How the MotorWatch Motorist Early Warning System will help save motorists lives.
By David Dré Solomon MA, SAE, CAAT, MTC
Veronica was experiencing tire wear problems on her 2005 Cadillac SRX. She went to the dealership and they installed new tires free of charge. There had been a recall for the rear suspension weld causing separation of the tie rod from the body allowing the rear wheel to flop around. The recall number is 06V125. But her Cadillac was not involved in the VIN break out and even though she was at the dealership, the techs did not look at the rear suspension on her car.
A few days later she was driving on surface streets in LA on her way to the freeway with her daughter in the car. Just a few blocks before the ramp to get on the freeway the rear wheel flopped away from the body and began dragging on the ground. Veronica heard the noise and pulled over to see what was wrong.
A small crowd gathered at the spectacle of the broken-loose wheel and tire assembly laying flat against the ground. When she got out and saw what had happened, she was thankful that their lives had been spared. If the weld had broken just a few minutes later—she would have been on the freeway and the car would have been unable to control.
Just the week before Veronica had been at the dealership complaining about prematurely worn out tires on her Cadillac. She had no idea that her car had been recalled. Then the wheel came off, and she was scared to death by the incident. As soon as she was able to get on the Internet, she began searching for information about her Cadillac.
A search engine brought up the MotorWatch website and Veronica saw her car listed on the recall page. Normally MotorWatch requires inquiries to use the email portal, but Veronica was desperate to find out why her car was not recalled. Then she did a search for the corporate phone number and began calling and leaving messages on the MotorWatch voicemail about her Cadillac.
I called her back and got her permission to record the phone support session for the purpose of our hotline, and she agreed. The recording of the support session aired during our weekly hotline program on September 02, 2006. Since that time she has filed a formal complaint to NHTSA about what happened to her Cadillac.
General Motors has failed to expand the VIN break numbers to warn other owners of 2006 Cadillac SRX vehicles of an impending problem. If she had been notified, she would have been able to tip off the dealer technicians because she would have brought up the concern when she brought it in for the tire wear problem.
As any trained automotive technician knows, when the strut began pulling loose from the body of her Cadillac, it changed the alignment on the car which exacerbated the tire wear problem. But the techs had no idea there was a problem lurking in the rear suspension and did not even look. By having knowledge of a potential defect, Veronica could have complained about it and everyone would have been a winner.
But it was only by the grace of God that Veronica and her daughter were almost led into harms way if the weld had broken loose at high speed. She would not have been around to call MotorWatch and complain, and we would not have an example of how important the existence of a warning system is.
In 1997 while working at an assignment in Pittsburgh, I parked my Jeep Wrangler in the lot and set the parking brake. The parking lot had a slight slant to it. A little while later a security guard showed up at my office and told me the Jeep had rolled backward and gone through a fence.
I followed the guard outside and found my Jeep had rolled backward from the parking space and crashed into a fence at one end of the parking lot. The parking brake had been set. I immediately filed a formal complaint to NHTSA. I followed the complaint from a preliminary investigation, engineering analysis and finally a recall.
I was never notified of the recall. Last year I finally decided to call Daimler-Chrysler and get the recall taken care of. The customer service agent told me that only the original owner would have been notified. I told her that I was the original owner. She then tried to blame it on problems with a forwarding address, saying that I must have moved. No, I had not moved since 1988.
The real reason is because I fell through the cracks of the recall system. Obviously the system is not perfect and has room for improvement. And even worse, there is no way to know just how many others have fallen through the cracks.
Last fall I discovered that NHTSA was not posting about one out of a hundred of their recalls on the NHTSA public site. I wrote a letter and Frank Borris at NHTSA called me as a result. I explained to Borris that I kept seeing recalls being listed in Automotive News and not on the NHTSA site. After much discussion and faxing of NHTSA’s weekly recall reports that I had saved, Borris admitted that there was a problem with the NHTSA posting system.
Subsequently the system was changed from listing recalls based on a date range to a system which lists recalls from the first of the month. But the point is clear, there needs to be some form of outside-the-government accountability. Just as the legislative branch of the government has its checks and balances, NHTSA and the auto manufacturers need an outside form of accountability. And that is exactly the stated mission of MotorWatch.
MotorWatch has been publishing the motor vehicle safety recalls for almost two decades, and takes pride in the fact that the motor vehicle recalls are re-written for easier understanding and to eliminate the confusing verbiage which the manufactures use to hide the gravity of the problem, making it seem flippant and unimportant.
MotorWatch lists the last three year’s of recalls on the website, along with the current NHTSA motor vehicle safety investigations. But this is not enough. Now that the Internet has reached into a majority of American’s lives, the ability to contact motor vehicle owners has become easily available.
A web-based system is needed that lets motor vehicle owners enter their VIN designation and to instantly find out as much safety-related motor vehicle information as possible. With such a system MotorWatch could have prevented the carnage caused by the Ford Explorer Firestone Tire debacle.
MotorWatch was established as a 501c-3 Safety organization for the purpose of providing motorists with life-saving information. It is our mission to provide motorists with as much information about their vehicle with the belief that by knowing the inherent weaknesses (pattern failures) of their motor vehicles, consumers will be informed and enabled to have the problem areas serviced before failure can occur and leave them in harm’s way.
We at MotorWatch believe that NHTSA is seen as the enemy by truckers and ethnic groups and is hamstrung in effectively reaching the majority of motorists. It is a known fact that there is relatively little input from truckers, because truck drivers and owner operators will not go anywhere near DOT associated government organizations. Both truckers and ethics mistrust the government and will not go anywhere near their website.
MotorWatch began publishing important safety-related information in 1988, and on its website starting in 1997. The MotorWatch website has been publishing the latest recall information listed by month, and then by car make, model, and year. The MotorWatch website is still in its infancy.
In order to provide substance to the creed that an informed motor vehicle owner can operate a safer motor vehicle, MotorWatch began building a database of motor vehicle pattern failures, starting in 1986. We began publishing this information in 1988, and have since collected about 10,000 pattern failure records. It is our goal to make these pattern failures, including silent recalls, available to all motorists via our website. This is a project that will save lives.
In addition, MotorWatch is poised to become the Internet portal where motorists, consumers, fleet personnel, automotive technicians, and auto manufacturers can go to find out as much information about a given motor vehicle. MotorWatch will become a central clearinghouse for the dissemination of motor-vehicle-related information.
MotorWatch will be a point of connectivity which will interface not only with our own pattern failure database, but with the following motor-vehicle information systems and databases (in alphabetical order):
The MotorWatch website will also offer an independent reporting and tracking system which will mirror the NHTSA system. This will provide a form of checks and balances to insure unfettered data collection and Motorist Early Warning System (MEWS).
The eventual MotorWatch mission and goal is to bring about safer, more reliable motor vehicles. The way to do this is by the establishment of a neutral, non-fettered, non-governmental, unbiased independent data gathering and disseminating website. That is MotorWatch MEWS in a nutshell.
Our President, Doctor Jordan Goldman MD, and the president of the MotorWatch Technical Committee, Tom Mettner, and me are looking for others who are willing to become stakeholders in our MEWS endeavor. We ask you for your help and support.
We look forward to your interest and participation in helping us bring about this important outcome. We see this as important to travel safety as the building and connecting of the East and West coast with railroads. We invite you to help us hammer the new Golden Spike connecting the information highway with America’s highways and byways.
Contact us at 410-374-0900 or email Help@motorwatch.com