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NHTSA's Dirty Little Secrets

Safety Regulators Keep Consumer Complaints Secret

By Joe Benton
ConsumerAffairs.com

November 21, 2006

• Feds Offer Car Recall News Electronically • NHTSA Posts "Early Warning" Safety Data on the Web • Court Upholds Public Access to Crash Data • Company Sues Feds For Release Of Safety Data • Feds Asked to Reverse Auto Safety "Secrets" Rule • NHTSA's Dirty Little Secrets • Consumer Group Sues For Release of Recall Data --- • Auto Safety News

Federal regulators at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) are sitting on more than 150 million consumer complaints, keeping them secret and away from the prying eyes of consumers and the press, The Washington Post reported.

U.S. automakers want the safety agency to keep it that way.

The information is part of an early warning system Congress ordered more than five years ago to prevent another public safety debacle like the Firestone tire episode that cost the lives of hundreds of consumers.

Safety groups have repeatedly challenged NHTSA's decision to cooperate with automakers. At stake is public access to almost eight million consumer complaints, approximately 138 million warranty claims and as many as 5 million field reports on product malfunctions.

NHTSA has now proposed a set of rules covering the complaints to comply with a federal court order after the judge accused the agency of deliberately deleting language that would insure the information would be available to the public.

NHTSA, arguing the automakers' case for them, claims that releasing the information will cause "substantial competitive harm and will impair the government's ability to obtain this information in the future."

Big money is at stake for automotive industry. Firestone recalled 10 million tires because of tread separations and other failures that were linked to at least 271 deaths.

Automakers claim consumers would use the complaint data base to file class-action suits if the information is part of the public record and they have lobbied long and to keep the reports labeled as confidential business information.

NHTSA insists the information is worth collecting and storing at taxpayers' expense, even if only federal regulators, whose salaries are paid by those same taxpayers, are the only ones allowed to see it.

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