Who’s Watching Out for Safety?

As lawyers for Isuzu Motors Ltd. and Consumer Reports gird for a fierce courtroom battle next month over the magazine’s characterization of the 1996 Rodeo sport-utility vehicle as an accident waiting to happen, the federal government’s traffic safety agency is about to hand the publication a big psychological boost.

In response to years of lobbying by safety advocates including Consumer Reports’ publisher, New York-based Consumers Union, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is ready to publish proposed rules for a standardized vehicle rollover test, The Times has learned.

The NHTSA proposal, which the agency hinted at last summer, would mark the first time any government has tried to codify a method of testing for rollover problems--a subject of concern among many consumers and safety advocates, given the growing number of SUVs on U.S. roadways.

Although only two of the more than 40 SUVs that Consumer Reports has tested failed the magazine’s rollover test, the vehicles tend to be less stable than passenger cars because of their high centers of gravity.

NHTSA’s new consumer information standard would be distinguished from a regulatory standard: Motorists would be able to consult a listing of “star” ratings to compare the performance of competing vehicles, but NHTSA would not be setting an absolute rollover safety standard that would keep certain vehicles from being manufactured and sold.

Opponents of the kind of dynamic testing done by Consumer Reports have scored points in recent years by citing NHTSA’s previous reluctance to adopt a rollover test of its own.

Indeed, NHTSA and traffic safety agencies in several other countries have criticized Consumer Reports’ procedures as unscientific because the vehicles are driven by test drivers whose reflexes and motor skills are human and thus cannot be repeated without variation on run after run through the test course.

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NHTSA is expected to call for use of a computerized steering control to ensure that every vehicle is driven in an identical manner every time it is put through the course. That, the agency believes, would make it a scientifically valid test because its outcome could be repeated time after time.

Sources say the proposal is expected to be published in the Federal Register later this month. It would establish criteria for pushing passenger cars, minivans, SUVs and pickups to the limit in a series of highway speed turns.

The so-called obstacle avoidance maneuvers are designed to test a vehicle’s ability to remain upright in conditions approximating those a typical driver might create while swerving to avoid another vehicle at speeds of 40 mph or more.

NHTSA would solicit comment from auto makers, safety advocates and the public during a 90-to-120-day review period. If adopted, the rollover test would become another element in the agency’s New Car Assessment Program, which rates vehicles on crash-worthiness and other safety factors.

For their part, the auto makers have typically been unenthusiastic about rollover testing by outside entities, whether private or government, maintaining that they do their own tests and that their vehicles meet all applicable federal and state safety requirements.

Typical is Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc.’s position on outside testing.

“Each organization and individual test is just one measure of the performance, safety or reliability of a vehicle,” said Mike Michels, a spokesman for the Torrance-based importer and distributor of Toyota and Lexus cars and trucks. “Consumers should consider a wide variety of information--tests, reviews and opinions, as well as their own specific needs--before buying.”

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Although NHTSA officials would not comment on the agency’s test procedures pending publication of the proposal, it is believed that they want to rate rollover propensity on the same five-star system they use in their crash test ratings: The most stable vehicles would receive five stars; the least stable would get none.

The NHTSA test would not precisely copy Consumer Reports’ procedures, but the nonprofit publication’s lawyers are likely to claim that it validates the magazine’s efforts to show consumers that SUVs, because of their high centers of gravity, are less stable than passenger cars and that some are dangerously unstable.

Consumers Union is defending its rollover test in separate federal product-defamation suits brought by the American subsidiaries of Isuzu and fellow Japanese auto maker Suzuki Motor Corp. The Isuzu trial is set to begin Feb. 2 in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles; the Suzuki case is on hold pending a ruling by a federal judge in Orange County on Consumers Union’s request to have the suit dismissed.

Representatives of Consumers Union cheered in July when a preliminary version of the NHTSA procedure was unveiled.

The agency “is finally conducting serious research on the SUV rollover problem,” said R. David Pittle, Consumers Union’s technical director.