Probe of Alleged Flaw in Mercedes Widened
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration confirmed Monday that it is substantially broadening its investigation into alleged sudden acceleration problems involving some late-model Mercedes-Benz automobiles.
The focus of the investigation will be all 215,000 gas-powered Mercedes cars with automatic transmissions sold new in the United States between 1984 and 1988, a spokesman for the auto safety agency said.
Watchdog Group
Last October, the agency announced it had reopened an investigation of sudden acceleration involving 35,000 Mercedes 300Es built in 1986 and 1987. At the time, it said it would “monitor”--but not formally investigate--1984-87 model years.
Both the October investigation and the broader probe were the result of petitions from a consumer watchdog group, the Center for Auto Safety in Washington.
The center announced Monday that it recently received a letter, dated July 14, from the Traffic Safety Administration declaring that the center’s petition of March 9, urging a wider investigation, had received a green light.
In its petition, the center charged that the agency’s “reluctance to undertake a thorough investigation of sudden acceleration in Mercedes’ other models . . . is inconsistent with the interests of auto safety.”
The Traffic Safety Administration has received 301 complaints alleging unintended acceleration involving Mercedes cars, a spokesman said. Of these complaints, he said, 217 drivers reported that the alleged problem led to an accident, 92 reported injuries and there was one fatality.
A spokesman at Mercedes’ U.S. headquarters in Montvale, N.J., said the German auto maker has investigated every instance of alleged sudden acceleration and found no problems with the car.
“None of these investigations has revealed any electronic or mechanical defect that could cause (the unintended acceleration),” said the auto maker’s public relations manager, A. B. Shuman.
Southern California is the second-largest U.S. market for Mercedes-Benz. More than 26,000 Mercedes are owned by residents in Los Angeles and Orange counties, according to the auto maker’s figures. The Northeast is the largest market.
Several Mercedes owners said they experienced sudden acceleration when they shifted from park to drive or reverse, while keeping a foot firmly on the brake pedal.
One owner, Maria Denker, 61, of Studio City, said she encountered the unexpected lurching of her 1987 Mercedes 190E last March 25.
Foot on Brake
“I have nightmares over almost killing somebody,” she said Monday in a telephone interview. “I was scared to death and I still am.”
Denker said she was parked in the lot of a North Hollywood garden shop and had just turned on the ignition of her gray-colored Mercedes in preparation to leave.
“I had my foot on the brake. I always have my foot on the brake when I shift from park to reverse,” she said. “Then, instantly, the car accelerated and shot backward. I hit a stone fountain and a steel pole holding a display sign.”
At that point, after laying down “about a 5-foot strip of rubber,” she said, the car stopped.
“I wasn’t hurt,” she said, “I had my safety belt on.”
Mercedes engineers from the auto maker’s Long Beach regional office inspected Denker’s car and concluded there was nothing mechanically wrong with it, she said.
At that point, Denker said she decided that her longtime fondness for the Mercedes-Benz was over. She sold the car and bought a Jeep.
“The reports all sound similar,” said Debra Barclay, a spokeswoman for the Washington-based Center for Auto Safety, a nonprofit consumer group. “A person has a foot on the brake, the car takes off with incredible speed. We don’t know whose fault it is. But there’s a problem.”
The most publicized cases of sudden acceleration have involved the Audi 5000, and lawsuits against the European auto maker are beginning to surface in courts across the nation.
Research Group
Last October, traffic safety agency Administrator Diane Steed announced that a Transportation Department research group in Cambridge, Mass., the Transportation Systems Center, was launching a study of sudden acceleration that would not be confined to any make or model. The group is expected to issue a report by year’s end.
The Cambridge-based group, an informed source said, has been attempting to produce mechanical conditions that would lead to sudden acceleration. But, so far, the source said, “nobody has been able to duplicate it.”
