WASHINGTON — Under fire for what some decry as its slow response to reports of sudden acceleration in Toyota vehicles, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration battled back during a congressional hearing on Thursday, saying it is considering new auto safety mandates.
Those would include requiring automakers to equip new vehicles with brake override systems and so-called "black boxes" that record crash data, according to NHTSA's new administrator, David Strickland.
Strickland took a pounding from lawmakers in an appearance before a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee looking into the massive Toyota recalls. "We've heard that NHTSA has not fulfilled its responsibilities," said Rep. Edward Whitfield (R-Kentucky). "That it's a lapdog for the industry, not a watchdog for the industry."
Strickland said the criticism was not "valid.... We're a very active agency," he said. "This agency opened eight separate investigations [following reports of sudden acceleration in Toyotas]. A lapdog doesn't open eight investigations."
Strickland said that NHTSA may need greater authority to set standards for the increasingly complex technology in vehicles.
"One area we are looking at very closely is brake override," he said in written testimony. "Manufacturers are equipping many of their vehicles with this feature, but there is not currently any standardization with regard to the conditions under which this feature will work or precisely how it will work. 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."
In other testimony, safety advocate Joan Claybrook, a former NHTSA administrator, described NHTSA as "the poor stepchild of the U.S. Department of Transportation." She accused Toyota of treating "the agency with contempt, failing to supply requested information, delaying actions requested, arguing with reasonable agency proposals, attempting to mislead the agency, gloating when the agency backs off of proposed actions and boasting about their influence over the agency."
Claybrook called for new safety standards, strengthening of conflict-of-interest rules and an increase in the motor vehicle safety budget by $100 million. "[The budget] has been declining for years and has crippled this important agency as the Toyota case reveals," she said in written testimony.
Among the standards that need to be updated is the accelerator standard, which Claybrook notes was issued in 1973, "years before electronic throttles were installed but which are now common in all motor vehicles."
She also called for a brake override system standard, the standardization of ignition shut-off systems and minimum safety standards for electronic systems and for protection of those systems from electromagnetic interference.
Claybrook described NHTSA as an industry "lapdog." One example she cited is that NHTSA rents space at a crash testing facility now owned by Honda in Ohio. "It originally was owned by the State of Ohio when I established our testing work at the facility," she said. "It is now time to avoid the conflicts inherent in this arrangement and find new facilities that are not involved with regulated companies."
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