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* NHTSA under fire - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.autos/t/dc2ca36cf4702cd3?hl=en
* Design a new Studebaker! - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.autos/t/d38201b42af8ed5e?hl=en
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TOPIC: NHTSA under fire
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.autos/t/dc2ca36cf4702cd3?hl=en
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== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Tues, Mar 9 2010 8:19 pm
From: FridoLay
On 3/9/2010 4:54 PM, C. E. White wrote:
> http://www.sae.org/mags/sve/7743
>
> The withering national publicity focused on Toyota's handling of
> complaints about sudden acceleration has prompted congressional concern
> about the capability of NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety
> Administration). Among the issues being debated is whether the agency
> has the engineering know-how in-house to quickly and thoroughly respond
> to allegations of safety defects.
>
> Two separate hearings in two separate House committees took place the
> last week of February, with additional hearings scheduled (but too late
> for coverage in this issue). Remedial legislation-which is a
> certainty-could rival the 2000 TREAD Act in breadth and depth.
>
> Much of the congressional furor has focused on NHTSA's handling of
> auto-defects investigations. But some longtime NHTSA watchers with no
> pro-industry bias think some of the criticism is unfair. Adrian Lund,
> President, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, said: "In the furor
> of this, and Toyota's foot dragging, NHTSA is getting a bit of a bad
> rap. People underestimate how difficult it is to find something that is
> a defect, where something happens rarely. For NHTSA to issue a recall,
> it has to be able to document a real problem. These defects are hard to
> find and it is not as if nothing is happening. Every year, NHTSA recalls
> millions of cars."
>
> Although the congressional reaction has lacked a certain amount of
> perspective-Lund called it "over the top"-at hearings in the Oversight
> and Government Reform Committee on Feb. 24 Rep. Darrell Issa of
> California, the top Republican, promised to introduce legislation to
> require automakers to publish additional safety data and for NHTSA to
> put it on its website. Rep. Paul Kanjorksi of Pennsylvania, the number
> two Democrat on the committee, quickly offered to co-sponsor the bill.
> U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who was
> testifying, promised, "I will work with you on that."
>
> The bill could end up as imposing as the Transportation Recall
> Enhancement, Accountability, and Documentation (TREAD) Act of 2000,
> enacted after the Firestone/Ford Explorer debacle. That bill required
> NHTSA to complete 15 separate rulemaking actions, three reports, two
> studies, and one strategic plan.
>
> Joan Claybrook, a former NHTSA administrator and president Emeritus of
> the advocacy group Public Citizen, suggested at the hearings that any
> legislation should force NHTSA to update its requirements on event data
> recorders and make their installation mandatory instead of voluntary.
> She also proposed revisions to three safety standards in addition to
> giving NHTSA the authority to issue criminal penalties instead of just
> civil penalties, which is now the case.
>
> LaHood didn't help to fill the "perspective gap" as he was unable to
> answer a number of questions with regard to the Toyota issue and NHTSA
> generally. Asked by Committee Chairman Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.) why
> NHTSA waited until August 2009 to investigate the alleged Toyota
> acceleration problem after receiving more than 1000 consumer complaints
> prior to that date, LaHood answered that he would "put it on the record
> when I can get the facts." Asked how many of NHTSA's authorized 632
> positions were currently vacant, LaHood said he did not know.
>
> Promising a complete review of electronic accelerators, LaHood ran into
> skepticism over whether the agency had the technical expertise to
> accomplish that credibly. The DOT secretary pointed out that NHTSA
> employed 125 engineers. "We do have electrical engineers," he quickly
> added and suggested NHTSA would be hiring additional engineers if
> Congress approved President Obama's fiscal 2011 budget request, which
> would increase NHTSA's budget by $5 million to $878 million. That
> increase would be used to hire 66 additional staffers.
>
> Getting into the debate on engineering capability at NHTSA, Claybrook
> later disputed LaHood and stated there are neither electrical nor
> software engineers on staff at the agency. She argued that NHTSA was
> underfunded, a point sharpened by Rep. John Mica (R-FL) who pointed out
> that the Obama administration has requested only a $5 million increase
> for NHTSA for fiscal 2011. That is the smallest request ever asked for
> by any administration, he said.
