Federal highway safety officials are investigating more than 1.1 million Ram 1500 pickup trucks because the vehicles may suddenly lose their power steering ability, heightening the likelihood of a crash.
The investigation centers on Ram 1500s from model years 2013 to 2016, according to documents from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The agency said it has received 380 reports from drivers saying their power steering failed completely or intermittently. Three of those reports resulted in a crash, but no injuries have been reported, NHTSA said.
“The failure allegations occur at various speeds with limited detectability to the driver,” the documents state.
The Ram 1500 is an award-winning truck that traces its birth to 1981, back when the Dodge brand of vehicles was owned by Chrysler. The first Ram truck was called the Ram 150, but it was renamed the 1500 nearly a decade later as part of a full-body redesign. The Ram 1500 won Motor Trend’s Truck of the Year award in 2013, then won the title again three times straight between 2019 and 2021.
The Ram 1500 is an award-winning truck that traces its birth to 1981, back when the Dodge brand of vehicles was owned by Chrysler.
STAN HONDA/AFP via Getty Images
Possible connection with earlier recall
Fiat Chrysler recalled about 440 Ram 1500s in 2016 due to contamination in the electrical power steering unit. That recall centered only on 1500s in the 2015 and 2016 model years. NHTSA said the same issue with those vehicles could be happening with the earlier year models currently being inspected.
The agency said it has launched an investigation “to determine if the scope of the recall mentioned above is correct or if another defect might exist that causes the alleged steering concerns.”
Earlier this year, Stellantis recalled nearly 132,000 Ram 1500s from model years 2021 to fix an engine software issue that caused the vehicle to stall while someone’s driving. That recall only impacted trucks with the 5.7-liter V8 eTorque mild hybrid engine, NHTSA said in documents.
Khristopher J. Brooks is a reporter for CBS MoneyWatch covering business, consumer and financial stories that range from economic inequality and housing issues to bankruptcies and the business of sports.
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Highway safety officials said Tuesday they’re looking into complaints from Ford Motor customers about the doors on some Escape SUVs that have opened while a driver was at the wheel.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s probe will focus on 346,000 Escapes from the 2020 and 2021 model years, the agency said. Customers have filed 118 complaints about Ford Escape doors, sharing that the spot welds on the door assembly bracket can malfunction.
There have been 25 reports of minor injuries tied to the Ford Escape doors, the agency said.
“Many consumers report hearing a popping noise when opening the door as the door check bracket begins to separate from the door,” NHTSA said in its investigation documents. “Continued use of the door may result in a dislodged door check which may cause a failure to latch when closed, failure to open, and/or inadvertent opening while driving.”
NHTSA and Ford have not announced a formal recall of the vehicles. The agency said it’s trying to determine if the door issue poses “an unreasonable risk to highway safety.”
Khristopher J. Brooks is a reporter for CBS MoneyWatch covering business, consumer and financial stories that range from economic inequality and housing issues to bankruptcies and the business of sports.
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Ford has issued a safety recall for 1.28 million Fusion and Lincoln MKZ sedans sold in the U.S. over faulty brake fluid hoses that can rupture, requiring more distance to stop the vehicles and “increasing the risk of a crash,” according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The affected vehicles are approximately 1.2 million Ford Fusions made between 2013 and 2018, and about 113,000 Lincoln MKZs of the same model years.
A worker prepares a Ford Fusion Energi sedan at the company’s booth ahead of the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, in this Nov. 14, 2016 file photo.
Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg/Getty
NHTSA said in a document detailing the recall that 2% of the affected vehicles are estimated to have the defect. Owners of vehicles subject to the recall will be “notified by mail and instructed to take their vehicle to a Ford or Lincoln dealer” for the required repair, NHTSA said, adding that the notification letters are “expected to be completed by April 28, 2023.”
Owners will not be charged for the repair, NHTSA said.
According to the federal agency, a hose carrying brake fluid to the front brakes on the affected vehicles can rupture due to normal wear and tear associated with its interaction with suspension and steering hardware, causing “a progressive brake fluid leak.”
In cars that have the leak, drivers may notice the brake pedal depressing further under their feet, “together with a reduction in the rate of deceleration, increasing the risk of a crash.”
In addition to the change in the braking behavior of affected vehicles, NHTSA said a brake fluid warning light may illuminate on the dashboard if a leak is detected.
It’s not the first brake-related recall for Ford in recent years. Almost one year ago exactly, the auto giant recalled nearly 215,000 pickup trucks and large SUVs in the U.S. and Canada because of a potential brake fluid leak.
That recall covered some F-150 pickups from 2016 through 2018, as well as Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator SUVs from 2016 and 2017.
The pandemic upended everyday life in lots of ways, and one of them was driving. We didn’t do as much of it for a couple of years. But apparently we got way worse at it when we did get behind the wheel.
