Tag Archives: auto safety defects

Examining Ways to Improve Vehicle and Roadway Safety

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Examining Ways to Improve Vehicle and Roadway Safety – See more at: http://energycommerce.house.gov/hearing/examining-ways-improve-vehicle-and-roadway-safety#sthash.F4YzqjVb.dpuf

Joan Claybrook, Consumer Co-chair of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety (Advocates) and former Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), spoke today to the COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE, SUBCOMITTEE ON COMMERCE, MANUFACTURING AND TRADE:

“It is essential that NHTSA, the agency charged with ensuring the safety of our vehicles and our drivers, be equipped with both the appropriate resources and personnel to confront the myriad of emerging issues presented by new technologies. It is almost incomprehensible that the entire vehicle safety program for the U.S. has a miniscule budget of only $130 million, and it has barely increased over the last six years. It is both unfortunate and unnecessary that this agency is chronically underfunded by Congress even while its critical importance to public health and safety continues to expand. Congress has a moral obligation in the safety title of the six year reauthorization bill to give NHTSA the ability to do its job and to do it effectively. Our lives and those of our families as well as yours literally depend on it.”

 

Victims testify:

Car Safety Wars book cover

When will we figure out that somebody’s getting away with murder?

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The EPA apparently has more authority than NHTSA to give out consequences that really hurt the corporate pocketbook:

“It Took E.P.A. Pressure to Get VW to Admit Fault”
By BILL VLASIC and AARON M. KESSLER SEPT. 21,  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/22/business/it-took-epa-pressure-to-get-vw-to-admit-fault.html

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, for example, can impose a maximum penalty of $35 million on an automaker that flouts safety regulations — a relatively low sum for a company like General Motors, which last year paid such a fine for a defect that has now been linked to at least 124 deaths.

By contrast, under the Clean Air Act, Volkswagen, the world’s largest automaker, could be fined as much as $37,500 for each recalled vehicle, for a possible total penalty of as much as $18 billion.

“The Clean Air Act statutory scheme gives E.P.A. more power and flexibility to move more quickly than N.H.T.S.A.,” said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, who has studied the government’s response to auto safety issues. “E.P.A. also seems more tough-minded and savvy about how to be effective in this arena.” . . .

And why do we let this go on and on and on? Why does corporate profit always win out over human life? Can we blame it on ignorance–theirs or ours?

Michael Moore’s answer:  . . the cause of this tragedy is an economic system that places profit above everything else, including—and especially—human life. GM has a legal and fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders to make the biggest profits that it can. And if their top people crunch the numbers and can show that they will save more money by NOT fixing or replacing the part, then that is what they are going to . . . well do.   http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/09/17/justice-department-lets-giant-corporation-evade-prosecution-deaths-over-100-people

Maybe it’s time for a change. Maybe we need to recognize that companies and individuals who make decisions and take actions which lead to unnecessary deaths on our roads should be held accountable for their criminal negligence. Maybe we should use the word manslaughter (look it up). At the very least, they should get more than a slap on the wrist. It appears that merely appealing to their conscience is not going to do the trick.

The question is, Will we rise up and demand change? Wake up, America. It could be you or your loved one that ends up dead on the road because somebody else was allowed to get away with murder*.

IMG_4467

I suppose we’ll never know what all went into this result on May 4, 2013.  https://annaleahmary.com/2014/07/our-crash-was-not-an-accident/

* To escape punishment for or detection of an egregiously blameworthy act . . . to not be punished for bad behavior. http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/get+away+with+murder

Interesting. . .Just saw this on facebook: “What about the [40,000] Americans who will die on the highway this year? . . . Why aren’t you up in arms about that? Or is dying in a car somehow moral?”  At 1:45 on this video: https://www.facebook.com/disturbreality/videos/vb.121420231235396/1140232616020814/?type=2&theater

[Note: You might want to inform yourself on the topics of “second collisions”  and Vision Zero because, although improving driver behavior is essential, we shouldn’t pretend that it is the only thing that needs to change when we look for how to end crash deaths.  http://tinyurl.com/pmtw66h  http://tinyurl.com/qdt7mog]

Sign & Share our Vision Zero Petition:  http://www.thepetitionsite.com/417/742/234/save-lives-not-dollars-urge-dot-to-adopt-vision-zero-policy/

Support Underride Research: https://www.fortrucksafety.com/

GM Settlement: “What will it take to stop the needless deaths and injuries and produce safety and justice?” Lou Lombardo

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Lou Lombardo of Care for Crash Victims sent out an update on the GM Settlement with the Justice Department.

