Automobile Safety Features and Defects

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Ford Fined by Safety Agency Over Defective Rearview Camera Recalls

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The regulator faulted the automaker for not recalling cars with defective rearview cameras quickly enough and for providing incomplete and inaccurate information.Ford Motor will pay a fine of up to $165 million for not recalling cars with defective rearview cameras in a timely manner, the federal government’s main auto safety agency said on Thursday.The agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said Ford also had failed to provide accurate and complete information about the defect and recall. If Ford is required to pay the full sum, it will be the second-largest fine ever issued by the regulator. The largest fine, a $200 million penalty in 2015, was levied against Takata, a Japanese company that made defective airbag inflaters that resulted in a huge, global recall.The safety agency said a defective rearview camera could increase the risk of a crash.“Timely and accurate recalls are critical to keeping everyone safe on our roads,” the agency’s deputy administrator, Sophie Shulman, said in a statement. “When manufacturers fail to prioritize the safety of the American public and meet their obligations under federal law, NHTSA will hold them accountable.”Under a consent decree between the agency and Ford, the automaker is required to pay $65 million. A second sum of $55 million will be deferred and can be partly or completely reversed if Ford makes changes to improve its ability to identify defects and alert the safety agency quickly.Ford also agreed to spend $45 million to improve its ability to analyze data, create a new means of sharing information and documents with the safety agency, and set up a base to test rearview camera components.“We appreciate the opportunity to resolve this matter with NHTSA and remain committed to continuously improving safety and compliance at Ford,” the automaker said in a statement. “Wide-ranging enhancements are already underway with more to come, including advanced data analytics, a new in-house testing facility, among other capabilities.”According to a summary of the safety agency’s investigation, the defect was related to a faulty circuit board that caused rearview cameras in certain models to stop working. The agency received 15 complaints about the defect but did not identify any injuries or fatalities caused by it.Ford first identified the defect in 2020 and issued a recall for more than 620,000 vehicles, largely from the 2020 model year, including F-Series pickups, Mustangs and several sport utility vehicles. A year later, the safety agency opened an investigation to determine if Ford had accurately identified and reported all of the vehicles that could have been affected by the camera defect.Ford expanded the recall in 2023 and again this year. Separately, Ford recalled a different set of rearview cameras in 2023 at a cost of $270 million. More

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    How Elon Musk Might Use His Pull With Trump to Help Tesla

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    Although Donald Trump has opposed policies that favor electric cars, if he becomes president he could ease regulatory scrutiny of Tesla or protect lucrative credits and subsidies.Former President Donald J. Trump has promised, if he is re-elected, to do away with Biden administration policies that encourage the use and production of electric cars. Yet one of his biggest supporters is Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, which makes nearly half the electric vehicles sold in the United States.Whether or not Mr. Trump would carry out his threats against battery-powered cars and trucks, a second Trump administration could still be good for Tesla and Mr. Musk, auto and political experts say.Mr. Musk has spent more than $75 million to support the Trump campaign and is running a get-out-the-vote effort on the former president’s behalf in Pennsylvania. That will almost surely earn Mr. Musk the kind of access he would need to promote Tesla.But Mr. Musk would also have to confront a big gap between his Washington wish list and Mr. Trump’s agenda.While Mr. Musk rarely acknowledges it, Tesla has collected billions of dollars from programs championed by Democrats like President Biden that Mr. Trump and other Republicans have vowed to dismantle.In Michigan, a battleground state and home to many auto factories, the Trump campaign has run ads that claim that Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, wants to “end all gas-powered cars” — a position that she does not hold.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    NHTSA Seeks to Recall 52 Million Airbag Inflaters by ARC and Delphi

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    The action covers airbags made by two companies and used by 12 automakers from 2000 to 2018. The parts were linked to seven injuries and one death.Federal auto safety regulators moved Tuesday toward a recall of about 52 million airbag inflaters used by a dozen major carmakers, calling the parts unsafe and susceptible to rupture.The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration scheduled a public meeting on Oct. 5 on its recommendation to recall the airbags, manufactured by ARC Automotive and Delphi Automotive Systems. ARC rejected the agency’s initial findings that its airbags were defective.The agency said that at least seven people had been injured and one killed in seven incidents in the United States as a result of the defective airbags.Of the 52 million airbags, 41 million were manufactured by ARC and 11 million were produced by Delphi using a design licensed by ARC. The airbags were variously made in China, Mexico and Knoxville, Tenn., and were used by a dozen major carmakers: BMW, Ford, General Motors, Hyundai, Kia, Maserati, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Stellantis, Tesla, Toyota and Volkswagen.“An airbag inflater that fails by rupture not only does not perform its job as a safety device, but instead actively threatens injury or death, even in a crash where the vehicle occupants would otherwise have been unharmed,” the agency said in its announcement.ARC and Delphi did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The ARC matter comes several years after the safety agency’s investigation of inflaters made by Takata, a Japanese supplier, that were found to explode violently and suddenly, even when the airbags were not deployed in a crash. In that case, regulators determined that Takata used a propellant that could break down over time from exposure to humidity.The safety agency linked the Takata defect to more than a dozen deaths in the United States. More than 70 million vehicles equipped with Takata inflaters were recalled in more than 40 countries.In April, the safety agency demanded in a letter to ARC that the company recall tens of millions of airbag inflaters that were made from 2000 to 2018.The agency’s investigators found that a small number of inflaters designed by ARC could explode more violently than intended when a vehicle’s airbags are deployed, and therefore “pose an unreasonable risk of death or injury,” the letter said.The letter prompted G.M. to recall nearly one million vehicles made from 2014 to 2017 and equipped with ARC inflaters. The automaker said it was taking the action “out of an abundance of caution.”In response to the agency’s demand, ARC declined to issue a recall and said in a letter in May that it did not believe a defect existed and that in its view NHTSA’s finding was not based on “any objective technical or engineering conclusion.”Inflaters use an explosive substance such as ammonium nitrate that is compacted into tablets stored in a metal cylinder. In a crash severe enough to set off a vehicle’s airbags, the tablets are supposed to create a controlled explosion that rapidly fills the airbags with gas.The safety agency said it had found that ARC’s manufacturing process could leave bits of welding material, known as weld slag, inside the cylinder. If the airbags are deployed, that material could clog the exit opening and cause an explosion violent enough to blast shards of metal and plastic into the vehicle’s interior.The agency has been looking at ARC inflaters since 2015. The most recent incident involving a rupture occurred in Michigan in March, when the driver of a 2017 Chevrolet Traverse sustained facial injuries.ARC, in its letter to regulators in May, said that weld slag had been ruled out as the cause of two of the seven incidents noted by the agency, and that it had not yet been found definitively to be the cause of the other five.A large-scale recall, and any related legal expenses, could have considerable costs for the inflater makers. After the Takata recall, the largest in automotive history, which forced it to pay millions of dollars in fines to U.S. regulators, the company filed for bankruptcy in 2017 and was sold to Joyson Safety Systems, formerly known as Key Safety Systems.Takata had been responsible for the cost of replacing the defective inflaters — a task handled by local car dealerships — but the bankruptcy filing left automakers to pick up the bill. About 11 percent of the affected airbags still haven’t been replaced, according to the safety agency’s most recent estimate.The agency has come under scrutiny for its investigations of vehicle defects. In May the Department of Transportation’s inspector general issued a report concluding that the agency’s Office of Defects Investigations did not identify and investigate safety defects in a timely manner. More