>
> One of the three standard revisions Claybrook promoted was for
> electronic accelerator systems. But no one mentioned the checkered
> history of that standard. NHTSA proposed in 2002 to revise Federal Motor
> Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) 124, Accelerator Control Systems, but
> canceled the effort in 2004 to do more research, after the Alliance of
> Automobile Manufacturers and Toyota raised questions about NHTSA's
> proposed test methods.
>
> When it was established in 1972, FMVSS 124 guided manufacturers'
> development of accelerator systems, which then were almost wholly
> mechanical. The standard requires the rapid return of the throttle to
> the idle position (within 1 s for light vehicles and 2 s for heavy
> vehicles) when the accelerator pedal is released. When electronic
> systems began to come into vogue in the late 1980s, NHTSA began to get
> queries from manufacturers as to whether 124 applied to those newer
> systems. NHTSA always answered "yes."
>
> Rather than deal with individual queries piecemeal, the agency took the
> first step toward revising 124 in 1995 with the intent of adding
> specific provisions for electronic accelerator controls. A request for
> comment was followed by a public technical workshop in 1997. Nothing
> more happened until July 23, 2002 when a Federal Register notice
> appeared containing a proposed rule with changes to FMVSS 124. The
> notice said the modifications, which would have specifically applied the
> standard to electronic systems, "draw on the suggestions" made by the
> predecessor group to the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers in 1997
> but "differ in several important ways." The proposed changes to 124
> included three new test procedures to better address different types of
> powertrains. A manufacturer would have been able to choose any one of
> the test procedures as a basis for compliance, and a "universal" chassis
> dynamometer test was included as a last resort in cases where the other
> procedures were inapplicable.
>
> In response to that proposed rule, Robert Strassburger, Vice President,
> Vehicle Safety and Harmonization, at the Allilance, sent a letter to
> then NHTSA Adminstrator Jeffrey W. Runge on Oct. 2, 2002, saying: "While
> the Alliance generally agrees with the proposed changes to the current
> regulation, there are aspects of the proposal that will preclude
> compliance with some existing accelerator control systems. Furthermore,
> the proposed test options, which the Alliance supports, do not
> adequately address the unique test conditions required by certain
> advanced (e.g., diesel and hybrid) powertrains."
>
> The Alliance wanted inclusion of a direct measurement of powertrain
> output to the drive wheels and later amended that to suggest that the
> powertrain output test should measure vehicle driving speed-i.e., "creep
> speed"-rather than output power or torque. Toyota took a similar tact,
> except it suggested a somewhat different creep speed test procedure.
>
> More than two years later, in November 2004, NHTSA suddenly withdrew the
> proposed rule. It said the agency wanted to conduct its own tests to
> provide additional support for the use of a dynamometer for measurement
> of powertrain output (or possibly creep speed measurements) and
> demonstrate the feasibility of conducting compliance tests for all
> suggested approaches.
>
> Wade Newton, an Alliance spokesman, declined to comment beyond the
> Alliance's publicly available federal docket comments. Cindy Knight, his
> Toyota counterpart, was unable to provide any light on Toyota's thinking
> at the time.
>
> FMVSS 124 is mentioned in NHTSA's 2009 semi-annual regulatory schedule,
> which indicates that a proposed rule, ostensibly different from the one
> issued in 2002, was scheduled for August 28, 2009. No proposed rule ever
> appeared. Nor is it clear whether NHTSA ever did any of the research it
> referred to in the 2004 Federal Register notice canceling the proposed
> rule. Karen Aldana, a NHTSA spokeswoman, had no information for the
> status of changes to 124.
>
> And that is where the electronic accelerator standard stood when the
> first flash of publicity from the Toyota issue hit the front pages.
>
Like the SEC, they do seem pretty much dead above the neck.
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TOPIC: Design a new Studebaker!
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.autos/t/d38201b42af8ed5e?hl=en
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== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Wed, Mar 17 2010 6:43 am
From: Robin
(Car Lust Blog) - The Studebaker National Museum has begun accepting
entries for its 2010 "Design a New Studebaker" contest. The object of
the contest is to design a Studebaker for the twenty-first century...
Continued: http://tr.im/NewStude
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