News The difficulty of bringing autos into the US Market

Competing interests among automakers, governments and the insurance industry are hampering efforts to standardize safety requirements worldwide. That means extra engineering to make different versions of vehicles for different markets.
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Some differences are significant, like the U.S. rule that requires protection for passengers not wearing seat belts, which has no European equivalent. Others are small, like the U.S. requirement that vehicles have side lights, which are optional in Europe.

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Medford said NHTSA's test to make sure cars are safe for unbelted occupants is important in the U.S. market, where people who weren't wearing seat belts make up 45 percent of all traffic fatalities.

"The data that we have really drives the direction and the nature of the standards we develop," he said.

But car makers grumble that NHTSA's requirement makes cars less safe for belted occupants, since protecting people without seat belts requires more powerful air bags and other changes.

"We would much prefer to design a vehicle that provides good protection for unbelted occupants but is tuned specifically to protect occupants that are doing what they're supposed to be doing," Vondale said.

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Morganthe said:

Stupid 45%!!!!

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crunchierthanthou said:

but that's not saying 45% of people don't wear seatbelts, just that 45% of fatalities aren't. Otherwise, we could say that 55% of fatalities are wearing seatbelts and therefore not wearing one is safer. However, we know that's not the case. According to NHTSA, national seatbelt use was 82% in 2007. That means less than 1/5 of the occupants account nearly half the deaths.

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TechnoGranola said:

Why do you need more powerful air bags for unbelted occupants. I swear that my manual says it shuts OFF the air bag if you are not wearing your seat belt. I would think the air bag would have a likelyhood of killing you if you aren't belted (kind of like sitting way too close to the air bag). Off to check my manual....

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Morganthe said:

I don't know how that relates to those cars where the airbags don't deploy unless there's a seatbelt locked --- but I suspect there's also a weight sensor involved too. If the weight in the seat is over _____lbs, airbags will also deploy.

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