of cathartic grieving. But, I have to say, it caused an ache deep within to touch those familiar pieces of some of their favorite clothes.
Vision Zero will not undo the past, but it can shape the future.
Mary’s Confirmation Questioning on April 28, 2013–Six days before the crash, on May 4, 2013, which ended their lives.
Warning is only the tip of the iceberg: CAS petitions NHTSA to warn parents of back seat dangers
Children vulnerable while in back seats Center for Auto Safety asks NHTSA to issue Warning to Parents: Center for Auto Safety Rear Seat Petition
We request that the agency modify its child seating recommendations by adding the following or similar warning language and that such language be required in Owner’s Manuals under 49 CFR § 571.208 S4.5.1(f):
If Possible, Children Should Be Placed In Rear Seating Positions Behind Unoccupied Front Seats. In Rear-End Crashes, the Backs of Occupied Front Seats Are Prone To Collapse Under the Weight of Their Occupants. If This Occurs, the Seat Backs and Their Occupants Can Strike Children in Rear Seats and Cause Severe or Fatal Injuries
Until cars on the American highway are equipped with adequately strong front seats and seatbacks, children in rear seats behind occupied front seats will continue to be in danger of death or severe injury from front seatback failures in rear-end impacts. For this reason the Center for Auto Safety today petitions for action by the agency to warn parents of this danger and how to avoid it when possible. Separately, the Center is filing a detailed analysis of police reports and lawsuits that shows the dangers of seat back collapse are far greater than what the agency recognizes because seat back collapse is not captured by the FARS database on which the agency has relied for all too long to deny there is a seatback collapse danger.
This is admittedly an interim measure which is made necessary by the continued absence of a federal motor vehicle safety standard requiring that cars be equipped with adequately protective front seats, but it is essential. The agency can take most of the requested steps on its own, without time-consuming rulemaking, and should do so promptly.
Sincerely,
Clarence M. Ditlow Executive Director
cc: Secretary of Transportation
As a mom of nine children (although they are now all adults), this is of great concern to me on behalf of those who don’t have an option of picking a “safer” spot to seat their young children. This warning is not enough; lives are at stake!
Another case of the need for presidential Vision Zero action to end unconscionable, unimaginable, and unethical delays in implementing traffic safety measures!
Tell Obama you are standing with us in this: “Family Continues Fight for Trucking Safety”
