Issues
Woman's Hyundai SUV catches fire, raises questions
Jason Levine, the Executive Director of the Center for Auto Safety, a watchdog consumer non-profit, said while there is no current recall on the 2019 Tucson, this latest unexplained fire should be scrutinized. “What we would like to see is the manufacturers, Hyundai and KIA and the National Highway Safety Administration do is more actively…
'It kept blowing up!': Another Kia catches fire, this time in Osceola County driveway
“Try to get to the bottom of what’s going on here and what is an appropriate remedy for people who have had these fires happen to them,” Jason Levine, of Center For Auto Safety said. June 6, 2019 OSCEOLA COUNTY, Fla. — A Kia Sportage caught fire in a driveway in Osceola County. The fire…
The star of 'Aladdin' claims a defect in his Tesla Model 3 led to his car wreck, and it comes from a problem area the company has known about for years
What safety advocates like Levine are looking for, though, is more transparency — and that goes for all automakers. They want to see fewer safety critical issues treated as performance or quality repairs, and they want more defects reported to third parties like the NHTSA. “From everything we’ve seen we can determine that Tesla’s been…
Car safety takes a back seat for passengers in the rear
“In reality in a crash, rear-seat passengers are often at greater risk than front-seat passengers,” he said. “Over the past few decades the front seat has seen significant safety improvements, including air bags and seat belt reminders. In an era with rideshare vehicles containing far more backseat passengers than ever before, the time to upgrade…
GM faces blowback on federal driverless car petition
Jason Levine, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety, a Washington, D.C.-based consumer advocacy nonprofit, said GM’s petition failed to demonstrate its fully self-driving cars match the safety levels required for human-operated vehicles. “Despite a petition of 97 pages, and 78 footnotes, GM has provided no data that establishes…the absolute value of safety” of…
1 in 6 Uber and Lyft Vehicles Have Open Recalls
“Consumer advocates say Uber and Lyft, with their billion-dollar valuations and technological prowess, can—and should—do far more to ensure consumers are kept safe, and reduce the open recall rate. For example, some advocates point out that Uber and Lyft could use VINs to identify and ban vehicles with open recalls from operating on their platforms.…
GM's Driverless Car Strategy Questioned By Safety Group
“The path to the successful introduction of autonomous vehicle technology in the consumer marketplace must be paved with objective, measurable, repeatable safety demonstrations – in simulation, on test tracks, and in controlled environments. The risks of failure on this journey are not only to the people who will be in danger from unproven and unregulated…
Risks of Buying a Used Car and What the Dealership Isn't Telling You
The Center speaks with NBC Los Angeles about the dangers of buying a used recall car
Auto safety regulator scraps its proposal to prevent unintended acceleration
But Jason Levine, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Auto Safety, said it will take years to find out whether automakers installed the systems due to the threat of a regulation or could remove them without the regulation pending. “What we know today is that with no requirement, there is no performance standard for…
Despite deaths, injuries and recalls, air bags still save lives
“The horror of this type of defect is that you don’t need it until you need it, and when you do need it, it’s now going to be hurting you,” said Jason Levine, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety in Washington, D.C. “A defective safety product is just as terrible as defective brakes…