Issues
Former Arizona Congressman Dies In DC At Age 67
MESA, Ariz. (AP) — Former Arizona congressman Jay Rhodes has died in Washington, D.C., from complications following an automobile accident last year. He was 67. Family members say Rhodes died Thursday at the Veterans Administration Medical Center. They say he had been treated for three fractured vertebrae suffered in an October car crash and took a turn for the worse about 10 days ago. Born in Mesa, Rhodes was a Republican who served Arizona’s First Congressional District from 1987 to 1993.
Ashley Turton, former Hill aide, dead in burning car
The wife of a key White House aide was found dead early Monday in a sport-utility vehicle that was heavily damaged by fire in the garage of the couple’s Capitol Hill home, sources familiar with the incident said. The cause of her death is uncertain.
Ashley W. Turton, 37, an energy company lobbyist and former chief of staff to U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), was found dead shortly before 5 a.m. in a burning BMW, the back end of which was partly out of the garage, as if the vehicle had been entering or leaving when the fire started, authorities said.
NHTSA needs more reliable fire crash data
Automotive News
December 20, 2010
It’s a tragic story: Cassidy Jarmon, a 4-year-old Texas girl, died from burns in 2006 after the 1993 Jeep Grand Cherokee being driven by her mother was hit from behind by a car and burst into flames. Yet the accident never showed up in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s database as a fiery crash.
Jeep probe casts doubt on NHTSA data
Safety group says feds’ system misses many fiery crashes
Neil Roland
Automotive News | December 13, 2010 – 12:01 am EST
WASHINGTON — The federal safety investigation of 1993-2004 Jeep Grand Cherokees is flawed by gaps in data collection that may hamper all U.S. probes of deadly fire crashes, a consumer group says.
The Center for Auto Safety, whose research spurred the ongoing Jeep Grand Cherokee inquiry, says government fire-crash data on which many investigations are based often are incomplete and unreliable.
Consumers Union Letter on California Rental Car Bill June 21, 2011
June 21, 2011
Senator Noreen Evans, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair
State Capitol–10th & L Street
Sacramento, CA 95814
Dear Senator Evans,
Are Rental Car Companies Renting Recalled Cars?
By WKBW News
May 30, 2011
Rental Car Firms Taking a Wrong Turn on Recall Bill
By Ben Kelley
4/21/11
What began as a simple bill to assure that car rental companies in California provide defect-free cars to their customers has become ensnarled in a full-out campaign by those companies to kill the bill as it moves through the state’s legislature. Ironically, the bill does nothing more than require the rental companies to do what they claim they already do in “the vast majority” of cases.
Faced With Recalls, Rental Companies Sometimes Decide to Wait
By Christopher Jensen
4/19/11
Several major rental car companies have told the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that in some cases they continue to rent vehicles that have been recalled if they believe the problem is not serious.
The companies said they were faced with so many recalls it was difficult for them to determine what a Hertz executive called “a true safety recall.”
But as N.H.T.S.A. sees it, there is no such thing as an unimportant recall.
Safety Agency Widens Inquiry into Repairs of Rental Cars
By Christopher Jensen
In an expansion of its investigation into whether millions of rental cars are repaired quickly enough, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is demanding that major rental car companies quickly provide detailed information about their safety operations.
The investigation began late last year with the agency saying it was troubled by reports of injuries and deaths in unrepaired rental cars.