Making lemonade out of the auto industry's lemons.

The Center for Auto Safety (CAS) is a public interest organization founded by Ralph Nader and Consumers Union in 1970 to provide a voice in Washington, D. C., for consumers to offset the powerful auto industry lobby. The center represents the interests of consumers before federal regulatory agencies on issues of auto safety, reliability, quality, and efficiency as well as highway safety and environmental issues. Clarence Ditlow serves as the center's executive director.

TRIAL Associate Editor Kelly McMurry questioned Ditlow recently about trends in auto safety. His comments follow.

Can you explain what resources the center provides for consumers and plaintiff attorneys?

CAS provides a wide range of auto safety publications ranging from small packages on defects on individual vehicle models to detailed safety research reports on topics such as fuel-fed fires, seat belts and crashworthiness, and air bag safety. Our most well-known publication is The Lemon Book, an action manual for car owners who have bought a lemon. We also help Jack Gillis write The Car Book every year. It's a buyers' guide to better cars.

What are the top two or three auto safety issues today?

Some of the major issues today include the aggressivity of light trucks and sport utility vehicles (SUVs), which are four times more likely to kill the occupants of passenger cars in crashes. Aggressivity refers to the design of SUVs. By adding weight, raising the bumper height, and stiffening the front end of these vehicles, auto companies have turned them into urban assault vehicles that pose a lethal threat to any vehicle they strike.

Other major issues include fuel system integrity--also known as fuel-fed crash fires--commercial truck size, improved air bag performance, rollovers, and higher speed limits on highways.

Is there a shared responsibility for auto safety? If so, who shares it?

The primary responsibility for automobile safety rests on the auto industry, which has long had the know-how to build cars that protect occupants in 50 mph front, rear, and side crashes. The auto industry also has the know-how to improve vehicle controls, handling and stability, and braking to avoid crashes.

The federal government's role is to force the auto industry to build auto safety into new cars and trucks and to ensure safe road designs and regulate driver behavior through speed limits, occupant restraint laws, and impaired driver control measures, such as sobriety checkpoints and public safety campaigns.

What is the role of plaintiff attorneys in influencing automakers to produce safer cars and trucks?

Attorneys can provide information on auto cases to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and CAS. Above all else, attorneys should resist protective orders that don't allow information about product hazards to be released. Auto companies routinely conceal information from NHTSA so that its defect investigations do not lead to recalls.

The classic example of this is General Motors' production of its C/K-model pickup trucks with sidesaddle gas tanks. NHTSA investigated these trucks twice without finding a defect before the discovery documents in Zelenuk v. General Motors Corp. were forced into the public domain by Public Citizen under Texas's anti-secrets legislation.

After a settlement was reached in this case, which involved the burn death of a GM employee in a C/K pickup, Public Citizen petitioned the court to release the sealed discovery material under the Texas anti-secrets law.

After initially opposing release of this material--even insisting that copies provided to NHTSA be kept confidential--GM dropped its claims in the face of public scrutiny.

What is the center's position on air bags and NHTSA's role in ensuring safe air bags?

Air bags are extremely effective in saving lives, particularly in high-speed crashes. But NHTSA has failed to inform the public that not all air bags are created equal. Some manufacturers have much better designs to prevent injuries to out-of-position occupants, who are close to the dashboard or steering wheel when the air bag inflates. Because NHTSA failed to require testing of smaller occupants, such as petite women and out-of-position children, many manufacturers opted for cheaper, less protective air bags and less reliable crash sensors.

The original NHTSA passive restraint standard required that air bags could not deploy in barrier crashes below 15 mph because they were not needed for occupant protection. The agency dropped this requirement in the early 1970s. Two-thirds of the air-bag-related deaths in the 1990s occurred at crash speeds below this threshold---deaths that would not have occurred if NHTSA had kept the 15 mph threshold.

Can you comment on the recent government ruling that allows drivers to self-certify that they qualify for air bag deactivation switches?

In my opinion, NHTSA's decision is an abrogation of agency responsibility. First, the agency has failed to provide any information to consumers on which air bags perform better, so they cannot make an informed decision. Second, the switch on air bags does not recycle to the on position, so it is likely to remain off. Finally, the decision relies on self-certification, which will lead to consumers getting on-off switches when the consumers do not meet the criteria set by NHTSA.

