The proposed fine is the largest civil penalty assessed by the auto safety regulator against a car maker.
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The group said it based that conclusion on a chart it said was used by auto safety regulators at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
The book ignited a national discussion on auto safety and ultimately led to reforms that dramatically refashioned the industry's standards, helping lead to a 32 percent drop in deaths by 2011.
"The difference is you're talking about somebody dead in the vehicle or dying very quickly, or somebody being able to get out of the vehicle themselves, " said David Ward, director general of the London-based FIA Foundation for auto safety, which supports the Euro and Latin NCAP programs.
The second company has to issue a certification that the car meets National Highway Traffic Safety Administration safety standards for new vehicles, and that all safety equipment is working as required before it can be sold to the public, said Henry Jasny, an attorney with the Washington-based nonprofit Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety.
Joan Claybrook, the top federal auto-safety regulator under President Jimmy Carter, said the stretch limousine industry is poorly regulated because the main agency that oversees car safety doesn't have enough money to prioritize investigating the small businesses that modify limos after they leave the assembly line.
The good news is that traffic fatalities are at historic lows, thanks in large part to increasingly sophisticated auto designs, advanced safety features and stricter seatbelt and DUI laws.
Embarrassed by a series of safety recalls that tarnished its quality image last year, Toyota Motor Corp. is working with leading U.S. universities to better understand key safety issues facing the auto industry and will share those findings with the public to get safety innovations on the road faster.
Modern auto marketing is often entirely about safety benchmarks, and modern consumers are eager to moderate driving risk.
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Auto makers have leeway under federal safety rules to experiment with shift-selector designs.
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The Transportation department also is nearing the completion of a set of electronics guidelines for auto makers that will dictate certain safety protocols.
In May, auto industry officials and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Energy Department discussed potential dangers faced by first responders from electrical charges produced by hybrid and electric cars.
All this networking was made possible by a 1999 grant from Congress to the auto industry of 75 megahertz of radio spectrum for safety use.
As an extra safety bonus, it also features an auto-off sensor, just in case a certain someone wakes up late and has to run to class in a hurry.
Plug In Cars' anonymous source also made mention of sales, which have reportedly slowed practically to a halt after the auto was was recalled by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration in August thanks to safety equipment issues.
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Johnson Controls, the big auto supplier, says coming lithium ion batteries will also have better safety systems.
Safety turned out to be a huge moneymaker for the auto industry, not an immense financial burden.
Johnson Controls (nyse: JCI - news - people ), the big auto supplier, says coming lithium ion batteries will also have better safety systems.
Since 2011, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has filed more than 20 of notices of violation against his auto-parts empire, Illinois-based Flex-N-Gate.
The bad news is auto crashes still accounted for 32, 788 deaths in 2010, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which means a vehicle-related fatality occurs an average of once every 16 minutes.
In a seeming acknowledgment of these dangers, the FBI issued a statement Tuesday stating it had "immediately sealed off" Dutschke's former tae kwon do facility -- which is near an auto body shop and an ice cream parlor -- and contacted public health authorities in the interest of public safety.
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