CONSUMER REPORTS ADMITS BEING WRONG ON CHILD SEATS

In 2004, as part of a settlement of an 8-year-old lawsuit, Consumer  Reports said that its finding about the Suzuki Samurai SUV – that it “easily rolls over in turns” – applied only to severe swerving turns on the test track. In other words, Consumer Reports was testing the vehicles at much higher speeds than normal and essentially "set-up" the test so the Samurai (photo), the kind of vehicle which CR had complained about for years because they simply don't like them, would do poorly. What CR almost succeeded in doing was destroying Suzuki as a vehicle-marketer in the USA. But there's more, plenty, plenty more false attacks against an easy business to go after --- the auto industry and their deep pockets.

A few years before that, CBS' highly-rated "60 Minutes" show did a hit-piece on the Audi 5000 (photo), saying that it was simple for drivers to mistake the gas pedal for the brake, and cited several instances of people getting hurt or even killed because of these "faulty" Audi cars. Audi sued several people involved in making these claims and even won the home of the woman who took the original claim against Audi to CBS. Eventually, the public found out that William Rosenbluth, an automotive consultant retained by plaintiffs in a suit against Audi, says he drilled a hole in an Audi transmission and piped fluid into it. The resulting filmed sequence, in which the accelerator pedal moved down on its own, provided 60 Minutes with the damning visual evidence the program needed to brand the Audi 5000 a dangerous vehicle. But it was all phony, and the story was not seen on the recent one-hour edition of '60 Minutes" celebrating the life of reporter Ed Bradley, who ws the reporter on the Audi story.

Good for those who complained, sued and proved CBS and their "consultant" wrong! Like Suzuki, Audi almost left the US marketplace because of a media hit piece. And remember NBC's "Dateline", which hired so-called "safety expert" Byron Bloch (a failed local Los Angeles TV reporter who hit on a hot vein by attacking car companies for TV news shows) to prove that certain GMC/Chevrolet pickup trucks could explode in deadly flames --- And it made a great story, until investigators found that Bloch was putting explosives in the vehicles and on their gas tanks and spraying gasoline in the vehicles before the "testing" --- Just to make for a good TV shot, you know. Bloch was also the "expert" behind the ABC network's infamous "Beyond the Pinto" series in 1978, which claimed (again, falsely) that many, many Ford cars and trucks other than the ill-designed Pinto could easily burst into flames.

And now, Consumer Reports admits they tested the child car seats at speeds much higher than they were made to withstand. The following is kind of long, but if you're a parent, or anyone who transports kids, here's part of the wire service story for your perusal:

A retraction of a damning report on infant car seats may be a relief for parents who feared for their  babies' safety, but it is an embarrassment for a trusted consumer guide.

Consumer Reports said it was conducting an internal investigation into what may have gone wrong in  its tests. The magazine originally reported that many seats had “failed disastrously” in test crashes at moderate speeds, but the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said the tests were conducted at drastically higher speeds than the report had claimed.

Nicole Nason, head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, urged parents Friday to continue using the infant seats.

“You're doing the right thing. Keep doing it,” Nason said on CBS's “The Early Show.”

“Parents should have confidence in their car seats, and they need to keep using them,” she said.

Consumer Reports spokesman Ken Weine said he could not say how the tests might have gone awry or who, if anyone, was to blame for the report, which was retracted Thursday.

“This is very early,” he said Thursday. “We found this information out very recently, and as soon as we did we wanted to take the most important step, which is openly communicating with consumers.”

The initial report, released earlier this month, concluded that many car seats failed in crashes at speeds as low as 35 mph. In one test, it said, a dummy child was hurled 30 feet.

But the NHTSA said some of the crash tests were conducted under conditions that would represent being struck at more than 70 mph.

Phil Haseltine, executive director of the National Safety Council's Air Bag & Seat Belt Safety Campaign, said the report had raised doubts among many parents about their car seats despite the “very rigorous standard at NHTSA.”

  “I think it's going to take a substantial educational effort to undo that damage,” said Haseltine, whose organization was created through a partnership of automakers, insurance companies and safety groups.

Researcher Kristy Arbogast, of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, who has studied child seat safety, said, “The worst thing that could happen from a study like this is that parents take their children out of child restraints.”

Consumer Reports' Don Mays, a product safety director, said at the time, “It's unconscionable that infant seats, which are designed to protect the most vulnerable children, aren't routinely tested the same as new cars.”

In the 35-mph frontal test, seats separated from their bases, rotated too far or would have inflicted grave injuries, Consumer Reports said in the original report. At 38 mph, four seats flew out of their bases following side impact, it said.

Comments

[steve parker]

Thanks for writing!

Your ‘correction’ on my memories, if correct, makes CBS’ methods even worse than I remember, whichever one is truly correct (and after all these years, who can really say?) … However, I am pretty sure Audi DID eventually sue CBS (and they did take that woman’s home) --- Can’t imagine how they’d be talking about such things in front of a vendor, except if you were one of their attorneys … Thanks again!

Steve Parker

[Gary Stock]

This article's review of the Audi situation is off on several counts. 60 Minutes DID NOT blame the Audi problem on pedal misapplication. Rather, they rigged an Audi to create the perception that the throttle could open spontaneously. The ultimate finding of three later government studies (USA, Canada, Japan) was that the problem was the result of pedal misapplication.

Also Audi did not sue CBS, though it should have (I happen to know because I was a vendor to Audi at the time and walked into the meeting room where the decision NOT to sue had just been made, after heated debate). Though the 60 Minutes report by the much vaunted Ed Bradley was as deliberately bogus as the later Dateline GM C/K Pickups report, VWOA did not take an aggressive tack with CBS or investigate the circumstances of the reporting.