Missed Opportunities in Auto Safety
by Guest Blogger, 8/22/2005
Two new regulatory developments fail to do enough to make our roadways safe:
- The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration issued revised rules governing the maximum number of hours that companies can force their truck drivers to work without rest. As Public Citizen notes, these new rules are virtually unchanged from the inadequate rules recently rejected by a federal court: Like the 2003 rule, today’s proposed rule makes permanent a dramatic increase in the allowable weekly driving time and on-duty hours for truckers. It reduces weekly off-duty time for the most exhausted drivers (truckers who drive the maximum number of allowable hours) and significantly weakens safety requirements for short-haul drivers. While we support the portion of the rule that no longer allows drivers to split the time they spend in sleeper berths, the overall increased driving and working time is not supported by the vast body of scientific literature that exists about fatigue and driver safety. Nor does this proposal help drivers get on a 24-hour circadian schedule. Read more.
- Meanwhile, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration finally moved to update its 30-year-old standard to prevent vehicle roofs from crushing in on top of occupants during rollover crashes, but that proposed rule "falls tragically short of what is needed to fix the problem of roof collapse in rollovers," explains Public Citizen: The long-delayed roof crush rule proposed today by NHTSA fails to comply with new safety mandates issued by Congress just last month. The highway funding bill requires roof strength be tested both on the driver and passenger sides of a vehicle. However, the proposed rule tests roof strength only on one side. Most auto manufacturers already produce vehicles that can pass this very weak test, which requires a roof to withstand 2.5 times its weight. It’s not enough because forces in a rollover crash exceed that amount. Rollover crashes are responsible for about a fourth of all traffic fatalities and about one-third of all occupant fatalities each year. In 2004, 10,553 people died in rollover crashes; roofs crush in during roughly a quarter of all rollover crashes, NHTSA has estimated. And SUV rollover deaths are up nearly 7 percent. It is feasible to make much stronger roofs; in fact, the Volvo XC 90 has a roof that can withstand at least 3.5 times its weight. The agency still has no plans to require real world crash tests to gauge roof strength, known as a dynamic test. This test is the only way to learn what happens in a rollover crash to the roof, its supporting structures, the windows and the belt system, and of course, to the occupants. Read more.
