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Feds Propose New Auto Safety Tests

Too Many Cars Getting Five Stars

By Joe Benton
ConsumerAffairs.com

January 9, 2006

Auto Safety • Study: Vision Checks Cut Fatal Accidents • Is Your Vehicle Child-Proof? • Teen Misjudgment Major Factor in Highway Accidents • New Auto Safety Legislation Aims to Protect Children • Insurance Group: Supersport Motorcycles Deadly • Feds Consider Tougher Auto Safety Ratings • Congress Urged to Protect Children from Vehicle Deaths • Motorcycle Death Rates Rising, Safety Chief Warns • Feds to Require Additional Minivan Door Latch • Survey: Teens Still Driving Dangerously • Feds Propose Recorders to Monitor Truckers' Hours • Feds Propose New Auto Safety Tests • Consumers Choosing Tiny Cars Despite Safety Risks • IIHS: Bigger is Better in Car Safety • NHTSA's Dirty Little Secrets • Feds Find Backup Sensors Ineffective • Simpler Dashboards Might Make Cars Safer • States Struggle to Cut Highway Fatality Rate • Ford Makes Stability Control Standard for 2009 • Feds Require Safety Info on New Car Window Stickers • Motorcycle, Pedestrian Deaths Rising • Safer Cars, Not Safer Drivers, Reducing Highway Deaths • Former Lobbyist in Driver's Seat at NHTSA • Must-Have Safety and Convenience Features for New Car Shopping • More ...

Federal regulators plan to make it harder for vehicles to earn top marks for auto safety in the government's five-star rating system, hoping to provide a little more meaning for consumers shopping for a safe vehicle.

Regulators want fewer models to receive the top five-star rating in an effort to reward vehicles that carry more safety features.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said the move will toughen frontal, side and rollover tests conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

"Eighty-seven percent of the cars on the market today get a five-star rating, so it doesn't allow the differentiation between those who are advancing some of the new technologies and others that are not," Peters said. "We're raising the bar and increasing the standards so that we can push the bar always for safety."

DOT is not demanding new legal requirements from automakers but is proposing to change how auto safety will be measured and reported.

"Everyone knows the old adage 'wrapping the car around the telephone pole,'" Peters said. "We want to re-create this kind of crash to show how side air bags can protect the driver's head during this type of crash."

A major problem with the current testing program is that nearly every vehicle passes. Fully 87 percent of 2006 vehicles received four or five stars for side impact crashes and 95 percent earned top marks for frontal crashes.

Joan Claybrook, president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen and a former NHTSA administrator, said that the proposed new standards don’t go far enough.

"A rollover crashworthiness test evaluating roof crush and ejection was still not included in determining the rollover safety rating," Claybrook said, adding that the standards ignore important crashworthiness elements such as passenger ejection as well as the size disparity between passenger cars and light trucks.

In recent years, tougher crash tests conducted by outside groups such as the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety have received more attention than the government tests as wells as pointing out safety flaws in some vehicles that won top marks in government tests.

IIHS has adjusted crash tests requirements to make them tougher. Automakers must pass front and side crash tests, protect against whiplash injuries in rear-end accidents as well as offer electronic stability control in order to earn top marks . "Vehicles are much better at protecting passengers but we are still losing a lot of people," said Adrian Lund, president of the IIHS. "My concern is it doesn't go as far as we'd like."

Under the NHTSA proposal, safety regulators will employ smaller dummies to represent female drivers, increase speeds in some crash tests and add to the weight of crash barriers to account for heavier vehicles on the roads.

NHTSA will also give automakers a letter grade for how quickly they add advanced technology systems to vehicles, including electronic stability control, lane departure systems and rear-end collision avoidance.

The agency will hold a public meeting March 7 in Washington to take questions and comments about the proposed standards.

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