Four types of drivers qualify for the deactivation switch: drivers who must transport infants riding in rear-facing infant seats in the front passenger seat; drivers who must transport children age 1 to 12 in the front passenger seat; drivers who cannot change their customary driving position and keep 10 inches between the center of the steering wheel and the center of their breastbone; and drivers with medical conditions whose physicians indicate that air bags pose a special risk that outweighs the risk of their hitting their head, neck, or chest in a crash in the event the air bag is turned off.

Please comment on sport utility vehicles and safety.

The larger size and increased popularity of SUVs are causing more and more deaths on the highways. Contrary to popular opinion, SUVs are less safe for their occupants than comparable size cars because the SUVs are more likely to be involved in deadly rollovers. Also, the added weight in these vehicles is not beneficial to their occupants but is deadly to the occupants of cars they hit.

Since NHTSA has failed to regulate SUVs, they are most likely to be made safer by higher insurance rates and products liability lawsuits brought against the SUV manufacturers on the theory of aggressivity, much as the crashworthiness doctrine adopted in Larsen v. General Motors Corp. helped improve the crashworthiness of automobiles.

Speed limits are getting higher. Are crash fatalities increasing?

As speed limits increase, so do crash deaths. Studies of fatalities on roads where speed limits have been increased since Congress repealed the federal 55 mph speed limit in 1996 show a 15 percent to 30 percent increase in fatalities. The laws of physics dictate that the higher energy of vehicles and the reduced reaction time of drivers who are traveling faster will result in more frequent and more serious crashes. Cars are not designed to protect occupants in crashes at 70 mph or higher.

Are antilock brakes safer than conventional brakes?

Studies by NHTSA and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety have not shown a decrease in overall fatality rates for vehicles with antilock brakes over vehicles without them. NHTSA should do comparative make and model studies to see whether or not there is a difference between the antilock brake systems used by different manufacturers.

In 1995, Chrysler Corp. undertook a repair program to voluntarily fix the latches on its minivans. The program has been criticized as ineffective because the compliance rate is low. Do you agree with this criticism? Given this situation, what should be done now?

Service campaigns result in lower repair completion rates than safety recalls. One of the reasons Congress adopted mandatory safety recalls in the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act was that the service campaigns of auto companies before the act did not get the job done.

For example, NHTSA Administrator Ricardo Martinez said Chrysler should be able to easily exceed the average 69 percent recall completion rate in 18 months for its minivan latch service campaign. But, after two years, the completion rate is still less than 60 percent.

Some groups have criticized NHTSA's collision/highway accident statistics. How accurate are they?

They are unreliable. Each year, the Department of Health and Human Services records about 2,000 more deaths in traffic crashes than does NHTSA's Fatal Accident Reporting System, which reports only on fatal crashes. The National Accident Sampling System, which investigates fatal and nonfatal crashes, cannot do the number of in-depth investigations that it was designed to do. While both databases are useful in rulemaking, neither was designed to--nor can either--pinpoint vehicle defects for recall purposes.

How can NHTSA improve?

The agency needs more funding for its safety programs. There is also a lack of leadership and sense of mission, which are even larger obstacles to overcome. For example, the agency has known about the hazards of SAVE for years but has done virtually nothing to reduce the safety risk they present to society.

Also, when former top-level NHTSA staff cash in on their former positions to work, consult, and testify for the auto industry, the revolving door has spun out of control.

Your organization has been instrumental in the passage of lemon laws in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Are the current laws, as drafted, adequate to protect consumers?

Lemon laws represent one of the biggest success stories since Connecticut passed the first one in 1981. In 1995, the auto industry bought back 100,000 lemons, compared with less than 500 in 1970 when CAS first called for the enactment of these laws.

Today, industry constantly attempts to weaken the strong laws and prevent weaker laws from being strengthened. One of the biggest threats to consumer protection, particularly in lemon laws, is industry's efforts to get Congress to pass weak federal consumer and safety laws that expressly preempt state consumer protection laws and legal rights.

What's on the horizon for auto safety? Are researchers developing technologies that would increase auto safety in the future?

The challenge of auto safety is not so much developing new technology but forcing the auto industry to put known safety technology in the cars they build. Since the introduction of the motor vehicle in America, over 3 million people have been killed in traffic crashes. Many of these deaths could have been avoided if the auto industry had not suppressed the use of safety features ranging from laminated windshields in the 1920s to seat belts in the 1950s to air bags in the 1970s.