ThePopTort

Road Safety Tips, PopTort Style

The National Safety Council has issued a lovely statistic for this Thanksgiving holiday (which, for their purposes, runs from 6:00 p.m., Wednesday, November 21 until 11:59 p.m., Sunday, November 25.) They estimate that 451 will die on the road and about 48,300 will have “nonfatal medically consulted injuries.”  Ah, Thanksgiving, a.k.a., the deadliest time to be out driving.  So we’d like to offer PopTort fans some holiday tips to stay safe.

First of all, don’t be drivin’ in red states. You heard us!  In one of the more curious car crash stats out there, it seems like, 

To an extent that mystifies safety experts and other observers, federal statistics show that people in red states are more likely to die in road crashes. The least deadly states – those with the fewest crash deaths per 100,000 people – overwhelmingly are blue.

Lots of theories on why this may be: speed limits, access to trauma centers, long rural roads, Chris Christie yelling at New Jerseyans. 

But to be serious about this, there’s also the very grim reality of distracted driving (texting), which is now involved in one in four accidents despite 38 states banning it. In fact, speaking of New Jersey, courts there are grappling with an interesting new twist in civil litigation theories about texting-related crashes. A decision is expected soon (Friday according to this CBS report) on an appeal brought by a couple horribly injured by an 18-year-old driver, who slammed into their motorcycle while he was texting. David and Linda Kubert, who both lost legs in the crash and are now in serious financial straits, settled with the teenage driver for $500,000.  But they have also sued his girlfriend Shannon Colonna, who they say was the one who kept texting the boy, knowing he was driving (although she denies this).

The argument is that while “Colonna was not physically present at the wreck, she was ‘electronically present.’” They argue, “Colonna knew, or should have known Best would have been driving and was therefore partly liable. [Their attorney] said her actions constituted aiding and abetting negligence and that she was ‘virtually present’ at the scene of the accident.”

At this point, they are just asking for the case to go to a jury. It’s on appeal because earlier this year, a lower court judge dismissed the case against Colonna on summary judgement, a first-of-its- kind case at the time. We expect it won’t be the last.  Drive safely, everyone.

Renting Cars - A Great Deal Safer

There are close to 2 million rental cars on the road, and for anyone who has had the pleasure of renting one of them, it’s a peculiar and sometimes intimidating experience.  That's probably why there are so many “consumer advice” columns on the topic.  Here’s one called “Car rental craziness; Six odd rules -- and how to steer clear of them.”  Here’s another. (“Even if you’ve rented a car many times in the past, it’s still possible to experience that deer-in-the-headlights feeling as you stand at the counter and talk to the rental agent.”)  Even Seinfeld once did a famous bit on the whole bewildering experience.  

Yet with all the rental car guidance out there, there was virtually no information available to consumers about the safety of these cars.  That’s most likely because it was inconceivable that any rental car company would rent a car that was defective, recalled and remained unfixed.  I’m not talking about companies like Rent-A-Wreck, where you gotta expect there might be issues (although the company does boast about “maintained and safety inspected vehicles.”  However, I will say that the last time I drove a Rent-A-Wreck, I got a flat tire in the middle of LA’s 405 Freeway.  Thank you Caltrans! ) No, I’m talking about the big guys, the ones with 93 percent of the market, who rent out spiffy new and costlier cars: Hertz, Avis, Dollar, and the new #1 company (after acquiring National and Alamo) – Enterprise.  Who would question the safety of these cars?  Turns out, we all should have.

Thanks to the persistent efforts of: 1. Cally Houck, whose daughters Raechel and Jacqueline were tragically killed in a defective, recalled Enterprise rental car (see our early coverage here, and 2. the indefatigable consumer advocate Rosemary Shahan of Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety (and her DC advocates), Enterprise finally became the last company to agree to legislation banning the rental of defective, recalled cars.  Writes the Kansas City Star:

Car rental giant Enterprise Holdings has joined the rest of its industry in backing federal legislation to prohibit companies from renting out or selling vehicles under safety recalls.

The announcement Thursday brought together, for the first time, all four major U.S. car rental companies in support of new safety requirements. The long-sought agreement to ban the rental of autos that have been recalled but not yet fixed stems from a double fatality involving an Enterprise car rented in California in 2004.…

The second-largest in the industry, Hertz, had already agreed to back measures outlined in a U.S. Senate bill named in the Houck sisters’ honor.