And in that simple fact seems to lie the main reasons U.S. traffic deaths have spiked dramatically since the onset of the coronavirus – and have stayed elevated even since the pandemic has ended, compared with the encouraging trends in highway deaths during the previous 20 years.
“Distracted driving and speeding became more normal during the pandemic, and have stayed that way,” Chris Hayes, leader of the transportation and risk-control practice at Travelers Insurance, told me. “One reason fatalities and injuries have been going up is that, while there might be a somewhat elevated number of crashes, crashes at higher speeds are worse” in their outcomes.
Hayes has more than 20 years of experience in his field, and lately the study of traffic fatalities unfortunately has gotten more fascinating. More than 9,500 Americans died in traffic crashes in the first quarter of 2022, the deadliest start to a year on our roads in two decades, with deaths up 7% compared with the same period last year. That followed a 10.5% increase in deaths in all of 2021 over 2020, to nearly 43,000 people, a rise that, in turn, followed a 7% increase in deaths to nearly 39,000 people in 2020 over 2019.
Fortunately, the number of people dying in U.S. traffic accidents finally fell in the April-to-June period this year compared with a year earlier, by 4.9%, the first decrease after seven consecutive quarters of increases that started in the summer of 2020. But it won’t be clear until next year whether the pandemic-era plague of increased traffic fatalities has ended or reversed itself.
Driving behaviors that got out of line during the pandemic for various reasons created a dramatic reversal of decades of steady progress in cutting U.S. traffic deaths, which had seemed to defy a stubborn foothold of distracted driving and had benefited from the spread of more and more automated safety technologies in new vehicles.
Long story short, American drivers basically let more sparsely populated roads get to their heads early in the pandemic.
“The pandemic saw massive changes,” Hayes noted. “Unemployment skyrocketed; fuel became very cheap at the same time; and people were afraid to go out. So the density on roadways went down substantially. There was an assumption that this would be good for roadway safety. But, conversely, it ended up leading to long-term increases. It sounds too simple to be true, but the basic barometers of what makes a person a good driver — speed and lane management — got substantially worse early in the pandemic as the perception grew that you could just drive the way you want to.”
A number of dynamics sewn by the pandemic worsened and then persisted at heightened levels, Hayes said. More drivers became distracted by personal anxieties that grew because of Covid, for instance, even as more drivers felt freedom on emptier roads not to check their driving behavior. And many drivers simply veered into behaviors that are patently dangerous and lead to increased crashes, injuries and deaths on the road.
Twenty-three percent of U.S. drivers said they engage in texting or emailing while behind the wheel, according to Traveler’s latest annual risk index, up from 19% in the survey taken just before the pandemic. Also, 15% check social media, up from 13%; 12% take videos and pictures, up from 10%; and 11% actually shop online while driving, up from 8%. That last statistic — measuring conducting ecommerce while on the move — “is the one that shocks people,” Hayes said.
One reason for the alarming increase in distracted-driving activities, Hayes explained, is that “the line between when you’re working and when you’re at home has blurred significantly. Especially during the pandemic, that sense that, ‘I need to be in touch with my employer because I feel removed’ from work absolutely grew, and employers felt it was OK to call people on their cell phones because that’s how you got in touch with people.
“So there’s a temptation to still answer the call and be part of that meeting and be part of something [at work]. That remains. That’s one of the real challenges now about distracted driving.”
Another relevant factor in driving safety over the last few years has been the spread of legalized recreational-marijuana usage through a number of states, which in turn has led to more Americans driving while high. And though clearly state and federal traffic-safety officials are worried about the impact of more pot-influenced drivers, as judging by the temporary warning signs that increasingly appear on roadways, Hayes said “understanding where [cannabis] use might end and people can operate machinery is still poorly understood.”
“It’s absolutely one of the most complex topics you can talk about” in automotive safety,” Hayes said. “It’s not very well understood. One of the [knowledge] gaps we see is the assumption from many people and employers that drunk driving gives them a reference point for driving while under the influence of marijuana.
“They are both substances that have an effect on reaction time, but that’s about the best you can get in comparing the two. The rate of absorption and reduced faculties, the time [marijuana] remains in your system, and the time it take sto affect driving are so completely different that they fail as comparison points.”
At the same time, Hayes believes the impact on traffic safety from the many advances in automated safety systems — including adaptive cruise control, drowsiness alerts and lane-departure warnings — hasn’t been significant enough to offset such negative factors. But he said the contributions of new automotive-safety technology to actually reducing crashes and deaths significantly have taken a long time historically, in part because it takes many years for the collective American vehicle fleet to turn over. Thanks to quality and durability advances in most vehicles, the average age of the vehicle “park” in the United States is at a record average of about 12 years.
“It typically takes 40 years from when they’re introduced to when they’re in 95% of vehicles,” Hayes said about new safety technologies. “This is true even for ones that are digitally based, because they require new hardware. Another factor with [automated-safety systems] is that there is a level of resistance to adoption by consuemrs who perceive theyre giving up some level of control of the vehicle.”
