I wrote about this fine movie four years ago yesterday, but so far it hasn’t attracted the cult following I think it deserves. Entitled “What’s The Big Hurry” and released in 1970 to no-doubt-bewildered Driver’s Ed students, the film was directed by Sid Davis and features extremely weird electronic music by Louis Barron. Junkyard employees pulling a GM A-body’s wiper motor with a gas-axe, long pans past wrecked Porsche 914s and VW Beetles, and all of it taking place in Huntington Park, California. (Read More…)

Edmunds’ Jeremy Anwyl asks:

The chart [above] shows the rate of fatalities per 100 million miles driven. We have assembled the data, going back almost 100 years. Look at the chart closely. Can you see a drop in fatalities that corresponds with when seatbelts were first introduced? Or when legislation mandating their use was passed? Or what about when air bags become prevalent? What about a jump in fatalities that ties to the current “epidemic” in texting while driving?

I can’t. The data does show that fatalities dropped markedly during the Great Depression and WW II. Aside from that, the rate has been declining  steadily for years. Decades, even. This is good news, but makes it hard to credit seatbelts, technology or the other factors that reflexively are given credit. I am not suggesting that we should all stop wearing seatbelts. I am suggesting that when thinking about transportation safety, there is more going on than we typically consider.

Has it really been a year since the United States tore itself apart in a frenzy over the possibility that Toyota’s might suddenly accelerate out of control? So intense was the furor over Toyota’s alleged misdeeds, that it seems like the whole scandal occurred only yesterday, yet the brevity of the crisis already gives it the distance of ancient history. Now, just a year after the height of the hysteria, the first major book on the subject has arrived, casting a clear light on the events of the recall. Serving as a history of the scandal, a case study in Toyota’s responses to it, and a cutting critique of the media’s coverage of the recall, Toyota Under Fire is a powerful reminder of the many lessons that emerged from one of the most intense and unexpected automotive industry events in recent years.

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Cars charred in Barkhamsted fire: wtnh.com

The Hartford Courant reports that the fire reported on in the video above, which first started in a garage holding a new Chevrolet Volt and a converted electric-powered Suzuki Samurai, re-ignited this morning. According to the report

A fire apparently reignited inside the battery of a new Chevrolet Volt car early Monday, less than five days after the Volt, an electric hybrid, was involved in a blaze that destroyed a Barkhamsted garage where it had been plugged in for recharging.

“The rekindle this morning really adds to the mystery,” Barkhamsted Fire Marshal Bill Baldwin said today.

Representatives from General Motors, the vehicle’s manufacturer plan, are scheduled to arrive in Barkhamsted this evening to examine the car, Baldwin said.

The hybrid electric car was not plugged in this morning when the fire rekindled, Baldwin said.

Investigators still haven’t linked either the fire or the rekindle to either vehicle, but GM’s investigators should be able to help narrow down the cause of the fire.

UPDATE: TTAC Commenter mcs finds the blog of a Suzuki EV converter based in Barkhamsted, CT. One post describes a homemade charging system its owner describes as “certainly not a recommended safe practice.” Hit the jump for a screen capture of the post, or check out the blog here.
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Over the weekend, Chinadaily [via CarNewsChina] reported that China’s General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine had halted imports of Jeep Wranglers due to what was reported as

fires [caused by] a problem in the vehicles’ automatic transmission and related systems.

And though for some this story’s value may begin and end with the ironic humor value of China recalling unsafe American products, there’s more to this than meets the eye. As it turns out, NHTSA has investigated a suspiciously similar transmission-related fire risk in Wranglers, and made Chrysler fix it. What’s not clear is why China-bound Jeeps don’t appear to have received the upgrade that US regulators required for American-market sales.

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As I’ve explained many times before, it can be very difficult to know when a recall is worth covering. Drawing too many conclusions from a single defect can be dangerous, as defects are a fact of any industry that balances quality and cost as closely as the auto business. But in this case, I’ve received enough emails about the video above that I’m willing to open a discussion about it here. But before you jump in, be sure to read the caveat after the jump.
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We’ve long struggled with finding the right balance of recall coverage here at TTAC, as the sheer volume of them makes it extremely difficult to separate the life-saving wheat from the irrelevant chaff. Now, it seems the rental car industry is tired of struggling with the same challenge and is lobbying the government for reform of the recall system. Bob Barton of the American Car Rental Association explains the problem to the NYT

We can’t determine the significance of a recall and whether a vehicle is no longer safe to operate or whether it can continue to operate and then should simply be brought in for service at some point in time. We simply want the manufacturers to instruct us when a vehicle needs to be grounded and we will absolutely comply.

Fair enough. Recalls are carried out for plenty of non-safety-critical problems. But where do you draw that line? And, more importantly, does the rental industry enjoy enough of a reputation for safety consciousness to assure customers that their calls for reform won’t result in any increased danger?

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Texas is the last state in the nation that still imposes different speed limits on its highways depending on whether it is daytime or nighttime. Roads marked 70 MPH during the day can only be legally driven at 65 MPH when its dark. Big rig trucks must also obey specially lowered speed limits. The state House Transportation Committee yesterday filed a favorable report on legislation that would simplify the Lone Star State’s speed laws and boost the speed limit in most rural areas.

“A difference in vehicle speeds can contribute to accidents,” the House committee report explained. “HB 1353 seeks to minimize the number of accidents that can occur when cars and trucks change lanes or pass or tailgate slower-moving vehicles by removing the different, lower speed limit for heavy trucks.”

