Detroit has hidden the truth about rollover safety from the government and the public for thirty years. Singing the same tired song, the auto companies continue to blame drivers who do not buckle up. Once again, Public Citizen has documented that Detroit is twisting the truth about auto safety to fit their bottom line. People who ARE wearing their seatbelts in rollover collisions are STILL being crushed and killed in ever-rising numbers.
Every twelve minutes someone dies on U.S. highways - that's equivalent to two fully loaded 747s crashing every week. As rollover-prone SUVs and pickups proliferate on U.S. roads, fatalities in rollover crashes have climbed to one-third of all vehicle occupant fatalities, 10,000 each year -- 2,000 of these people were wearing their safety belt.
Even though inexpensive and simple solutions for such unsafe vehicle designs have been available for decades, the auto industry refuses to make them standard on all vehicles, reserving safety as a luxury for the rich.
And the government has failed for over thirty years to address the problem of unstable, flimsy vehicles. True, following the highly publicized and still-tragic Ford Firestone debacle of the late 1990's, which resulted in the deaths of at least 200 people, Congress acted quickly to pass legislation to enhance tire safety and safety information. But in the three years since the passage of that law, more than 150 times that number of people were killed in rollovers alone.
There is a crisis on American highways - dangerous vehicle designs put you and your family at risk each time you get on the road. The people who should be held accountable for fixing the problem have been, until now, let off the hook.
Public Citizen Fights for the Safety of Consumers on Our Roads
Educate: Public Citizen investigates unsafe vehicle designs and advocates for new vehicle safety standards. In our report released Monday April 19, 2004 "Rolling Over on Safety: The Hidden Failures of Belts in Rollover Crashes" we highlight the growing problem of rollover crashes and the failure of belts to protect people from serious injury and even death during them.
Legislate: Public Citizen has helped to bring once-in-a-lifetime auto safety legislation to the floor of the U.S. Congress that would prevent thousands of unnecessary fatalities each year by reducing rollover crashes, reducing the violent mismatch of crashes between hulking trucks and SUVs and cars, enhancing crash protections in all vehicles, and improving the safety of our highways and driveways for children. The bipartisan safety provisions in Title IV of S. 1072, the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, and Efficient Transportation Equity Act (SAFETEA) passed the Senate in February, but were left out of the House bill following strong auto industry lobbying. We are now working to keep the safety in the final version of SAFETEA, read our report "Keeping the Safety in SAFETEA: Life-Saving Vehicle Safety Provisions Are Long-Overdue and Feasible".
Take Action Tell Congress and the Auto Industry that Safety is a MUST
The Department of Transportation has never issued a federal standard for belt performance in rollover crashes. As a result, belts often spool out during the rollover, failing to protect the occupant.
Don't wait until an unsafe vehicle hurts someone you love. Help keep the safety in SAFETEA - Let Congress know that thirty years is long enough for the government to stagnate on passing new, meaningful auto safety standards.
Auto industry lobbyists have not been shy in their bold opposition to the safety provisions in SAFETEA and the Bush Administration has sided with them. There is a tough fight ahead of us in the next few weeks and we need you to make the dream of safe vehicles on the highway a reality.
TAKE ACTION to demand safer vehicles
