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Andrew Warner was driving his family home from a Christmas party near Houston when they were rear-ended. Warner’s seat buckled, slamming backward and killing his infant daughter, Taylor. Seatback failures caused by rear collisions have been injuring and killing people for decades. Experts say the safety standard for seat strength is so weak that a lawn chair could pass.
General Motors has fought orders to replace allegedly defective Takata airbags in over six million of its pickup trucks and SUVs, arguing in a series of petitions that the recall is unnecessary because the airbags are safe. Four years after receiving the first of the petitions, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has yet to rule on them, leaving vehicle owners in limbo.
Nurses and other health care workers hold their own counter-protests, urging people to go home and continue with social distancing.
U.S. transportation officials are seeking to speed deployment of driverless cars by easing certain safety standards, drawing strong protest from groups who say the move is premature because the safety of the technology is unproven.
Polaris Industries, which boasts of being a global leader in sales of off-highway vehicles, also has the dubious distinction of being the No. 1 company for recalls, according to a new report.
While walking and bicycling have been promoted as ways to get healthy exercise while reducing traffic congestion, air pollution and carbon emissions, the death toll for pedestrians and cyclists has risen sharply. Pedestrian and bicyclist deaths are now about 20 percent of all U.S. traffic fatalities.
Drunk drivers, motorcyclists and young or distracted motorists make up the majority of those involved in fatal vehicle crashes, and many states are failing to pass key safety measures that could prevent such deaths, according to a new report by a highway safety group.
Without admitting liability, Toyota since 2014 has quietly settled 537 lawsuits blaming sudden unintended acceleration for crashes that caused deaths or serious injuries. Automotive safety advocates see the complaints as a sign that Toyota and federal regulators failed to properly address the root of the problem when they had the opportunity years earlier.
Grade inflation in school makes it difficult to distinguish who is actually achieving in the classroom. The federal government’s vehicle safety rating system suffers the same problem. Today, 98 percent of all vehicles tested receive four or five stars for crashworthiness. Consumer advocates and safety experts say it’s time to raise the bar for the New Car Assessment Program, which hasn’t been updated in nearly 10 years.
In Washington, D.C., a new Trump administration plan to relax safety rules for truck drivers has rekindled old heartaches for families across the country.
Driver-assistance technology is becoming more common. Major carmakers have pledged to make automated emergency braking standard on all vehicles by 2022, for example. But technical barriers, plus the general unease of consumers, make full automation a farther reach, despite what Elon Musk may say.
Lawyers presented a federal judge in Ohio with a proposal that would allow every town, city or county in the country to receive a payment from the companies that have made and sold prescription opioids. Local governments opting in to the settlement would get money to help address the public health crisis stemming from opioid abuse.
Food sick: The U.S. has seen a significant increase in the number of people contracting certain foodborne illnesses, with more multi-state outbreaks in 2018 than at any point in the previous decade, reports Laura Riley of The Washington Post. Better, quicker diagnosis is one factor, but public health experts told [...]
The federal government’s 1995 decision to allow states to set speed limits higher than 65 mph caused almost 14,000 additional deaths over 25 years on interstates and freeways.
David Bernhardt, acting secretary of the Interior Department, seems headed for confirmation by the Senate. He told the Energy and Natural Resources Committee that, if confirmed, he will stop recusing himself from issues that involve his former clients as soon as this summer
