Issues
A Little-Known Tactic Can Make the U.S. Investigate Your Car-Safety Problem
That so many of the petitions in the last decade were dismissed is not a surprise to Jason Levine, the executive director of the Center for Auto Safety. What seems to work best is a defect petition “in combination with consumer awareness, media attention and other mechanisms to sort of raise the temperature,” said Mr.…
A Lawyer’s Battle to Puncture Secrecy and Legal Misconduct by Goodyear
The director of the Center for Auto Safety, Jason Levine, said that while only somewhat more than 40,000 of the tires were distributed for use on motor homes between 1996 and 2003, Goodyear has acknowledged that more than 3,000 had problems. Most were handled through warranty adjustments, but there were also hundreds of property damage…
Questions after fires in Kia & Hyundai vehicles: Sorentos, Optimas, Santa Fes and Sonatas
“What we started seeing here is a pattern, which is unusual, that no crash was involved and there were a lot of them happening in the two manufacturer’s models — Hyundai and Kias,” Jason Levine said. He said the problem is so extreme the government should force a massive recall of 3 million cars. So…
Car engines going up in flames across the country
Jason Levine, the Executive Director of the Center for Auto Safety, said the companies need to take appropriate action too. “[We’ve gotten a] lot of reports of people saying they don’t feel like they’re being taken seriously,” he said. “I would also point to the fact that they’ve not gone ahead and issued a separate…
Combustible Kias? Owners report vehicles going up in flames
“In May, we started noticing reports of a significant number of Kias and Hyundais catching on fire in what we call a non-collision fire,” said Jason Levine, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety, an independent consumer watchdog. “We started getting reports of this on Sonatas and Santa Fes and Sorentos and Optimas and…
Feds defend voluntary robot car regulations
“Since the passage of the FAST (Fixing America’s Surface Transportation) Act in 2015, drivers, passengers, pedestrians, and bicyclists have served as human guinea pigs across the United States without even the minimal requirement that those testing autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicle technology make public information demonstrating the safety of their technology,” the Center for Auto Safety,…
Expert Voices: AV diagnostic systems needed for road safety but easy to hack
Under current regulations, vehicles must allow connection to their diagnostic systems for analysis and repair. This access point is crucial for ensuring that both conventional and future self-driving cars are safe on the road, yet it is vulnerable to hacking by physical and wireless intrusions. Why it matters: Autonomous vehicles are highly dependent on networked…
Senate panel wants Hyundai, Kia to testify on engine fire reports
“We’re glad to see Sen. [Bill] Nelson and the Congress committee call Hyundai and Kia up to explain to the Senate and, more broadly, the American people exactly why so many of their cars are catching on fire and what they plan on doing to fix the problem,” Levine told Automotive News. “If they’re not going…
CAS comments on the DOT publication of Preparing for the Future of Transportation: Automated Vehicles 3.0
December 3, 2018 Secretary Elaine Chao U.S. Department of Transportation 1200 New Jersey Ave. SE Washington, DC 20590 Submitted electronically via www.regulations.gov RE: Preparing for the Future of Transportation: Automated Vehicles 3.0, Docket DOT-OST-2018-0149 Dear Secretary Chao: The Center for Auto Safety (“the Center”) appreciates the opportunity to comment on the Department of Transportation’s (“DOT”)…