Black box recorders coming to cars?
U. S. safety body ill- equipped to detect problems in complicated high- tech electronics, report concludes
A U. S. study into the failure of safety agencies to deal with Toyota’s sticking accelerator problem in 2008- 2009 suggests requiring data recorders on all new automobiles.
LOS ANGELES — The top auto safety regulator for the United States is ill- equipped to detect problems with high- tech electronics commonplace in modern cars, a study has concluded.
Calling such shortcomings “troubling,” the study called on the U. S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to review its technical capabilities and appoint an advisory panel to help it handle potentially serious risks associated with systems such as adaptive cruise control and GPS navigation.
In addition, the agency should require automakers to install electronic data recorders, often referred to as black boxes, in all new cars, and consider significant changes in the design of pedals and certain ignition systems.
These steps, the U. S. National Research Council found in a 139- page report released Wednesday, would help NHTSA “ascertain the causes of unexpected vehicle behaviours” — in particular unintended acceleration — and thus improve safety. In addition, they would assist in allaying public concern about the agency’s credibility that emerged during the Toyota Motor Corp. recalls of 2009 and 2010.
“Neither the automotive industry, NHTSA, nor motorists can afford a recurrence of something like the unintended acceleration controversy,” said Louis Lanzerotti, a physics professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and chairman of the committee that wrote the report.
The study was commissioned in March 2010, shortly after a series of congressional hearings on sudden acceleration in Toyota vehicles, a phenomenon that was blamed for scores of deaths, led to hundreds of lawsuits and forced Toyota to pay more than $ 32 million in fines to U. S. regulators.
Toyota issued over 14 million recall notices worldwide from November 2009 to February 2011 and repeatedly maintained that its electronically controlled throttles played no role in the problem. Instead, the automaker said, sudden acceleration was caused by faulty floor mats, sticking gas pedals
Neither the automotive industry, NHTSA, nor motorists can afford a recurrence of something like the unintended acceleration controversy.
LOUIS LANZEROTTI PHYSICS PROFESSOR, NEW JERSEY INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY AND REPORT COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN
and driver error.
Amid a public firestorm over the recalls, NHTSA announced the National Research Council study, along with a separate examination of electronic throttles by NASA.
The NASA report, released in February 2011, uncovered no conclusive evidence of an electronic defect that could provoke sudden acceleration in the electronic throttle system in Toyota vehicles. That finding was trumpeted by both NHTSA and Toyota as vindication of their previous public conclusions on the matter.
The National Research Council study, originally scheduled to be completed in June of last year, supports NASA’S findings and does not contemplate Toyota’s own research into the topic.
But the report, called The Safety Promise and Challenge of Automotive Electronics: Insights from Unintended Acceleration, does point out significant and serious shortcomings at NHTSA, which is charged with ensuring the safety of the nation’s automotive fleet — and through it influence that of much of the world.