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Safety Groups Want Earlier Stability Control Rule

Insurance Industry Also Wants Deadline Moved Up

By Joe Benton
ConsumerAffairs.com

November 24, 2006

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Public Citizen and Consumers Union have joined the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety demanding that federal regulators speed implementation of a proposed rule requiring electronic stability control in all vehicles.

The auto industry wants more time and NHTSA plans to issue the final rule early next year. The agency has suggested it will require automakers to install stability control systems in all vehicles by the 2012 model year, describing the systems as safety technology on par with seat belts and air bags.

The rule would be phased in over four years, requiring 30 percent of vehicles to have electronic stability control by the 2009 model year, 60 percent by 2010 and 90 percent by 2011.

Approximately 29 percent of vehicles sold today have standard or optional electronic stability control and NHTSA estimated that automakers had planned to put them in 71 percent of their vehicles by the 2010 model year.

Consumers Union wants NHTSA to impose a 2010 deadline for equipping all vehicles.

Public Citizen contends the rule defines electronic stability control so loosely that by the time the rule takes effect it will be obsolete.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety argued in a letter to NHTSA that the benefits in lives saved are too great to delay the rule.

IIHS urged a more aggressive timeline because of its research showing electronic stability control reduces single-vehicle crashes by 40 percent and fatal crashes by 56 percent.

Stability control systems use sensors and the antilock braking system to help keep a vehicle pointed in the right direction by modulating power or brakes at each wheel.

The system is always on and kicks in if it senses you're about to lose control of a vehicle. For instance, if you try to take a curve took fast or make an emergency evasive maneuver on the highway.

"You still have to steer," explains Russ Rader, a spokesman for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, "But electronic stability control does the rest to brake individual wheels and even in some cases reduce the throttle."

IIHS estimates that if every vehicle on the road had electronic stability control 10,000 fatal crashes would be prevented every year.

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