The DOT’s Inspector General looked at how the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) looks into vehicle safety problems and found that it could be better. Even though the NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation has been improving its processes, the new office layout and tools needed to be revised to look into more than 88 of the 75,267 consumer complaints filed in 2019. The report gave the NHTSA 12 ways to move more quickly. The problems are now considered “resolved but open pending implementation.” So it’s time to get down to business. Today, it takes time to figure out what might be wrong with a car. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) needs less time, says the Inspector General of the Department of Transportation (DOTIG), who just released an audit report on the subject. The main point of the 40-page study is that even though the NHTSA has made a lot of progress with its procedures, there is still much more work to be done. Before we get into the study details, “NHTSA Has Not Fully Established and Applied Its Risk-Based Process for Safety Defect Analysis,” let’s talk about why it’s essential to know how the NHTSA handles investigations and recalls. The flawed Takata airbag inflators were one recent example of a significant safety failure that got much attention. They caused 24 deaths and more than 400 injuries. The DOT Inspector General wants the NHTSA to speed up how it collects and analyses information to fix similar safety problems and keep accident rates from rising to similar levels. The Defects Investigation Office needed to look into more flaws. The DOT looked at the NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) for the report because it “plays a key role by gathering and analysing relevant information, investigating potential defects, identifying unsafe motor vehicles and motor vehicle equipment, and managing the recall process.” Between 2016 and 2020, the ODI changed its ways of doing things. For example, it reorganised its workspace and changed the tools it uses to store and analyse data. This didn’t stop the DOTIG from making some critical comments, though. Lastly, the ODI “does not always follow its issue-escalation procedures and lacks guidance for other efforts before an investigation.” It also missed deadlines, didn’t post documents on its public website on time, and didn’t look into safety problems or recall goods. In other words, the NHTSA needs to improve. In the study, these arguments are looked at in more depth. For example, the DOT found that the ODI didn’t always follow the rules for figuring out which complaints should be dealt with first and should be looked into for the last point, “escalation of the issue.” In 2019, the NHTSA got 75,267 complaints from customers, and 32,482 of them needed “further substantive review.” The NHTSA sent out 966 recalls that year, but the ODI only started 88 probes. The auto industry is moving more quickly than the NHTSA. This low number of probes is partly because automakers decided to do some recalls before the ODI’s investigation. According to the DOTIG, this method “counts the number of vehicles recalled each year instead of the number of possible safety defects investigated,” which aligns with ODI’s success standards. The NHTSA accepted ten of the DOTIG’s twelve ideas for making safety changes faster. The NHTSA didn’t agree with the DOT study on how to get makers to fix safety problems, but it did agree with another report on how to meet deadlines. Based on the NHTSA’s response, the DOTIG said, “All 12 recommendations are resolved but open pending implementation.”
