YONKERS, NY — The recent Toyota recalls involving sudden unintended acceleration have focused national attention on safety problems that are infrequent, but potentially fatal. Much of the ongoing debate and public outcry has centered on why these issues weren’t caught or acted upon earlier. But while the U.S. has arguably the best automotive safety net in the world, these types of infrequent problems can be the hardest to catch and the most difficult to diagnose – in this case, with deadly consequences. 

Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports is calling for changes to strengthen the U.S. car safety net. The changes will be online at www.ConsumerReports.org at 8 am on Tuesday, February 23rd.

Why are issues like unintended acceleration so hard to identify? Car problems reported to dealers, automakers, and government agencies every day create a level of “noise” that can make it difficult to identify real trends and rare problems. Many complaints are about isolated incidents, which may be due to driver error, vehicle abuse, lack of maintenance, or variability on the assembly line. NHTSA receives more than 30,000 complaints a year; and only about 2,000 in the last decade were related to acceleration issues with Toyota models.  So, the key is to identify, as early as possible, when a series of problems points to a trend, and to a real and possibly lethal defect in a part or design.

Consumers Union believes that addressing this formidable challenge demands a coordinated effort by the government, automakers, the public, and independent consumer groups.  "Every generation of safety innovation that Consumers Union has promoted — from seatbelts, to airbags to electronic stability control — has required the coordinated commitment of carmakers, the government and consumers," says Consumer Union President Jim Guest.  "Our nation’s drivers, passengers and consumers at large deserve an even stronger car safety net." 

Improvements made to catch and fix these less frequent, but potentially lethal issues should benefit the entire auto-safety system. At the same time these changes must be made without losing sight of widespread, and arguably more critical, safety challenges that are associated with significantly more deaths, including drunk driving, safety-belt misuse, and distracted driving. 

After analyzing the nation’s current safety net in detail and speaking with many industry experts, here are recommendations that Consumers Union would like to see implemented, and improvements the organization plans to make to support this effort. Consumers Union (CU) also invites consumers to participate in this discussion and submit their ideas.

WHAT THE GOVERNMENT CAN DO

Improve public access to safety information:  Public access to Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) information about consumer complaints and issue-related manufacturer data should be dramatically improved. Consumers shouldn’t have to visit multiple sites to see parts of this information. Or be forced to search it using tools that are less than user-friendly. Complaints information should be visible via a single consumer-facing site, with intuitive tools that allow users to easily find information for particular models and compare vehicle safety records.

CU also recommends that NHTSA initiate a program to raise public awareness and encourage more drivers to participate in data gathering. The more public complaints there are to analyze, the greater the chance that rare-but-deadly problems such as unintended acceleration will be identified at any early stage.

Mandate specific safety changes in new cars:  NHTSA should promulgate safety regulations to prevent sudden unintended acceleration in all automobiles.

• Require cars to be able to stop within a reasonable distance, even if the throttle is wide open.
• Require simple, standard controls that turn off the engine in an emergency.
• Mandate intuitive, clearly labeled transmission shifters in all new cars.
• Require a minimum distance between the gas pedal and the floorboard.

Remove NHTSA’s cap on civil penalties:  NHTSA has the authority to seek civil penalties from automakers and suppliers for a variety of violations. If agency officials determine that a company violated such statutory obligations, the company can only be fined up to a maximum of $16.4 million in civil penalties.  This amount might be considered by a large, multi-billion dollar manufacturer as just the “cost of doing business.”

CU recommends removing this cap on civil penalties to act as a deterrent for future violations of the law.

Give NHTSA more resources:  CU believes NHTSA is in need of additional funding and staff. Motor-vehicle crashes account for 99 percent of all transportation-related fatalities and injuries. Yet NHTSA’s budget currently amounts to just over 1 percent of the overall Department of Transportation (DOT) budget.

It is important to make sure that the agency’s budget and staffing for auto safety and consumer protection functions is commensurate with the realities of traffic safety and can keep up with the agency’s other priorities.

