Electronic Stability Control: Benefit to Consumers or Corporations?
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has recently determined that more than ten thousand fatal automobile crashes a year would be prevented if vehicles were equipped with electronic stability control to prevent them from rolling over.
What are the implications?
“This is a really significant finding,” said Bob Lange, General Motors Corp.’s top safety official, at the time the reports were released. Additionally, the federal government’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is currently developing a new performance standard for stability control and is expected to release the proposal soon.
Of course, before one takes this information to heart, one would be well advised to study the history of the NHTSA and the big US automakers, warns our Illinois personal injury lawyer. Oddly enough, he says, one need only study the history of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 216, purportedly designed to be a “roof crush test.”
Chicago personal injury attorney: “Simply Google FMVSS 216 and read about the long, tortured history of the federal government developing a sufficiently meaningless and watered down regulation to satisfy the concerns of the large US automakers. In the end, most commentators have agreed that whatever FMVSS 216 measures, it certainly doesn’t measure anything related to whether an automobile can withstand the dynamic forces of a rollover.
“In fact, the federal government has yet to reject the industry’s meritless position that there is no repeatable dynamic rollover test.
“We can only hope that the federal government doesn’t repeat history by writing an electronic stability control ‘federal standard’ that provides protection to the auto industry over the needs of the public.”
Do you agree? For more information on Auto Products Liability or Rollover Accidents, contact a Chicago personal injury attorney who specializes in auto accident cases.
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