Now, all four companies are pledging to fix recalled vehicles before renting or selling them.  However, what safety advocates really want is the only way to guarantee this practice: federal legislation.

With the industry on board, “we don’t know who would oppose this bill,” said U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat. He predicted bipartisan passage of the Senate measure and a U.S. House version by the end of the year.

A Senate co-sponsor, California Democrat Barbara Boxer, said she was stunned to learn that no federal law protected car renters from driving off in a vehicle under a safety recall.

“If you asked anyone on the street about it, you’d hear, ‘Well, of course, they (rental companies) can’t do that,’ ” Boxer said.

She credited constituent Cally Houck, mother of the 2004 crash victims, for “making something positive out of what happened to her,” a tragedy Boxer called “unthinkable.”

Missouri’s Democratic U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill joined Boxer and Schumer in co-sponsoring the measure.

Said McCaskill, “Consumer advocates and industry representatives were able to bridge their differences and find common ground here, and that's what we need more of in politics.” 

It's terrible that it took such a tragedy to move this industry to do the right thing.  And it's not over yet. Let’s hope Congress moves quickly.

Fords and Toyotas and Jeeps, Oh My!

Granted, it’s not lions and tigers and bears, but if Dorothy were around today and driving, she would have every right to be as fearful.  (And I don’t just mean because of speeding pop stars.)

Yesterday, the non-profit Center for Auto Safety filed a petition with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration “to investigate its claim that some cruise control cables on about 320,000 Ford Escapes were damaged during a repair for an unrelated recall, making the vehicles susceptible to unintended acceleration,” which “could have “lethal consequences.”  Writes the New York Times Wheels blog:

The original recall, which covered about 470,000 Escapes from 2002-4 equipped with the 3-liter V-6 engine, was performed to prevent the accelerator cable from snagging on the accelerator pedal, which could have prevented the engine from returning to idle.

In its petition, however, the safety group argued that in October 2005, Ford sent a technical service bulletin to dealers cautioning mechanics to not damage the adjacent cruise control cable during the course of the recall repair. Any damage could allow the cable to snag on a ridge in the engine cover, causing unintended acceleration, the petition said.

Ford has never formally informed the roughly 320,000 owners who had the repair performed that damage may have been caused to their vehicles’ cruise control, according to Clarence Ditlow, the group’s executive director.

The petition also cites the case of Saige Bloom, a 17-year-old who died in a crash in Payson, Ariz., in January. According to the petition, the Bloom family hired an expert who inspected the engine of the 2002 Escape driven by Ms. Bloom at the time of the accident and found the cable was snagged.

Mr. Ditlow claims Ford should conduct a new recall and the safety agency should pursue a civil fine.

“Ford knew there was a problem. Ford knew the consequences,” he said in a telephone interview.

This “unintended acceleration” problem may sound familiar.  Remember that massive Toyota problem (which we covered quite a bit, like here)?  Oh, it’s not over. Just a few days ago, Toyota “added Lexus RX 350 and RX 450h crossover vehicles from the 2010 model year to the list of  vehicles it has recalled” saying “[i]n these cars the accelerator pedal can get stuck at full throttle when trapped by ‘an unsecured or incompatible driver’s floor mat.’”  Still?

And last month, Ditlow said "it's just a matter of time before Chrysler is forced to recall as many as 5 million Jeep SUVs built from 1993 to 2007.”  That’s because “[t]he fuel tanks of Jeep Grand Cherokees built after 2004 are located in front of the rear axle” which presents “a risk because the fuel tank is near the back of the vehicles. ‘Just looking at the design, as a safety advocate, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize an unshielded tank, hanging below the rear bumper, is unsafe,’ Ditlow said.” Chrysler disagrees, so we’ll see if NHTSA orders a recall.  Right now, it’s conducting an engineering analysis. 

But Sean Kane, president of Safety Research and Strategies, is worried.  He says that “he is concerned that NHTSA's decision to expand the number of vehicles could lead to a dismissal of the case without a recall.  ‘Frequently that is done as a tactic to try and minimize the numbers,’ Kane said. ‘If they spread out the accidents across more vehicles ... then you have low number of incidents and that is a reason that the agency can use’ to not order a recall.”

