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NHTSA Failing To Meet Investigation Deadlines Is Just One of Its Multiple Problems

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) received a petition for a recall of all Tesla vehicles sold in the US in April. Costas Lakafossis came up with an explanation for sudden unintended acceleration (SUA) episodes and proposed a correction for them. NHTSA said it would evaluate the request. China's State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) started an investigation into that, and Tesla quickly recalled 1.1 million BEVs in that market. Nothing happened in the US so far – and an old explanation may address why.
Department of Transportation report shows NHTSA has to improve its processes to fulfill its objectives 24 photos
Photo: Department of Transportation/NHTSA/edited by autoevolution
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The complex answer is in the report ST2023031, released by the Department of Transportation's (DoT) Office of Inspector General (OIG) on May 31. In a way, it looks like a follow-up on the report ST-2015-063, also from the OIG, but disclosed on June 18, 2015. The most recent one states that NHTSA fails to deal with safety defect analysis as it should. Considering all these investigations are subject to NHTSA's Office of Defect Investigation (ODI), the DoT focused on that division of the traffic safety agency.

According to the report ST2023031, the ODI "does not have an integrated information system to facilitate the safety defect investigation and recall processes." It also "does not consistently document information used for investigating and identifying potential defects and unsafe motor vehicles or motor vehicle equipment in the Agency's internal and external files." Finally, "ODI does not consistently follow its procedures for issue escalation and lacks guidance for other pre-investigative efforts."

Department of Transportation report shows NHTSA has to improve its processes to fulfill its objectives
Photo: Department of Transportation
These findings suggest NHTSA has a major issue with data organization and procedures. The report ST-2015-063 was about the same difficulties, even if they were much worse back then. The latest document informs that the safety regulator restructured ODI in 2016 but that this did not help it be more effective in its functions. ODI still fails to "upload investigation documentation to its public website in a timely manner." Worse than that, it "did not meet its timeliness goals for the five types of investigations" OIG examined.

In 2015, ODI did not have professionals with statistical skills to help it "differentiate trends and outliers that represent random variation from those that are statistically significant." There were several shameful examples of how NHTSA was unable to perform its work because it did not have the necessary experts to do the job. Although the new report does not clarify if that was fixed, it brings up something that is somewhat concerning.

Department of Transportation report shows NHTSA has to improve its processes to fulfill its objectives
Photo: Department of Transportation
The report ST2023031 informs that "ODI's staffing increased from 54 full-time employees in 2016 to 88 in 2021." With 63% more people taking care of business, it should be much more productive. However, "ODI's number of investigations has remained nearly constant." By using the word "nearly," OIG tried to be generous with NHTSA. "From 2015 to 2017, ODI opened, on average, 18 PEs and 5 EAs per year. From 2018 to 2021, ODI opened, on average, 17 PEs and 4 EAs per year." In other words, 63% more professionals ended up opening 5.6% fewer preliminary evaluations (PEs) and 20% fewer engineering analyses (EAs). Although it would be nice to believe safety risks get increasingly lower as time goes by, the Takata recall shows that is not a given. On the contrary: the higher production scale makes mistakes more widespread, with the potential to kill many more people.

For its latest report, OIG selected 27 investigations from 2018 and 2019 and 8 from 2021 to audit. These cases revealed that NHTSA failed to meet the deadlines it defined for them by a wide margin: 26 of 27 investigations from 2018 and 2019 and 7 of the 8 cases from 2021. That's a 96.3% failure in 2018 and 2019 and an 87.5% miss in 2021.

Department of Transportation report shows NHTSA has to improve its processes to fulfill its objectives
Photo: Department of Transportation
These samples comprised five types of investigations in the 2018 and 2019 samples: PEs, defect petitions (DPs), audit queries (AQs), recall queries (RQ), and EAs. The 2021 cases involved only three types: PEs, DPs, and EAs.

NHTSA established that it has 120 days to complete PEs, DPs, and RQs. AQs do not have a time limit for analysis, but OIG considered the same 120 days for them. Preliminary evaluations are converted into engineering analyses when they produce enough evidence of a defect, so the other investigations are probably also just to sort the wheat from the chaff. EAs have 365 days to end.

