If a U.S. Senate-passed bill becomes law, crash-test ratings of new vehicles will become mandatory information on new-vehicle "Monroney" stickers, along with manufacturers' suggested retail price and fuel economy averages. Crash-test and rollover ratings now are compiled and published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Manufacturers use favorable results in their vehicle advertising. But shoppers checking out vehicle safety rankings find little help in showrooms, and most rely on Consumer Reports Magazine or the NHTSA's website for data on crash resistance or rollover propensity.

The Senate bill now under consideration must go to the U.S. House of Representatives for a conference procedure. President Bush has spoken of vetoing the measure because of its cost, but there is no opposition from the auto industry because of the crash ratings clause. The bill would dole out not only funds to the states for new and improved roads, but it would also allocate $6 million to NHTSA to clear a backlog in ordering vehicles for the crash tests and rollovers it regularly performs. Currently, most vehicles receive four or five stars, out of a maximum five, for frontal impact, side impact and rollover resistance. A Government Accountability Office (GAO) study has criticized the rankings as indicating "little differentiation" from a consumer point of view.

Last year, NHTSA spent $7.7 million to conduct 85 crash tests and 36 rollover tests. The chief champion of adding crash data to the "Monroneys" (MSRP), named after former U.S. Senator Mike Monroney of Oklahoma, who sponsored the price-sticker mandate in the late 1950s, is Senator Mike DeWine, (R) Ohio.

http://www.thecarconnection.com/Indu...173.A8632.html

 

Yet another classic stupid, wasteful, pointless, and nanny-state-esque legislation sponsored by an Ohio Republican. Everyone in Ohio must be a total idiot to vote for these government-expanding clowns.

Soon, window "stickers" will be window "blankets." Okay then, can we at least then force automakers to put hp ratings on the stickers? Several automakers only put the engine size on there, but not any output data. I guess they don't want the world to know that their V6 engines are weaker than a set of Honda 4-cylinders.

 

settle down, dude. what's wrong with providing crash test data on the window sticker? do you not want people to know how safe or unsafe a car is? :screwy: a lot of people (i'm guessing most people) don't regularly read car magazines, read consumer reports, surf auto enthusiast websites, etc. when the only thing the average joe has to go on is TV commercials, it can only help people in deciding what car to buy.
if it's not directly related to safety, fuel efficiency or the environment, i say it can be left off. but this is obviously a safety thing. if you read the article, you'd also see that the bill would give states more money to improve roads, and the NHTSA more money to conduct the crash tests. i really don't see anything wrong with this, other than that it may be too costly

 

I agree that a lot of shit out of Ohio is dumb, but this seems like a good idea.

 

Nah, let the lemmings hear it from Consumer Scamports or "NEWS-8 AT TEN!"
Getting the government into the car-rating business is shortsighted, at best.

 

how does this constitute "getting the government into the car-rating business? they're not rating cars, they're providing information already being gathered by the NHTSA. again, unless you're for some reason against conducting independant crash tests, i can see nothing wrong with this idea.

 

I think this is a good idea all around. It would be very easy to implement, and would cost barely any money.

And what do you mean by "getting the govt. into the car-rating business?" The govt. is already in the car-crash-test rating business, and all this would do would be to make this info more readily available to consumers. The governments role wouldn't change at all.