And here’s another problem: resources: 

Mr. Ditlow lamented what he said was the slow pace of the investigation, but said the agency had its hands full. “We want N.H.T.S.A. to move faster, but the only way it would move faster is if it had more resources and authority,” he said. “N.H.T.S.A.’s band of defect investigators is going up against trillion-dollar companies.”

Talk about scary.

Traveling Down the Safety Road

Remember when the age-old problem of drunk driving was the main source of bone-crushing terror for parents sending their kids off to college?  It should still be of big concern, of course.  The CDC says, “Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for U.S. teens [and a]mong male drivers between 15 and 20 years of age who were involved in fatal crashes in 2005, 37% were speeding at the time of the crash and 26% had been drinking.” 

Bad enough.  But now, the universe has graced us with some new roadway hazards, and fortunately, there are valiant efforts being made to do something about them.

If you’re a college kid living and going to school on the east coast, you are no doubt aware – and have probably traveled on - the “Chinatown buses,” the super cheap, curbside pick-up buses that shuttle “about 1,800 passengers a day between Manhattan, Boston, Washington and places as far south as Florida.”    One might think traveling on a bus provides a far safer trip than driving oneself.  But yesterday, the U.S. Transportation Department, “citing imminent safety hazards, … ordered 26 companies … to stop operating” many of these buses.  Writes the New York Times,

The crackdown was the most sweeping action ever taken against American passenger-bus operators and was intended to chasten other low-budget companies that might try to evade safety regulations and the relatively small pool of inspectors who enforce them, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said.

“Shutting them down will save lives,” Mr. LaHood said at a sidewalk news conference in Chinatown.

The 26 companies were affiliated with three “unscrupulous” networks of bus operators that ignored federal rules and, when they were caught, simply changed names and continued operating, said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, who was also in Chinatown. …

The safety administration, which regulates more than 4,000 bus companies, started investigating the curbside bus industry last June amid what seemed like a wave of crashes en route to or from Chinatown. Inspectors found that many of these companies hired drivers without checking their backgrounds, testing for use of drugs and alcohol or verifying that they had the proper licenses.

We found this interesting, too:

Thomas G. Jebran, the chairman of the American Bus Association, which represents bus companies big and small, said his members welcomed tougher enforcement of the regulations. "There are some bad apples out there that, frankly, it took way too long for them to deal with," he said.  Mr. Jebran said his association supported many of the stricter rules Mr. Schumer has pushed for in a broad transportation bill that is pending in Congress. Those rules would sharply increase fines for violations and would require companies to display their safety ratings on their buses and on the Web sites they use to sell tickets, Mr. Schumer said. Ultimately, he said, he would like the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to adopt a letter-grade rating system similar to the one that is now used by New York City restaurant inspectors.

(Industry supporting regulation and enforcement! Maybe NYC Mayor Bloomberg should ask this guy for help countering the soft drink industry’s pushback against his latest restaurant health initiative - banning large soft drinks – just as the city celebrates National Donut Day.  Timing, Mr. Mayor!  OK, back to the roads.)

The other big and relatively recent road hazard, particularly for kids, is distracted driving – texting, especially.  According to a recent study by the University of California, San Diego’s Trauma Epidemiology and Injury Prevention Research Center, “Seventy-eight percent of college students reported that they drive while talking or texting on a cell phone, and about 50 percent said they text while driving on a freeway.”

One texting tragedy led to the founding of the group End Distracted Driving:

Casey Feldman, of Springfield, was a 21-year-old Fordham University senior when she was struck and killed by a distracted driver in 2009 in Ocean City, New Jersey, when walking to her summer job.  In the aftermath of that devastating tragedy, Casey’s family and friends launched a campaign through the Casey Feldman Memorial Foundation to raise awareness of distracted driving and of the injury and grief it can cause.

Learn more about End DD and other groups here.  EndDD has done an incredible job organizing volunteers – including many trial lawyers - to go into the schools and teach kids about the extreme dangers of distracted driving.

Reports the group,

In April 2012, hundreds of attorneys committed to making our communities a safer place to live will provide End Distracted Driving campaign presentations at hundreds of schools, community groups, civic organizations and other gatherings in every state in the U.S. and every province throughout Canada

This effort to reach more than 100,000 student drivers will kick-off an ongoing campaign that will continue throughout 2012 and beyond.

