NHTSA Chief Sees Safety as Moral Obligation

THE NATIONAL HIGHWAY TRAFFIC SAFETY Admin.'s new chief outlines an ambitious agenda at the SAE World Congress that likely will include new rules and higher expectations regarding how auto makers respond to alleged safety problems.

While NHTSA has been highly critical of Toyota Motor Corp.'s response to complaints of sudden unintended acceleration in some of its vehicles, NHTSA Administrator David Strickland praises the auto maker for swift reaction to a possible rollover risk of its Lexus GX 460 SUV.

Toyota stopped all sales of the vehicle globally following a report by Consumer Reports magazine that the vehicle's electronic stability-control system performed poorly in a handling test and could pose a rollover risk.

Strickland says NHTSA currently is testing the Lexus large SUV to look for a defect and see if the vehicle's ESC system complies with government standards.

He also suggests the safety agency is raising its expectations in terms of how fast and comprehensively all auto makers will be expected to react to safety problems.

Strickland calls safety “a moral obligation. The car is a mode of transportation that has become incredibly complex with wonderful technologies, and it creates great joy and pleasure. But if the car is not safe, we've lost it all.”

Improving pedestrian safety and addressing driver distraction now are high on the safety agency's to-do list, he says.

NHTSA is looking at numerous ways of protecting pedestrians from vehicles, ranging from requiring quiet hybrid and all-electric vehicles to emanate warning sounds to sophisticated systems that detect pedestrians and automatically brake vehicles if drivers are inattentive.

He also says the agency is waging a multi-pronged war on driver distraction, which was linked to 6,000 deaths in 2008.

2010 World Congress Attendance: 10,000 Down 38% from 2009