This morning, Toyota Motor Corporation announced it intends to replace accelerator pedals on about 3.8 million recalled vehicles in the United States because the pedals can get stuck in a floor mat. But the recall could still leave more than a million faulty cars on the road.
As I wrote earlier, there had been over 2,000 reports from the owners of Toyota cars that they have surged forward without warning reaching speeds of up to 100 miles per hour. NHTSA has investigated Toyota for runaway cars on eight separate occasions, but the agency only ordered two small recalls, which addressed floor mats and carpet panels. It is not apparent why the agency did not act more forcefully, and Congress should investigate that.
A problem with relying on recalls, as NHTSA often does to correct safety defects, is that not all vehicle owners will have the cars and trucks fixed. NHTSA indicates that the overall effectiveness of recalls is about 72%, which means Toyota will not fix about 1.1 million cars, assuming the average recall rate applies.
This is one reason why it is better if NHTSA requires manufacturers to design safe cars rather than waiting for defects to show up and instituting a recall. But this strategy does not work if the agency cannot anticipate a problem or it lacks the political will to issue a regulation for a problem that it does recognize. Congress should dig into this.
Consumers Reports has produced a video that demonstrates how other brands of cars have a built-in safety system that if the accelerator gets struck, you can step on the brake and it will over-ride the accelerator and stop the car. Since Toyota does not have this system, it is more difficult to stop their cars, although the video demonstrates how to do this. NHTSA could require this system be built into all cars.
This story is likely to continue. ABC news notes “safety expert Sean Kane said the recall doesn't address hundreds of runaway Toyota cases he has uncovered where owners insist floor mats cannot be blamed.” I hope NHTSA is looking into these cases, but the agency has been looking into this problem for a number of years without doing anything to address this apparent problem.
Perhaps NHTSA is blameless, but we will not know this until Congress investigates. As someone who has studied regulatory dysfunction for years, I know that there can be a number of causes. But, unless Congress takes responsibility for identifying and addressing the causes, American consumers will continue to be at risk.
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Sidney A. Shapiro | November 25, 2009
This morning, Toyota Motor Corporation announced it intends to replace accelerator pedals on about 3.8 million recalled vehicles in the United States because the pedals can get stuck in a floor mat. But the recall could still leave more than a million faulty cars on the road. As I wrote earlier, there had been over […]
James Goodwin | November 25, 2009
Perhaps caught up in the spirit of the holiday shopping season, a large number of industry bargain hunters have been busy seeking great deals on regulatory relief at the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in recent weeks. To be precise, the bureau hosted no fewer than 11 meetings with corporate interests […]
Yee Huang | November 24, 2009
On Monday, CPR Member Scholars and others sent a memorandum to Senator Ben Cardin that addressed the constitutionality of S. 1816, the Chesapeake Clean Water and Ecosystem Restoration Act of 2009. At a Senate Subcommittee on Water and Wildlife hearing earlier this month, one witness contested the key provisions of S. 1816, asserting that they […]
Ben Somberg | November 23, 2009
The Obama Administration is expected to issue revisions to Executive Order 12,866, which specifies how the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) supervises federal regulatory agencies as they develop regulations to protect health, safety, the environment, and more (see the full comments on the matter submitted by CPR's board members in March). CPR […]
Joel A. Mintz | November 20, 2009
As it nears the close of its first year in office, the Obama Administration has thus far failed to name half of the regional administrators for its ten regional offices of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); and it was only on November 5th that it named those five officials. The reason for the lengthy […]
Ben Somberg | November 19, 2009
“Interior increases oversight of mountaintop mining” trumpets the AP, and “U.S. boosts coal mining oversight to fight pollution” says Reuters. That’s in response to an announcement from Interior on Wednesday. But on Coal Tattoo, and from NRDC and Sierra Club, one learns of a pretty different story. Says NRDC’s Rob Perks: Why in the world […]
Rena Steinzor | November 19, 2009
On Monday, OMB Director Peter Orszag sent a letter to Rep. Ed Markey, responding to Congressman Markey’s concerns about OMB’s involvement in EPA’s Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program. Orszag’s letter — released by Markey's office Wednesday — explains, in no uncertain terms, that OMB is done meddling in EPA’s scientific determinations about endocrine-disrupting chemicals. It’s a […]
Yee Huang | November 18, 2009
A few months ago, I wrote about a landmark agreement by the EPA to set numeric, statewide nutrient pollution limits — the first of its kind in the United States. Florida, like most states, has qualitative nutrient pollution limits, which are written in terms such as, “in no case shall nutrient concentrations of body of […]
Yee Huang | November 13, 2009
In October, Senator Ben Cardin (D.-Md.) introduced the “Chesapeake Clean Water and Ecosystem Restoration Act of 2009,” signaling the beginning of a new era of federal commitment to Bay restoration. The legislation is a tremendous step in the right direction, and it includes many elements to help make the Bay Program and the Bay-wide Total Daily […]