Thursday, January 19, 2012
Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES
The nation’s top auto- safety regulator is ill-equipped to detect problems with high-tech electronics commonplace in today’s cars, a new government study has concluded.
Calling such shortcomings “troubling,” the study called on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to review its technical capabilities and appoint an advisory panel to help it handle potentially serious risks associated with systems such as adaptive cruise control and GPS navigation.
In addition, the agency should require automakers to install electronic data recorders, often referred to as black boxes, in all new cars and consider significant changes in the design of pedals and certain ignition systems.
These steps, the National Research Council found in a 139-page report released Wednesday, would help NHTSA “ascertain the causes of unexpected vehicle behaviors” — in particular unintended acceleration — and thus improve safety. In addition, they would assist in allaying public concern about the agency’s credibility that emerged during the Toyota Motor Corp. recalls of 2009 and 2010.
“Neither the automotive industry, NHTSA, nor motorists can afford a recurrence of something like the unintended- acceleration controversy,” said Louis Lanzerotti, a physics professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and chairman of the committee that authored the report.
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