NHTSA Fines Ford $165M, Orders Overhaul of its Process for Issuing Recalls
Ford will have to pay out $165 million to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for being too slow to issue a recall and giving the agency inaccurate information, reports Associated Press.
U.S. law requires an automaker to submit a defect report to NHTSA within five days of becoming aware of a safety defect in any of its vehicles.
Ford had first received warranty claims related to faulty rearview cameras in early 2020, with a Ford committee meeting on it in May. It wasn’t until September 2020 that a recall for over 620,000 vehicles in the U.S. was issued.
Prior to that, NHTSA had reached out to Ford in July 2020 about complaints it was receiving of faulty rearview cameras. A month later, at a meeting with NHTSA, Ford revealed data it had on several 2020 models with high rates of camera failure.
About a year after Ford issued the recall, NHTSA began investigating whether the automaker’s timeliness was sufficient.
In a consent order this week, NHTSA said the penalty was due to Ford being too slow to issue a recall, providing the agency with inaccurate or incomplete information, and not submitting required quarterly reports about additional recalls. Ford has disagreed with these assertions, according to the order.
Now, Ford will have to pay a $165 million civil penalty—the second largest ever dolled out by NHTSA, second only to what Takata paid for its faulty airbag inflators.
In addition, Ford must cooperate with an independent entity will be supervising its recall performance obligations for at least three years. The automaker will also need to review all recalls it’s made over the past three years, determine if they were sufficient, and issue new ones if necessary.
Changes will also need to be made to Ford’s recall decision-making process, including how it identifies safety defects and investments in technology that can trace parts by vehicle identification numbers. Ford has said its plan to achieve this is to put $45 million into advanced data analytics, a new document system, and a new testing lab.
