Jeep Cherokee Airbag Recall

Fiat Chrysler adds nearly 69,000 Jeep Cherokees to side air bag recall over software problem. The AP<http://mailview.bulletinmedia.com/mailview.aspx?m=2015051301aaj&r=3915930-4b3b&l=00b-7f5&t=c>(5/12) reports Fiat Chrysler is adding almost 69,000 Jeep Cherokees to a “recall to fix software that can cause side air bags to inflate without a crash.” The AP said that the additional numbers brings the total of 2014 and 2015 Cherokees under the February recall to almost 317,000. Of those, 265,000 are in the US, Canada or Mexico.

        The Detroit News<http://mailview.bulletinmedia.com/mailview.aspx?m=2015051301aaj&r=3915930-4b3b&l=00c-443&t=c> (5/12, Shepardson, 523K) reports Fiat Chrysler said it “updated the software in 2015 and 2016 vehicles in a production change in November 2014 to address air bag deployment issues without recalling the vehicles.” The News says Fiat Chrysler told the NHTSA last week it was expanding the US recall because it had “inadvertently omitted 62,000 vehicles.”

Pennsylvania Lawyers Helping Pennsylvania Farmers in Litigation over Genetically Modified Corn and Seeking to Recover Market Losses

The law firm of Atlee Hall is assisting Pennsylvania farmers in lawsuits against agribusiness giant Syngenta seeking to recover damages to the US corn market from Syngenta’s introduction of genetically modified corn, which has caused major countries to reject US corn.  This has caused the price of US corn to drop roughly 25% or more, resulting in damages to farmers and others in the stream of corn sales. 

Syngenta, the Swiss based maker of seeds and agricultural chemicals, is facing responsibility and accountability tied to its Agrisure Viptera strain of GMO corn.  Syngenta sold Agrisure Viptera (MIR162) to US farmers without first obtaining import approval from China.  China no longer accepts corn from the United States, thus causing millions of dollars in damages to US farmers.

The lawyers at Atlee Hall are seeking to recover market losses on behalf of Pennsylvania farmers against Syngenta as a result of the drop in corn prices due to China’s rejection of US corn shipments because of the GMO corn introduced by Syngenta. 

We welcome the opportunity to further discuss this GMO corn dispute process with you.  You may contact any of the following:  Jaime Jackson at jdjackson@atleehall.com; Mark Atlee at mcatlee@atleehall.com or you can call our office at 800-924-2309.

Who owns vehicle-generated data?

Interesting Article by Keith Crain at the Automotive News:

As more companies develop and test autonomous vehicles, we'll have to sort out how to handle the inevitable malfunctions and crashes that come with adopting any new technology.

Regardless of how well planned and thought-out, new technology is bound to create challenges.

The courts may believe they have decided who owns the information that today's automobiles generate, but I doubt that it's a closed book.

Every new car has a small but important black box on board. In the few seconds before a vehicle crash, the box will have recorded a lot of very important information. Were the brakes applied? What was the angle of the steering wheel? Did the airbags deploy?

Such information would be very valuable in any lawsuit that tries to determine responsibility. To me, it seems obvious that the vehicle owner should be the rightful owner of any and all information from the black box.

Yet the courts are full of lawyers fighting over that information.

So if a future collision involves a driverless vehicle, it's bound to become even harder to determine what went wrong and assign fault if no human was driving.

Will parts suppliers be held responsible? Or only vehicle manufacturers? Does an owner have a responsibility to stay in control even if he or she put the vehicle on autopilot?

The lawyers will have a heyday fighting over this one.

It may all seem far off, but Daimler AG's Daimler Trucks division has begun testing autonomous heavy-duty trucks on public roads in Nevada.

Running big trucks on open highways is a logical start to testing driverless vehicles. Driving in relatively light traffic on a Nevada highway makes for safer testing than in heavier traffic in a major urban system.

As the automobile continues as a platform for more complicated vehicles, it will be fascinating to see how the legal system allocates ownership of the data generated.

And we haven't even scratched the surface of autonomous vehicles. Brace for more complexity.

NHTSA launches recall query after complaints about previously recalled SUVs.

The Washington Post (5/6, Read, 5.03M) reports the NHTSA has received eight complaints about Jeep Grand Cherokees and Dodge Durangos vanity mirrors or headliners catching fire, despite Chrysler’s 2014 recall for these problems in 2011-2014 models of the SUVs. Some occupants complained of “smoke sometimes followed by flames erupting in the headliner.” The Post reports that the NHTSA has launched a “recall query” to examine whether Fiat Chrysler Automobiles’ solution for the recalled vehicles or why it may have created new problems.

        Reuters (5/6) adds that more than 900,000 vehicles in the US alone were recalled last year and explains how the vanity light wiring was rerouted in sun visors to address the fire hazards in the recalled vehicles

Dangers of Self-Driving Vehicles

Driverless vehicles are no longer science fiction. They’re a reality that could hit the road in the next few years and become a standard feature in all vehicles by the middle of the century.

The appeal of self-driving cars is evident. They will improve the mobility of those who don’t (or can’t) currently drive, and they could minimize emissions thanks to reduced congestion. But there are also some unexpected dangers that could arise.

Driverless Cars Could Make Roads More Dangerous

Here are a few dangers of self-driving vehicles that you may not have thought of:

Road safety will worsen before getting better.

When both conventional vehicles and SDVs share the road during the transitional period to SDVs only, the risk of accidents for conventional vehicles could be elevated, according to an earlier study conducted by Sivak and Schoettle. They found that SDVs may not be able to avoid crashes that aren’t caused by drivers. It’s still hard to know exactly how long self-driving vehicles and conventional vehicles will share the road during the technological transition.

Hackers could highjack self-driving vehicles and control them remotely.

NHTSA probes Jeep, Dodge over sun visor fires.

The New York Times (5/5, B3, Jensen, Subscription Publication, 12.24M) reports that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is investigating a Jeep and Dodge sun visor recall last year affecting 895,000 vehicles after the NHTSA “received eight reports of fires in vehicles whose electrical wiring had been repaired in a recall started by Fiat Chrysler in July, according to a statement on its website.” One Jeep owner reported the fire from the sun visor spread throughout his vehicle. 

Ford, under pressure from NHTSA, expands door handle recall.

The Detroit News (5/2, Shepardson, 523K) reports that Ford Motor Co., under pressure from the NHTSA, said Friday it will expand an existing recall for door latch issues for 156,000 additional vehicles, including Ford Fiesta vehicles manufactured in 2011. Since 2014, Ford has issued five recalls covering more than 1.55 million vehicles for door latch glitches. The News says a discussion between NHTSA Administrator Mark Rosekind and Ford officials led to the expanded recall now totaling 390,000 vehicles. The story says Rosekind is meeting this week with Ford CEO Mark Fields and other top executives with Detroit’s Big Three automakers. “I want to have direct communication. If there are issues, I want to be able to call them or they can call me — that just doing this through headlines for example or reading a press release is not the way for us to talk about a recall issue or a defect,” Rosekind said.