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EDITORIAL: National Safety Administration needs evaluation

4 min read

The nation’s top auto-safety regulator deserves a good grade for its efforts on behalf of automatic emergency braking on new vehicles.

However, too bad the same agency is so woefully slow many times in completing investigations into suspected vehicle defects that could put drivers at risk.

The agency in question – the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration – needs a full, comprehensive performance evaluation to address the question of why it can be so good on some fronts but so seemingly lacking or inept on others.

Does the agency need leadership changes, a shuffling of just some personnel on various tiers of responsibility to maximize performance, or merely a stricter commitment to meet guidelines and goals that the agency established for itself years ago?

Perhaps it needs a bit of all of those remedial actions.

Regarding virtually snail-paced suspected-vehicle-defect probes, reporting in The Wall Street Journal has revealed that the average length for NHTSA’s open investigations is currently the highest in the agency’s 52-year history.

A government inspector general’s report made public after the Journal published its findings last month, based on publicly available data, recommended that NHTSA implement a plan for meeting its auto-defect-investigations time targets, as well as ensure that documents related to those probes are uploaded to its public website for transparency and accountability.

The report stated the obvious conclusion that lack of timely investigations can limit NHTSA’s ability to identify and respond to rapidly evolving or serious auto-safety risks.

“Further, delays in completing safety defect investigations could result in unidentified motor vehicle defects and safety risks to the traveling public,” the report said.

In its examination of publicly available data, the Journal found that many safety probes launched by NHTSA have been open for three to four years, and that among the longest of the government’s investigations has been NHTSA’s eight-year probe into air-bag inflaters made by auto-parts supplier ARC Automotive – inflaters that could explode and cause injuries.

Obviously, that eight-year investigation has far exceeded NHTSA’s longstanding guideline of completing such probes in a year or less.

There is more:

The government inspector general’s office determined by way of the office’s look into NHTSA performance that the NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation did not meet its own timeline goals in five types of investigations examined.

Compare all of those lapses and inadequacies with the automatic emergency braking issue that NHTSA is on top of, in terms of promoting. According to a June 1 Journal report, NHTSA proposed on May 31 a new regulation that would require automakers to sell new cars with the advanced emergency braking technology.

As described by the Journal, the advanced braking technology “uses a combination of sensors and software to detect roadway dangers and brake the car itself if the driver doesn’t act fast enough.”

The move is a big step by regulators to harness some of the automated driving technology that has been deployed by vehicle manufacturers up to now mostly as an optional feature.

NHTSA says that “the proposed mandate could save at least 360 lives a year and reduce injuries by at least 24,000 annually.”

It is reasonable to wonder how many of the four people who died on Pennsylvania highways over the Memorial Day weekend could have been saved if automatic emergency braking had been a workable component in their vehicles.

It is reasonable to wonder how many serious and not-so-serious injuries could have been averted.

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