Automobile Safety

When Ralph Nader thrust auto safety into a national issue in the 1960s with his book "Unsafe at Any Speed," it looked like political pressure had reach such a level that the federal government would never dare retreat on improving automobile safety equipment. But Nader, who ran for president this year, is charging that the Clinton administration has seriously backtracked on auto safety--caving in to the interests of auto makers and commercial truckers.

Motorists and passengers in California, Oregon and Washington state have the highest seat-belt use in the country, according to a new report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Oregon ? where nearly 94% of people said they always wore a seat belt ? ranked No. 1, according to a CDC telephone survey. California was close behind in self-reported seat belt use at 93.2%, followed by Washington state at 92%. All three states have strict enforcement of safety belt laws ?

When it comes to auto safety, the most basic and seemingly simple issues are sometimes the least understood. The auto industry invests billions of dollars each year in technology to make cars safer. Laws are passed by legislators every year with the intent to make roads safer. And experts debate endlessly about whether teens or older people should be denied some or all driving privileges. But all this ignores some rudimentary matters, such as which foot you brake with.

Every time I hear a big industry crab about how some new set of government regulations will mean the end to life as we know it, bring the economy crashing down around our heads, or burden the consumer with more passed-on costs, I think of the smartest words Ronald Reagan ever spoke. They were: "There you go again." Reagan and I wouldn't have seen eye to eye on much, but this phrase sums up my exact reaction to the arguments by the financial industry and its chums in Washington against the financial regulation bill now before Congress.

About the Project This is the result of six months of research and reporting by Tribune Auto Race Writer Ed Hinton, with help from staffers at other Tribune papers, among them Darin Esper of the Los Angeles Times. It sheds new light on the decline of traditional fatalism among race drivers and the need for more research and action to prevent the violent deaths the sport has come to accept.

Toyota Motor Corp. officials took credit for saving hundreds of millions of dollars by persuading federal regulators to limit or avoid safety recalls and rules, a company document released Sunday shows. The document, an internal company presentation, depicts an automaker focused on getting what it termed "favorable recall outcomes" from regulators, with a goal of saving money even as the death toll climbed from accidents in which Toyota vehicles accelerated uncontrollably. The presentation by executives in the company's Washington, D.C., office was addressed to Yoshimi Inaba, Toyota's top U.S. executive, and dated July 6, 2009 -- months before the sudden-acceleration problem was widely known outside Toyota and the federal highway regulatory agency.

Conventional wisdom about broken glass and other kinds of hazards encountered on the road abounds. The sight of smashed glass on the highway prompts most motorists to swerve to avoid damaging their tires. Potholes are generally viewed as obstacles, sort of a test of one's driving skills. Rubbing a tire against the curb is considered unfortunately clumsy, but nothing to worry about. Such thinking is correct in some cases and entirely wrong in others.

Federal highway safety inspectors have released new details of a fatal car crash that triggered Toyota Motor Corp.'s largest recall, including a finding that the Lexus ES 350 sedan involved had a gas pedal design that could increase the risk of its being obstructed by a floor mat. Toyota has previously said that the floor mat was improperly installed and may have trapped the accelerator pedal, causing the vehicle to race down Highway 125 in...

We all know the drill. The first thing you do when you slide behind the wheel is buckle up for safety. If you don't, you risk getting a ticket that could cost you as much as $271. So what's up with all these vintage car owners who cruise around Southern California sans seat belts? How safe is that? Not a day goes by that I don't see someone zipping around in a vintage automobile--a '50s-era Cadillac or a dilapidated Volkswagen Beetle from the '60s.

Accusations of unethical auto safety tests Wednesday engulfed the respected Heidelberg University, one of Germany's oldest institutions of higher learning. Senior officials at the university's Institute for Forensic Medicine found themselves scrambling to defend a series of auto crash tests, carried out over a period of nearly two decades, in which human cadavers were used instead of the customary plastic manikins.

