The company behind one of the largest safety recalls in automotive history might have a lifeline thrown its way.
Takata, the manufacturer at the heart of the exploding airbag scandal, is being courted by private equity firms, Bloomberg reports, with at least one high-profile company already in close talks. (Read More…)
Modern technology helps vehicles avoid collisions and prevents injury, but the potential for a deadly collision inside the vehicle is being overlooked, some say.
Seat back collapses have killed or seriously injured 100 people since 1989, a CBS News investigation found, and lawmakers in Congress are now joining victims in calling for action. (Read More…)
If you’re going to hit a pole in a Dodge Challenger, it’s better to nail that sucker head-on or it miss altogether.
That’s the takeaway from a series of crash tests performed by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, where Dodge’s muscle coupe scored itself a “marginal” rating in the small front overlap test.
The IIHS normally doesn’t test niche vehicles, but V8-powered Challenger, Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Camaro models are hot-selling items and buyers demanded it. (Read More…)
Long-time TTAC readers will recall an occasional contributor to these pages who was kind of the Dave Barry of auto writing. He wrote articles with titles like “Has BMW Lost Its Mojo?” and “Has Audi Lost The Plot?” and “Has CarMax Lost The Invoice I Sent Them?” Unfortunately for him, however, there is a limited number of automakers in the North American market about which to generically speculate, so he eventually turned to a series of articles about “This Is The Worst Button On A Car Ever” and “This Is The Worst Warning Light On A Car Ever” and, just possibly, “This Is The Worst Turn Signal Lever Since The Dawn Of Time.” Articles like that are popular because they invoke a sort of Pavlovian response in readers. “Wait … that son of a bitch says the BMW temperature control blend knob is hard to understand? I’LL SHOW HIM!”
I tried to do something similar to get my clicks up and convince our august Managing Editor to pay for my next Kiton sportcoat, but he rejected my take on the formula, which was tentatively titled “How Can The New Camaro Ask The Mustang To ‘Step Outside’ When Cars Can’t Even Fuckin’ Talk Most Of The Time, Except For The Nissan Maxima, And Maybe The Frank Sinatra Imperial, And In Those Cases Weren’t The Cars In Question Restricted To A Fairly Basic Set Of Phrases,” calling it “thoroughly asinine and far too recherche for all but the most tasteful of search-engine spiders.”
That was the end of my career as a pure clickbait writer. Until this morning, when I looked down at the console of the Ecoboost Mustang I was renting in San José and realized I’d finally found the worst button ever!
There are four reasons why … and Number Three Will Blow Your Mind!
Human error causes most vehicle wrecks, so why is “car accident” still the go-to term?
A safety advocate-led movement is gaining steam to change the lexicon, the New York Times reports, with “crash” being the preferred word to replace “accident.”
With fatal crashes on the rise on U.S. roads, policymakers are joining the groundswell of voices calling for eradication of the word, which they say absolves blame. (Read More…)
Ford Motor Company probably wishes it had gone with a CVT.
After weathering years of complaints about the performance of its six-speed PowerShift dual clutch transmission, Australia just added to the misery with a class-action lawsuit, CarAdvice reports.
The suit, which alleges the transmissions are unsafe, concerns 2010–2014 Ford Fiesta and Focus models. (Read More…)
Three versions of a Renault hatchback spectacularly failed their frontal crash tests in India, earning them zero out of five stars, even with an available airbag.
It’s food for thought for the 125,000 Indian buyers who placed orders for the subcompact coffin, but the Renault Kwid isn’t alone in flunking Global NCAP testing in that car-hungry country.
The Maruti Suzuki Celerio, Maruti Suzuki Eeco, Mahindra Scorpio and Hyundai Eon also failed to earn a single star, reports Business Standard. (Read More…)
Tesla Motors responded quickly to a bombshell exposé on the low-paid foreign workers helping to expand the company’s California assembly plant.
The investigation by the Bay Area News Group, published in The Mercury News, detailed the hundreds of Slovenian and Croatian laborers brought into the Freemont plant on business visas last year to build a paint shop. Paid $5 an hour, safety protocol among the group was lax, work hours were long, and a serious injury ended in a workers’ compensation lawsuit.
Tesla was cleared of any wrongdoing by an accident investigator, but now the company says it has a moral responsibility to stop all unsafe and unfair work practices at its facility. (Read More…)
It’s a great reason to ditch the bike and leave downtown Portlandia.
Oregon drivers will soon feel more wind in their hair, all thanks to the Oregon Department of Transportation and a dictate from the federal government. (Read More…)
Surrounded by hundreds of miles of tinder-dry forest, Fort McMurray, Alberta seemed to ignite in an instant when wildfires overtook the oil-producing Canadian city earlier this week.
As the 88,000 residents fled in their vehicles, in many cases with just the shirts on their back, dashcams captured their flight towards safety.
It’s harrowing stuff, especially when you consider there’s only one highway leading into the city — an artery that quickly turned into a parking lot as flames encroached on both sides. Amazingly, no lives were lost in the fast-moving disaster.
Watch the horror for yourselves after the break: (Read More…)
Confirming rumbling from earlier today, the U.S. Department of Transportation is calling for the recall of 35 to 40 million Takata airbag inflators that pose a potentially deadly risk to motorists.
All of the company’s ammonium nitrate-based frontal airbag inflators that were shipped to automakers without a chemical drying agent are included in the recall. (Read More…)
Maybe 2016 isn’t Takata’s year.
The airbag manufacturer at the heart of the largest automotive safety recall in history is poised to double the number of airbag inflators it needs to fix, Reuters reports.
A number of people close to the issue said the beleaguered company will soon announce a massive expansion in the scope of the recall, which has already seen 28.8 million airbag inflators recalled in vehicles from 14 automakers. Another 35 to 40 million units require fixing, the sources say. (Read More…)
He doesn’t have any firm numbers, but Barrie Kirk has a feeling.
The Canadian Automated Vehicles Centre of Excellence executive director just knows that once humans no longer have to pump the brakes and jerk the wheel of their autonomous vehicles, their ingrained habits will give way to exploits of a carnal nature.
Yes, some people are predicting fleets of rolling bedrooms coursing their way through commuter traffic. Don’t tell Helen Lovejoy. (Read More…)
Ford Motor Company issued three recall notices today, but top billing goes to a sensor problem linked to the sudden downshifting (to first gear!) of certain vehicles.
That safety recall involves 202,000 2011-2012 Ford F-150, 2012 Expedition, Ford Mustang and Lincoln Navigator vehicles. (Read More…)
Like an unoccupied Dodge Charger stuck in “Drive,” Fiat Chrysler Automobiles’ gear selector controversy was rapidly building momentum before yesterday’s announcement.
Responding to numerous instances of runaway vehicles and an expanding National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigation, FCA voluntarily recalled 811,586 vehicles in the U.S. and 52,144 in Canada, and a further 265,473 in Mexico and overseas. (Read More…)
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