An investigation by CBS News triggered changes to the federal vehicle safety law when President Joe Biden signed the infrastructure bill on Monday.
Six years ago, CBS news reporter Kris Van Cleave and producer Megan Towey discovered during an investigation that regulators and automakers were aware of the problem of seats collapsing during a vehicle collision, but did not take any measures to prevent this. happen.
The federal safety standards established in 1967 made the front seats of vehicles prone to collapse in a rear-end collision. The result can be fatal to children sitting in the back seat of the vehicle. According to the new legislation, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) now has two years to upgrade federal requirements for seat strength standards.
Katie Johnston of CBS sat down with Kris Van Cleave to discuss his years of investigation into exposure safety standards.
"It's certainly not that people don't know," Van Cleave explained. "You keep seeing examples of it and well-documented evidence. People knew there was a problem but didn't take action."
CBS News learned that as early as 1989, a highly regarded accident investigator notified NHTSA of concerns about the strength of the front seats of the vehicle. Investigators appeared at 60 minutes to discuss this issue in 1992, but never made any adjustments to the federal seat strength standards.
"We learned in 2000 that the administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration told CBS News that this was a standard that needed to be changed. A few years later, NHTSA gave up research to find a better standard," Van Cleave said.
According to reports by Van Cleave and Towey, CBS News found more than 100 cases of children being seriously injured or killed in such accidents. However, tracing the lawsuits or victims caused by such accidents proves to be challenging.
"When an incident that leads to a lawsuit occurs, they tend to settle, and then there will be a non-disclosure agreement," Van Cleave said. "The automakers don't seem to really want these cases, they have to be tried and entered into the public record."
Crash test video obtained by CBS News shows that when the seat collapses, the driver will be bounced into the back seat, where children often sit. The report shows that all seats that fail the crash test meet or exceed the federal strength standards established half a century ago. But the same is true for banquet chairs.
"Think of all the changes that have taken place in vehicle safety in 54 years."
Van Cleave said that their report has not yet been completed. He and the manufacturer Towey plan to follow up with NHTSA in the next two years to determine the measures being implemented to improve the safety standards of seat backs, and to investigate car manufacturers' responses to the new regulations.
You can read the full report of CBS News and links to previous reports here.