Defect Investigations at Record High in ’89

The auto safety tally for 1989 has come in, and the news isn’t particularly good for consumers. Last year, 6.7 million vehicles, including cars made by virtually every major producer, were recalled by manufacturers because of safety defects that needed correcting.

The recalls included 1.7 million General Motors cars with sticking throttles, 1.4 million Ford Escorts with defective seats, 500,000 Chryslers with rusty front-suspension parts, and 408,000 Toyota Camrys with problem seat belts.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration boasted that it opened 213 defect investigations during 1989, a record in the 20-year history of the agency. Of the 6.7 million recalls, the agency claims that it influenced 77%.

The statistics beg the question: Are cars safer because more investigations are being run, or do cars have more defects than ever? The numbers, critics say, show the public is at risk.

“There are more defective vehicles out there,” says Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety, an advocacy group in Washington. “In the 1980s, we had a record number of new models introduced, which are always prone to problems.”

Ditlow has harsh criticism for the federal safety administration, saying it has dropped important safety investigations and has imposed fewer recalls than in past years.

But safety administration spokesmen defend their record and say a decline in recent years in the number of recalled vehicles could have resulted from higher quality in new automobiles.

There has never been an authoritative national estimate of highway traffic deaths that result from safety defects. But academic studies have indicated that anywhere from 5% to 33% of the 50,000 highway fatalities each year can be blamed on defects, including worn-out tires and improperly maintained brakes.

Even at the lowest estimates, several thousand highway deaths each year can be blamed on bad maintenance and defects, a toll that virtually all experts agree is simply too high to accept.

Question: On a recent vacation to Colorado and Utah, I noticed that a Texaco station was selling premium No. 2 diesel fuel unleaded with an octane rating of 88. I have never seen a premium or unleaded diesel fuel or one that is octane-rated. Can you explain that, please?--P.E.

Answer: The station either had an erroneous sign or you misread a sign for gasoline and thought it was for diesel. Diesel fuel is a much more generic product than gasoline. It comes in a single grade, has few additives and carries no ratings for consumers.

As you may know, gasoline octane is a measure of a fuel’s ability to resist uncontrolled combustion inside the engine, a condition that can cause knocking or pinging. The higher the octane rating, the more controlled is the combustion.

But diesel does not carry an octane rating, and if it did, it would be very low, because the whole idea with diesel is that you want very rapid burning. Diesel engines do not have spark plugs. Rather, they ignite their fuel by simple pressure and heat inside the combustion chamber.

Diesel fuels do have something called a cetane rating, which is a measure of its combustion characteristics, but the rating is almost never posted at the pump. Diesel engines are not rated for a certain cetane in the same way that gasoline engines are rated for octane.

In addition, diesel has few additives. One exception to that rule is an additive to retard gum formation during long-term storage.