Car and Driver in a blog slams the NHTSA over its “incompetent, mismanaged staff who are practically set up by their superiors to fail.” The article references a DOT 11-month audit of the Agency that found that NHTSA needs an overhaul from the number of employees to the quality of their credentials and the procedures they follow to document information obtained from complaints or investigations. The blog goes on to list several shortcomings found in the DOT’s audit report including gross delays, adding that NHTSA administrator Mark Rosekind called for an increase in funding to hire more investigators, but failed to acknowledge the agency’s shortcomings, which prompted Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO)to say, “I’m not about to give you more money until I see meaningful progress on reforming the internal processes in this organization.” She added, “You can’t start throwing money until you have a system in place to make this agency function like it’s supposed to.”
DOTOIG report critical of NHTSA’s defects office. The Daily Caller reports that the a report from the DOTOIG said that the NHTSA’s “Office of Defects Investigation has poorly trained staff members.” The OIG report also said that “even if they were properly trained, they review defect and accident data that is all but worthless.” NHTSA officials argue that they need a “bigger budget and larger staff.” NHTSA Administrator Mark Rosekind recently told a Senate subcommittee that the “defects office budget has dropped over the past decade.” NHTSA spokesperson Gordon Trowbridge said, “The administrator has said we will do everything we can with available resources, but that the lack of resources required to accomplish our mission is a known safety risk.” Trowbridge also said, “That’s why the president’s [fiscal year 2016] budget request includes a request for funding to double the number of personnel assigned to ODI.”
From the news release of the American Association for Justice.
