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Toyota Recall: NHTSA Considers New Rules For "Smart" Brakes; Black Boxes

By Brett Emison

In the fallout of Toyota's massive sudden acceleration recall, the Wall Street Journal reports that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration ("NHTSA") is considering tougher regulations requiring "smart brake" technology and "black box" data recorders for US vehicles.

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--The Obama administration is considering new rules on the design of automobiles, including possible requirements that cars be equipped with advanced-brake technology and "black boxes" that record crash data, the top U.S. highway-safety regulator said Thursday.

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In written testimony he submitted to the [House Energy and Commerce] committee, Strickland said the administration is prepared to require that all cars be equipped with brake-override systems, which are designed to ensure that a car stops if both the gas and brake pedals are depressed, if regulators determine such a move would significantly improve vehicle safety.

"If our review indicates that requiring this feature could substantially reduce the most dangerous kinds of sudden acceleration, we will strongly consider a rulemaking to require it," he testified.

Strickland also said that the administration is studying whether to require that all vehicles be equipped with event-data recorders, also known as black boxes. Many U.S. vehicles are already equipped with the black boxes. Some are also equipped with brake-override systems.

The hearing will examine NHTSA's role in tracking defects, and is at least the fourth congressional hearing in recent weeks related to Toyota Motor Corp.'s recall of some eight million vehicles worldwide for sudden-acceleration problems.

Why does NHTSA need to tell Toyota to install critical safety devices like "black box" data recorders and brake override systems? NHTSA's requirements are the minimum standards. Car makers can -- and are expected to -- do more than the bare minimum required by NHTSA.

Car makers like GM and Ford have used "black box" data recorders for years. Companies like Chrysler, Nissan, Audi and other car makers have used "smart brake" technology for more than a decade. Where has Toyota been during all of this?

Toyota has actually installed "black box" data recorder in many of its vehicles. However, Toyota calls its own data recording technology "experimental" and unreliable. Why would Toyota install unreliable data recorders in its vehicles?

So Toyota's "black boxes" are "experimental" and there is only one laptop in the entire United States that can interpret the data? And Toyota fights tooth and nail to keep from having to produce this information in lawsuits across the country... going so far as to settle the claim quickly if the Court orders production of this information.

Other auto makers make their data recorders available to the public and to law enforcement.

U.S. auto makers General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler Group LLC have provided their black-box data formats to Bosch Diagnostics, a unit of German auto supplier Robert Bosch GmbH that makes tools that download crash logs from vehicles made by those auto makers. Those tools are widely used by police, crash investigators and attorneys, and the auto makers don't question the accuracy of the data retrieved with them.

I want to know what these black boxes say that Toyota doesn't want us to know.

Toyota has also said it would install "smart brake" technology in vehicles going forward.

That only puts Toyota 15 years behind the curve. Since Toyota's first recall announcement, I have called on Toyota to implement smart brake technology that would override an out-of-control gas pedal or throttle. Several weeks ago, USA Today reported that smart brake or smart pedal technology has been used by other car makers for more than a decade and would have cost less than $1 per vehicle to design and implement.

Why did Toyota refuse to utilize this critical safety device for so long? Was $1 too much to spend to ensure that innocent drivers wouldn't be injured or killed by runaway vehicles? Was it simply easier to "blame the driver" and call the problem "driver error" rather than acknowledge this serious safety defect?

It is time that Toyota is finally held accountable for putting profits over safety and for putting money ahead of human life.

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Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Brett Emison

Full post as published by Kansas City Personal Injury Lawyer on March 11, 2010 (boomark / email).