NHTSA Needs More Cash to Enforce Auto Safety

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration wants to expand its abilities to ensure a 60 million recall year doesn’t happen again and it basically needs one thing above all else to make it happen: cash.

Avoiding a replay of a year that included events like General Motors’ recall of 2.6 million small cars due to a defective ignition switch that ultimately led to the deaths of at least 51 people and Takata’s faulty airbags that explode sending shrapnel into the cabins of vehicle, resulting in the recall of more than 10 million vehicles in the U.S. and five deaths requires manpower, the agency explains, and manpower costs money.

The agency, which is part of the Department of Transportation, operates on a miniscule budget and is actively backing the Obama Administration’s attempt to triple the funding for the agency’s Office of Defects Investigation from $10.7 million to $31 million.

“It’s no longer reasonable frankly to expect an office with 8 screeners and 16 defects investigators to adequately analyze 75,000 complaints a year,” Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx told reporters on a conference call earlier this week.

If the budget is approved, the number of ODI personnel would increase from 28 to 56.5 full-time equivalent positions. Those positions would include hiring a mathematician, two statisticians, 16 engineers and four investigators. The administration wants to add 57 people to a staff of more than 100.

NHTSA officials say they want increase the rate at which recalls are completed using better data mining and monitoring tools. With the additional resources, the agency might be able to live up to newly appointed Administrator Mark Rosekind’s goal is for the agency.

“NHTSA needs to be the enforcer,” he said during his confirmation process last year.

To see the original article, go to The Detroit Bureau.

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