Vehicle Safety

The government wants to change its car safety ratings by strengthening crash tests and promoting collision avoidance technology that automakers are adopting, Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters said Monday. The agency's proposal calls for improving frontal crash tests so that they would measure how a person's upper legs are affected in a collision. The new approach would also assess how side air bags protect a driver's head.

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.

U.S. regulators are overhauling a program for rating vehicle safety, including new crash tests that make it tougher for automakers to earn the highest grades. The changes starting with 2010 models include more challenging front- and side-crash measures that will be incorporated with rollover-test results into a single rating, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Tuesday.

Chrysler announced Thursday that it is recalling some 2013 Chrysler 200 and Dodge Avenger cars built from Oct. 30, 2012, through Nov. 2, 2012. The automaker said 1,785 of the cars may have a broken control valve in the fuel-tank assembly. The problem could result in an engine stall and potentially a crash if a car would stall while it is being driven. The same problem could result in a fuel leak, which might lead to a fire if the leak reaches an ignition source. Chrysler said it will notify owners of the affected vehicles, and that dealers will inspect the fuel-tank assembly and replace any defective control valves for free.

After five years of fending off government investigations into a rash of steering column fires, Ford Motor Co. in April 1996 announced the largest safety recall in automotive history, agreeing under pressure to replace the ignition switches in 8 million cars, trucks and vans. Ford's action came too late for Prakash Krishan, a 31-year-old mother of three.

Chrysler announced Thursday that it is recalling some 2013 Chrysler 200 and Dodge Avenger cars built from Oct. 30, 2012, through Nov. 2, 2012. The automaker said 1,785 of the cars may have a broken control valve in the fuel-tank assembly. The problem could result in an engine stall and potentially a crash if a car would stall while it is being driven. The same problem could result in a fuel leak, which might lead to a fire if the leak reaches an ignition source. Chrysler said it will notify owners of the affected vehicles, and that dealers will inspect the fuel-tank assembly and replace any defective control valves for free.

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 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.

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.

Having already paid record fines for not promptly recalling cars, Toyota Motor Corp. will pay the government another $17.35 million to federal safety regulators. The latest fine, announced Tuesday, is for not promptly recalling Lexus RX 350s and RX 450h sport-utility vehicles because a floor mat on the driver's side could jam the gas pedal, causing the car to accelerate when the driver didn't intend to. “It's critical to the safety of the driving public that manufacturers report safety defects in a timely manner,” said David Strickland, head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

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.

Having already paid record fines for not promptly recalling cars, Toyota Motor Corp. will pay the government another $17.35 million to federal safety regulators. The latest fine, announced Tuesday, is for not promptly recalling Lexus RX 350s and RX 450h sport-utility vehicles because a floor mat on the driver's side could jam the gas pedal, causing the car to accelerate when the driver didn't intend to. “It's critical to the safety of the driving public that manufacturers report safety defects in a timely manner,” said David Strickland, head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

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 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.

Toyota Motor Corp. responded slowly and ineffectually to a growing sudden-acceleration crisis because it was hampered by a top-down management style that gave short shrift to customer complaints, a special panel has concluded. In a 60-page report, Toyota's seven-member North American Quality Advisory Panel said the company had come to regard federal safety regulators as adversaries, an attitude that may have exacerbated its response to complaints of sudden acceleration and ultimately led to recalls of more than 10 million vehicles worldwide, as well as nearly $50 million in fines against the automaker.

The number of traffic fatalities fell for the fifth year in a row in 2010, dropping 3% to its lowest level since 1949, according to estimates released by the U.S. Department of Transportation. Fatalities fell from 33,808 in 2009 to 32,788 last year, despite the fact that Americans drove nearly 21 billion miles more in 2010 than in the year before. That works out to about 1.09 deaths for every 100 million miles traveled, a major drop from 1972, when traffic deaths peaked at 54,589 and there were 4.33 deaths for the same number of miles traveled.

A panel of international safety experts agreed Friday that vehicle mismatches in crashes are a growing worldwide concern but that more research is needed before design or regulatory changes should be imposed on auto makers. More than a dozen safety officials from North America, Europe and Asia gave their views on vehicle compatibility at a meeting here organized by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The discussion was prompted by recent U.S.

The number of traffic fatalities fell for the fifth year in a row in 2010, dropping 3% to its lowest level since 1949, according to estimates released by the U.S. Department of Transportation on Friday. Fatalities fell from 33,808 in 2009 to 32,788 last year, despite the fact that Americans drove nearly 21 billion miles more in 2010 than in the year before. That works out to about 1.09 deaths for every 100 million miles traveled, a major drop from 1972, when traffic deaths peaked at 54,589 and there were 4.33 deaths for the same number of miles traveled.

Toyota has begun the painful and difficult task of trying to convince consumers that they should buy the beleaguered company's cars -- even as worries mount that more bad news may be ahead. Capping a week of by-the-book crisis management, including television appearances by top executives, the world's largest automobile maker has begun to air a commercial aimed at restoring confidence in its vehicles. Opening with a 1960s-era photograph of what is now Toyota of Hollywood, the ad is airing frequently on network and cable television stations along with YouTube and the company's website.