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As I write this, President Obama and his top environmental and auto regulators are gathering for a speech on “American energy security” at Georgetown University. In this speech, the President is expected to make the case for ramped-up CAFE standards, EV subsidies and other transportation-related energy efficiency goals, and based on his politically pragmatic framing of the issue as being about “energy security” rather than environmental prerogatives, it seems that he’s serious about creating new policy rather than merely playing to his base. But, according to the Detroit News, the automakers are not going to take increased regulation sitting down, but appear to be gearing up for the first major legislative clash over automotive regulation since the green-tinged bailout. Automakers have begun to push back on both fuel economy and stalled safety legislation, explains Alliance of Automotive Manufacturer’s spokesperson Gloria Bergquist.

Automakers have always supported legislation and regulations that are driven by data and sound science, and there have been some examples where there was more wishful thinking and targets being selected that weren’t based on the data. So we have become more outspoken on the need for data to drive policy decisions.

Of course, automakers haven’t always supported regulation of their industry… but this is clearly a change in tone from the cowed industry that collapsed into the government’s arms just a few short years ago. A battle is brewing, so let’s look at some of the flashpoints in this forthcoming conflict.

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Sometimes news stories don’t need commentary. This little item, from orange.co.uk, seems like one of those stories:

Simona Suhoi, 28, faces up to five years in jail after police found her behind the wheel a month after she was banned from driving.

The former singer and designer, who is known as Simona Sensual, was pulled her over for not wearing a seatbelt in her home city of Bucharest.

She said: “I admit I shouldn’t have driven the car but I had no other choice.

“You see, I was having terrible pains in the chest, I think it was because of these brand new breast implants.

“I tried to get a taxi but they were all busy so I jumped into the car and dashed for the clinic. I mean, what was I supposed to do?”

And aren’t two airbags safer than one seatbelt anyway? You’ve been a great crowd, don’t forget to tip your waitresses.

Fourteen state senators want to do away with safety inspections for vehicles in the North Carolina. Led by state Senator Stan Bingham (R-Denton), the group introduced Senate Bill 123 last month in response to a 2008 legislative report suggesting the benefit of imposing the $165 million annual burden on motorists has yielded no measurable safety benefit.

Each year, the state’s 6.1 million vehicles must be taken to a private station for a $13.60 safety inspection. Vehicles registered in half of the state’s counties must also take a $30 emissions test. The state only keeps 85 cents out of the safety inspection fee, with the remainder kept by the inspector who also earns significant revenue by repairing whatever faults he discovers.

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Investigators are still trying to determine the cause of a bus crash on New York’s I-95, but it’s clear from these photos [via ABC] what caused many of the 14 fatalities in the crash: a sign warning motorists of red-light photo enforcement is what appears to have ripped the bus in half. Now, as much as we dislike photo enforcement, we wouldn’t argue that the sign caused this tragedy… but the irony of a sign intended to improve safety actually becoming a deadly obstacle is more than we can ignore.

A year ago we reported on a study by the Center for Automotive Embedded Systems Security, which showed that the proliferation of eletronics systems in modern auomobiles left them vulnerable to hacks through the OBD-II port, leading to such scary lessons as

Much to our surprise, significant attacks do not require a complete understanding or reverse-engineering of even a single component of the car.

But, the results of that study were dependent on gaining physical access to a car’s OBD port. This year, the UC San Diego and University of Washington academics behind CAESS took their research a step further, exploring how hackers could compromise cars without ever gaining physical access to them. Researchers bought a 2009-model-year vehicle of undetermined make, and attempted to hack into it. One of their findings: cellular-enabled assistance programs like GM’s OnStar and Toyota’s SafetyConnect unsurprisingly leave vehicles especially vulnerable.

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One of the eternal battles of the car world has broken out in New Hampshire, where angry seniors have introduced a bill [HB 549] to remove that state’s requirement of annual driving tests for motorists over the age of 75. According to the New Hampshire Union Leader,

In 2008, 1,088 state residents 75 or older failed the road test. In 2009, the number rose to 1,405, and in 2010, there were 615 failures through October… New Hampshire and Illinois are the only two states that require license-renewal applicants 75 and older to take a vision test and a road test. Nine states require some form of vision test. Maine requires one at first renewal after age 40.

The AARP and angry seniors say the elderly do not actually cause more crashes than young people, and in  recent years, the New Hampshire accident statistics bear them out, as 16-25 year-olds were involved in around 10 percent of crashes there in 2008 and 2009, while the 66-75, 76-85 and 86+ cohorts each accounted for around 2-4%. But then, those statistics are based on years in which over a thousand seniors were denied the right to drive… without the law, it’s hard not to argue that those numbers could be higher. But seniors call testing “age discrimination” and say the tests often fail good drivers who become nervous and allow poor drivers to pass.

Given that your state likely doesn’t have a mandatory senior driving test law, would you support one? Is mandatory vision testing enough? What about mandatory video games? Or, should government stay away from age-based conditions on drivers licenses?

Another day, another way to die in a car… and this time, the IIHS blames weak safety standards for semi-truck underride guards for this mangled Malibu [report PDF here]. The IIHS argues that

Under current certification standards, the trailer, underride guard, bolts, and welding don’t have to be tested as a whole system. That’s a big part of the problem. Some manufacturers do test guards on the trailer. We think all guards should be evaluated this way. At the least, all rear guards should be as strong as the best one we tested

But the best underride system they tested (a Wabash) still would have likely decapitated the Malibu driver in a 30% offset hit at 35 MPH. So even if government enact the stricter standards endorsed by the IIHS, you’ll still have to hit the rear of a semi truck fairly square-on in order to reap the benefits. But of the 2,200+ passenger car occupants who died in crashes with large trucks in 2009, we have no idea how many were square-on rear crashes like the one tested. And until the IIHS gets the government to regulate bumpers height, crash test-derived standards will always be less effective when they leave the lab and get into the messy real world of the American road.