Department of Transportation report shows NHTSA has to improve its processes to fulfill its objectives
Photo: Department of Transportation
After auditing the 27 investigations in the 2018/2019 sample, the DoT found out that PEs took 617 days on average to complete, or five times what they should have. DPs remained 339 days open (2.8 times), AQs took 1,053 days (8.8 times) to complete, and RQs lasted 488 days (4.1 times) without a conclusion. Those that reached EA status demanded, on average, 1,001 days to end, or 2.7 times the maximum amount of time they should have taken.

Things were a bit different with the 2021 sample. Engineering analyses were completed in 307 days on average, 58 days earlier than the time limit ODI set for them. Sadly, DPs still took 175 days to be closed, or 55 more days than the 120-day limit ODI created. Preliminary evaluations demanded 296 days. That's much better than 617 days, but still 2.5 times what the process should take.

Department of Transportation report shows NHTSA has to improve its processes to fulfill its objectives
Photo: Department of Transportation
I know of at least one case that was not covered by the OIG investigation and confirms its perception that NHTSA has to improve. The safety regulator opened the PE21-020 on August 13, 2021, and turned it into EA22-002 on June 8, 2022. If you exclude the date on which the EA was opened, we're talking about 299 days, or more than twice what the PE should have demanded – 2.5 times, to be precise. The EA22-002 is about to celebrate its first anniversary, and there is no perspective for it to end. Considering how long they take to reach a conclusion and what the OIG reports present, it will not surprise anyone if it takes almost two more years to get there.

NHTSA's Deputy Administrator tried to defend the safety regulator to Reuters. Sophie Shulman stated that exceeding internal deadlines was not a sign that it was not able to protect the safety of road users. In her words, NHTSA does not wait for an investigation to close to "hold a manufacturer accountable for fixing a safety defect." It does not make sense: if the regulator knows for sure there is a flaw to fix, why isn't the investigation closed? If it continues, isn't it because the problem still has to be confirmed and delimited?

Steven Cliff leaves NHTSA less than three months after being confirmed by the Senate\. Why\?
Photo: General Motors/NHTSA/edited by autoevolution
The fact that Shulman is the Deputy Administrator also explains a lot. NHTSA has not had a Senate-approved administrator for much of the last six years. The last one was Steven Cliff, who was approved in June 2022 and left in August 2022. Ann Carlson replaced him and was later nominated for the position in March. The Biden administration withdrew her nomination on May 30 with no explanations. Carlson also did not answer a request for comment from Reuters, which makes that all even more mysterious. Shulman replaced her. It seems no one wants to take care of the safety regulator.

OIG concluded that "weaknesses in ODI's adherence to timeliness goals; inconsistent documentation of safety defect analyses; reliance upon aging, decentralized databases; and lack of consistent compliance with its issue escalation processes increase the potential for delays in investigating and mitigating important safety issues." It made 12 recommendations to fix that, and NHTSA concurred with 11.

Department of Transportation report shows NHTSA has to improve its processes to fulfill its objectives
Photo: Department of Transportation
NHTSA said it would hire 26 more employees for ODI. The recommendation that it opposed to following was the 8th:

"Develop and implement a consistent procedure to govern ODI's practice of negotiating a resolution of potential safety defects with manufacturers."

According to the safety regulator, "communications vary significantly across investigations." That said, "imposing a procedure specifically governing those communications could impede the flexibility and discretion necessary to conduct negotiations and achieve resolutions that optimize safety for the public." NHTSA only agreed to "document negotiation outcomes in the official record."

It would be easy to say that the safety regulator is underfunded. However, it does not seem to be the case. Quite frankly, the reports suggest NHTSA just did not spend the money it has in a way that would make it more effective. OIG may be helping it become a sharper tool in road user protection. Sadly, the example I used right at the beginning of this text shows the agency has to do a lot more to be as respected as its equivalent in China: the SAMR.
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 Download: Department of Transportation's (DoT) Office of Inspector General (OIG) report ST2023031 (PDF)

About the author: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo
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Motoring writer since 1998, Gustavo wants to write relevant stories about cars and their shift to a sustainable future.
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