Lawyers and others interested speaking or hosting an event should go here. Travel safe this weekend!

The Newest Energy Worker Hazard - Highway Crashes

This week, the House is set to vote on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) – i.e., defense reauthorization for 2013.  There’s no shortage of controversy about this bill (indefinite military detentions anyone?) but provisions that would gut health and safety protections for workers at Department of Energy weapons sites clearly isn’t getting the same kind of attention.  

That's not unusual.  Except for coverage of the occasional national catastrophe, worker safety in this country’s ultra-hazardous energy industry isn't something to which enough people pay attention.  So we’ll thank the New York Times today for its enormous front page story about oil and gas industry workers. As dangerous as the work itself is, workers – many of whom are not unionized - are being killed in new ways you can’t even believe.  Specifically:

Over the past decade, more than 300 oil and gas workers … were killed in highway crashes, the largest cause of fatalities in the industry. Many of these deaths were due in part to oil field exemptions from highway safety rules that allow truckers to work longer hours than drivers in most other industries, according to safety and health experts.

Many oil field truckers say that while these exemptions help them earn more money, they are routinely used to pressure workers into driving after shifts that are 20 hours or longer.

And the problem is only getting worse.

According to federal officials, more than 200,000 new oil and gas wells will be drilled nationwide over the next decade. And the drilling technique used at more than 90 percent of these wells, known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, leads to far more trucks on the road — roughly 500 to 1,500 truck trips per well — than traditional drilling, partly because fracking requires millions of gallons of water per well.

The new drilling has been an economic boon to the country, adding millions of dollars in local tax revenues and royalty payments and creating hundreds of thousands of jobs, many of them providing high pay to unskilled laborers in areas with double-digit unemployment.

But the jobs are also hazardous, with fatality rates that are seven times the national average across all industries. Nearly a third of the 648 deaths of oil field workers from 2003 through 2008 were in highway crashes, according to the most recent data analyzed by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By contrast, highway crashes caused roughly a fifth of workplace fatalities across all industries in 2010.

It’s not just that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is under-resourced.  It’s that, according to one OSHA official, the law is terribly weak - specifically,

"[C]ompanies were not required to alert his agency when their truckers crashed on public roads. Nor do they have to inform his agency when drilling starts, making timely inspections difficult.”

By contrast, mining companies are required to alert the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration about new sites. While there are far fewer active oil and gas drilling sites in the country than underground and surface mining sites, more drilling industry workers than miners typically die each year.

What's more, driver fatigue is only part of the problem. 

Oil and gas workers also crash because their trucks are frequently in disrepair, the police say. … Oil service companies also often circumvent highway safety rules. …

In March, the Government Accountability Office criticized federal highway regulators for their failure to detect commercial truckers — widely known as “chameleon carriers” — that use shell companies to get around safety rules.

Even if you’re not an oil/gas worker, you need to care about this because - just guessing - you’ve probably shared the road with a large truck at some point in your life. 

Cutting Class – Actions, That Is

Yesterday, Allstate filed a federal lawsuit in New York State to recover $796,000, alleging that bunch of doctors and medical groups fraudulently billed them.  According to Allstate’s press release, “Since 2003, Allstate has filed thirty-nine fraud lawsuits in New York, seeking nearly $204 million dollars in damages.”  How nice for them.  Did you ever notice how freely doctors and insurance companies run to court to sue each other?  (See also, for example, the 2003 class action brought by New Jersey doctors against Allstate and other auto insurers for underpaying them after treating accident victims, and other examples here.)

At the same time, insurers and doctors are running around the country trying to limit consumers’ and patient’s rights to sue them when they kill, harm or rip-off everyday people.  (See more about how the American Legislative Exchange Council helps them do that - including wiping out consumer class actions - in Media Matter’s analysis of ALEC’s “Tort Reform Boot "firmly on the neck of justice" Camp, and other gems.)  And unfortunately, some courts have been helping.  Look what a struggle it’s become in Florida, for example. 

