WASHINGTON — Toyota’s bungled reporting of safety defects has created a group of innocent victims: Everyone else in the industry.
This year, Congress is certain to pass auto safety legislation that will impose more requirements on the industry and make vehicles more expensive — perhaps several thousand dollars per car, according to one lobbyist.
The eventual law is sure to require brake override systems and crash data recorders in all new light vehicles, auto industry lobbyists said….
Industry impact
The impact of a brake override system requirement on the auto industry would be minimal. All major automakers either have them on all their cars or have announced plans to install them. Only Honda hasn’t done so….
The impact of a black-box requirement would be more significant.
Two of every three new vehicles are equipped with them, a NHTSA spokeswoman said. That leaves, most notably, German manufacturers Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Volkswagen, which typically don’t provide black boxes, and small companies such as Ferrari and Jaguar,
Controversial provisions
The House and Senate bills, which are similar, seek to improve vehicle safety, increase NHTSA’s authority and resources and make safety information more transparent to the public….
The mandate of electronic brake override systems stems from Toyota’s problems with unintended acceleration. Those safety defects have led to recalls totaling 9 million vehicles worldwide since September, as well as reports of 52 deaths that are under federal investigation.
Brake override systems automatically cut engine power when the gas and brake pedals are both depressed. They can be installed with an inexpensive software fix, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has said.
About 20 percent of Toyota’s U.S. vehicles have brake override systems, a company spokesman has said. Toyota plans to install them on all new U.S. models by 2011.
Black boxes
Black boxes, which can be stored inside instrument panels or under front seats, record speed, acceleration and brake information immediately before and during a serious crash. They can be used by regulators, plaintiffs’ lawyers and automakers to help understand what happened to a vehicle and how the safety systems performed.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers have complained that, unlike the Detroit 3, Toyota has blocked or limited access to its black-box data….
A number of German manufacturers still have not installed black boxes because of concerns for owner privacy….
Volkswagen has black boxes only in its Routan minivans, which account for 1 percent of U.S. sales. …
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