“Mother of GM Crash Victim: Why Is Justice Dept. Allowing GM Write a Check to Get Away with Murder?”  http://www.democracynow.org/2015/9/18/mother_of_gm_crash_victim_why

USA Today Editorial

“Thursday’s disappointing conclusion after months of federal investigation is simply par for the course. In the past decade, corporations have gotten away with all manner of  fraud, self-dealing, negligent manufacturing and market manipulation. The subprime mortgage industry nearly brought down the U.S. economy and ruined untold number of lives. But  to the extent there was punishment at all after these acts, it usually involved a company writing a check, as if these firms ran on automatic pilot.”
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/09/17/gm-justice-settlement-cars-defective-editorials-debates/32569791/

Ralph Nader spoke on the topic:  http://www.democracynow.org/2015/9/18/gm_did_the_crime_drivers_do

See more reactions to the GM Settlement:

Lou Lombardo concludes his email update this morning: “What will it take to stop the needless deaths and injuries and produce safety and justice?”

Do you want manufacturers of vehicles to be held accountable for deaths related to known safety flaws?

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If a manufacturer knows that one of their products has a defect or flaw or a component which could potentially result in death or serious injury, should they be let off of the hook from being accountable for the consequences of their refusal to improve the safety of their product?

What do you think? What would you think if you were the victim (or if someone whom you knew was the victim) of such an “oversight”?

Does a cost/benefit analysis which indicates that making the change would be “too costly” (i.e., costs “outweigh” the benefits of saved lives) excuse them from responsibility?

Read about the GM settlement over deaths due to installation of defective ignition switches:

“‘GM killed over a 100 people by knowingly putting a defective ignition switch into over one million vehicles,’ said Clarence Ditlow of the Center for Auto Safety. ‘Yet no one from GM went to jail or was even charged with criminal homicide. This shows a weakness in the law not a weakness in the facts.  GM killed innocent consumers. GM has paid millions of dollars to its lobbyists to keep criminal penalties out of the Vehicle Safety Act since 1966.  Today thanks to its lobbyists, GM officials walk off scot free while its customers are six feet under.’” – See more at: http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/news/200/critics-rip-gm-deferred-prosecution-in-switch-case/#sthash.KW9gdwjA.Tc0H8H28.dpuf

Underride Research Meme

DONATE NOW: https://www.fortrucksafety.com/

“Opponents of white collar criminal prosecutions argue that corporate managers should not be charged criminally for regulatory violations”?

AnnaLeah and Mary, Truck Safety, , ,

“’Opponents of white collar criminal prosecutions argue that corporate managers should not be charged criminally for regulatory violations because health, safety, and environmental rules are too complex to understand and violations of such arcane requirements do not cause real harm,’says Rena Steinzor, author of Why Not Jail? Industrial Catastrophes, Corporate Malfeasance, and Government Inaction.

“’Both arguments are revealed as hypocritical by the criminal prosecutions of three drivers who had fatal accidents as a result of a defect that the manufacturers’ executives covered up. All of these accidents caused fatalities and the drivers were charged with versions of vehicular manslaughter or reckless driving. Only after suffering through great hardship and, in one case, two years in prison, were they exonerated by belated disclosure of corporate malfeasance. The cases are just the latest example of the double standard that prevails between street and white collar crime.’”

– See more at: http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/news/200/vehicular-homicide-and-manslaughter-convictions-being-reversed-as-drivers-blame-corporations-for-auto-defects/#sthash.fPVqpLAk.dpuf

I wrote about this in a previous post, and I will repeat it here:

https://annaleahmary.com/2015/05/how-a-truck-crash-changed-the-month-of-may-or-what-happens-when-nobody-takes-responsibility/

My grief is complicated by the many things which I have learned about highway safety and the growing awareness that, way too often, nobody really takes responsibility for the countless and potentially-preventable deaths which occur on the roads of our country year after year.

Until that May, I had never heard of an underride crash–too often due to an underride guard that did not prevent a car from riding under a truck and resulting in horrific injuries and deaths. Recently I have read many reports of the problems with defective cars and the fatal crashes which have occurred as a result. Who takes responsibility for these deaths? And when will they come to an end?

For example, here is a report on recent activity with GM recalls:

“. . . the company took its taxpayer-funded bailout agreement and turned it around on millions of consumers unlucky enough to own compact cars with ignition switch defects who had accidents before July 10, 2009, the date when the agreement became effective. Invoking a liability shield negotiated by the Obama administration,GM won a ruling from a bankruptcy judge that is now on appeal, avoiding billions in damages for injuries, deaths, and the lost resale values of vehicles with the defect. The judge took the view that when the ‘old GM’ went bankrupt, the ‘new GM’ got a fresh start, even though all but 15 of the executives and managers involved in the ignition switch fiasco remain ensconced in the company’s iconic skyscraper in Detroit. GM won this counter-intuitive relief even though areport it commissioned from former U.S. Attorney Anton Valukas revealed that senior executives knew about the problem as early as 2005 but dragged their feet on notifying consumers until 2014. ‘Although everyone had responsibility to fix the problem, nobody took responsibility,’ he wrote.”  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rena-steinzor/gm-and-its-no-good-very-bad_b_7191124.html

“Why Not Jail? makes a compelling argument for criminal prosecutions of executives who tolerate noncompliance and endanger public health and the environment.’”  http://www.acslaw.org/acsblog/white-collar-crime-and-justice

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