Yesterday, a case was argued before the Florida Supreme Court to determine whether a class action can even move forward against notoriously-rotten payday lenders.  Like many businesses these days, these companies have stuck into their contracts fine-print arbitration clauses, which try to waive consumers' rights to file class-action lawsuits.  This has become the norm since the practice was recently upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision, AT&T Mobility LLC. v. Concepcion.  In trying to deal with this horrendous  case, the wonderful Paul Bland of Public Justice argued what’s obvious to everyone, i.e., that the only way an individual case like this could ever be brought is by banding together with others in a class action.  Said Bland,

“If this arbitration clause had said, you have to go to Alaska to bring claims, that would be unenforceable. If the arbitration clause had said that the filing fees for the arbitrator would be a million dollars, there’s no doubt that that would be unenforceable.  And this was a trial court’s finding that there was essentially no reasonable avenue other than a class action.”

Notably, the lower Florida courts agreed with him, with Circuit Judge Elizabeth Maass calling the class action bad "unconscionable."  Writes the Miami Herald, “Bland said the decision did not invalidate prior U.S. Supreme Court rulings saying consumers must be able to effectively vindicate their rights. ‘A procedure that ends up gutting the rights effectively is enough to render the clause unenforceable.'"

Meanwhile in California, Honda Motor Co. was able to get a $10,000 small-claims judgment reversed, a case it had lost in small claims court for overstating the fuel economy of the Civic hybrid.  The plaintiff in this case, a Los Angeles woman, had rejected a class-action settlement and filed in small claims instead. Other Civic hybrid owners followed, rejecting the settlement and also filing small claims.  But car owners are finding that these cases are difficult to prove in small claims court (although they are requiring a lot of attention and resources from Honda). 

Now what?

Small Group of Safety Advocates Change Auto Industry

It’s not every day that we cover extraordinary success stories against the recalcitrant (to put it mildly) auto industry, and it's all thanks to a few relentless safety advocates. 

According to a front page article in today’s New York Times, “Federal regulators plan to announce this week that automakers will be required to put rearview cameras in all passenger vehicles by 2014 to help drivers see what is behind them.”   This is because, reports the Times,

On average, two children die and about 50 are injured every week when someone accidentally backs over them in a vehicle, according to KidsAndCars.org, a nonprofit group that pushed the government to begin tracking such tragedies. And more than two-thirds of the time, a parent or other close relative is behind the wheel. … Backovers are the most common cause of off-road deaths involving children and vehicles, according to KidsAndCars.

Said Janette Fennell, the founder of KidsAndCars.org, “We wouldn’t buy a car if we couldn’t see 30 or 40 feet going forward.  We’re taking this big lethal weapon going in reverse, and we can’t see.”

By the way, that’s the awesome Janette Fennell quoted here, who became a safety advocate after her own horrific experience described in this 1995 article.  USA Today described her this way:

[S]he was carjacked, robbed, and left in a trunk with her husband. They escaped and their infant son was unharmed but Fennell wondered why few others were so lucky. That led to a successful four-year campaign to get emergency trunk releases required in cars, a feat considered remarkable both for its speed and her tenacity. Since then, Fennell has taken on a variety of other hazards facing children in and around cars, ranging from deaths and injuries due to heat, backovers and power windows. She’s become an unabashed critic of the auto industry, an ally of safety czars including Ralph Nader and Joan Claybrook and a singleminded, if unrealistic, spokesmom for kids everywhere.

But that’s not the only safety advocate success story this week.  We’ve covered the unimaginably tragic case of Jacqueline Houck and her sister, Raechel, who died in a 2004 car crash because Enterprise failed to carry out a safety recall of the car they rented.  It's truly a disturbing state of affairs, i.e., federal law prohibits manufacturers and dealers from selling recalled vehicles before they are fixed, but this law doesn't apply to rental car companies. And the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has no authority to force rental car recalls.  So of course, rental car companies have been renting cars subject to safety recalls without fixing them first.

But safety advocates, including Jacqueline and Raechel’s mom, Cally, have been pushing for NHTSA oversight.  (Read Cally’s comment on our earlier coverage of this case.)  And in an astonishing turnaround last week, Hertz struck an historic agreement with these safety advocates, asking Congress to put them under NHTSA oversight so they can be regulated!  Writes USA Today, “that agreement adds momentum to an amendment with the same provisions backed by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. The senators hope to include the amendment in a massive surface transportation bill that the Senate expects to address after it reconvenes Feb. 27.”  Notes Rosemary Shahan, president of the Sacramento-based Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety,   “It’s unprecedented for a major rental car company to actively support a new federal law that would require the industry to ground unsafe, recalled cars until they're fixed.”

