From the front lines of the safety wars comes Bloomberg‘s report that NHTSA has dropped a proposed rule requiring automatic reverse systems on obstructed windows. Auto safety advocate group Kids and Cars had pushed for the systems to be put on all power windows, at a cost of $6-$8 per window. But Mr Safety himself, Ray LaHood isn’t convinced, telling Senator Jay Rockefeller in a letter
There is considerable uncertainty about benefits estimates, particularly with respect to preventing or mitigating the less serious, mostly minor, injuries involving a power window closing on a person’s finger or hand
Automakers had opposed the rule, which would have covered only “one touch” power windows, on the grounds of costs and “unintended consequences with regard to security.” Kids and Cars cites [PDF] a 2007 NHTSA estimate that 2,000 emergency visits each year are caused by power window injuries. NHTSA said in 2009 that the proposed rule would save two lives and help prevent 850 injuries a year. The safety dilemma marches on…
[Hat Tip: John Horner]
Huh, I thought all cars had this already. Mine does, even for the sun roof.
Agree- It’s been mandated in Europe for at least 5 years – I’d quite happily pay an extra $32 – $40 for my car for this feature!
There is considerable uncertainty about benefits estimates, particularly with respect to preventing or mitigating the less serious, mostly minor, injuries involving a power window closing on a person’s finger or hand
But these systems help with the trapped finger as well!
typically only vehicles with 1-touch close windows have the auto-reverse function…
Had this on one car (don’t remember which), and it became a bit of a hassle as the car aged. Dirty window tracks or something would trigger the reverse when trying to close the window. Lotsa fun in the rain.
$8 per windows is too much, but $150 for a camera backup system is an OK cost/benefit?!? I can only guess that the camera manufacturer PAC is larger.
Backup cameras are required? Really? That’s news to me. If they are, then the following statement applies to them as well.
It’s fien as an option, but don’t force me to pay for something that I neither want nor need. In the case of the window feature, you can’t even argue that it will have an adverse impact on anybody but me or my passengers no matter how far you stretch and twist reality. Therefore, it should be entirely my decision if I want this “safety feature” whatever its cost or benefit might be.
Backup cameras are usually an optional feature, one that customers actually ask for. The auto-reverse window function would be a mandatory feature required in all vehicles. $8 per window for hundreds of thousands of cars adds up, as opposed to $150 per vehicle in only 50,000 vehicles or so.
$8 per window is fine, but let the MARKET decide….competition will lead one manufacturer to put it in all their cars. Others will follow suit if the consumer decides it is prudent.
What ever happened to capitalism?
Our parents should have taught ALL of us, since power windows have been around since the 1960’s and common in most cars since the 1980’s, NOT to put hands, feet, necks (or other body appendages) in the path of either closing doors or power windows. Common sense, much?
What ever happened to parenting?
Oh. I see. Creeping statism begets the Trial Lawyers Association begets the nanny state begets NHTSA begets Too Hot McDonald’s Coffee spilled in our lap begets 60 Minutes etc., etc. ad nauseum ad infinitum until we are too dumb to figure life out for ourselves, and take responsibility for ourselves. And so it goes….
What happened is small families. People with only a handful of close relatives and a single spoiled shot at immortality get insanely overprotective.
Child safety used to mean having spare children. Not pussifying the world for everyone else.
…but let the MARKET decide…
The market sucks at externalities.
What ever happened to parenting?
Do you have young children? I do, and I can tell you that this is just not the kind of thing kids are good at. Because some kid will, despite having all the common sense in the world—which isn’t much, as Mr. Baruth demonstrated at far more advanced ages**—stand on the window controls, or get a foot caught under the switch, or whatever and get his/her neck broken and/or larynx crushed. On older cars where the switches didn’t have guards it was pathetically easy to do this, and, despite it being the 60s where men were Real Men and women were Real Women and we didn’t do any of this namby-pamby crap and taught out kids right, dagnabbit, this kind of stuff still happened.
It’s still easy to do. And it’s eight bucks to avoid it, and it probably keeps your insurance premiums down anyway, just like backup cameras would do. And if we waited for “the market” to bless us with these developments we’d be waiting a really long time. The market, perfect and beautiful as it is, has to be dragged kicking and screaming when the costs are external and the profits immediate.
** Consequence processing is done by the prefrontal cortex, and isn’t fully developed in the human brain until the ages of 21-25, which is also when most people stop being idiots and settle down.
psarhijian:
I know you love government mandates and regualtions always justified by “externalities”, but what is the exterenality here? Will my kid see some other kid crush his throat in a window then try to do it himself becaues it looked like fun? Seriously, though, what is the externality?
I know you love government mandates and regualtions always justified by “externalities”, but what is the exterenality here?
Insurance costs, both that which you carry, and the legal liability insurance costs the automaker carries.
I don’t “love government mandates” per se; I’m just not blind to the idea that just because something doesn’t cost money now doesn’t mean it won’t cost a lot a money later. And I’ll freely admit that the market does certain things very well, like balancing supply and demand or value-pricing, which is where I disagree with some of my (much more pinko) friends. What you guys need to understand is that the market sucks at externalities and deferred costs, and I’m afraid that it’ll take the Western equivalent of the USSR’s collapse to drive that point home.
8 bucks a window on every new car is upwards of 400 million dollars a year. That’s half a million dollars to prevent a single pinch.
While I think it would be ridiculous to require this “safety feature” on all cars, a guy at work would have benefited from having power windows like this. He was leaning through the window of his truck, when his dog stepped on the power window switch and rolled the window up, trapping his head in the truck cab, and his hands and arms outside. The doors were locked, and he had no way to roll the window back down or open the door and access the window switch (I’m fairly certain, that you wouldn’t be able to reach the switch around an open door while trapped in the window, anyway). Luckily for him, his wife was in the house and was able to come out and rescue him.
My dad’s ’00 Camry has a nice feature where you push down on the button to open, and stick your finger under it and pull up to close. Extremely intuitive and very hard (as in, impossible) to close unintentionally. Whatever happened to that idea? Don’t solve the symptom, solve the problem.
Most, if not all, cars have that now, and they also have guards around the switch to prevent it from getting jammed, but it’s possible for a kid to get his/her very little finger or toe (or their sibling to do the same).
The last three cars I bought as well as all of the new ones I looked at but didn’t buy have also had this feature. It also makes it very hard to intentionally pull up four switches and close all the windows at once.
This is a great tradeoff as I close four windows at least once a day 8 months out of the year and have small unsupervised children in my car approximately never.
I’d like to know which car out there has one-touch-close (a window that goes up, a liftgate that comes down, sunroof that slides shut, etc) where this feature is not built in.
I’m under the impression all major automakers already put something that detects when resistance load shoots way up and reverses or halts the door/gate.
As a side note, if you ever get trapped in the trunk of an S-Class, you can be happy to know that there is a large, back-lit button you can push that automatically opens the trunk door. Those glowing levers in cheaper cars are so lame compared to the Mercedes’ button.
Auto down is already required on windows which have a one-touch close feature. The proposed rule would have required it on all power windows.
One concern raised is whether this might make it easier for thieves or other “evil-doers” to access your vehicle.
I was going to raise this aspect. What about being accosted by a thief or some other miscreant? You try to roll the window up to protect yourself but he just puts his hand in and you are fully accessible again.
I think auto-reverse should definitely be available on all vehicles but it should be optional or, at the very least, have the ability to be switched off at the discretion of the driver.