Lawmakers Revive Efforts on Auto-Safety Regulations

Effort Gains Momentum in Light of GM Recalls

WASHINGTON—Lawmakers are reviving efforts to strengthen the powers and resources of the nation's auto-safety regulators as they dig more deeply into why General Motors Co. waited almost a decade to recall vehicles with an ignition-switch defect.

Such an effort failed almost four years ago during the last auto-safety crisis, involving unintended acceleration in Toyota Motor Co. vehicles, but is gaining new life in light of failures by GM and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to act more aggressively amid indications of the problem with the Chevrolet Cobalt and other small models.

Democrats, in particular, are making clear that they believe a 2000 law that was supposed to catch defects earlier didn't go far enough, and some have already proposed legislation to increase reporting requirements on the auto makers and raise penalties for noncompliance.

Rep. Henry Waxman of California on Tuesday became one of the most prominent Democrats to jump into the mix, proposing an updated version of the legislation that passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee on a party-line vote in 2010. That bill withered amid opposition from the auto industry.

Like that bill, the new legislation would impose a new fee on car makers, of as much as $9 a vehicle, to supplement the federal auto-safety agency's funding. It also would require the companies to provide more information about fatalities in quarterly reports that are already filed with NHTSA. Further, it would require NHTSA to disclose information from car makers that is currently shielded from the public or difficult to obtain, and would have given the agency something called "imminent hazard authority" to make it easier to force car makers to recall defective vehicles.

"We need to make sure that NHTSA and the public have access to the same information about safety as auto executives," Mr. Waxman said Tuesday.

Auto makers through the years have fought off new regulation, warning about burdensome new rules and extra costs for an industry that needed a federal bailout in 2008.

While Republicans have mostly sided with the auto industry, it was Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican, who wrote the last major rewrite of auto safety law, the 2000 law known as the TREAD Act, in light of fatal accidents involving rollovers of Ford Explorers equipped with Firestone tires.

Mr. Upton, chairman of the committee that is heading up the House investigation into the GM, noted Tuesday that the issue was "personal" for him. He has recently said new legislation may be needed.

On Tuesday, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D., N.Y.) said he would introduce his own bill. And Sens. Ed Markey (D., Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) have already taken aim at what they see as a weakness in the 2000 law: Much of the information that auto makers share with NHTSA is treated as confidential business information and not released to the public.

The 2000 law requires car makers to share data on fatalities, injuries, field reports, warranty claims and customer complaints with NHTSA, but much of that information is kept from the public eye or difficult to obtain. The Democratic senators want the information available in a searchable, user-friendly format, despite worries within the car industry that the data would simply be a boon to class-action lawyers.

Rep. Diana DeGette of Colorado, the top Democrat on the investigations subcommittee that held Tuesday's hearing, said that the 13 deaths linked to an ignition-safety defect at GM "has exposed significant gaps in federal law." House Democratic investigators, meanwhile, rolled out a memo showing that the ignition-switch defect was hiding in plain sight—in a GM warranty-claims database that has a level of detail not automatically shared with federal regulators.

Among the comments: "Technician found vehicle stalling due to too heavy of a key chain causing ignition to rotate to 'off' position when hitting bump" and "Customer bumped key and car shut off…tech duplicated concern [and] found key not returning to proper spec after starting causing key to easily turn and shut off."