NHTSA chief challenges automakers in wake of GM, VW cases
"We're questioning everything now. You have to question all assumptions," Mark Rosekind says.
The nation's auto safety chief said Tuesday the auto industry's recent missteps have tarnished its credibility with regulators, but limited budgets and staffing may restrict how much the government can do to catch defects and fraud sooner.
Mark Rosekind, administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, spoke Tuesday to a conference in Novi sponsored by the Auto Industry Action Group. He addressed last week's $900-million criminal penalty between the U.S. Department of Justice and General Motors, and the unfolding case of Volkswagen's massive cheating to enable up to 11 million diesel-powered vehicles to meet emission standards.
VW emission scandal widens: 11 million cars affected
The Environmental Protection Agency, rather than NHTSA, is the agency that uncovered Volkswagen's use of a "defeat device" to pass federal emission standards. The agency's leaders said last week that without the device 482,000 diesel VW and Audi cars were emitted up to 40 times the permissible levels of nitrous oxide.
"Every time we have an individual automaker or supplier where we find an issue, your first question has to be how extensive is it through the whole industry?" Rosekind said. "If they did it anyone else can do it."
"The DOJ just validated everything that was found in the NHTSA investigation," Rosekind said.
On another matter, NHTSA will hold a public information meeting with multiple automakers and representatives of Takata, the air bag supplier, at the center of the agency's largest recall ever concerning air bags that have, in rare instances, activated with excessive force.
Eight fatalities and more than 100 injuries have been linked to the Takata air bags, and in some cases the incidents were horrific, with metal shards penetrating a driver’s face and neck.
As awful as they are, such incidents are very rare. In June Takata said its was aware of 88 ruptures in total: 67 on the driver’s side and 21 on the passenger’s side out of what it calculated was just over 1.2 million air bag deployments over 15 years.
So far neither Takata nor NHTSA have found the root cause of the defect.
"We've been trying to get a focus not just on probably cause, but on a remedy," Rosekind said. "We're also going to talk about the plan of repair. They (Takata) have updated their numbers. They gave us 34 million vehicles to start with. It's now at about 21.4 million. We're going to have a plan for how to phase them in."
Senators call on Takata to recall all vehicles
An impasse could result in a shutdown of the federal government, just when the Department of Transportation, which oversees NHTSA, is seeking a budget increase and the authority to raise NHTSA's maximum civil penalty from $35 million to $300 million.
During congressional hearings on the GM ignition-switch recall last year, many House member and senators criticized the agency as harshly as they did GM for not exerting more pressure sooner for the automaker to recall the 2.6 million small cars equipped with the defective switches.
Rosekind is new to the agency. He began his current job last December after heading the National Transportation Safety Board, which oversees airline safety.
His predecessors cited limited resources as a major problem. For example, the agency had eight people to follow up on about 80,000 annual complaints from car owners.
"The right balance is acknowledging we have tools related to enforcement that can be used to their full extent when needed," he said. "What I hope is a transformation which will get us to be proactive."
Contact Greg Gardner: 313-222-8762 or gardner@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @GregGardner12