Automobile Safety

The Chevrolet Corvette has the highest death rate in crashes, and a four-door Volvo has the lowest, a study released Monday says. The study shows that 5.2 drivers and passengers die in car wrecks for every 10,000 1985-87 Corvettes registered in the United States. It also found the Volvo 740-760 four-door had the lowest rate, 0.6 deaths per 10,000 vehicles. The figures from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety were released by the Michigan Assn. of Professional Insurance Agents.

The federal government has been too slow to decide on proposals for stronger automobile safety standards, President Bush's choice to head the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said today. Jerry R. Curry, a retired Army major general and former deputy assistant defense secretary, said at his Senate confirmation hearing that he would set a goal of 18 months for the agency to approve or reject new safety regulations.

Three safety groups Friday urged federal officials to require a recall of Ford Motor Co.'s model E-350 ambulance chassis because boiling-hot gasoline sometimes spurts from fuel tanks and fill pipes. The demand, covering as many as 20,000 ambulances on Ford chassis built from 1983-86, was made at a news conference by the American Ambulance Assn., the Center for Auto Safety and the International Assn. of Fire Chiefs.

Are you a bumper basher, the kind of driver who gets up close and personal with the garage wall, leaving little dings on the front of your car? Two electronic parking-guidance devices are designed to put a stop to that bad habit. No more homemade solutions such as a tennis ball hanging from the ceiling that bumps your windshield as you close in on the end of the garage, or a 2-by-4 on the floor so the car stops in time.

A significant number of children ages 7 through 12 are riding up front in vehicles with passenger-side air bags, putting them at added risk in the event of a crash, according to a study by researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health. In the study, researchers looked at 503 cars and light trucks that carried at least one child under the age of 13. The vehicles were stopped at restaurants, rest stops and other points in five New England states.

A new federal investigation into braking problems with Toyota Motor Corp.'s Prius hybrid is just one in a series of possible glitches that may be linked to the vehicle's complex electronics, including headlights that fail inexplicably, records and interviews show. Thursday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it had opened a formal investigation into the 2010 model Prius after getting 124 complaints from drivers of a brief loss in braking power, which has been blamed in four crashes, two of which resulted in injuries.

The government's automobile safety agency said Thursday that it has decided against opening a probe of the Suzuki Samurai sports-utility vehicle for an alleged tendency to roll over. Two private safety watchdog groups petitioned the agency earlier this year to investigate the alleged propensity of the vehicle, made by the Suzuki Motor Corp., to roll over.

A U.S. appeals court has ruled that a jury may decide the amount of damages Japan's Suzuki Motor Co. must pay for alleged rollover problems from its Samurai sport utility vehicle. But the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a jury trial is not needed to decide whether Suzuki is liable for injuries to a former local police officer in Georgia from a 1989 accident.

Airbags and seat belts have helped more people survive potentially fatal automobile crashes, but they haven't shielded drivers and passengers from leg and foot injuries. The vulnerability of feet was illustrated earlier this month, when actor Jason Priestley suffered fractures to both feet, his back and nose, as the car he was driving at the Kentucky Speedway crashed into a wall at 180 mph.

The government released rollover risk ratings for 30 more vehicles on Tuesday, giving low marks to eight sport-utility vehicles and high grades to four cars. The ratings of the 2001 vehicles are based on a mathematical formula for measuring the vehicle's center of gravity and width. SUVs and pickup trucks are more top-heavy and thus more likely to get lower marks than a car or van.