7/29/2019 LANG2030 Script
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Thank you, Pong!
After hearing the ethical issue of Toyota, Now, I would like to
move on to another ethical issue - the
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The
National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration is an agency of the Executive Branch of the U.S.
government, part of the Department of
Transportation. Its mission is Save lives, prevent injuries,
reduce vehicle-related crashes. However, itdidnt do really well in
this case.
Id divide my presentation into three parts, insufficient
attention on investigations, unbelievable limited
resources and insufficient working team.
First, the NHTSA didnt pay much attention on the
investigations.
In March, 2004, the NHTSA conducted the first investigations
about speed-controlling problem and it
was closed when the NHTSA fails to find a "defect trend."
In August, 2005, the NHTSA conducted the second evaluation after
a Camry owner reported
inappropriate and uncontrollable vehicle accelerations." After
that, Questionnaire was sent to car
owners, hundreds of people report problems with acceleration and
braking, but the NHTSA determined
that their concerns were ofambiguous significance". Therefore,
there were no further investigations in
19 Camry and Lexus models that are potentially involved.
In my point of view, the NHTSA didnt pay much attention on these
two investigations because as
mentioned by Pong, Toyota had found the problems in 2003, but
the NHTSA, being a government
branch, cannot find the problems. It is impossible. The reason
is that the NHTSA didnt pay enough
attention to it, didnt check it carefully.
Having examined the insufficient attention on investigations,
let me talk about unbelievable limitedresources.
In September 2006, the NHTSA conducted the third evaluation
after another Camry owner petitioned
the administration to investigate the multiple "engine surging"
incidents. However, once again, the
NHTSA failed to identify any problems. But the reason was really
strange. It was the need to best
allocate limited administration resources.
In my opinion, it is hard to believe the NHTSA, being a
government branch, has only very limited
administrative resources and cannot allocate for investigating
petitions related to human lives.
Investigating car problems is one of the major works of the
NHTSA; however, the NHTSA cannot allocate
resources to do that. Its ridiculous!
After talking about unbelievable limited resources, Id move on
to the last part insufficient working
team.
There are no computer science and electronic engineering experts
working for the NHTSA. Its
unbelievable! Being a government branch for traffic safety
