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Show Dan Marriott Bureaucracy ignores 121 Suppose you sent a child out to water the garden. After a short time you hear a lot of noise from that direction. Upon inspection you found that was the child watering the plants, but he had taken it upon himself to stamp out the bothersome garden bugs. But while stomping on the pests, your child was also stamping out some of the valuable plants you wanted to nurture. Then as you attempt to reprimand the child, he refuses to quit, claiming victory over the bugs and ignoring the fallen plants. In a similar way, the national Highway Traffic Safety Administration, NHTSA, is making a modern tragedy of highway safety. While attempting to stamp out the pests of safety hazards, they have caused the loss of some small businesses, and in some cases, human life. NHTSA was set up by Congress under the pressure of Ralph Nader to make America's roads safer. Unfortunately, Nader and his cronies have taken it upon themselves to go one step beyond. They have taken to crushing small businesses who cannot afford af-ford the needless and expensive ex-pensive equipment which NHTSA requires on large trucks. And even worse, NHTSA has required one so-called "safety system known as the "121 brake system" as mandatory equipment. Even after it has caused at least 18 deaths and numerous accidents, ac-cidents, and has been declared invalid by a federal court, the agency refused to face the reality of its own mistake. The system was prompted by concern over truck jack-knifing, jack-knifing, which is a major cause of accidents in the trucking industry -- a reasonable concern. Theoretically the system was designed to automatically pump the brakes by a computer in a full skid situation. Unfortunately Un-fortunately the system was never road tested before it was put on trucks and buses. In real life, the computers are exposed to all kinds of weather, bounced over thousands of miles, and expected to work like a simple fan belt. It has 2,000 parts, some of which are micro-chips, transistors and delicate circuits. After 15,000 miles, the system starts to malfunction. Sometimes the brakes fail altogther, and sometimes there is a potentially fatal dealy of from 2 to 10 seconds before the old brakes are activated. The cost to trucking companies from jack-knifing jack-knifing accidents runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Any safety device that truly cut down those costs would be an automatic favorite of trucking companies. But the 121 air brake has caused more accidents than it has prevented, resulting in 12 deaths in Utah (including four teenagers in Magna and a family of eight in Scioio.) I have personally talked with the head of NHTSA, Joan Claybrook, a Nader follower. She told me that this brake issue was a political one, not a matter of safety. But she topped even herself when she said her principle concern was making sure the manufacturers of the 121 computers stayed in business. That is the kind of irresponsible and arbitrary government that we cannot tolerate. I have introduced legislation to withdraw the 121 system until it is proven safe. About a month ago, at my prompting, the House Public Works Committee voted to impose a two year moratorium in the enforcement en-forcement of the mandate. That measure will come to the floor of the House in July. The prospects are very good that it will be approved. This is a classic example of federal elitists, out of touch with reality, telling the rest of society what is good for us. It Droves to me once again that without careful scrutiny by the public and its representatives, the bureaucracy will run amuck. And the people they are supposed to protect will be the ones to continue to suffer the most. |