WASHINGTON, Jan. 10, 2000 -- Auto manufacturers and the government agencies that are supposed to be their watchdogs point with pride to the continuing decline in highway deaths, relative to total miles driven.
What they don't boast about is the continuing toll of death and injury in one-vehicle rollovers involving Sport Utes and light pick-up trucks.
The recently-released 1998 fatality count was 41,471 -- about 1.6 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles, roughly equal to 1997 and down from the 1.7 rate of 1992-96.
But of those 41,000 fatalities, about 9,000 occured in "first event" rollovers -- accidents in which vehicles, mostly Sport Utes and pickups, overturn without hitting other vehicles. Another 60,000 are injured each year in such accidents.
Experts say these first-event rollover are almost totally avoidable through proper design. And since the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) was created specifically to mandate safer cars and highways, it might be expected to take action to reduce rollovers.
But despite several attempts since 1973, the agency has failed to institute tough new measures and has rejected several proposed standards for one reason or another. NHTSA has also rejected a number of petitions asking it to declare specific models unsafe.
Its reasoning is that since the high-center, narrow-track vehicles are inherently unsafe, it would be unfair to single out a particular brand or model.
NHTSA's failure to act has also served the industry well in defending against suits brought by consumer lawyers. The "NHTSA defense" -- a classic Catch 22 -- basically is that the vehicles must be safe or NHTSA would not permit them to be built.
Consumer leaders and plaintiffs' attorneys blame the lucrative revolving-door deals that lure many former NHTSA officials to take industry's side once they leave government.
Former NHTSA Administrator Jerry Curry supplements his NHTSA and U.S. Army pension checks by working as an expert witness for auto makers. He earned hundreds of thousands of dollars testifying for Ford, Chrysler, Nissan, Suzuki and Hyundai, according to a recent analysis by The Los Angeles Times.
Curry was finally blocked from testifying in defense of the Ford Bronco II after complaints that, since he had approved the decision to close a NHTSA probe of Bronco II rollover, his actions on behalf of Ford constituted a conflict of interest.
Replacing him on the stand in many Bronco cases was William
Boehly, a former NHTSA enforcement chief who is now vice president
of the Association of International Automobile Manufacturers.
Boehly said former NHTSA officials need to earn a living and
shouldn't be criticized for defending the industry they were
once paid to regulate.
"What would you want them to do -- put on a funny hat and say, 'Would you like fries with these?'" the Times quoted him as saying.
Indeed, while their earnings may not match Curry's, some former
NHTSA officials continue to work on behalf of consumers.
Former agency head Joan Claybrook is president of Public Citizen,
founded by Ralph Nader, and remains a tough critic of the auto
industry. Also, former associate administrator A. Michael Brownlee
has testified for accident victims in cases where the auto companies
allegedly withheld safety data from NHTSA.