But it wasn’t all good news. Enterprise (now the largest auto-rental company after buying National and Alamo), and Avis Budget, the third-largest, resisted joining Hertz - something Cally Houck clearly would not stand for.  So she immediately began an online petition drive directed at Enterprise. 

And sure enough, just days later, Enterprise said it would support federal legislation overseeing the way rental car companies manage the safety recall process. Writes the San Jose Mercury News,

Roll Call, the newspaper that covers lobbying and influence on Capitol Hill, reported Monday on Houck's online petition, attributing Enterprise's change of heart to pressure from consumers. Bryant told Roll Call Enterprise has "not endorsed any specific legislation or amendment to date."

They'd better, or watch out for Cally Houck, who said, “We will prevail, with the help of all of us working to fix this consumer safety problem.… We made it this far. We are going all the way.”

NHTSA, Meet FOIA

"Today, General Motors is back on top as the world's No. 1 automaker. Chrysler has grown faster in the U.S. than any major car company," reported the President in the State of the Union last night.  Great news for auto workers.  I’m sure no one would attribute any of that success to GM and Chrysler deciding to wipe out the legal rights of a few hundred people – including children – who were seriously injured or killed due to vehicle defects. 

On the other hand, Toyota’s downfall was clearly a big factor in GM’s rise to #1 again.  And while most of this is attributable to the Japanese tsunami, Toyota – and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration - continue to battle with auto safety advocates over still-lingering questions about the very odd sudden acceleration problem and the company’s response.  

Reports the New York Times, Safety Research and Strategies has filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against NHTSA trying to find out if the agency has been withholding information “that may depict an acceleration incident caused by electronic systems in a Prius instead of the floor mats or pedals covered by Toyota recalls.”  Specifically, they’re seeking “transcripts, recordings, photographs and videotapes generated by a visit of two federal investigators to the home of a senior government official who had complained about sudden, unexplained acceleration of his own Prius,” which happened several times on one 200-mile trip!

“The engine started to rev — actually almost roaring — and the vehicle picked up speed,” he said.

He noted that the accelerator pedal was neither stuck nor constrained by the floor mat. “The floor mat wasn’t up against the accelerator pedal,” he said. “I put my toe up against the back of the accelerator pedal to see if it was stuck. It was not stuck; it was fully up.”

NHTSA has dismissed all concerns that sudden acceleration incidents have been caused by electronic systems, as has the National Academy of Sciences.  However, as the Times notes, NAS also “concluded that federal regulators were ill equipped to detect problems in the increasingly complex computer systems of modern automobiles.” 

 “This is all about transparency,” said Sean Kane, co-founder of Safety Research, an auto consulting firm in Rehoboth, Mass. “This is an agency that selectively releases data that fits its narrative that electronics are not at fault in sudden acceleration.”

Hope they get what they need.

Flaming Volts Ignite Investigation

In our continuing series called “On the road this holiday? Watch out!”, here’s a situation you may have missed last week. You know those stories of laptops catching fire thanks to their overheating batteries?  Or last year’s UPS plane crash near Dubai when the plane, carrying thousands of lithium batteries, ignited?  Well, turns out those same batteries are in every electric car!  What’s more, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has evidence that GM Volts are catching fire.

Here’s how it all went down:

NHTSA learned of a possible fire risk involving damaged Volt batteries when a fire erupted in a Volt that was being stored in a parking lot of a test facility in Burlington, Wis. The fire was severe enough to cause several other vehicles parked nearby to catch fire as well.

The car had been subjected to a side-impact crash test more than three weeks earlier, on May 12, during which the battery was punctured and its coolant line ruptured.

Last week’s tests of three battery packs were designed to replicate the May test. In that test, the Volt was subjected to a simulated side-impact collision into a narrow object like a tree or pole followed by a rollover, the agency said.

The first battery tested last week didn’t catch fire. But a battery test on Nov. 17 initially experienced a temporary temperature increase, and on Thursday caught fire while being monitored. Another battery tested on Nov. 18, which was rotated 180 degrees within hours after the test, began to smoke and emit sparks shortly after the rotation.