Toyota will agree to pay a record $16.4-million fine for hiding safety defects related to sudden acceleration in 2.3 million vehicles but will stop short of accepting full legal responsibility for purposely withholding safety information, federal safety regulators said late Sunday. Toyota failed to notify the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for at least four months after learning that the accelerator pedals in some of its vehicles could stick and cause unwanted acceleration, regulators say. Under federal law, automakers are required to disclose defects within five business days.

An executive for Toyota Motor Corp. in January urged colleagues in an e-mail to "not mention about the mechanical failures" of accelerator pedals in its vehicles, prompting a response from the company's top U.S. spokesman that said, "We are not protecting our customers by keeping this quiet," according to internal company documents reviewed by The Times. "The time to hide on this one is over," the e-mail from spokesman Irv Miller continued. "We need to come clean." The exchange, which occurred just days before a massive recall of Toyota vehicles to repair accelerator pedals, is the clearest indication so far that the Japanese carmaker was debating internally when to disclose that its accelerators pedals could become stuck and cause drivers to lose control of vehicles.

On a summer day in 1911, Donald MacPherson was driving his Buick runabout to Sarasota Springs, N.Y., when the wooden spokes snapped on a rear wheel, flipping the open car and trapping him under the rear axle. MacPherson suffered a badly lacerated eye and a broken wrist so painful he couldn't grip the tools he needed to ply his craft as a stone cutter. He sued Buick Motor Co., alleging negligence in failing to ensure the wheel was roadworthy. In what would become a landmark ruling in product liability law, the New York Court of Appeals in 1916 awarded MacPherson $5,025 in compensation -- about $115,000 in today's dollars -- and established the automaker's "duty of care" to ensure customers are sold a safe product.

Federal regulators in 2007 asked Toyota Motor Corp. to consider installing software to prevent sudden acceleration in its vehicles after receiving complaints that vehicles could race out of control, company documents show. Yet the automaker began installing the safety feature, known as brake override, only this January after a widely publicized accident involving a runaway Lexus ES that killed four people near San Diego. Safety regulators acknowledged late last week that they pressured Toyota anew last fall to consider the override software in the wake of that crash, which set off a chain of events leading the company to issue nearly 10 million recall notices worldwide.

Federal inspection of the runaway Toyota Prius that took a wild ride on a San Diego County freeway was delayed several hours Wednesday when a California congressman insisted that someone from his office witness the examination. A team of inspectors from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration was already at Toyota of El Cajon examining the car -- which reportedly had a stuck accelerator, causing it to speed for half an hour before the driver got it stopped -- when a staffer from the office of Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista)

More than 60 drivers have complained of sudden acceleration incidents despite the fact that their cars were repaired by Toyota Motor Corp. in the current recalls, new data released Thursday show. The latest figure, released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, significantly increases the total number of complaints involving repaired vehicles, which was less than 10 on Tuesday. The new complaints allege several accidents and at least three injuries resulting from runaway unintended acceleration despite the vehicles' undergoing a series of modifications at Toyota dealerships designed to resolve the issue.

More and more motorists seem to be driving around in cars sitting atop what look like rubber bands: low profile tires on giant alloy wheels. Those "rubber bands" are actually high performance or touring tires, and they're wildly popular among consumers who like a muscular, sporty look. But like an injury-prone star athlete, the buff body disguises some weaknesses. If you don't think so, just ask Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Lance Ito.

Although a new state law went into effect this year barring pickup truck passengers from riding without seat belts in the bed of the vehicles, an exemption for trucks with camper shells has allowed accidents involving pickups to remain nearly as dangerous as ever, law enforcement officials said Wednesday. Such camper shells routinely snap off in accidents, often hurling their victims to their deaths, the officials said.

One car barreled through a stop sign, struck a tree and landed upside down in a Texas lake, drowning four people. Another tore across an Indiana street and crashed into a jewelry store. A third raced at an estimated 100 mph on a San Bernardino County street before striking a phone pole, killing the owner of a sushi restaurant. At least 56 people have died in U.S. traffic accidents in which sudden unintended acceleration of Toyota Motor Corp. vehicles has been alleged, according to a Times review of public records and interviews with authorities.