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“THE DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION AND THE NATIONAL HIGHWAY SAFETY ADMINISTRATION” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Transportation was published in the Extensions of Remarks section on pages E929-E930 on June 18, 2015.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
THE DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION AND THE NATIONAL HIGHWAY SAFETY
ADMINISTRATION
______
HON. VIRGINIA FOXX
of north carolina
in the house of representatives
Thursday, June 18, 2015
Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, the Department of Transportation and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recently announced a sweeping recall that encourages consumers to replace airbags installed in millions of vehicles on the roads of our nation.
The companies that manufacture the parts that go into the vehicles American families use in their daily lives have a responsibility to ensure their products meet the highest possible standards. Americans deserve the confidence of knowing safety features will perform their mission effectively.
Government, for its part, also has a responsibility. Its job is to ensure there is accountability in the development and implementation of these mechanisms, and to apply the laws of our country fairly and judiciously in carrying out its mandate.
As the recall is implemented, the safety of American drivers and passengers must be our highest priority. We must ensure there is accountability for failures in the system. But we also must ensure that the recall process does not devolve into a scorched-earth campaign that wrecks a vital industry, destroys jobs, and ultimately makes Americans less safe.
The loss of any life in conjunction with a product failure is tragic and unacceptable. As a representative of TK Holdings stated in recent testimony before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, ``it is unacceptable to us and incompatible with our safety mission for even one of our products to fail to perform as intended and to put people at risk.''
This is a higher standard than the federal government itself embraced nearly a quarter-century ago, when it mandated that all cars and light trucks sold in the United States be equipped with self-deploying driver-side airbags.
The federal airbag mandate was adopted by Congress in 1991 amid concerns by some experts that the airbags themselves could pose a danger to drivers and passengers in certain situations. Our colleagues, who authored the law, were aware of these concerns, but determined that the benefits far outweighed the risks.
Over time, their assessment has been proven correct. Thousands of lives have been saved by the presence of airbags as a standard feature in our vehicles.
Every life is precious. And the reality is that millions of airbags and other safety products produced by Takata--including those made by the many hard-working Americans employed by the company and its subsidiaries here in the United States--have inflated successfully and worked as intended. Thousands of Americans owe their lives to this success.
Correcting the problems identified with some of the airbags produced by Takata starts with recognizing this, and acknowledging the need for prudence in the manner in which the federal government responds to the problems that have been brought tragically to light.
We also should recognize that, in thinking about safety, we need to look beyond airbags to the broader question of how to protect drivers on the road and how to encourage them to drive more safely. As NHTSA itself recently recognized, ``[o]nly a small percentage (approximately 2%) of the annual highway fatalities is directly attributable to vehicle factors
(some design issues, some owner maintenance issues, some defect issues). Rather, 94 percent of highway fatalities are related to various human factors, including driver actions, such as speeding, distraction, impaired driving, and not wearing a seatbelt.''
No one questions the need for accountability in this case. My concern is with potential unintended effects of going too far in an effort to ensure accountability, as well as potentially getting distracted from the larger issue of how to encourage our constituents to drive more safely and responsibly.
In this instance, pushing Takata too hard financially, for example, will not save a single American life. To the contrary, it will make it harder to ensure safe airbags are installed in every vehicle that needs one and potentially put lives at risk. Moreover, doing so could significantly disrupt the auto sector, which depends on the company for airbags, seat belts, and other safety features that are essential for protecting lives.
Let me put this in perspective.
Takata's Highland Industries, headquartered in Kernersville, North Carolina, in my congressional district, is one of the largest suppliers of fabric for the North American airbag market. My talented, hard-
working constituents at Highland Industries take pride in their work, which has played a direct role over the years in saving thousands of American lives. In addition to helping save the lives of individuals in an accident, they produced the fabrics that have safely gotten astronauts into space, including to the moon and back. Indeed, the flag planted on the moon is made of fabric that was produced by these hard-
working Americans in my congressional district.
Destroying the jobs of my constituents in the name of safety will not make American drivers and passengers safer. It will ultimately make them less safe.
We all mourn the American citizens who lost their lives tragically in accidents in which an airbag did not perform as intended. Their legacy should be a better and stronger system of airbag safety in the United States, through the development of even more advanced airbags and other safety features. We owe it to their families to put political agendas and posturing aside and work together to achieve that goal.
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