Hi,

On Wednesday, Dr. Hogan and I had a conference call with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on my Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. There was an informal, general discussion, but the bottom line:

• NHTSA can't find the bodies either
• NHTSA statement 'there is insufficient data' is misleading

The NHTSA will close my FOIA by sending two pages, one listing their databases (likely to be identical to their web page) and a copy of one page from the NHTSA's Wagner presentation, June 23. But the general discussion was revealing.

The NHTSA decided not to look at the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) because the EV mode speeds are slow enough that a fatality is unlikely. But FARS directly addresses the words of HR 5734, "... such vehicles [are rjw] extremely dangerous ..." It is hard to find the bodies when you choose not to look for them. They are looking only for low-speed incidents and that data is sparse and flawed. For example, the General Estimate System (GES) is a 1 to 100 sampling and there was only one Prius pedestrian accident found.

The conference call confirmed what had been suspected, no one can 'find the bodies' but the ambiguity of the NHTSA claim is misleading. NHTSA has the same data we have but used the absence of a positive result, the absence of 'bodies' by ignoring FAR, to claim "There are not enough crashes." There are Prius pedestrian deaths, 11 of them, which makes the "extremely dangerous" claim in HR 5734 at best dubious.

STATE OF HR 5734

There is no Senate bill and this Congress ends in November. The window for further mischief is rapidly closing ... not closed but closing. But never underestimate the ability of Congress and the Executive to do the wrong thing given the announcement a week ago of plans to spend $750 B. without the taxes to pay for it.

Come January, there will be a new round of political appointments and a new head of the NHTSA. Soon the current political appointees are starting to think about their next job. The senior civil staff are planning their orientation presentations for the new bosses.

CONCLUSION

Efforts todate:

1. Every co-sponsor of HR 5734 and the committee members have a copy of the Hogan report and recommended language changes.
2. Every Congressman whose constituents signed the petition has a full data package.
3. Every major news paper of the co-sponsor's states has a data package on HR 5734.
4. Engineering the perfect solution continues.

I won't sleep well until January when there will be new political realities and the "perfect solution" will be ready. The only thing I didn't catch was the California legislation, SB 1174.

Bob Wilson

After April 3, use e-mail to contact me: