Nhtsa

NHTSA at a glance Founded: 1970, after the merger of the National Traffic Safety Agency and the National Highway Safety Agency Administrator: David Strickland, nominated by President Obama and confirmed by the Senate on Dec. 24. Mission: Regulate safety standards in the auto and transportation industries. NHTSA has oversight over safety in passenger vehicles, trucks and buses and also promotes safety programs. Employees: About 650 Budget: $867 million Locations: Headquarters in Washington.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating complaints that the rear suspension frames on some Hyundai Sonata mid-size cars can rust and fail. The probe affects about 393,000 cars from the 2006-through-2008 model years. The NHTSA said that rust in the frame can cause control arm failures. A car's wheel hubs are attached to the control arms. In documents on its website, the NHTSA said it had received six complaints of suspension failures. Three of the cases involved failures at highway speeds, but no crashes or injuries were reported.

The nation's top highway safety regulator on Thursday offered a limited endorsement of a proposed law that would give the federal government greater leverage over automakers by enacting new safety standards and significantly raising the maximum fines for violations of federal safety rules. The measure would put the auto industry on the same footing as other industries subject to federal oversight, said David Strickland, chief of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Federal safety regulators have unveiled an iPhone app that allows people to get safety ratings and recall information for vehicles they own or are thinking of buying. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration SaferCar app will let users search its 5-Star Safety Ratings for vehicles by make and model, locate car seat installation help, file a vehicle safety complaint, find recall information and subscribe to automatic notices about vehicle recalls. It also works on Apple's iPads and iPods.

The nation's top auto safety regulator is ill-equipped to detect problems with high-tech electronics that are increasingly commonplace in today's cars, a new government study has concluded. Calling such shortcomings "troubling," the report called on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to review its technical capabilities and appoint an advisory panel to help it evaluate potentially serious risks associated with systems such as adaptive cruise control. Despite those findings, the National Research Council found in a 162-page report that NHTSA's decision to close its investigation of sudden acceleration in Toyota Motor Corp.

Richard and Carolyn Carlson were driving through rural Colorado in February 2005 when they hit a patch of black ice. Their Chrysler PT Cruiser spun backward into an embankment, causing the back of Carolyn's seat to collapse. She was hurled into the roof and partway through the rear window. In an instant, Carolyn Carlson became a quadriplegic, and one of the thousands of Americans who suffer injuries, or death, each year in crashes in which car seats break. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has looked at forcing automakers to build stronger seats, first considering new rules in the early 1990s.

Federal safety regulators have given the Chevrolet Volt an all-clear. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Friday that it did not identify a safety defect, concluding that the car does not pose any unusual risk of fire. In closing the book on its investigation into Volts catching on fire, NHTSA also issued new guidelines for how emergency personnel and tow truck operators should deal with electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids that have been damaged in severe accidents.

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says it is looking into possibly expanding a small recall of Pontiac G6 midsize cars to as many as 550,000 vehicles. Three years ago, just 9,000 of the cars were recalled by General Motors because the brake lights and cruise control didn't work properly. That recall affected cars made only in January 2005. But the NHTSA says it has subsequently received more than 200 complaints about brake lights that do not come on when brake pedals are pressed or that the lights come on when brakes are not being applied.

Federal safety regulators have opened an investigation into steering problems with the Saturn Ion. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it has received 633 complaints alleging sudden loss of power assist to the steering in Saturn Ion vehicles from the 2004-2007 model years. About a third of the complaints to NHTSA were filed in the last six months. The cars were manufactured and sold by General Motors Co. but the automaker scuttled the brand and closed its operations last year as part of its bankruptcy reorganization.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating complaints that the rear suspension frames on some Hyundai Sonata mid-size cars can rust and fail. The probe affects about 393,000 cars from the 2006-through-2008 model years. The NHTSA said that rust in the frame can cause control arm failures. A car's wheel hubs are attached to the control arms. In documents on its website, the NHTSA said it had received six complaints of suspension failures. Three of the cases involved failures at highway speeds, but no crashes or injuries were reported.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has closed its probe into claims that three Ford sport utility vehicles from the 2002 to 2005 model years can roll away when the transmissions are in park. Federal officials the failure rates were too low to warrant recalls. The NHTSA probe, which began nearly four years ago, involved about 1.5 million Ford Explorer, Mercury Mountaineer and Lincoln Aviator SUVs. There had been 36 complaints, including 14 linked to crashes and six to injuries.

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says it is looking into possibly expanding a small recall of Pontiac G6 midsize cars to as many as 550,000 vehicles. Three years ago, just 9,000 of the cars were recalled by General Motors because the brake lights and cruise control didn't work properly. That recall affected cars made only in January 2005. But the NHTSA says it has subsequently received more than 200 complaints about brake lights that do not come on when brake pedals are pressed or that the lights come on when brakes are not being applied.

Automakers issued 586 safety recalls for more than 16.2 million vehicles last year, slightly higher than the previous year, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced Thursday. Most recalls start with consumer complaints, the NHTSA said in a release. Last year, the agency received 41,912 complaints concerning potential safety defects, compared with 49,417 in 2011 and 65,765 in 2010. "The role of the consumer in influencing auto recalls cannot be underestimated," NHTSA Administrator David Strickland said in the release.

The nation's top auto safety regulator has escalated and expanded an investigation into complaints of floor mats trapping accelerators in Ford Motor Co. vehicles. The probe has not led to any recalls, but it appears to echo recent investigations into unintended acceleration in Toyota cars, which ultimately led to massive global recalls after drivers complained of cars speeding out of control, causing injuries and deaths. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration this week upgraded the Ford defect investigation, originally launched in May 2010, to an engineering analysis, its most serious level of inquiry.

WASHINGTON -- Traffic deaths nationally were down last year to their lowest level since record-keeping began in 1949.  But not in North Dakota, where they were up 41%, the biggest increase of any state. Fourteen states, including California, recorded an increase in motor vehicle fatalities, even though the 32,367 traffic deaths last year were down 1.9% from the previous year, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The traffic safety agency this year projected a record low in 2011 traffic deaths as motorists drove less, perhaps because of high gas prices and a still-difficult economy.

WASHINGTON - A U.S. senator has raised concerns about a government investigation of sudden unintended acceleration problems in Toyota vehicles, saying the probe might have erroneously ruled out the company's electronic throttle control system as a cause. Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said whistle-blowers recently have provided his office with information suggesting that the investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, with the help of NASA engineers, "may have been too narrow.

The nation's top auto safety regulator has escalated and expanded an investigation into complaints of floor mats trapping accelerators in Ford Motor Co. vehicles. The probe has not led to any recalls, but it appears to echo recent investigations into unintended acceleration in Toyota cars, which ultimately led to massive global recalls after drivers complained of cars speeding out of control, causing injuries and deaths. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration this week upgraded the Ford defect investigation, originally launched in May 2010, to an engineering analysis, its most serious level of inquiry.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has closed its probe into claims that three Ford sport utility vehicles from the 2002 to 2005 model years can roll away when the transmissions are in park. Federal officials the failure rates were too low to warrant recalls. The NHTSA probe, which began nearly four years ago, involved about 1.5 million Ford Explorer, Mercury Mountaineer and Lincoln Aviator SUVs. There had been 36 complaints, including 14 linked to crashes and six to injuries.

Women are more likely than men to mistake the gas pedal for the brakes, according to federal safety regulators. "The most consistent finding across data sources was the striking overrepresentation of females in pedal misapplication crashes, relative to their involvement in all types of crashes," the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a report supporting its proposal this week to require automakers to make brake-throttle override...