Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C.

An activist and advocate for higher automobile roof strength standards believes that the federal government’s latest delay will ultimately benefit the consumer.

As we have reported in the past, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), a branch of the Department of Transportation, decided in 2005 to boost its archaic standards for roof strength, issuing a deadline of mid-2008 to accomplish that.

However, when June 2008 arrived, the NHTSA said it wasn’t ready and deadline was moved back to July. Then to October. Then to December. Now to April …

Paula Lawlor, the founder of People Safe in Rollovers Foundation, a California-based organization, doesn’t think the continual delays are necessarily a bad thing. She predicts that President-elect Obama’s administration will revise and improve new roof-crush standards in the consumer’s favor. Lawlor, like many consumer advocates and safety experts, believes the “new and improved” standards established in 2005 – the ones that the NHTSA has been repeatedly avoiding – are still insufficient.

Lawlor also expects the Obama administration to strike out preemptive provisions that would limit lawsuits against auto manufacturers if their vehicles comply with the federal regulations.

The old roof-crush standard, established 35 years ago, requires an automobile’s roof to withstand 1.5 times the vehicles weight as a metal plate descends on the static vehicle. The new standard would merely require vehicles weighing up to 10,000 pounds to withstand 2.5 times the vehicles weight in the same static test.

Safety advocate groups are calling for more realistic, dynamic tests in which the vehicle is subjected to a simulated rollover. Ironically, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers opposes dynamic testing, claiming it does not represent real-word conditions.

According to data from the NHTSA, approximately 273,000 rollover crashes occur every year, killing more than 10,000 people and seriously injuring 24,000 people. Such grim statistics represent a federal regulatory system that is “a total ineffective disaster,” according to one automobile safety expert.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 5th, 2009 at 4:18 pm and is filed under News, automobile accident, rollover accident, safety. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.