WHAT MANUFACTURERS CAN DO

Make more safety features standard:  CU believes manufacturers should go above and beyond when designing for safety, even when not mandated by specific government regulations. Advanced safety features – including electronic stability control and curtain airbags – should be standard, even in low-budget cars. CU also calls on manufacturers to end the practice of packaging safety options with luxurious, but non-essential amenities such as navigation systems or heated seats.

Share more safety-related information:  CU believes consumer complaints numbers collected by manufacturers and reported via the Early Warning Reports (EWR) system should be made public. And CU will be looking into which other non-public data points in the EWR that might be useful to investigators and consumers.

Consumers Union also calls on manufacturers to make information from black box recording devices more immediately accessible to government investigators. CU encourages all automakers to quickly adopt formats to enable swift information retrieval and dissemination to crash investigators. And the organization recommends that carmakers apply data monitoring requirements mandated by NHTSA for all 2013 models with EDRs as soon as possible, with the appropriate privacy controls — don’t wait till 2012 to do so.

WHAT CONSUMERS CAN DO

Share your information about safety issues:  CU encourages consumers to fix issues and report them. CU urges owners to submit their complaints to NHTSA. By reporting your information to the agency’s consumer complaints database, you will ensure it becomes part of the public record, and will be available for analysis by regulators and independent consumer groups like ours who are in a position to identify and take action on broader safety issues.

• Call NHTSA’s Auto Safety Hotline 888-327-4236, or make a complaint at NHTSA’s consumer-complaints database, https://www.safercar.gov.

Act on recall information: As a practical matter, contact your dealer to fix any recall-related issues with your car.

According to NHTSA, the average consumer response rate to vehicle recalls is 74.1 percent. Owners who have been notified of a recall could do more to take care of fixes.

If you are an owner of one of Toyota’s recent recalled vehicles, we strongly urge you to fix your car as soon as possible. Call the Toyota Customer Experience Center at 1-800-331-4331; or call your local dealer.

WHAT CONSUMER REPORTS WILL DO

Expand the safety information on www.ConsumerReports.org:  ConsumerReports.org currently provides a wealth of auto safety information, including CR’s own safety Ratings, which incorporate key scores from NHTSA’s and IIHS’s crash tests and some 300 IIHS crash-test videos for recent models. Going forward, Consumer Reports will broaden the scope of safety information on the Web site in as many areas as is practical, beginning with recall information.

Communicating recall information to consumers is currently the manufacturer’s responsibility. But Consumer Reports will support their efforts by publicizing recall information on the Web site and possibly other venues.

Increase efforts to mine public safety information:  NHTSA is the main safety watchdog – and CU will continue to rely on the agency as our first line of defense. A more accessible NHTSA database will also allow Consumer Reports to more thoroughly analyze consumer complaints.

A statistical rarity such as unintended acceleration is truly a needle in a haystack. So the more people who are mining the available data to search for that needle, the better. If people were able to more fully mine the database, Consumer Reports and other independent groups could do more to support NHTSA by flagging any spikes they see in problems with specific vehicles.

Gather more information about recalls:  Beginning with the online version of the upcoming Annual Questionnaire in April, CU will make additional efforts to gather information about subscribers’ experiences with recalls. The organization will be gathering this information for all vehicles, not just Toyotas.

CU plans to analyze and publish the findings for consumers on the Web site as soon as possible after the survey is complete (preliminary results will be published this spring).  CU will also share detailed information with government regulators and other groups that might find it useful. The organization’s leaders hope the data will provide insights that will help to improve the recall system, and increase consumer response rates to recalls.

With more than 7 million print and online subscribers, Consumer Reports is one of the most trusted sources for information and advice on consumer products and services. It conducts the most comprehensive auto-test program of any U.S. publication or Web site; the magazine’s auto experts have decades of experience in driving, testing, and reporting on cars. To become a subscriber, consumers can call 1-800-234-1645.  Information and articles from the magazine can be accessed online at www.ConsumerReports.org.