WASHINGTON — Toyota’s bungled reporting of safety defects has created a group of innocent victims: Everyone else in the industry.
This year, Congress is certain to pass auto safety legislation that will impose more requirements on the industry and make vehicles more expensive — perhaps several thousand dollars per car, according to one lobbyist.
The eventual law is sure to require brake override systems and crash data recorders in all new light vehicles, auto industry lobbyists said.
Toyota’s tardiness in reporting problems with unintended acceleration also gives industry critics an opportunity to push for regulatory changes. Now there is bipartisan agreement among lawmakers that Toyota’s lapses exposed gaps in the U.S. regulatory system that must be closed.
While the sweeping legislation contains many provisions that will be debated for months, it is a given that the two core technology mandates will pass, say spokespeople for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and the Association of International Automobile Manufacturers.
Both lobbies say they support passage of those new requirements but want less stringent standards for the technology — especially the event data recorders, or black boxes.
The automaker groups also are pushing for longer timelines to put the rules in place.
“This is going to happen,” said Mike Stanton, president of AIAM, which represents 15 foreign automakers. “Let’s just do it right.”
Gloria Bergquist, a spokeswoman for the alliance, which consists of 11 domestic and foreign automakers, says the technology requirements “can be adopted quickly to reassure the public.”
Neither lobby has estimated the overall cost on manufacturers, an amount that will depend on the provisions that become law. But a black box made according to the standards in the House bill would add several thousand dollars to the cost of each vehicle, alliance CEO Dave McCurdy estimated.
Some advocacy groups are pushing lawmakers to resist weakening the standards in the bill, especially those for black boxes.
“Any more Band-Aids are a waste of lives, time and money,” Joan Claybrook, president emeritus of Public Citizen and a former National Highway Traffic Safety Administration chief, told a House panel this month.
She said NHTSA “needs to enter the 21st century and be able to collect and analyze real-time crash data received electronically.”
Industry impact
The impact of a brake override system requirement on the auto industry would be minimal. All major automakers either have them on all their cars or have announced plans to install them. Only Honda hasn’t done so.
But on Friday, May 14, Honda said it would apply the software to all full- or minor-change 2011 models starting this fall. Those will account for fewer than half of the 1.2 million Hondas and Acuras to be sold in the United States, Honda spokesman Kurt Antonius said.
The impact of a black-box requirement would be more significant.
Two of every three new vehicles are equipped with them, a NHTSA spokeswoman said. That leaves, most notably, German manufacturers Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Volkswagen, which typically don’t provide black boxes, and small companies such as Ferrari and Jaguar, Stanton and Bergquist said.
Controversial provisions
The House and Senate bills, which are similar, seek to improve vehicle safety, increase NHTSA’s authority and resources and make safety information more transparent to the public.
Some of their most controversial provisions would lift the $16.4 million cap on fines, give NHTSA authority to order an immediate recall and impose fees on automakers to finance funding increases for regulators.
The mandate of electronic brake override systems stems from Toyota’s problems with unintended acceleration. Those safety defects have led to recalls totaling 9 million vehicles worldwide since September, as well as reports of 52 deaths that are under federal investigation.
Brake override systems automatically cut engine power when the gas and brake pedals are both depressed. They can be installed with an inexpensive software fix, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has said.
About 20 percent of Toyota’s U.S. vehicles have brake override systems, a company spokesman has said. Toyota plans to install them on all new U.S. models by 2011.
Black boxes
Black boxes, which can be stored inside instrument panels or under front seats, record speed, acceleration and brake information immediately before and during a serious crash. They can be used by regulators, plaintiffs’ lawyers and automakers to help understand what happened to a vehicle and how the safety systems performed.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers have complained that, unlike the Detroit 3, Toyota has blocked or limited access to its black-box data.
Toyota consistently has maintained that its unintended-acceleration problems have been caused by floor-mat interference or sticky pedals rather than by any electronic defects.
A number of German manufacturers still have not installed black boxes because of concerns for owner privacy.
“We obviously will comply with the legislation and have begun to look at installing” event data recorders, said Thomas Plucinsky, a BMW of North America spokesman.
He said BMW has not estimated the cost of tucking black boxes into the 300,000 cars the company sells each year in North America.
Volkswagen has black boxes only in its Routan minivans, which account for 1 percent of U.S. sales.
“The safety and privacy of our customers are top priorities for Volkswagen, and we support legislation requiring electronic data recorders in passenger vehicles,” Volkswagen of America spokeswoman Jill Bratina said.
The auto lobbies have targeted a section of the House bill that would require the black boxes to store accident data for at least 60 seconds before a crash or airbag deployment and 15 seconds after.
“I honestly do not understand what is sacred about those time frames,” Stanton said.
Claybrook said the post-crash interval is necessary to collect data about rollover crashes, which, she said, account for 10,000 deaths a year.
It is the 75-second standard that McCurdy estimates could add thousands of dollars to the cost of each vehicle.
By way of comparison, Toyota’s black boxes record crash data for five seconds before a crash and several seconds after, a company spokesman said.
Toyota started phasing in black boxes in 2001 and has had them in all new vehicles since the 2007 model year. But the company said several models do not record pre-crash data.
Ferman BMW of Tampa's Blog 
Leave a comment