GM, which was informed of the investigation on Friday, said in a statement that the Volt “is safe and does not present undue risk as part of normal operation or immediately after a severe crash.”

Now, it should be noted that “Volt competitor Nissan Leaf uses similar batteries but has not had fire problems in NHTSA crash tests. Ford and Mitsubishi are bringing out electric models next year that also will use the lithium-ion batteries.”  So what’s with GM and its auto defects – again!

At least this time, they’re on the hook for liability claims for this defect, having cruelly abandoned hundreds of victims of its defective cars before its 2009 bankruptcy and bailout.  That included children like Amanda Dinnigan, who was “nearly strangled” as “the adult seat belt and shoulder restraint snapped her neck.” She has “no feeling, can't breathe on her own, can hardly move her head" and whose health care costs are around $500,000 a year.  You may recall that GM, as well as Chrysler, has complete immunity from all tort claims, like Amanda's, arising from crashes which occurred before the bankruptcy. Each one of those claims represented a potential defect that might also have led to a NHTSA investigation.  This wholly unnecessary part of bankruptcy deal continues to be a shameful black mark on this country. That just had to be said.

You can help Amanda Dinnigan here. 

UPDATE: "General Motors says it will offer free loaner cars to Chevrolet Volt owners if they're concerned about the cars catching fire."

Rental Car Dangers - From Microbacteria to Fuel Tank Defects

About a year ago, the Today Show ran a piece about the filthy interiors of rental cars and ever since, I’ve been carrying around Wet Wipes.  I tend to rent cars a lot.  Now I realize that rather than Wet Wipes, I should be carrying around an auto mechanic.

At the New York Times automobile blog, Wheels, Christopher Jenson has been doing some great reporting about how rental car companies sometimes don’t comply with safety recalls – or at least, they think it’s OK to decide on their own whether a recall is important enough to respect.

Yesterday, the blog discussed actual letters from the major rental car companies, who have “told the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that in some cases they continue to rent vehicles that have been recalled if they believe the problem is not serious,” or “what a Hertz executive called ‘a true safety recall.’”

Of course, there is no such thing.  A safety recall is a safety recall.  NHTSA spokesperson Karen Aldana says, “All safety recalls resulting from defects present an unreasonable risk to safety and we believe it is inappropriate to suggest that some defects are not risky enough to require repair.  For the safety of the motoring public, all recalled vehicles should be fixed promptly.” 

Jenson writes,

The safety agency began its investigation last year, shortly after the Federal Trade Commission was asked by two consumer groups, Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety and the Center for Auto Safety, to order Enterprise Rent-A-Car to fix recalled vehicles before renting them. Enterprise has admitted in a California court that its failure to fix a Chrysler PT Cruiser was responsible for the deaths of two California women when their car caught fire and crashed.  The F.T.C. has yet to act on that request.

That would be the tragic case of Jacqueline Houck and her sister, Raechel (which we covered here and here), who died because Enterprise failed to carry out a safety recall of the car they rented. 

Earlier, Jenson reported,

The American Car Rental Association wants the government to adopt a new system that would designate some recalls as so serious that a vehicle should no longer be driven while others would allow cars to be driven and repaired later. …

Rosemary Shahan, the president of Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety of Sacramento, said in an e-mail that the proposal would “perpetuate rental-car roulette and allow rental car companies to get away with renting out vehicles that are so unsafe they are being recalled.”

The idea of a two-tier system amounts to a license to rent cars with “with unrepaired safety defects,” Clarence Ditlow, the executive director of the Center for Auto Safety, wrote in an e-mail.

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, has asked the Federal Trade Commission to explain why rental car companies are allowed to rent out vehicles that have not been repaired even though auto dealers may not sell a new vehicle if a recall is pending. He has also said he plans to introduce a bill this year that would put rental-car companies under the same restriction as new-car dealers.

In California, a bill is moving through the legislature that would make California "the first state to require car rental companies to pull vehicles out of service when they receive notice of a safety recall.”  The rental car companies believe this “unfairly targets them” arguing “the matter should be handled at the federal level so they do not have to deal with a patchwork of rules.”

How fortunate for them that currently, the federal agency, NHTSA, “lacks the authority to force rental companies" to recall cars.  Where's the Today Show when you need them?